Carb Counting

How to take the mystery out of carb counting & improve your blood glucose control

"How do I manage my blood glucose levels?" "What do carbohydrates have to do with diabetes?" "What are carbohydrates and why are they important?" If any of these questions sound familiar, then it's time to pick up The Complete Guide to Carb Counting.

These chain restaurant sites provide a nutrition analysis of their menu items to help you plan and balance fast food meals, whether you are dieting, controlling your blood sugar or eating healthy. We hope this information will help you make better decisions about balance, variety and moderation in your diet, and improve your overall control.

Your daily carb requirement is based on your daily calorie need. Carb amounts play a major role in setting your carb boluses. It is best to make gradual changes in how many carbs you eat and adjust your insulin gradually as you go.

Fill in the blanks below to determine how many grams of carbohydrate you need each day by hand or use our interactive Carb and Calorie Estimator.

Packaged foods have a "Nutrition Facts" label that provides nutritional information, including the number of calories and the grams of protein and fat. These labels also give the exact number of grams of carbohydrate contained in a serving and the size of this serving. For those with diabetes, food labels are extremely helpful for carb counting and for determining appropriate insulin doses for these foods.

What consumers get from food labels:

A few foods like table sugar and lollipops are entirely carbohydrate, so their weight on a gram scale will be exactly the same as the number of grams of carbohydrate they contain. Most foods, however, have only part of their total weight as carbohydrate. The carb content of these foods can be determined by food labels, reference books or software, or a scale and a list of carb factors.

These rules lets you match your meal carbohydrates with insulin for better post-meal readings. However, carbohydrates are also needed to raise a low blood sugar. For this, there are two helpful guides:

1. One gram of carbohydrate raises the blood sugar about 3, 4, or 5 points for people who weigh 200 lbs., 150 lbs., and 100 lbs., respectively.

2. The glycemic index, protein content, and fat content of foods can modify the speed and strength of Guide 1.

Grams are a unit of weight like pounds or ounces. Because of their very small size (it takes 28 grams to equal a single ounce), grams can be used to accurately measure carbohydrate.

To know how much carbohydrate you eat, you need to be clear about which foods are primarily carbohydrate and which contain enough carbs that they require counting.

When people think of diabetes, one of the first associations that comes to mind is food, especially the old prohibition against eating sweets. In fact, today's dietary guidelines are not as stringent, but are slightly more complex. The guidelines are: