RE: meal planners--Mike

[Guest guest]

Thanks...that certainly makes sense to me.

_____

From: Don Gallagher

Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004 11:20 AM

To: ketogenic

Subject: meal planners--Mike

>>>Also (in my opinion),

if the diet works for your child (and I pray it will), you will treat

that control like a fragile pot of gold (and it is) --- and you will not

trust anyone else making the mealplans -- and if they do, you will want

to double check everything before giving it to your child. That is just

my opinion & others may disagree. <<<

Oh my, Kathy couldn't have said it better!!!

Even if you don't plan meals yourself, it's really critical to double-check

those numbers. The meal planners make that easy and quick. When our former

dietician switched keto software to a brand new one on the market available

only to dieticians, we found a few errors in the program that were extremely

critical (apple juice values were wrong--a problem since that is my

daughter's main carb!). She was SO grateful I was double-checking her

numbers because they would probably have gone undetected if I hadn't been.

Being able to create meals or snacks based on my daughter's whims lets us

enjoy a degree of spontaneity, which gets to be important over the long

haul.

As mom and dad, we are ultimately responsible for my children. Because

we're the responsible party, that means we need to have a certain degree of

" control " in their lives. I'm not sure what word I mean here, because I

don't mean control-freak kind of control, nor a suppressive kind of

authority, but having influence over my kids and discretion to make

judgments about what is best for them. It's silly how being able to plan

their meals helps foster that sense of " control. "

It's funny how protective I also have become of any decisions that I can

maintain. I am saddened sometimes to think of how every aspect of my

daughter's life is under such micro-scrutiny...from the medical profession,

school system, State bureaucrats (for Medicaid). What a freedom it is to be

able to give my other typically developing, healthy daughter a dose of over

the counter cold medicine! Yet for , even o-t-c means checking with

the dietician to make sure the brand is all right, a call to the doc to fax

permission for her to receive a dose at school, double-checking that the

school received the fax, driving the medicine to school (since she can't

have it in her backpack, oh no, someone might get into it)...and so it goes,

multiplied many times for every issue she deals with.

Bill Barber creates his daughter's meals with hand calculations, something I

don't trust my math to do! So you don't HAVE to use a meal planner. But I

do advise acquiring the tools (skills or software) to be able to do the

planning/checking, because it prevents you from being at the mercy of

someone else's planning or even their errors.

Rose-Marie,

mom to , age 7 1/2