How many grams in one meal

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PGW

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Type 2
Maybe a hypothetical question but I would welcome your input.

I'm type2 diagnosed 4months ago 51 mol and have become very carb concious since reading all the good advice in the forum, weight is not an issue for me. But I wonder if I am being over cautious where food nutrition labels are concerned.

So my hypothetical question is this:- I make a meal that is a 2 egg mushroom omlette with a small amount of grated normal cheddar and I know that this is very low carb, if I then add a portion of shop bought coleslaw which adds approx 7 grams of carbs and 5.5 grams of sugar is that too much for one meal?

My other meals during the day are very low carb and I know their ok by doing blood tests 2 hours after.

It's just that the forums advise a max of 130 grams carbs per day spread out over meals and I'm not sure if the meal above kind of breaks that rule in some way?

I know that home made coleslaw is better but this is a hpothetical question!
 
How would 7g of coleslaw in one meal mean that the whole day then goes over 130g?
 
The 'no more than 130g per day' is a suggested starting point as before diagnosis many people would be eating in excess of 250g per day so that represents a sizable reduction which for many that may be enough, it is clearly better not to overload your system by having 2 meals with virtually no carbs and then one meal with all the rest so evening it out among your meals and any snacks (if you really need them) and drinks is better.
Having a blood glucose home monitor will allow to to see how much carb you can tolerate at any one meal and not just that but what type of carb. Some people can manage say 20g bread but not 20g of pasta or rice and some visa versa.
And again some people tolerate carbs less in the morning so stick with a low carb breakfast and opt for protein and healthy fats so they are then not tempted to snack on high carb foods because they are hungry.
Just look at the carbs, don't worry too much about the 'sugar' and avoid low fat unless you need to for other medical reasons.
 
Low carb is up to 130g per day @PGW Yes, it’s best to spread your carbs over the day, but if you have 7g carbs for lunch you still have up to 123g carbs to play with!

To put that in some kind of context, an average apple is 15g carbs, a slice of whole meal bread is around 17g depending on brand, an egg-sized boiled potato is 20g, etc etc. You can still fit some carbs in without too much difficulty and still stay below 130g carbs per day if your blood sugar is ok.
 
I don't know if this detail applies to T2:

Gary Scheiner, in his book 'Think Like a Pancreas' (aimed at insulin dependent folk) advises that if one's body needs glucose and insufficient carbs have been eaten then proteins and fats will be converted into glucose. In principle - so far so good. But for insulin dependency it is necessary to know how much glucose is going to emerge from fhe food eaten; generally most of us count the carbs and arrive at an appropriate insulin dose. We can ignore the glucose from proteins and fats PROVIDED we eat a suggested minimum of 30 gms of carbs for any one main meal; then our body doesn't need to convert proteins or fats.

This principle of at least 30 gms per meal appears to work well enough to make it a rule, which means that the much more tricky business of working out conversion AND timing of proteins and fats into glucose doesn't need to be considered. In practical terms 3x main meals at 30 gms carbs plus some snacks would still meet the recomnended maximum of 130 gms of carbs for a low carb diet.

Your hypothetical meal of just 7 gms of measurable carbs will inevitably mean your body will be converting proteins and fats into glucose - not least because our brains demand only glucose and that need takes priority over the rest of the body. So without a meter and frequent finger pricking through the day you will be unaware of how the very low carb daily diet will be affecting your BG. I can imagine that the irregularity of conversion timing from proteins will lead to glucose delivery being spread more across a 24 hour period and so helping.

But in the end one needs enough glucose to remain not just alive but healthy and so whether that glucose comes from carbs, proteins or fats it still comes down to total volume of food consumed: sufficient but not too sufficient!
 
Thanks for your responses - I think I have been too cautious about carb counting and I'm probably not getting enough at the moment.

So in a nutshell then I should aim to eat approx 130 grams of carbs a day spread over a number of meals and then do a blood test after each meal AND depending on how well I tolerate the particular ingredient/s that have the carb content my post prandial blood sugar should should ideally not have increased by more than 2-3 mmol.

Does that sound about right? I know its not an exact science and you cant generalise to much but it will help me plan meals if Im on the right track here.

Thanks as always.
 
PGW said:
Thanks for your responses - I think I have been too cautious about carb counting and I'm probably not getting enough at the moment.

So in a nutshell then I should aim to eat approx 130 grams of carbs a day spread over a number of meals and then do a blood test after each meal AND depending on how well I tolerate the particular ingredient/s that have the carb content my post prandial blood sugar should should ideally not have increased by more than 2-3 mmol.

Does that sound about right? I know its not an exact science and you cant generalise to much but it will help me plan meals if Im on the right track here.

Thanks as always.
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That sounds like a good plan, paired reading of before and after along with a good record of what you had and how much is a good start. Don't be too surprised if you don't get exactly the same result each time, diabetes is just awkward but look at the trend. Sometimes it is obvious what the issue is like when I had a pasta dish and then had pancakes Oh NO not a good idea.
Once you have established a particular meal is OK for you then you probably don't need to test it again and consider it safe.
 
Thing is though. years ago I worked out how many grams a day I normally ate every day, which never altered much from what I usually at before diagnosis. Turned out - 80(ish) grams a day. So if I suddenly decided I would eat 130g every day - I'd look like a barrel !
 
@PGW You don't have to eat as much as 130g if you don't want too either, It was just that the 200- 230 g that your nurse suggested sounded an awful lot.
 
Hi @PGW . You are planning the same path I'm on. I'm about 4+ months in and BG readings are mostly 5s - they were 9 and 10s+ when I started.

To make it easy i put 2 apps on my phone
  1. Nutricheck - it costs about £25 a year. I use it to look up the content of everything I am thinking about eating and record everything I do eat. It will zap barcodes when you are ut shopping as well. I'm targeting 130g carbs a day (but am trying to lose weight as well). I'd not set a limit of 30g per meal, but looking back it tends to be 20-25g and my BG fingerprint test results have really dropped.
  2. My Diabetes Connect - I think its about £4 a year. I record every test result - it takes seconds. It allows me to see patterns and work out when I ate something my body didn't cope well with.
I test immediately before a meal and 2 hours afterwards and record everything .... goood and bad.

I try and have most meals where BG is almost unchanged after 2 hours the traditional wisdom seems to be +2 or less after 2 hours but this this is your plan, so you set whatever limits you want.

BTW Glucose meters have a tolerance of about 10%- so don't get hung up with 5.9 being different from 6.1. Its about 6.

Good luck.
 
Catbanj said:
Hi @PGW . You are planning the same path I'm on. I'm about 4+ months in and BG readings are mostly 5s - they were 9 and 10s+ when I started.

To make it easy i put 2 apps on my phone
  1. Nutricheck - it costs about £25 a year. I use it to look up the content of everything I am thinking about eating and record everything I do eat. It will zap barcodes when you are ut shopping as well. I'm targeting 130g carbs a day (but am trying to lose weight as well). I'd not set a limit of 30g per meal, but looking back it tends to be 20-25g and my BG fingerprint test results have really dropped.
  2. My Diabetes Connect - I think its about £4 a year. I record every test result - it takes seconds. It allows me to see patterns and work out when I ate something my body didn't cope well with.
I test immediately before a meal and 2 hours afterwards and record everything .... goood and bad.

I try and have most meals where BG is almost unchanged after 2 hours the traditional wisdom seems to be +2 or less after 2 hours but this this is your plan, so you set whatever limits you want.

BTW Glucose meters have a tolerance of about 10%- so don't get hung up with 5.9 being different from 6.1. Its about 6.

Good luck.
Click to expand...
Thank you all so much for your good and constructive advice.
 
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