Carb Counting 101
 

Here is a web site with a lot of information on counting carbs for those of you who use this or are trying to learn how to do this.

WOW!!! Love the tags you provided for carb counting, carb counting 101, carbohydrates and counting carbs. Awesome! also loved it when I found the link to how to calculate your ideal weight and based on that, or your goal weigh, how to figure calories and carbohydrates based on your activity level. What an eye opener!

Thank you for the time you must take for all of this.

See, I told you that you would pick this up in no time! :D

On 2006 I discovered I was a type 2, since then I've been working hard to maintain a lifestyle that can give me time to spend with my family and at the same time work on this controllable diseases. to be honest, I became depressed, and angry but at the end of the tunnel I found the light. I was prescribed a bunch of pills that none of them worked. I was wrongly advised how to diet, this cause that my lever began to act up. A biopsy was going to be perform on me to make sure destruction of my lever was not occurring due to all the medication. So...I change my Dr, and everything began to change for awesomeness, 30g of carbs every meal, exercises, and gradually lower all my pills. Today after a 6 month battle, 40 lbs lighter, 1 pill a day, and a A1C average of 5.5, I fill healthy, God is great and my Dr. too. My new Dr, save my life and totally changed the mentality to positive thinking.

I have to admit that every once and while I give myself some treat but I deserve it after a long battle to keep the #2 under control. Keep working and don't give up...enjoy beating the crap out of #2.

Great news is always good to hear eldiputado. Keep up the good work! Thanks for sharing. :)

Also some food can be cook differently for you body to absorb it in a lower pace. I'll be writing some of the trail and error that I have explored in order for me to understand what is good for me and what is not.

Ok so I'm a hispanic male and love rice by matters of culture I find out that by cooking an already cooked (soft) 4 oz of rice and making it hard in the microwave, my body will digest it a lot slower pace. I work on the road and sometime is hard to eat healthy so if I'm going to McDonalds I'll ask for the chix sandwich only w/ a drink and remove the bread from it (believe me is hard). I also eat english muffing with eggs, ham, cheese in the morning which is about 30gm carbs. I love smoothies so I sat down with the store manager and we created a special smoothie for me 35gm of carbs against 49 that was before, all by counting the carbs.

I had to learn how to eat peanut butter I considered it nasty, but with a little scarifies is now my favorite snack combined with a low sugar strawberry jam (no bread). I eat tilapia, shrimp, salmon, tuna, all kinds of fish to maintain a low carb diet and so far has work.

This web-site will give you a better understanding of carbs in food, calorieking.com and if you search for glisemic index in food (hopefully I spelled it right) you'll be able to predict how you body will react on certain food item.

Of course always consult with you Dr. Good look.

Was just diagnosed with type2. Need all the help I can get... This was a great place to stumble onto

Welcome to the Forum! :)

Good luck with your control and management.

I am starting a low carb lifestyle to manage my Type2 and to lose weight. Am finding it difficult to adjust since i am used to eating a lot of fruit. Also, am not finding meats and fats especially appetizing and can definitely see how this will result in weight loss since i'll be finding fewer palatable food options. Suggestions welcome. :-)

What our goal should be.
 

We should all have the goal of normalizing our blood sugars. All of the problems associated with diabetes are the direct or indirect results of hyperglycemia, except of course dangerous hypoycemia. A normal blood sugar is ~83 mg/dl, corresponding to a HA1c of 4.55. Blood sugars should stay at ~ 83 mg/dl before and after meals. To achieve this, most of us will have to limit carbs to no more than 30-32 g per meal, and probably far less than 30 g at breakfast due to the Dawn Phenomenon, and normalizing blood sugars will require eliminating simple sugars from our diets, including fruits and milk (fructose and lactose are simple sugars), and eliminating starches, including breads and whole wheat, and other grains and rice, including wild rice, and potatoes, since all starches rapidly break down into simple sugars in our digestive tracks. This will also be easiest to achieve if we exercise vigorously each day and maintain a weight close to our ideal body weight, so that we eliminate insulin resistance. The elimination of insulin resistance will result in the need for only small insulin doses before each meal, minimizing the guesswork in calculating these doses. Significant insulin resistance, resulting from high BMI's, leads to such large does of pre meal insulin being required, that it becomes almost impossible to correctly guess the correct premeal insulin dose, resulting in frequent episodes of significant hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia, the inevitable result of a high carbohydrate diet. Almost all diabetic complications are reversible with blood sugar normalization, starting a few months after you achieve normal blood sugars. Doctors don't often recommend normal blood sugars because it is very difficult for a doctor to achieve normal blood sugars in a patient, and impossible if ADA recommendations for a high carbohydrate diet are followed. Only a patient, following a low carbohydrate diet, and taking charge of his or her own diabetes management, can have any real hope of achieving normal blood sugars. Read Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Sulutions to learn the fine points of achieving and maintaining normal blood sugars. Of course, if your pancreas is still capable of producing significant amounts of endogenous insulin, normal blood sugars will be much easier to achieve and your diabetes may be curable, but remember that many Americans who do not have blood sugars or HA1c's that would give them a diagnosis of diabetes, or even prediabetes, still have blood sugars that are high enough to cause significant harm in the long run, including an increased risk of heart disease, and most people who are overweight, even if they have no limit to their ability to produce endogenous insulin, still will have insulin resistance due to their increased fat-to-muscle ratio, and hyperinsulinemia will be the inevitable result. Hyperinsulinemia, as all diabetics who have started taking insulin shots while following a high carbohydrate diet know, results in significant weight gain. High serum insulin levels cause hunger. Being overweight with too much body fat and too little body musculature will produce a need for high circulating insulin levels to bring down high blood sugars, and whether tbe insulin comes from your pancreas or from the injection of insulin, an increased appetite and inevitable weight gain will be the result. Severe hyperinsulinemia will make it much harder or impossible for almost anyone to achieve a normal body weight and ,blood sugar normalization. It will become difficult to even maintain current body weight, but instead weight will steadily and progressive increase each year, resulting in increasing difficulty controlling blood sugars and body weight, a vicious cycle, until the affected person figures out that we should all be on low carbohydrate diets that minimize or eliminate simple sugars and starches. These are the foods humans have grown accustomed to since the advent of modern agriculture 10,000 years ago. But our basic physiology has not changed and our bodies are not designed to handle a chronic excess of simple sugars and starches. The cultivation of crops including fruit orchards, wheat fields, and rice patties, and the herding of goats and cattle that has allowed a bountiful supply of fresh milk, is the event that set into motion our current accelerating epidemic of type 2 diabetes and all of its consequences. We need to return to the diets our hunter-gatherer ancestors followed by necessity, fish, meat, and non-starchy vegetables such as green beans and leafy vegetables, and we should remember that while equal amounts of carbohydrates elevate blood sugars about five times as much as proteins, proteins still elevate blood sugars although slowly, so proteins need to be included in your calculations when determining premeal insulin doses. Fats have no effect on blood sugars and are also beneficial in that they are better at promoting satiety. Trans fats and a diet very high is saturated fats is probably not heart healthy, but I am not as certain about the adverse health effects of a diet high in saturated fats if carbohydrates are kept low, but I'm still staying away from pure lard and I don't plan to fry my bread in butter as my grandmother did. She died of a stroke in her 60's and I expect to live in good heath much longer. However, in general most fats are healthy as long as you are eating a low carbohydrate diet. There are essential fatty acids that we derive only from fats, and essential amino*acids that we derive from proteins but their are no essential fruits or no essential carbohydrates, and any trace elements, minerals, and dietary fiber that we might need can be easily obtained from non-starchy vegetables. Multi-vitamins are unnecessary and may even be harmful in that the absorption of vitamins is often by passive diffusion across the cell membranes of the tissues lining our intestines, so that too much of one vitamin may result in too little absorption of competing vitamins, and the same probably is also true for the absorption of minerals and necessary trace elements, many of which are probably still unknown to science. We also need to balance our need for sun exposure to produce vitamin D with the risk associated with excessive sun exposure, so supplemental vitamin D may be warranted for some people. Most other vitamen supplements are simply a waste of money and especially for the fat soluble vitamins, potentially dangerous in high doses. Multi-vitamins have never been shown to benefit people, and many studies have suggested the opposite.

Carb counting definitely works. See PowerProtein and other books by Drs Eads. They explain the impact of glucose from carbs, insulin resistance etc in relatively simple terms.

Has anyone tried cinnamon?

Yes, i take cinnamon caps before meals and/or add ground cinnamon to my greek yogurt along with some flaxmeal. Also make a few morrocan dishes and use as a spice in the dish. :-)

The next to last post sounds a lot like Power Protein by Drs Eads. Cut down on the carbs and get off most of the meds.

Carb Counting Instruments
 

I assume that if you are using the GlucoseBuddy App that you have an Apple Product. Here are four (4) free Apps to get you started counting carbs and three (3) web sites to check out.

Apple Apps:

1. Carb counting with Lenny the Lion (Children's Version, but it will help)
2. CalorieKing (It seems to work very well)
3. Restaurants (A big help if you eat out very often)
4. MyNetDiary (Be sure to turn on the "Show Carbs" in the Settings or use the "Daily Details Report" function)

WebSites:

Calorie King
Coheso
Carbs Per Day

Good Luck! :)

Hi I m Indian 35 yr old female, a #2 for last 10 yrs...y fasting blood sugar levels came 200 can't understand y n m stressed

delete

I'm following the advice of Dr. Thomas Cowan and limiting carbs to 60-70/day...anyone else limiting that much...how have you done? I'm newly diagnosed and managing with diet/exercise only.

Counting Carbs
 

After 5 years of struggling with high numbers in the 200&300 range I have given up on breads, potato,rice, crackers etc. I eat berries with plain Greek yogurt sprinkled with stevia. I am amazed that I have lost 13 pounds and my numbers are in the 80's now!

I use an app called lose it. You set your goal and how many lbs you want to lose per week and it tells you how many cals you can eat per day, plus you can add exercise and what you eat during the day. I love it and it helps me control my cravings.

45 carbs per meal, rule of thumb

Greek yogurt,

That's proper austerity food and NO TV ;-)

Seriously, it's really easy to make your own yogurt and even the Greek style at home.

Anyone interested?

I enjoy eating it because it's good for me and I made it, you know, all by myself!

The best app EVER is LoseIt! (http://www.loseit.com/#Home) If you don't mind me adding my two cents, I've used it for over two years and it's virtually failsafe... Because all the data is my own. Just sayin'.

The Lose It! app is very good for logging your food, but it does not give you the total carb count for the meal. You must resort to adding each item up as you input them. This is a problem that the "Lose It!" app has had for several years and the programmers still refuse to fix for people with diabetes. That is the main reason that I quit using the app several years ago.

I was just diagnosed, too, Tiger!

Thanks for sharing.

Went in Atkins. Within days dropped to 121. Had blood work 95. Handheld glucose meter is not accurate.

How do open this on the internet rather than through here? What is the address?

I limit my carbs to less than 20 per day.

Is there a way in GB to see what my total carb count is at any point throughout the day without having to add it up in the log ?

I use myfitnesspal for over 3 years. You're able to keep track of your food & exercise.

Reading all the post here is very educational. I've been type 2 for 2 yrs now and my a1c is 7.0 . My BS is going yoyo everyday and so with my diet. It's really hard to work with Diet and Exercise if you are going trough so much STRESS !!! I'm still not giving up though ... Hopefully all your advice here will me somehow .

I have no idea how to count carbs they got a schedule to go to a diabetes nutrition class so hopefully that will help

I was recently diagnosed with t2. My ggrandmother died from complications of t2, my grandmother had t2, my mother died from complications of t2 and my sister has t2. I do not want to die from complications of t2.
I was diagnosed in mid June and scheduled to see a diabetic educator in mid July. I decided to educate myself (I'm a 68 yo retired paramedic) on what I needed to do to get myself on track. After a lot research I had an idea on exactly what I needed to do. I bought several books which included books by a Seattle cardiologist, Dr Rob Thompson. Following his recommendations for a low glycemic load diet and walking I am feeling great and have lost 16 lbs since June 16. I use a Fitbit Charge HR and use it to guide me and keep me honest. I walk 3 1/2 miles in the morning and try to get at least 5 miles during the whole day. I don't see the Dr again until Sept 9th. I have 30 lbs to lose but this plan has made it pretty easy. More over, I think I can live this plan.