Potatoes ?

[Colm]

Thanks everybody for your answers, i really appreciate your time and opinions.
.@docb what you say about looking at a plate of food and guessing how much insulin I need is what I have been doing for nearly 20 years, but what I am working on now is carb counting, its new enough to me, so a big learning curve ;-)
I am contemplating getting an insulin pump, and I believe its all about ratios and carb counting with them to operate them, so I'm practicing !, also there is always room for improvement so carb counting is a good thing to understand..

Thanks again
C.

 

[Inka]

Thanks for that caveat @Inka - I can get carried away and not always reflect accurately on the practical differences between T1 and T2.

Do you take the dry, uncooked weight and use standard carb levels that experience has shown you to have worked? For instance, are spuds just spuds to you without taking into account what variety they are or how they are cooked?

Yes, I take the raw weight and all white/red potatoes are the same to me (there may be negligible differences but that’s not worth bothering about). I was taught the carb count and it’s always worked well. When I was diagnosed with Type 1, I got a really handy list of carb counts for everyday items listed in a way that was most useful (not just per 100g).

The cooking method can affect the GI and if that effect was significant, I might split my bolus or do an extended bolus, or bolus more in advance if it was high GI.

When I’m eating out, I know that a 2oz potato (10g carbs) is the size of a hen’s egg so I use that visual to estimate the carbs eg with boiled or roast potatoes. With chips, it depends if they’re home-made or not. If they are, I use my hen’s egg visual to estimate how many eggs they’d make, if they’re oven chips I estimate based on the carbs of the oven chips I have at home. It’s always sensible to under-estimate as you can always correct later if needed.

 

[Inka]

Have you had any education about carb-counting @Colm ? When I was diagnosed almost 30 years ago, carb counting was taught at diagnosis. A few years after, there was a (stupid) drive to ‘make things easier’ and not teach it, but it doesn’t make things easier at all.

I mentioned the carb sheet I got at diagnosis in my post above this. It was simple but so, so useful. It’s disappeared somewhere over the years or got damaged and thrown out, but it had everything needed and I memorised it through use very quickly.

There’s an online course called BERTIE if you weren’t aware of it:

https://www.bertieonline.org.uk/

A good set of digital scales is important too. I’m sure you’ll soon get the hang of it 🙂 Do ask any other questions here as they occur to you.

 

[Deleted member 21371]

I'm not type 1, but the same applies to every type of food.
The carb content of a basic food never changes.
What does change is the served weight.
Pasta gets heaver as it goes from dried to wet, some foods get lighter as they dry out, some just pick up extra weight from other things added to them, with their own carb content (or not, maybe just fat or protein) so the ratio of carbs to served foods change, but whatever went in raw is constant.

 

[Colm]

Have you had any education about carb-counting @Colm ? When I was diagnosed almost 30 years ago, carb counting was taught at diagnosis. A few years after, there was a (stupid) drive to ‘make things easier’ and not teach it, but it doesn’t make things easier at all.

I mentioned the carb sheet I got at diagnosis in my post above this. It was simple but so, so useful. It’s disappeared somewhere over the years or got damaged and thrown out, but it had everything needed and I memorised it through use very quickly.

There’s an online course called BERTIE if you weren’t aware of it:

https://www.bertieonline.org.uk/

A good set of digital scales is important too. I’m sure you’ll soon get the hang of it 🙂 Do ask any other questions here as they occur to

I found that BERTIE course during the week, I will definitely give that a go.
Tell me....how do you fair out with Pasta...I find it very hard to get the insulin dose and timing of the dose right with a big bowl of pasta.....and I loooooove pasta 🙂

 

[Inka]

I found that BERTIE course during the week, I will definitely give that a go.
Tell me....how do you fair out with Pasta...I find it very hard to get the insulin dose and timing of the dose right with a big bowl of pasta.....and I loooooove pasta 🙂

I do fine with pasta. I have a pump so can split my bolus and extend it through that, but on injections I’d give myself 1/2 to a 1/3 of the insulin upfront and the other 1/2 or 2/3 at 60,90 or 120 mins depending on what I was doing and the composition of the pasta sauce (fatty sauces absorb slower than tomato ones), etc.

It’s all a question of experimentation. As you’re experimenting, stick to the same amount of pasta each time so you’ve removed one variable.

 

[trophywench]

Pasta is easy, as is rice - the thing that makes it seem difficult is what you have with it! Doing what @Inka said has always worked AOK for me, too. Easier with a pump is all.

 

[Colm]

Thanks very much for all your help.
I have a cut off of 7pm for pasta..as the glucose levels go through the roof about 3.5 or 4 hours after eating it, its fine during the day, but night time when the activity level is at a minimum, thats the problem, so I need correction doses 3 or 4 hours after eating it, same with rice, but I tend to steer clear of rice as much as possible....I prefer pasta anyway 🙂

My medical center has always been against me having a pump since the day I was diagnosed back in 2003, "pumps are for people that cant manage their diabetes and your doing fine", I was told.
I love the freedom of not having a pump attached, but I am seriously considering going back to them looking for one now as pumps have moved on so much with algorithms and all sorts of auto control available, maybe when the new Tandem 3 comes out i'll have a proper look at that and decide...but definitely swinging that direction.

Thanks again.
Colm.

 

[Spathiphyllum]

looking up the carb content of raw potatoes, I find you get different answers, that's my point, some web sites say 15 or 16g per 100, and others say 30g per 100, whos telling the truth? 🙂 how many carbs are in potatoes per 100g ?

If you look at US websites or US food labels, you will get different values for carbs from what you would get on UK (or EU) websites or food labels.

This is because, in the US, they count non-digestible carbohydrates-- fibre-- as part of the 'total carbohydrate' figure; whereas, in the UK/EU, the figure for 'total carbohydrates' is only digestible carbohydrates, with fibre listed separately.

I learned this the hard way! ; )

Given that there may also be variations between different varieties of (for example) potato, I go by what's stated on the packaging or, if I've bought them loose, on the supermarket's webpage for the particular potatoes I bought.

 

[Inka]

Is that with a split bolus for the pasta @Colm ? If not, try splitting your bolus. Also, in your bolus-splitting experiments, stick with a moderate amount of pasta just to keep things simple. That’s what I did when I did my original calculations and experiments.

 

[Colm]

Is that with a split bolus for the pasta @Colm ? If not, try splitting your bolus. Also, in your bolus-splitting experiments, stick with a moderate amount of pasta just to keep things simple. That’s what I did when I did my original calculations and experiments.

I usually have 14 or 16 units of Novarapid just before eating pasta, then another 5 or 6 units 3 or 4 hours later, whenever thay start to climb..

 

[nonethewiser]

I found that BERTIE course during the week, I will definitely give that a go.
Tell me....how do you fair out with Pasta...I find it very hard to get the insulin dose and timing of the dose right with a big bowl of pasta.....and I loooooove pasta 🙂

Pasta isn't issue its what you serve it with that complicates matters, often its high fat sauce & generous portion of meat, all that takes time to digest.

Like many others use split bolus,so some upfront some later on, since switching to pump this is so much easier to do than before on injections.

Eat potato's all ways except mash, again its what's served with them that determines how to bolus for them, it's easy if you have good memory or organised enough to keep a diary to look back on.