Getting the munchies

When I'm at work, I tend to get the munchies. I don't know why the urge to snack comes over me more often at work than it does at home, but when I'm at work I really, really want to snack the day away.

Unfortunately, my snacking choices tend to be really high-calorie, high-carbohydrate foods such as muffins, chocolate bars or potato chips. None of those is a very good choice when I'm spending my day sitting in front of a computer, moving only to go the washroom or to grab a cup of coffee from the kitchen.

Last weekend when I was shopping I decided to look for better snack options. I found some mini rice cakes that came in flavours like chocolate, caramel, cinnamon and peanut butter. The cakes are packed into little pouches, and each pouch has about 15 grams of carbohydrate. "Oh, those look good," I thought, "and they're not super-high in carbohydrates."

So what happened? I bought a box, I took the box to work with me, and I ended up downing three pouches of rice cakes in about ten minutes, requiring an insulin bolus. It's one thing to eat a snack that has 15 grams of carbs; it's another to eat a snack that has 45 grams of carbs.

I'm not exactly a low-carber, but I try to be sensible about what I eat. And eating three bags of rice cakes is probably not terribly sensible of me.