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In my perennial bid to lose weight, I joined Sparkpeople. It's a website that lets you track your calories and exercise, gives you menus and recipes and has a forum for support and help. The best bit is that it's free, unlike Weight Watchers, which charges to use a lot of their site. I'm not knocking WW, by the way - I've done that in the past, with great success. I just don't have the money to do it right now.

I've thought, since signing up, that Sparkpeople would be a great tool for people with diabetes to use, too. It allows you to put in the food you eat and calculates the carbs, fat, fiber and protein, totaling it up for you along the way. Thus, if you're trying to cut back on carbs, you'll know how much you've eaten during the day and can plan accordingly. If you need to cut fat or increase fiber, it'll do the same thing. The thing I really like about the site, though, is that it lets you enter the nutritional values of foods it doesn't have it its database. This is genius. If you buy some sort of specialty item, like spelt bread, you can put in the info, add it to your favourites, and then every time you eat it, you just have to click on the item and there it is.

I'm thinking of introducing this to Olivia. I walk a very fine line with her, wanting her to have the freedom to eat what she wants, but not to go overboard, as is her tendency. Right now, her weight is holding steady, but she's on the high end of normal for her height and I don't want to see her pack on the weight like so many girls do at this age.

Once she's done being grounded from the computer, I think this could be a good tool for her, too. It might make her a little more aware of how often she snacks and how many calories she's taking in on a daily basis. That's never a bad thing for anyone, whether they have diabetes or not.