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Am i like the only person who doesn't carb count?

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I went on a carb counting course just after diagnosis with a few long term type ones who didn't carb count in the way I do by weighing my food. They were all brilliant at estimating the carb counts of what we we're given.

One lady was taught the exchange system (what approx 10g of carbs is) when she was diagnosed and by trial and error worked the effect on blood glucose using this method. She equates everything she ate to digestive biscuits.
 
i just base my insulin dose on my levels and how much i have eaten and whether i have had extra sugary things.
one of the reasons i don't carb count as i don't cook my own food majority of the time, my mum has 3 other people to cook for and she refused to carb count, we tried it and it was ridiculous the amount of time it took, i don't have time for such things and the fact the majority of lunch times i am out and about anyway.
 
Estellaa said:
i just base my insulin dose on my levels and how much i have eaten and whether i have had extra sugary things.
one of the reasons i don't carb count as i don't cook my own food majority of the time, my mum has 3 other people to cook for and she refused to carb count, we tried it and it was ridiculous the amount of time it took, i don't have time for such things and the fact the majority of lunch times i am out and about anyway.
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you are supposed to "eyeball" your grub and learn to guesstimate how many carbs in a serving/portion.
 
Estellaa said:
i just base my insulin dose on my levels and how much i have eaten and whether i have had extra sugary things.
one of the reasons i don't carb count as i don't cook my own food majority of the time, my mum has 3 other people to cook for and she refused to carb count, we tried it and it was ridiculous the amount of time it took, i don't have time for such things and the fact the majority of lunch times i am out and about anyway.
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What are your levels like, generally?
 
Just to clarify, carb counting doesn't mean you have to weigh every single thing you eat and work out every last carb you will be eating. I carb count and have done since diagnosis, but I weigh things only occasionally. I have learnt to count the carbs in food by seeing portions on a plate, with the help of carbs and cals. So if there is nutritional info on a packet I will use that, if not, for fresh things, I'll see the portion on the plate and work it out as best I can. Yes I don't get it 100% right all of the time, but it does make a big difference than just having a guess and hoping I don't go high or low. Without carb counting I know for a fact my HbA1cs wouldn't be as consistent as they are.
 
I'll stir things up here! When my son had good control (HbA1c of 6.1) I was weighing all his rice/pasta/potatoes etc and when making the main part of the meal I did weigh and look at packets and jars and calculate the whole meal and divide by 4 if we were all eating it, and it really did seem to work 100%. I know from years doing slimming clubs on and off it's so easy to pour a bowl of breakfast cereal and think you have 30g when in fact you have 60g+. Rice in particular, I would never be able to estimate accurately, or potatoes come to that. I found it no hassle though, and just used digital scales that I could put his plate on top of and have an idea in my head of how many grams to aim for for ease of calculation and go for it. It really was no bother. It actually opened my eyes to the size of portions I was feeding my whole family :O

Obviously going out he always had to guess and did so, there was no choice really. Even lunch boxes, he knew the values of a slice of bread/an apple/pack of crisps/cereal bar etc so would calculate for how much he was eating at that time and inject for it. It really did work well for him.
 
Copepod said:
I must admit that I tend to guestimate, too, based on occasional bench mark meals at home, when I can weigh food.
I reckon that using techniques to improve guestimates of carbohydrate content of food is the key to a happy life - there are so many other variables, including exercise / stress / sleep hours / meal times / weather etc, that there's no point being ultra accurate in one factor, when it's impossible to have the same level of accuracy for other inputs.
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I completely concur!
 
my levels are typically from 4-13 ish all depends what i have done during the day and all that.
 
That's an extremely wide variation - if you're frequently getting readings over 7, that's not good news. Good control means it shouldn't really matter what you do in the day, you adjust your insulin intake accordingly and keep your readings in the 4-7 range.

Otherwise, at the risk of sounding critical, you are going to store up problems for the future and they will catch up with you far quicker than you think. Again, don't want to be the prophet of doom here but there are people out there with variations in line with yours who are getting retinopathy after just 5 years. They might be unlucky but that should serve as a real wake-up call to get your diabetes under control.

I'm with Austin - you don't need to weigh out every single thing but I think it's really helpful to do this at first so you get a good feel for how much x g of carbs looks like on a plate.

I tend to eyeball all my food and then every six months or so (or whenever my control seems to slip) do a couple of weeks of religiously weighing stuff out and calculating to ensure I don't get off track. Some people also find carb counting strangely liberating too. While I'm the first to say that life's too short to agonise over exactly how much weighs what on your plate, it can be very reassuring to weigh out the food, say to yourself "ah, now I need exactly 8u to cover this" and get it down.
 
thats all very well, but i have been discharged from hospital cause i have such good control, never had problems? so i must be doing something right?
 
Estellaa said:
thats all very well, but i have been discharged from hospital cause i have such good control, never had problems? so i must be doing something right?
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Are you just with your GP now Estella, or do you have reviews with a consultant and DSN?
 
i see a dsn thats it 🙂
 
Estellaa said:
i see a dsn thats it 🙂
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Has she ever suggested that you go on a carb counting course, like DAFNE? Were you discharged from the hospital because you have just turned 18? Sorry for being so nosy, I just find it interesting how nowhere seems to have the same procedures for looking after people, in spite of NICE guidelines! 🙄
 
Estellaa said:
thats all very well, but i have been discharged from hospital cause i have such good control, never had problems? so i must be doing something right?
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No, you are discharged from hospital when you show you could theoretically get good control. You may not have had any problems yet but you've only had diabetes for 2 years - the damage from having BGs over 7 takes a few years to manifest itself. You are only hospitalised for poor control when it represents an acute medical emergency. An A1C of say, 8%, doesn't constitute this, but it certainly isn't a safe A1C for a good long-term prognosis. Happily any threat of damage can be reversed and eliminated through getting better A1Cs.

I am sure that generally your diabetes control is ok but if you are routinely seeing your BG swing between 4 and 13 then it definitely needs refining. The blood vessels in your retinas are particularly sensitive to blood sugar swings and these are blood vessels you really don't want to get damaged.

What was you last A1C like? The NHS defines 'good' control as 7.5% or lower, in conflict with most other authorities which define it as 6.5% or lower.
 
I always count carbs if I can, and try to be accurate to 5g each way.
If I eat out then I have to guess, but I?ve never been worse than 9mmol/l after 3 hours. If there is any doubt, then I aim on the hypo side, because eating is always more pleasurable than injecting. However if I am driving, then I err on the hyper side because getting there is always better than crashing.
 
i've had diabetes for 11years now, i joined the forum two years ago.
when i moved here my hb1ac was high, so i was sent to the hospital clinic, i got it down considerably within 3 months so i was discharged to just seeing the diabetic nurse at the clinic, i have been assigned there since last july i'd say and i've only ever seen her for diabetes related issues.
 
Sorry, my misunderstanding about the length of time you've been diagnosed. But if anything, that underlines the point I'm making about control even more so.

The situation you describe about your care arrangements is pretty much the standard, regardless of control. Many people see just a DSN at their GPs for their diabetes. Personally I always fight to make sure I see a proper endocrinologist at the hospital. I've always found DSNs at GPs to be very sub par, they seem to think an A1C of 7.5% is acceptable whereas the endos at the hospital are much more with it and have far more prescription power too. However, I've had bad luck with GPs in that most of them just don't know what they're doing with diabetes - I'm sure this isn't the case for all GP surgeries.

It was thanks to an endo that I was taught the 1000s rule - a very unscientific way of predicting complications but extremely good at showing how improvements to A1Cs work.

You take your A1C and subtract by 5. You then multiply the answer by 12. Then you divide 1000 by the answer, and the answer you get from that is the number of years away from your diagnosis date (roughly) that you'll develop serious complications.

So say you've got an A1C of 6.5. You subtract by 5 to get 1.5. Multiply that by 12 to get 18. 1000 divided by 18 is 55.5 - so say you're dxed at the age of 14, you probably won't get serious complications until you're about 69 or 70.

As I said, it's not scientific, but it's a great way for anyone to really consider the impact their control has on their long-term health.
 
DeusXM said:
...You take your A1C and subtract by 5. You then multiply the answer by 12. Then you divide 1000 by the answer, and the answer you get from that is the number of years away from your diagnosis date (roughly) that you'll develop serious complications.

So say you've got an A1C of 6.5. You subtract by 5 to get 1.5. Multiply that by 12 to get 18. 1000 divided by 18 is 55.5 - so say you're dxed at the age of 14, you probably won't get serious complications until you're about 69 or 70.

As I said, it's not scientific, but it's a great way for anyone to really consider the impact their control has on their long-term health.
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Hurrah! I'll be 216! 😉 🙂
 
Aha it doesn't bother me about who i see, i see no point in raising the topic of seeing an endo as i am moving in jan and will be with new care and it will probably end up me going to a hospital clinic cause of the area. i find my diabetes is under control i have no problems and of course i know the consequences of not keeping it under control so thats why i try my hardest in the 11years i've had it i've always done it my way and no one has questioned it or told me different.
 
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