One of the on going issues with my son Bailey and his Autism is that he eats without thinking, he has no idea of how much he has eaten and can often over eat.  We’ve had some disasters when I have thoughtlessly left the biscuits on the table and the next thing they are all gone, he swears black and blue he only “had a couple” when in fact he eat them all.  Now that he is a little older he is more aware of how being over weight causes him to be slow at running and effects how other children see him.  He feels like the fat kid that know-one wants to play with, sad but a fact of life.  So what can we do about this?

I began the week by teaching Bailey the basic facts about calories in food and how they are the energy our body uses to move around.  How if you eat too much energy and don’t use it all up your body will store the energy as fat.  I then got out my Weight Watchers points guide and we looked up all the food Bailey loves to eat and wrote down the number of points in each food, he took to it immediately.  We then found lower point foods that are similar to the high points food he likes to eat.

A trip to the supermarket next to have a look at the food and see just what I was talking about.  One of the foods he loves most is potato chips, high in fat and no nutrition.  Banana chips are much lower in point value, 6 to 1 in fact.  He chose the banana chips over the potato chips and when we got home said they tasted great.  Other good choices were low fat WW cookies, watermelon and turkey for his lunch sandwich.

One of the more revealing discoveries that Bailey made concerned breakfast cereal.  The WW approved amount is only 30 grams ( half a cup ), and this looks very small in abowl but those pre-packaged box’s of cereal appear to have more in them.  When we checked the box Bailey was shocked to see they only have 25 grams in them.  We even got the scales out to weigh them as “that can’t be right Mum”.  By adding a piece of fruit to breakfast Bailey found this was plenty to eat.  

We then made a chart with 40 squares per day, each square represents half a point.  When Bailey eats he cross’s off the points value.  I  have shaded six points slightly darker to represent breakfast, lunch and dinner so that he gets a feel for where he should have most of his points.  This then leaves room for a snack after school, his worst time for eating without thinking.

So far we have had great success and by Friday I was very happy with his understanding of how it all works.  When asked what the boys wanted for dinner, Nick exclaimed “Mc Donalds” only to have Bailey tell him “no way Nick, that’s too much points” …. music to my ears!   So fingers crossed, with a little persistence and encouragment this could be the way to help Bailey with his weight.  And it won’t hurt the rest of us either!

I have added photos from the garden, so much colour to enjoy at this time of year.  Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

TTFN