Carb counting & eating out

[Katie1979]

So as a recently diagnosed T1 who has started carb counting, I am interested to hear how people manage eating out.

I have been trying to look at menus in advance and working out how much insulin I will need. Any tips for making eating out easier?

It's been a while since I have had pizza and next month a cocktails and pizza night is planned (not such a fun thought these days!!) . I imagine this (or atleast) a whole pizza should be avoided as it would be too much carb at once?

 

[Sally71]

Pizza is always tricky! But in answer to your general question - get Carbs and Cals! It's available as a book and also as apps on Android and Apple, and shows you nice pictures of almost all foods you can think of with all the info you need. I don't know how I would have managed without it in the early days.

Inevitably you will end up resorting to a bit of guesswork, but this book/app makes it loads easier 🙂

 

[Mark T]

Some of the chains do provide nutritional information for the food they sell. Depending on where you are going it might be worth checking their website.

 

[khskel]

Pizza Express certainly provide a pdf and I know McDonalds and KFC have the info we need on their sites.

 

[trophywench]

What they said - but what none of them have yet is - Do NOT inject before your meal is in front of you!!

They may take ages and you could be hypo before it arrives. It may be more - or less - than you thought. In case you don't eat it all - probably best to underestimate a little until you are more comfy with doing it in general. You can always have a correction dose a few hours later (or next morning!) if it wasn't enough - and one night out of how ever many you get it right - won't really matter much in the overall scheme of the rest of your life!

But you can't do it regularly, so treat it as what it is - a TREAT !!

 

[Simbul]

Eating out is always very tricky for me. I have accepted I need to offset the pleasure of going out for a dinner with the almost certainty of screwing my BS, so I don't do it too often 🙂

The Carbs&Cals app is a good one, though when I go to restaurants it's almost impossible to find the exact food or know the exact quantity. It's a good way of getting a ballpark estimate.

Another trick I discovered recently: most big chains like Pret a Manger, Pod, Pure, Pizza Express (but also others that do not start with "P" 😛 ) have nutritional informations on their websites. I tend to eat lunch there rather frequently and having hard figures to base my carb counting on has helped a lot.

I've been especially surprised with rice pots, which I found out I was consistently undercounting by a lot.