Carbohydrate counting is the golden standard when it comes to maximizing glycemic control while expanding food choices.
Certainly, you can get away with a preset insulin dose that randomly estimates how much insulin you’ll take in your regular meal or snack, but carbohydrate counting allows for a much higher level of finesse when you’re trying out different carbohydrates and different foods outside your normal comfort zone.
If you like eating the same food Every day, every dayAnd it’s not a big deal to know how to count carbohydrates. However, the majority of people (with or without diabetes) enjoy adventures outside every day same Try out routines, new experiences and live your life!
With diabetes, trying new foods can be a difficult event because you don’t know how it affects your blood sugar levels. Learning carbohydrate counts can be liberated as it allows for stability in times of uncertainty.
This article explains carbohydrate counting, tools and apps available, how to “guest” carbohydrates when eating out, and how to explain protein and fat before calculating your insulin dose.
How to count carbohydrates
Carbohydrate counting may seem overwhelming at first, but the basic concepts aren’t difficult, and it’s even easier with access to modern apps and other tools.
Step 1: Identify the total amount of carbohydrates
Nutrition labels not only include the total number of carbohydrates in each serving, but type Carbohydrates such as sugar and dietary fiber.
To know how many carbohydrates are found in nutritional labeled foods, you must first determine the serving size. The calories and nutrients shown on the label refer to this single serving size.
It is important to identify the serving size as it can be significantly larger than the specified serving size listed on the label.
To add up your carbs when accessing nutrition labels, use the following:
- Identify the serving size
- Find all carbohydrates
- Multiply the number of servings consumed by total carbohydrates
If you don’t have access to nutrition labels (for example, for fresh produce), you can use a list of common foods and their carbohydrate content, or one of the many food tracking apps available. I’ll explain it later in this post.
Step 2: Subtract the fiber and sugar alcohol
Artificial fibers and sugar alcohols are common ingredients found in many protein bars, shakes and various other “low carb” products.
Simply put, dietary fiber refers to nutrients in your diet that gastrointestinal enzymes cannot digest. If you can’t digest nutrients, you don’t need to take insulin when eating nutrients (fiber) because nutrients cannot raise blood sugar levels.
Therefore, you need to subtract fiber from the total carbohydrate count to calculate the total number of carbohydrates that will raise your blood sugar levels. This process is known as the calculation of “net carbohydrates” in a food.
The net carbohydrate formula is to subtract the fiber (and half the sugar alcohol if present) to increase blood sugar and get the total net carbohydrate that requires insulin.
The reason you need to split the sugar alcohol in half before subtracting is because the sugar alcohol is only partially digested. Partial digestion still causes blood sugar levels to rise, but not to the same extent as regular sugar.
As a rule of thumb, if your food serving contains less than 5 grams of fiber, my advice is not to worry about subtracting. If your food contains sugar alcohol, I recommend dividing that total number by 2 and subtracting the total carbohydrates. If your food has a substantial amount of fiber and sugar alcohol, you can use the following formula:
| Online carbohydrates = Total Carbohydrates – Fiber (if above 5 grams) – (Sugar Alcohol/2) |
Note: There are various opinions about which fiber to subtract to find net carbohydrates. Some people only deduct less than 50% of the fiber. You need to go through a bit of trial and error to find the right amount for you.
How to explain protein and fat
When you eat carbohydrates, they are absorbed and rapidly increase the amount of glucose in your blood.
Eating protein can lead to delayed, longer-lasting increases in blood glucose due to the conversion of amino acids to glucose by gluconeogenesis. Gluconeogenesis is the formation of glucose in the body from non-carbohydrate substances, such as amino acids from proteins, glycerol from fats, or lactic acid produced by muscles during anaerobic exercise (1).
Because it is somewhat similar to protein, dietary fats delay the increase in blood glucose due to their effects on cellular responses that cause increased insulin resistance (2). When you consume fat, your stomach will also slow down.After meal) Slow rise in blood sugar levels (3).
When combined with carbohydrates, protein and fat usually relieve blood sugar rise, but then prolongs post-meal spikes and increases overall insulin resistance (alias, correction factors also don’t work well).
On average, diabetics will need to increase their insulin doses by an additional 30% on a protein-high diet and an additional 60% on a protein-high diet (4). However, the actual dosage should be adjusted to suit the optimal amount and method.
The key here is that carbohydrates are the main macros that raise blood sugar levels, but protein and fat also need to consider ways to not only increase blood sugar levels, but also increase insulin resistance within 3-8 hours after meals.
The lower the amount of carbohydrates in your diet, the higher the amount of fat and protein, the longer the post-meal spikes and the more insulin resistance will be. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a trend you need to be aware of so that you can make the necessary adjustments for better glycemic control.
Diabetes Exchange (List of Common Foods)
Diabetes Exchange List was created to simplify carbohydrate counts. Diabetes exchange is the size of the starchy food that makes up about 15 grams of carbohydrates. Below is a list of common diabetes exchanges. Click here to access the full list.
Don’t feel like you need to memorize all diabetes changes. You can print your list, highlight your favorite foods, eat them the most often, then place the list where it appears, and review it frequently.
Common Carbohydrate Source Diabetes Exchange List
One serving equals about 15 grams of carbohydrates
starch
- Sliced bread (1 oz)
- 1 tortilla (6 inch size)
- ¼ Large bagels (1 oz)
- 2 taco shells (5 inch size)
- ½ Hamburger or Hot Dog Bread (1 oz)
- ¾cup ready-to-eat cereal
- ½ cup oatmeal (cooked)
- 1 cup of soup based soup
- 4-6 Small Crackers
- ⅓ Cup Pasta or Rice (pre-cooked)
- ½ cup starch vegetables (peas, corn, potatoes, winter squash, etc.), beans, or legumes (pre-cooked)
- ¾oz pretzels, potato chips, or tortilla chips
- 3 cups of popcorn (pop)
fruit
- 1 small fresh fruit (4 oz)
- ½ cup canned fruit
- ¼ cup dried fruit (2 tablespoons)
- 17 small grapes (3 oz)
- 1 cup of melon or berry
- 2 tablespoons of raisins or dried cranberries
- ½ cup fruit juice
Dairy products
- 1 cup fat-free or fat-reduced milk
- 1 cup I’m milk
- 2 inch square cake (no frost)
- Two small cookies (⅔oz)
- ½ cup ice cream or frozen yogurt
- ¼ cup sherbet or sherbet
- 1 tablespoon of syrup, jam, jelly, table sugar, or honey
Carb Count App
There are a growing number of mobile apps that can help you count carbohydrate counts. Some of them are just food databases, while others are more interactive diet tracking systems. Here are four of the most popular carb counting apps:
These apps are generally accurate, but some of them accept user-generated information in the database. This isn’t always reliable (for example, people can enter nutritional data for their favorite restaurant dishes themselves).
When looking at carbohydrate counts, always use common sense to determine if you can see the numbers just before administering insulin.
Learn the art of guessing
In today’s world, you can easily access the carbohydrate count of your favorite foods using your smartphone. But the problem is when I’m eating at a friend’s house or a restaurant with a hole in the wall.
Don’t worry, remembering your favorite diabetic food exchange and the next step is to learn some measuring tricks so you can guess the total carbohydrate amount of your meal.
Inference = Inference + Estimation
The secret secret to learn how to measure in unknown situations is to use your hands to size up your food. Generally speaking, a normal sized hand is equivalent to: . .
- Fist = 1 cup.
- Thumb (Tip from base) = tbsp
- Thumb tip = 1 tsp
- Handful = 1 oz
Of course, the hand sizes vary, so to make this trick work, compare your fist with the actual measuring cup before using your hands as a measuring device. Learning to size up food requires practice, perhaps physically comparing the cleavage fist at dinner with a pile of rice or pasta.
By knowing your favorite diabetes exchange and being able to look at the size of the portion, the next step is to add everything and estimate the total carbohydrate count.
For example, let’s say you ate the following:
- 1 cup of rice (or about one fist)
- Covered with 3oz chicken tiyaki sauce
- 1 cup steamed broccoli
- One Fortune Cookie
Let’s break it down
- ⅓ Cup of Rice = 15 g (15 x 3 servings (3 servings per cup)) = 45 g
- 3oz chicken = ~0g
- Terriyaki sauce = ~10 g (guest swim here)
- 1 fortune cookie = ~7 grams (you looked it up on your phone)
45g + 10g + 7g = ~ 62g of carbohydrates.
You can then enter the total grams into the insulin pump or split it into carbohydrate ratios calculated by the provider or diabetic educator.
Count the carbohydrates that are important to you
In this article, we’ve covered some tips for counting all carbohydrates, but you don’t need to know the carbohydrate count of all foods across the planet. It’s just my favorite foods. If you think about it, we often stick to the same 20 or less, so the carbohydrates become much more viable.
An easy way to learn the carbohydrate counts in regular foods is to create the following chart using Google Docs or words (or you can always go on the old-fashioned route with pen and paper).
- Column 1 = Food
- Column 2 = Content and amount
- Column 3 = Carbohydrate count (grams)
Here’s an example of what a turkey sandwich entry looks like.
| food | material | carbohydrates |
| Turkey sandwich | 2 slices of wheat bread | ~30 grams |
| Turkey slices | ~3 grams | |
| Two slices of lettuce | ~2 grams | |
| Cheese slices | ~0 grams | |
| 2 sliced tomatoes | ~2 grams | |
| A little mayonnaise | ~1 gram | |
| Total = | ~38 grams |
You can add multiple meals and snacks to allow detailed reference sheets to be placed for all meals. After browsing charts for a week or so, you will soon become the master of the most important carb count for you.
Bonus Tip: Take notes on how certain foods affect blood sugar two hours after eating, as particularly useful for your carb counting experience. This is especially useful when eating a low-carb diet that is high in protein and fat.
Carb count takeout
Learning how to count carbohydrates can be a little difficult at first, but once you break down the rules and remember the serving size and amount of carbohydrates of the food that is most important to you, you’re well on track to count the carbohydrates into part of your normal routine.
Learning how to count carbohydrate counts makes the times messy. However, the goal here is not perfect, it’s progression. We try our best we can, learn from the highs and lows, and move a little more clever than before.
Understand that good control and diabetes management goes through a flow of motivation and motivation. Sometimes we’re really in the ditch and doing the killer work. You may also be burned out a little and need a break. During our regular deviations, we can still remain healthy when we strive for better control as a baseline.
Every day we continue to learn about diabetes and live a vibrant and fulfilling life. Taking the time to care for ourselves allows us to do what we love most and continue to share moments with our loved ones.
reference
- (1) Melkonian, EA (August 22, 2019). Physiology, gluconeogenesis. Retrieved March 29, 2020
- (2) Jejek, Petr, Jabrek, Martin, Blanca, and Liddy. (June 19, 2018). Fatty acid-stimulated insulin secretion and lipotoxicity. Retrieved March 31, 2020
- (3) Paterson, M., Bell, K.J., O’Connell, SM et al. The role of dietary proteins and fats in glycemic control in type 1 diabetes: an impact on intensive diabetes management. Curr Diab Rep 15, 61 (2015)
- (4) Smart, CEM, King, BR, & Lopez, PE (2020, January 1st). Fat and protein insulin administration: Time? Retrieved March 28, 2020
