New to carb counting

[FJS]

Hi there.
I’m new here, the partner of a T1 who has never carb counted! Diabetic for 20 years he’s about to go onto a pump but he has, and I’ve never carb counted and now it’s necessary. His support was clearly pretty rubbish as a kid, unfortunately he’s had to teach himself how to manage, mostly relying on a routine of repetitive foods and lucosade.
It’s time I properly helped and we do this together but we just don’t really know where to start or how I can help him adjust to this huge change when i know it’s going to raise his anxiety. And mine for that matter.
I wish there was more support out there for partners, I’d gladly go to education groups to help him.
ANY tips on making carb counting as straightforward as possible would be most appreciated.
Many Thanks

 

[Lily123]

Welcome to the forum @FJS

Carb counting will become easier over time because if you and your partner have the same meals quite often then you or your partner can write down the carbs for next time. It may make it easier to work out the carbs for a meal and the carbs are normally given as per slice for bread and per 100g for things like yogurt so it’s just a matter of weighing things out and working out the carbs from the back of packets

 

[Drummer]

You will obviously have a far wider range of foods than I do as a type 2, but making a record in a notebook or something electronic recording the carb content of packaged foods would be a good start. Anything with sugar alcohols will have those included in the total, which should be misleading as they are not digested by Humans - though they are by our gut flora and fauna and my do they have a party!!
Fruit and veges typical carb content can be found online, but you need to be aware that the US spell fibre as fiber, and include it in the total carbs on their information, boxes or sites, but in the UK it is spelt fibre and not included.
Once you have collected the information on the foods you eat then you can use electronic kitchen scales and a calculator to tot up the total carbs in a meal.

 

[rebrascora]

Hi and welcome.

Sorry to hear that your partner has not received enough support to manage his diabetes well and has been left to muddle along. It is great that you are prepared to learn and support him and you are right that sadly there seems to be very little educational opportunity for partners and carers in respect of this.
I would recommend that your partner asks to be put forward for a DAFNE (Dose Adjustment For Normal Eating) course or whatever your local equivalent is. Unfortunately partners are not generally accepted onto such courses but there is an online version which you could perhaps work through together at your own pace. It is called BERTIE online. If you can't find it via Google, then come back and ask and someone will provide a link.

One of the first things to get your head around is food labelling and where to find the information on packaging that you need and it is almost always in tiny, barely readable print (which is frustrating for those of us whose eyesight is less good since our diagnosis) on the back or side of the box or packet and will say Nutritional information. Sometimes it is in a nice little box which makes it easier to spot both other times it is in free text often under the ingredients or perhaps cooking instructions. It will be displayed as grams per 100grams and you need to look for the total carbs. Ignore the "of which sugars" part, just the total carbs. It may also give the number of carbs per unit ie per biscuit or per recommended portion and it will specify how big the recommended portion is. Digital scales are really helpful to weighing portion sizes so that you can calculate the number of grams of carbs.

So for instance if you have a box of breakfast cereal which has a carb content of 66g carbs per 100g and you had a 50g portion of cereal, then you would have 33g carbs in that portion..... Basically 66x50/100 or 66 x 0.5 If you had 40g of the cereal it would be 66x40/100 or 66x0.4=26.4g carbs. Milk is about 5g carbs per 100g and for milk you can assume grams and mls are interchangeable, so 100mls of milk with your cereal provides another 5g carbs.
So a 50g bowl of cereal with 100mls of milk would be approx 38g carbs (33+5) and I would normally round that up to 40 to make the maths easier because I use a 1:10 ratio and 2 less grams isn't going to make a big difference so I would use 4units of insulin for that.
For the 40g bowl of cereal with 100mls of milk it would be 26.4g carbs +5 = 31.4g which I would round down and with my ratio of 1unit of insulin for every 10g carbs (1:10) I would just need 3 units of insulin.

Foods which don't have packaging like fresh fruit and veg you can normally google their carb content or you can invest in an app (Nutracheck is one of the popular ones) for your phone which will give you all the info. There are some free apps which do this but I think there content is more limited. Generally you mostly only need to weight and measure the high carb foods and then make an allowance for the lower carb items. Once you get into the swing of it, you will learn to eyeball a lot of foods and remember the content of biscuits off the top of your head. It seems really complicated at first but it gets lots easier with practice. Dried foods like pasta and rice and dried beans and peas can be more complicated because they give you the cooked carb content, when you don't really want to start picking the beans out of your portion of chilli to weigh them before you eat it, or the pasta out of your pasta sauce. The Carbs and Cals book gives you a pictorial guide to carb content of lots of common foods and people find that really useful.

Anyway, that is a basic overview but if you work your way through BERTIE online I am sure you will find that helpful and probably gives you lots of examples to work through.

Good luck and I hope your partner is able to get a pump and that with your help he is able to manage his diabetes better and enjoy a greater variety of food.

 

[Inka]

Hi there.
I’m new here, the partner of a T1 who has never carb counted! Diabetic for 20 years he’s about to go onto a pump but he has, and I’ve never carb counted and now it’s necessary. His support was clearly pretty rubbish as a kid, unfortunately he’s had to teach himself how to manage, mostly relying on a routine of repetitive foods and lucosade.
It’s time I properly helped and we do this together but we just don’t really know where to start or how I can help him adjust to this huge change when i know it’s going to raise his anxiety. And mine for that matter.
I wish there was more support out there for partners, I’d gladly go to education groups to help him.
ANY tips on making carb counting as straightforward as possible would be most appreciated.
Many Thanks

Carb counting is a lot easier than it’s made out to be so don’t be put off. Look at BERTIE as mentioned above. Get some good digital scales and try to stick to similar meals to start with, particularly breakfast and lunch. With recipes, jot the carbs on the book so you don’t have to count again.

Does he know his meal-time ratios?

 

[nonethewiser]

Hi there.
I’m new here, the partner of a T1 who has never carb counted! Diabetic for 20 years he’s about to go onto a pump but he has, and I’ve never carb counted and now it’s necessary. His support was clearly pretty rubbish as a kid, unfortunately he’s had to teach himself how to manage, mostly relying on a routine of repetitive foods and lucosade.
It’s time I properly helped and we do this together but we just don’t really know where to start or how I can help him adjust to this huge change when i know it’s going to raise his anxiety. And mine for that matter.
I wish there was more support out there for partners, I’d gladly go to education groups to help him.
ANY tips on making carb counting as straightforward as possible would be most appreciated./
Many Thanks

Surprised he's not been told to go on carb counting course before going on pump, own clinic insists on it.

Nowt to stress about carb counting as its easy & takes no time to learn.

 

[PattiEvans]

Hi there and welcome @FJS it's great you want to help your OH. So many people don't.

The Bertie Online course is here https://www.bertieonline.org.uk/ Myself and a couple of members here did the beta testing on it and honestly it's really good. I also had to do a carb-counting course before getting the pump, but by that time I'd done the Bertie course, so I found the real-life course incredibly simple.

 

[helli]

Hi @FJS there is some great advice from other members about carb counting. As they say, it seems hard work at first but it becomes easier and definitely helps to manage blood sugars.

Forgive me for being curious but I am interested to understand why your partner is about to go on a pump if he does not carb count today. The carb counting will help hugely.
As a 12 year carb counter, I found pumping challenging at first. It was like having to learn as much again about Type 1 management compared to what I already knew. It was definitely worth it. But learning carb counting AND pumping at the same time would probably make my brain explode. Plus the benefits of carb counting are huge once you get your head around it.

Both tools together are fantastic for managing Type 1 but I am surprised your partner has been recommended a pump when he is likely to see huge gains just from carb counting.

Hope the two of you get to grips with your new skills and see the value quickly.