Measuring carbs

[Exflex]

Pre-diabetic with HbA1c of 44. I’ve been reading and self educating but it’s a steep learning curve.
Can someone please tell me how to measure carbs. Say you want to limit to 40g, for example, that sounds like almost nothing, and although I’ve not measured I guess a piece of bread is nearly at limit. Hope I make sense. I’m cutting carbs as much as possible and finding protein: eggs, cheese, chicken fish all with greens quite satisfying.

 

[Leadinglights]

Pre-diabetic with HbA1c of 44. I’ve been reading and self educating but it’s a steep learning curve.
Can someone please tell me how to measure carbs. Say you want to limit to 40g, for example, that sounds like almost nothing, and although I’ve not measured I guess a piece of bread is nearly at limit. Hope I make sense. I’m cutting carbs as much as possible and finding protein: eggs, cheese, chicken fish all with greens quite satisfying.

You can look on packets, tins etc for carb values usually given a x carbs per 100g or per item, slice etc and then you would need to work out how many carbs for the portion you are going to have. Shop websites will give nutritional information for all their products. Carbs and Cals book or app gives carb values for a whole range of foods and meals with portions with their carbs.
If you buy sliced bread it will say g carbs per 100g and probably per slice e.g. 20g carb per slice so a sandwich of 2 slices would be 40g carbs, proteins and fats will not add any substantial amount of carbs.
You likely only need to make some modest changes to your diet unless you have been having a very high carb diet, a good starting point for reducing carbs is no more than 130g per day to include meals, snacks and drinks divided roughly between meals

 

[Drummer]

Pre-diabetic with HbA1c of 44. I’ve been reading and self educating but it’s a steep learning curve.
Can someone please tell me how to measure carbs. Say you want to limit to 40g, for example, that sounds like almost nothing, and although I’ve not measured I guess a piece of bread is nearly at limit. Hope I make sense. I’m cutting carbs as much as possible and finding protein: eggs, cheese, chicken fish all with greens quite satisfying.

You'd have to be really sensitive to carbs, like me, to have to keep to 40gm of carbs a day, but the main thing is to avoid the high carb foods, and that will immediately result in more to eat.
I found that my ability to deal with carbs is far lower in the mornings, so scrambled eggs with cheese and a tomato is a good choice, or seafood, green salad and coleslaw in warm weather, or steak and mushrooms, or a chop and stirfry - or even sausages bacon egg and bubble and squeak made with swede rather than potatoes. That is little more than 10gm of carbs, so leaving enough options for dinner to include sugar free jelly with berries for dessert.
My HbA1c is 43 at the moment, but I started off at 91 at diagnosis so I should be grateful for getting down to that level. If I'd been told that my levels were as high as they'd reached 10 years prior to diagnosis I might have had some chance to reduce lower, but they just stopped doing the test.
The easiest way to count carbs in a meal is with an electronic weighing scale. Some have inbuilt calculators, but I used a notebook and sliderule - because I can, until I could judge by eye well enough
Cheeky whatsit spell checker just underlined sliderule in red.

 

[Exflex]

Thanks for the helpful replies.
I like a couple of glasses of red wine in the evening with my meal. No idea how to factor this indulgence into my sugar allowance, the label on the bottle has no info. My guess is I should stop the wine but would value the member’s opinions.

 

[Leadinglights]

Thanks for the helpful replies.
I like a couple of glasses of red wine in the evening with my meal. No idea how to factor this indulgence into my sugar allowance, the label on the bottle has no info. My guess is I should stop the wine but would value the member’s opinions.

250ml dry red wine is only 1 g carb

 

[Martin.A]

Thanks for the helpful replies.
I like a couple of glasses of red wine in the evening with my meal. No idea how to factor this indulgence into my sugar allowance, the label on the bottle has no info. My guess is I should stop the wine but would value the member’s opinions.

Please don't fall into the trap of focussing on sugar. Sugar is a carbohydrate but it's all carbohydrates that we need to be mindful of, not just sugars. Sugar in general is best avoided, so there is no sugar allowance as such.

 

[Paul Rankin]

Have you tried logging your food with an app like MyFitnessPal on a smart phone you will have to weight things but doesn’t take long to get used to portion sizes. It’s really good resource to learn which are the best foods to eat for low carb

 

[Exflex]

Please don't fall into the trap of focussing on sugar. Sugar is a carbohydrate but it's all carbohydrates that we need to be mindful of, not just sugars. Sugar in general is best avoided, so there is no sugar allowance as such.

That’s a good point, I’m part way through Dr Cavan’s book ‘How to Reverse Type 2 Diabetes and Prediabetes’ which says white carbs especially breakdown quickly to sugar, he calls them ‘carbs holding hands’. Brown carbs apparently take longer.

 

[Exflex]

Have you tried logging your food with an app like MyFitnessPal on a smart phone you will have to weight things but doesn’t take long to get used to portion sizes. It’s really good resource to learn which are the best foods to eat for low carb

View attachment 29238

Thanks, I’ll download and get the scales ordered. My wife will think I’m a nutter, but it’s me with the blood sugar issue isn’t it.

 

[PerSpinasAdAstra]

Thanks, I’ll download and get the scales ordered. My wife will think I’m a nutter, but it’s me with the blood sugar issue isn’t it.

If you don't already own a scale a smart kitchen scale is worth a look. They come with an app that does the same kind of thing as the free version of an app like MyFitnessPal, though the scale app connects directly to the scale so you skip the step of typing in the weight of each item in a meal. I bought the Arboleaf one because it's cheap on Amazon UK and it was fine - a little annoying to setup as the built-in database of food nutrition can't be trusted, which means you have to setup each type of food you eat as a 'custom food' (a one-off process), but with that done it's quicker to use on a daily basis than a standard scale while tapping the numbers into MyFitnessPal.

5 Best Smart Kitchen Scales That You Can Buy

Looking for a smart new kitchen scale? Check out these modern smart kitchen scales to keep track of the food you eat.

www.guidingtech.com

 

[Exflex]

If you don't already own a scale a smart kitchen scale is worth a look. They come with an app that does the same kind of thing as the free version of an app like MyFitnessPal, though the scale app connects directly to the scale so you skip the step of typing in the weight of each item in a meal. I bought the Arboleaf one because it's cheap on Amazon UK and it was fine - a little annoying to setup as the built-in database of food nutrition can't be trusted, which means you have to setup each type of food you eat as a 'custom food' (a one-off process), but with that done it's quicker to use on a daily basis than a standard scale while tapping the numbers into MyFitnessPal.

5 Best Smart Kitchen Scales That You Can Buy

Looking for a smart new kitchen scale? Check out these modern smart kitchen scales to keep track of the food you eat.

www.guidingtech.com

Thank you.
Problem I have is that my wife likes to do the cooking and she thinks I need carbs; “everyone needs carbs”, she says. Anyway, im making changes to the ‘menu’ saying I’ll have a protein such as chicken or fish, cauliflower rice and greens.
BTW, I find I need to add something to the cauliflower rice, such as a baked tomato to disguise the taste - the smell of cauliflower rice isn’t too appealing either.

 

[Docb]

@Exflex, coming back to your question about measuring carbs. When I started to try reducing carbs I asked myself the same question so I did a bit of digging and came to the conclusion that it is very, very difficult to measure the carbohydrate content of any food stuff. For example, take the humble spud. All the apps, tables, sources will give you an apparently exact number to one decimal place in grams/100grams but I could not find anything that looked at the effect of variety of spud, its age, how long it has been stored, how it has been cooked and anything else which might significantly affect the carb content.

It turns out, as far as I could see that most of the carb values you see are guesses - no doubt in most cases decent guesses, but guesses none the less. Presenting a guess with some smart, colourful, clicky software does not get away from the underlying point that the whole thing is based on guesswork.

So, I took a more pragmatic approach and knocked lumps off my carb intake by eating less of high carb stuff, essentially anything containing flour and potatoes. I've never eaten sweet stuff so sugar was irrelevant and life is too short to worry about the carb content of wine and so I ignored stuff with low carb contents. I just replaced the missing carbs and their calories with other stuff. I checked progress with my trusty glucose monitor (i like measuring things to check progress) and stopped worrying.

My method will not suit everybody but it is one way of going about starting a low carb approach to blood glucose control.

 

[Exflex]

@Exflex, coming back to your question about measuring carbs. When I started to try reducing carbs I asked myself the same question so I did a bit of digging and came to the conclusion that it is very, very difficult to measure the carbohydrate content of any food stuff. For example, take the humble spud. All the apps, tables, sources will give you an apparently exact number to one decimal place in grams/100grams but I could not find anything that looked at the effect of variety of spud, its age, how long it has been stored, how it has been cooked and anything else which might significantly affect the carb content.

It turns out, as far as I could see that most of the carb values you see are guesses - no doubt in most cases decent guesses, but guesses none the less. Presenting a guess with some smart, colourful, clicky software does not get away from the underlying point that the whole thing is based on guesswork.

So, I took a more pragmatic approach and knocked lumps off my carb intake by eating less of high carb stuff, essentially anything containing flour and potatoes. I've never eaten sweet stuff so sugar was irrelevant and life is too short to worry about the carb content of wine and so I ignored stuff with low carb contents. I just replaced the missing carbs and their calories with other stuff. I checked progress with my trusty glucose monitor (i like measuring things to check progress) and stopped worrying.

My method will not suit everybody but it is one way of going about starting a low carb approach to blood glucose control.

I like your approach @Docb Basically doing the same by eliminating carbs as much as possible, and like you I don’t have a sweet tooth, but I do like a glass or two of dryish red wine with my evening meal. I asked the question because I thought it wise to be a bit more exact, because i guess its not going to easy to be carb free all the time for the rest of my life.
My daughter is throwing a bit of a birthday party for me at the weekend, at her place, and since it’s in the afternoon it’s bound to be buffet type of food with many of the things I’m best avoiding. Just one of many things in life to trip one up.

 

[PerSpinasAdAstra]

It turns out, as far as I could see that most of the carb values you see are guesses - no doubt in most cases decent guesses, but guesses none the less. Presenting a guess with some smart, colourful, clicky software does not get away from the underlying point that the whole thing is based on guesswork.

Yup this is entirely true - the carb values on food packaging are known to be inaccurate. My thinking is that they might be high, or low, at random, and so it'll all even out in the end 😉

 

[Leadinglights]

Thank you.
Problem I have is that my wife likes to do the cooking and she thinks I need carbs; “everyone needs carbs”, she says. Anyway, im making changes to the ‘menu’ saying I’ll have a protein such as chicken or fish, cauliflower rice and greens.
BTW, I find I need to add something to the cauliflower rice, such as a baked tomato to disguise the taste - the smell of cauliflower rice isn’t too appealing either.

My cauliflower rice recipe Fried cauliflower rice which is pretty well a meal on it's own. cauliflower, bacon, eggs, minced ginger, garlic, diced carrot, peas, spring onions, cashew nuts / almonds, soy sauce or tamarind.

 

[Docb]

Yup this is entirely true - the carb values on food packaging are known to be inaccurate. My thinking is that they might be high, or low, at random, and so it'll all even out in the end 😉

Yep a good way of thinking although there is one slight flaw which you need to be aware of. The biggest errors will be in the higher carb stuff and so you need to take those out of the equation when looking at the balance. The idea adds to the notion that sorting out the big hitters and leaving the rest to take care of itself is a valid way of going about things. Also, it is less faff to eat one less spud than scrutinising all the labels in your supermarket trolley and then weighing everything in your plate in an effort to eliminate a few carbs.

 

[helli]

Things are a little different with me and my Type 1 but I still don't get hung up on absolute accuracy of carbs.
The reason for me is that managing diabetes is managing a load of approximations
- the carb content is an approximation
- our BG meter accuracy is only within 15%
- there are so many other things (stress, exercise, illness, ...) that can affect our BG. Even if we did have accuracy in the other two, the bus would be running late or I might have the start of a cold or ... and our BG would do a bit of its own thing anyway.

 

[PerSpinasAdAstra]

Yep a good way of thinking although there is one slight flaw which you need to be aware of. The biggest errors will be in the higher carb stuff and so you need to take those out of the equation when looking at the balance. The idea adds to the notion that sorting out the big hitters and leaving the rest to take care of itself is a valid way of going about things. Also, it is less faff to eat one less spud than scrutinising all the labels in your supermarket trolley and then weighing everything in your plate in an effort to eliminate a few carbs.

Good point. I would have thought that the higher the carb content of a food the more accurate carb value of the packaging might be in terms of percentages, but maybe I'm wrong about that. In practise I do actually follow your own approach on a day-to-day basis, the one-less-spud approach. I weight things rarely at present, though I do strive to be as accurate as I can when trying to measure and record the average carb and calorie values for different meals as a way to compare meals with one another. I'm on a 1Kg per week weight loss diet at present, 1100 calorie per day deficit, as much as a moderate carb diet. Sooner or later I'll have to stop losing weight and keep it as level as I can. I'm hoping the records in my app with carb and calorie data will allow me to quickly formulate a rough weight maintenance diet that doesn't increase my daily carbs when the time comes. Otherwise it'll become a 'Just add 1100 calories worth of cheese' diet modification, which might not be the healthiest 😉 I'll go back to small changes without any effort to record anything once I'm close to keeping an even keel weight wise.

 

[Exflex]

Not sure if portion size should be a separate topic, but I’ll say something here because it seems to be relevant.
I’ve been cutting carbs drastically to the level of almost eliminating them, but my weight remains more or less static. I imagine it’s calories of the food I eat. I also try to walk everyday, but limit to about a mile due to osteoarthritis of the knee.
Anyone care to give advice for me please. I’m 13st 3ibs and told I need to get to 12st 10ib in 4 weeks time. This is proving to be challenging.
PS should I be doing finger prick blood tests as a pre-diabetic?

 

[PerSpinasAdAstra]

My own approach was to start by eliminating the obvious things - all junk food basically and all meals that were obviously very high in carbs, and cutting way back on my alcohol. Then with the app and the smart scale I recorded everything I ate, carbs and calories, right down to the butter I was spreading on my bread. This is not as much trouble as it sounds with the scale as you can zero it (Tare function) every time you add something to the scale. So - put plate on scale, tare, put bread on plate, log bread in app, tare, butter bread, log butter in app, tare, add turkey slices, log turkey in app. End result - calories and carbs in that turkey sandwich, down to the last smear of butter. Not 100% accurate but the process made me consider everything I was eating in detail and showed good meals vs bad in stark contrast.

Every week I eliminated the worst meals I was eating from my shopping list and picked a couple of low-calorie alternatives for those meals. I also made small adjustments - less spuds obviously but also much less butter on spuds, almost no cheese, light mayo instead of butter where appropriate - that kind of thing, week after week, until I hit 1Kg of weight loss per week. Along the way I also increased exercise gradually. Eliminating the highest calorie meals and making small changes also reduced my carb count as a side effect, but big weight loss while not feeling too hungry between meals was my primary goal. It took me a month to hit 1Kg loss per week target and lost just under 3Kg (~6.5lb) in total in that first month. You could speed up the process by planning a lot from the beginning, using the nutritional info for products on the supermarket websites and planning a shopping list, excluding meals before you even buy them, though it would take a lot of effort up-front whereas I could only handle all that hassle in bite-sized chunks. Once I hit the 1Kg twice in a row I stopped logging all my food - everything I need is now in the food diary in the app.

I hope that's a little helpful and not just a confusing mess 😉