Monday, July 9, 2012

Counting Carbs for Beginners

I had another Diabetic education session last week, and now I am supposed to be counting carbs for my son.Every bite that goes into his mouth has to be accounted for.

It kind of hard to keep to the rules when my husband - who has type 2 Diabetes, doesn't count carbs at all. He eats what he like when he likes and gives himself insulin to cover what he eats. Incredibly enough - 90%  of the time - his blood glucose level is within his target range.

My son cannot do that. We now have a specific amount of carbs he has to eat at each meal and snack so that we can keep the insulin on the same level.

On Saturday things went very well - I counted everything - and my sons numbers stayed in inside the BG target for the entire day.

On Sunday (yesterday) we went to the movies. We went to see The Amazing Spiderman - and my son was most upset to discover that he can no longer eat what he likes when he likes.

 Up until now, he has always had a JUMBO bag of popcorn at the movies. Popcorn has 6 carbs per air-popped cup. And Jumbo bags have at least 8 cups - possibly more.  So 6 x 8 is 48 carbs just in one jumbo bag alone. We have never added butter so that's ok. We always add cheese and cheese is a "free food"  Free foods have no carbs.

Yesterday we discovered that he can now only ever eat a SMALL bag of Popcorn - (and that's still at least 4 cups) but we can manage the 24 carbs. Still his BG went a little high but not too high.

Then after the movie we stopped at MacDonalds, and for the first time EVER, we asked for a nutritional fact sheet and sat down to decide what he could have before we purchased it.

So we settled on a double cheeseburger and small fries. We had to buy a Sprite Zero from another shop since MacD's do not sell Diet pop (other than coke and we never drink coke).

AS usual, my son wanted a MacFlurry - but with over 40 carbs, that's now a no-no!!

Again he was not happy.

"I'll never be allowed to eat at MacDonalds again" he sobbed.

Well that's not true, he can eat cheeseburgers and small fries, and salads, and the chicken nuggets, but he doesnt want to eat a healthy salad and he thinks that chicken nuggets are for babies.

Also at MacDonalds, I had to inject him with his dinner time insulin. Since I knew his BG numbers were a little high after the popcorn, I opted to give one extra unit of insulin to cover the high (of both the Popcorn and the Cheeseburger and Fries). This was the right decision to make because his bedtime BG was back down within the target range.

I am proud of myself for making a small decision that turned out to be correct.






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