Amount of carbs I should actually eat

[commit]

Hi! I’ve recently been diagnosed as a Type 1 Diabetic and the journey has been alright so far. However, I’m starting to get worried about my carb intake. Here’s the situation: I’ve been told to tailor my insulin based on my food intake, but I found that controlling the amount of carbs I eat is alot easier. As such, I’ve found that I’ve been eating carbs lesser and lesser, specifically the whole grain ones. I’ve noticed that in my culture, many of the foods I eat contain sauces or are fried with bread crumbs or flour, which affects my glucose levels quite drastically. I compromised by eating lesser whole grains like rice or bread so that I can still enjoy the foods with sauces that aren’t carb sources (i.e. chicken with marinade etc.). Now my worry is that I might be eating TOO LITTLE carbs which I am aware can lead to starvation and ketone build up in urine and blood. So far I feel fine and there’s no drastic change. What’s you guys’ opinion on this?

 

[Lucyr]

Eat as many or as few carbs as you want and do the correct insulin, simple.

 

[trophywench]

As long as your body is getting enough nutrition for itself from the food you eat and not either too much or too little for its needs, no prob. Its when folk severely curtail carbohydrate (and/or other food) that problems arise. How many grams of carb per day have you cut down to?

 

[SimonP]

Though to be fair, it is sometimes easier to control BG levels if you eat fewer carbs at a meal to allow a better match of carb absorption and insulin absorption (and if you make a mistake with dosage/carb counting, your error results in less of a BG excursion).

With that said, as the other posters have said, you can eat whatever you want, just take the right quantity of insulin at the right time. Experimenting with split boluses and pre-bolusing is probably your best bet to get good results with high carb meals. Experiment! 🙂

 

[Inka]

Welcome @commit 🙂 Type 1s should eat a normal healthy diet basically. I eat pretty much what I ate before diagnosis. The key to Type 1 is insulin. We have to be our own pancreas basically. When I was first diagnosed, the dietician asked me what I ate and then wrote out my meal plan and insulin doses based on what I told her I ate (we had fixed doses of insulin then and only two injections a day). I still remember that plan even though it was 30 years ago.

So, just eat normally and do any little tweaks that are necessary. Any problems almost certainly won’t be caused by the food, they’ll be caused by the insulin (wrong amount, wrong timing).

Have you been taught to carb count and adjust your mealtime insulin?

I’m just being nosy so ignore this question if you don’t want to answer, but what is your culture? You might find some carb-counted meals from similar cultures in the Diabetes U.K. recipe section.

Type 1 is a big learning experience. It’s a hard job being a pancreas and it takes time to learn.
There are a couple of books often recommended for Type 1s on this forum:

Think Like a Pancreas’ by Gary Scheiner.

And Type 1 Diabetes in Children Adolescents and Young People by Ragnar Hanas.

Think Like A Pancreas is American but I liked the chatty style and it contains some great information, as does the Ragnar Hanas book.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Welcome to the forum @commit

As others are saying, a normal, healthy, balanced diet - with all the food groups balanced, and portion sizes adjusted to keep weight stable is what’s recommended for T1 diabetes.

It’s almost impossible to attempt to eat zero carbohydrates. Some do attempt it for peculiar reasons, but it means eating no vegetables, and there are traces of carbs in eggs and cheese - so essentially you are left with just meat and oil. Yuck!

If you restrict carbohydrates down to 20-40g per day you can get into nutritional ketosis, but again this can be tricky for T1s because of the likelihood of developing insulin resistance. And also because modern insulins are designed to match the speed of absorption of carbohydrates in a mixed diet, rather than the slower conversion of fats and proteins to glucose (which is ultimately what your brain needs).

I’ve read recently that a minimum 30g of carbs per meal should be enough to reduce the risk of ketosis / insulin resistance, but more normally I’d have 40-80g in most meals.

Really you should just be aiming to eat a healthy, flexible, enjoyable diet, and balancing that with insulin at the right doses and timings. You don’t need to ‘fear’ carbohydrates - you have access to the insulin you need to process them properly 🙂

 

[SimonP]

... eat fewer carbs ...

When I say fewer, I don't mean low carb, I mean fewer than 100g of carbs per meal. It's all relative! If I eat much more than that I need to be quite careful about how I bolus and might need 3 injections.

If I'm eating 60g then I'm into single injection territory.

We're all different though.

 

[beating_my_betes]

And also because modern insulins are designed to match the speed of absorption of carbohydrates in a mixed diet, rather than the slower conversion of fats and proteins to glucose (which is ultimately what your brain needs).

That's very interesting!

 

[commit]

Welcome @commit 🙂 Type 1s should eat a normal healthy diet basically. I eat pretty much what I ate before diagnosis. The key to Type 1 is insulin. We have to be our own pancreas basically. When I was first diagnosed, the dietician asked me what I ate and then wrote out my meal plan and insulin doses based on what I told her I ate (we had fixed doses of insulin then and only two injections a day). I still remember that plan even though it was 30 years ago.

So, just eat normally and do any little tweaks that are necessary. Any problems almost certainly won’t be caused by the food, they’ll be caused by the insulin (wrong amount, wrong timing).

Have you been taught to carb count and adjust your mealtime insulin?

I’m just being nosy so ignore this question if you don’t want to answer, but what is your culture? You might find some carb-counted meals from similar cultures in the Diabetes U.K. recipe section.

Type 1 is a big learning experience. It’s a hard job being a pancreas and it takes time to learn.
There are a couple of books often recommended for Type 1s on this forum:

Think Like a Pancreas’ by Gary Scheiner.

And Type 1 Diabetes in Children Adolescents and Young People by Ragnar Hanas.

Think Like A Pancreas is American but I liked the chatty style and it contains some great information, as does the Ragnar Hanas book.

I have been taught to carb count and adjust the insulin, but I found it really odd and “thinicky” to get right because I have a “higher requirement of insulin”. My current system that has given me the best results works like this:

7
9 (seldomly)
11

I work off of these values when I have my meals. 7 and 9 is for when I make my own meals and I know the content (these tend to be breakfast) and I dont eat alot during these times. For lunch and dinner I inject 11 units and eat a larger meal (but might not have alot seemingly because the main carbs SEEM very little… the damage tends to be because of other “hidden” carbs like sauces and breading of fried food)

As for the carb counting, I havent found a number that suites me (i.e. 1 carbohydrate exchange = x units of insulin) because they dont seem to work that way for me.

I’m from Malaysia, so alot of the foods I eat have carbs (its basically baked into my diet). Stuff like sauces contain sugar, and much of the food here is fried and then marinated in sauce (breading and sauces being a double kill)

 

[Inka]

Ah, ok @commit 🙂 Yes, eating is a lot more thinky with Type 1! It does get boring very quickly! Most people in the U.K. use ratios, eg 1:8g, which means 1 unit of insulin covers 8g carbs. That makes the Maths pretty simple, eg if someone had that ratio and was going to eat 40g carbs, they’d divide the carb amount in grams (40) by 8, giving an answer of 5 units of insulin.

Many people find they need different ratios for different meals, ie breakfast, lunch and evening meal. It’s just a question of finding what works.

You might also find it useful to keep a little notebook where you jot down what worked for meals, eg you would write down what food you had and how much, then the number of units of insulin that worked for that meal. You can also note down meals that didn’t work, so that when you have them again you know to reduce or increase your insulin dose.

 

[SimonP]

I count carbs and then use a standard 1:10 ratio, then apply "what happened before" adjustments. I'm not too bothered if I'm not quite right - too little insulin means more correction (if I'm splitting bolus - i.e. evening meal), which is fine. If I'm not splitting bolus (breakfast and lunch typically) I'll tend to err on the side of taking a bit more insulin rather than too little, and then if I trend low will have a "free" biscuit/snack with morning coffee/afternoon tea. Things change if exercise is involved and I have to try to be a bit more accurate, though it's very hard as lots of things can affect what happens in this case.

So low thinky re calculations, and more thinky with remembering roughly what happened last time I ate X and how activities and the time of day affect blood sugar in general.

You get used to it, don't worry.

Agree with what @Inka says that keeping a log of some sort is quite a good idea to remind you what happened last time you ate a given thing, and to be able to look back and spot trends (e.g. always running low after lunch) - if you've got a CGM this may come as part of the app that logs the data, otherwise there are 3rd party offerings which will integrate (and hopefully allow you to search for a specific meal so you can see what happened)