Chick peas?

[belugalad]

I have a couple of tins of chick peas in my cupboard and have just had a look at the contained carbs it says 15.7g carbs per 100g of which sugars 0g,are these too carb heavy.
I have only just been diagnosed 3 days ago and I'm waiting for my meeting in a couple of weeks,I'm trying to lose weight.
I was hoping to have these to replace baked beans which are 15.1g of carbs and 6.1 g of sugar.
I was thinking of just having a couple of table spoons and putting a poached egg on top for lunch.

 

[Docb]

No straight answer, it depends on your portion size. I don't know what weight you would get in a couple of tablespoons so I would weigh them out and use that weight to work out how many grams of carb there were in the portion. As to whether something is carb heavy or not, I have found that heading for a carb content per meal has worked for me. Not worried too much about where the carbs come from, just making sure that I keep close to my target when they are all added up. In reality there is not a lot of difference between your chick peas and baked beans although I would not mind betting that you would eat a lot more beans than chick peas in one go and get a lot more carbs as a consequence.

One thing you do highlight is the labelling of carbohydrate and sugar under separate headings. Sugar is another carbohydrate so when reading labels you should look for TOTAL carbohydrate.

Also a good idea to keep a food diary so that when you work out carb levels for a dish then you can refer back if you have it again. Saves all the faff of weighing, looking up stuff and calculating.

 

[HOBIE]

Backed Beans are heavy carb wise. Tell you on the tin.🙂

 

[belugalad]

No straight answer, it depends on your portion size. I don't know what weight you would get in a couple of tablespoons so I would weigh them out and use that weight to work out how many grams of carb there were in the portion. As to whether something is carb heavy or not, I have found that heading for a carb content per meal has worked for me. Not worried too much about where the carbs come from, just making sure that I keep close to my target when they are all added up. In reality there is not a lot of difference between your chick peas and baked beans although I would not mind betting that you would eat a lot more beans than chick peas in one go and get a lot more carbs as a consequence.

One thing you do highlight is the labelling of carbohydrate and sugar under separate headings. Sugar is another carbohydrate so when reading labels you should look for TOTAL carbohydrate.

Also a good idea to keep a food diary so that when you work out carb levels for a dish then you can refer back if you have it again. Saves all the faff of weighing, looking up stuff and calculating.

Hi @Docb I opted to have sardines(tinned in spring water) on a slice of Hovis low carb in the end,when people say they have a carb target,how do you work out or decide what that target is?

 

[Docb]

Hi @Docb I opted to have sardines(tinned in spring water) on a slice of Hovis low carb in the end,when people say they have a carb target,how do you work out or decide what that target is?

It's a bit individual and requires monitoring to work out what works for any individual. All I can say is how I got to my target of 60-80 per day spread out over three meals. I started monitoring when my Hba1c went wonk and my spot readings were in the high teens and low 20's. GP upped my pills and I found this place and began to understand role of carbohydrates and started experimenting. Soon found that cutting carbs was more effective than the pills to the point where the pill taking was reduced. After a couple of months of monitoring, keeping a food diary and carb counting I found that for about 60g carb per day, 20g per meal kept my average glucose at around 6 with a range of four to 9. If I did not do that and pushed it to over 30g per meal then I got some big excursions. Small things can do that, a few berries in my granola, a cappuccino, an orange or an apple, would send me into double figures.

If you read around this forum, one thing that will strike you is that although carb control comes through all the time as beneficial when it comes to glucose control, different people have different ways of going about it. There is no universal number which is right for everybody. One approach might be to sit down and write down what you might have eaten in a week before your diagnosis and work out what your daily carb content might have been. You could set a target to half that and see what the effect is and work from there.

 

[belugalad]

Backed Beans are heavy carb wise. Tell you on the tin.🙂

Hi @HOBIE with a heavy heart I feel that I now have to abandon my beloved baked beans,it's a shame but life moves on🙂

 

[belugalad]

It's a bit individual and requires monitoring to work out what works for any individual. All I can say is how I got to my target of 60-80 per day spread out over three meals. I started monitoring when my Hba1c went wonk and my spot readings were in the high teens and low 20's. GP upped my pills and I found this place and began to understand role of carbohydrates and started experimenting. Soon found that cutting carbs was more effective than the pills to the point where the pill taking was reduced. After a couple of months of monitoring, keeping a food diary and carb counting I found that for about 60g carb per day, 20g per meal kept my average glucose at around 6 with a range of four to 9. If I did not do that and pushed it to over 30g per meal then I got some big excursions. Small things can do that, a few berries in my granola, a cappuccino, an orange or an apple, would send me into double figures.

If you read around this forum, one thing that will strike you is that although carb control comes through all the time as beneficial when it comes to glucose control, different people have different ways of going about it. There is no universal number which is right for everybody. One approach might be to sit down and write down what you might have eaten in a week before your diagnosis and work out what your daily carb content might have been. You could set a target to half that and see what the effect is and work from there.

Hi @Docb that's interesting,yes I have to do a food diary for the 7 days before my meeting,so when you mention Hba1c is the baseline zero?when you say that yours was on the wonk at hight teens and low 20's.,the nurse said to me that mine was a high reading,so I'm a little concerned until I see them as I only spoke to the nurse over the phone

 

[Lilian]

Hi @HOBIE with a heavy heart I feel that I now have to abandon my beloved baked beans,it's a shame but life moves on🙂

Not necessarily. Beans have fibre in them which is good. You probably wont be able to have them on toast but a smaller portion of lower sugar baked beans with an egg might be OK for you. You just have to test. Try having the beans with a little less of the sauce. Chick peas too are a source of fibre and again it depends on the amount you have and what you have it with.

 

[Docb]

Hi @Docb that's interesting,yes I have to do a food diary for the 7 days before my meeting,so when you mention Hba1c is the baseline zero?when you say that yours was on the wonk at hight teens and low 20's.,the nurse said to me that mine was a high reading,so I'm a little concerned until I see them as I only spoke to the nurse over the phone

I have a technical background so I like to start with the numbers. Hba1c gives an indication of your average blood glucose over the last three months or so and as such cannot be zero . The cut off point is 48. Above that and you are officially diabetic. Mine had been around 50 for years but suddenly jumped to 88 indicating something had changed and action was required. Some on here have had values of 100 and more.

The nurse should tell you your Hba1c result and work out a plan for you to get it down if is "high".

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Not necessarily. Beans have fibre in them which is good. You probably wont be able to have them on toast but a smaller portion of lower sugar baked beans with an egg might be OK for you. You just have to test. Try having the beans with a little less of the sauce. Chick peas too are a source of fibre and again it depends on the amount you have and what you have it with.

I agree with @Lilian's post @belugalad - you'd really need to try then a few times (possibly even at different times of day!) and in different combinations with other things to be sure.

As a T1, I need to pay careful attention to pulses, because while their total carb value may be 'x' the carbs in pulses don't seem to obey the normal rules, because of how they are made up. Ultimately I only allow about half the insulin I would need for pulses if I took their carb count at face value.

There's some complex detail here: https://www.healthcentral.com/article/all-complex-carbohydrates-are-not-created-equal

You may find it works similarly for you and beans don't treat your BG too unkindly at all.

At the end of the day there are so many overlapping factors that go into our unique response to different foods, including our own metabolism and gut biome, so it is very difficult to deal in absolutes by looking at a packet - you kinda need to treat yourself and your food as an n=1 science experiment. General rules can be helpful, but your own specifics need checking personally. You may get some happy exceptions to the average results allowing you to eat things that others would struggle with 🙂

 

[belugalad]

I agree with @Lilian's post @belugalad - you'd really need to try then a few times (possibly even at different times of day!) and in different combinations with other things to be sure.

As a T1, I need to pay careful attention to pulses, because while their total carb value may be 'x' the carbs in pulses don't seem to obey the normal rules, because of how they are made up. Ultimately I only allow about half the insulin I would need for pulses if I took their carb count at face value.

There's some complex detail here: https://www.healthcentral.com/article/all-complex-carbohydrates-are-not-created-equal

You may find it works similarly for you and beans don't treat your BG too unkindly at all.

At the end of the day there are so many overlapping factors that go into our unique response to different foods, including our own metabolism and gut biome, so it is very difficult to deal in absolutes by looking at a packet - you kinda need to treat yourself and your food as an n=1 science experiment. General rules can be helpful, but your own specifics need checking personally. You may get some happy exceptions to the average results allowing you to eat things that others would struggle with 🙂

Thanks @everydayupsanddowns Oh I see so things can vary between people and certain food items,I will find my way and see what workds for me as you say