Hi DaveT
I eat 250 gms carbs/day using 38 units of bovine insulin.
I suspect I can eat this amount due to the length of time the bovine insulin
is active compared to the synthetic insulin's
I've been insulin dependant for over 40 yrs but went up to 250 carbs in
1976.
Sue type 1

"DaveT" <justask@privacy.com> wrote in alt.support.diabetes.uk:

You're a T1, you use humalog, and you can use a bolus to counter the carbs
you eat. If your PP BG-levels are okay, there's no need to consider how
many carbs you "should" eat. There's certainly no need for "low carb".

What's more important is what your insulin need per gram of carbs is. Is
it 10 mg of carbs per unit of humalog? 12, 15? If you know, you can simply
calculate your bolus for each meal. If you know what carbs you eat, and
how much units of insulin you need to counter them, you're doing alright.

What to eat? Eat a normal, balanced and healthy diet, which provides you
with all nutrients, vitamins, minerals you need. There's plenty of
bandwidth in "good food choice" as long as you can keep BG's under control
with the insulines you use.

The ADA recommendations and that food pyramid give you a good _idea_ of
what your daily meal should consist of. It's no law. Nothing is. Don't
follow anything slavishly - listen to your own body, and cater its whims,
not the whims of websites, Usenet posters and neighbours doing diet X.

Keep an eye on the total amount of calories; sit down and try to calculate
what your daily intake is. If you start to gain weight, and you're eating
normally, you should consider adapting your diet to take in less calories,
and maybe start exercising a bit more to compensate.

If you're overweight, and want to lose weight, the best thing is to cut
back on calories without cutting back on the diversity of food, and
_especially_ increase your exercise, like walking each day for at least
half an hour. With a negative energy balance, you'll lose weight.

Remember that it can happen that people concerned with their eating habits
turn it into some kind of "orthorexia" obsession. For some "stuff X" is
the big bad wolf and should be erased from their diet, for others "stuff
Y" is the main culprit of everything since the dawning of time. For some,
carbohydrates have become such a category.
Don't get yourself lured into such obsessive behaviour with food, twisting
and turning in your bed if you're eating right and what could be wrong.

Listen to your body, read your meter, keep going to those checkups, and
you chose the best way to handle things. Good luck.

I don't stick to any one amount per day, i just eat what i want and
inject accordingly although i doubt i go much over 180 to 200g in total
for the day - sometimes less.

Although Madison is different because she's younger and more active and
probably burning off a lot more than "we" do, she's also probably still
on honeymoon.

As for insulin amounts, first thing in the morning i could use up to 10u
of novorapid for 4 sausages in a wholemeal small bun, the same food at
night would only need 6u at most.

It's not so much a question of low carb as a question of watched carb up
to a certain amount that i know my system can handle without spiking. I
generally stick to between 60 and 80g per meal and inject between 8 and
12u of novorapid.

I've been doing pretty the same thing for a year or more now and it's
working well. I know what i need to inject for all of the foods i eat at
 whatever time of day i eat them, i also know how much insulin i need
per  20g of carb which is around 2u if it's evening or 4u if it's early
morning.

I've been trying out porcine isophane from cp pharma, so far it seems ok
... have definitely lost some weight, bgs fluctuated for a bit but i
think i've got the hang of it now. I'll know at the next set of tests
what effect i've had on my A1c.

Patrick

I fear my comments would be relatively useless being a T2 speaking to a T1,
but if any T2s want to discuss "how low" then I'll jump in.

Make it a new thread tho ;)

VBH

I've stuck to the same thread but started another branch ;)

I am a type 2 on 1500mg Metformin per day for bg control.  Since my meds
are fixed I have no flexibility to increase meds to deal with a large
intake of carbs.  Increasing Met over a short period does not have a
significant effect on BG for a meal.  However, I do reduce to 1000mg on
some days when my carb intake is lower.  This appears to work for me
although I do not get overly scientific about it.

The trouble with any baseline figure of X carbs per day is that it is
too generic a term.  Sugar, white starches, brown starches are all
carbs, but have different impacts on the BG.  Within those categories
and others, each item has a different level of effect.  If you were to
cap an individual meal at 50 carbs then 50g of white bread is vastly
different from 50g of rye bread.

However, so long as you are reasonably consistent (boring!) with your
food choices then having a target figure is more reasonable.  My target
tends to be 40g carbs max per meal.  That would be 120 per day plus
snacks - around 140/160.

But I do not always meet the target from either side.  If a meal is
heavily veggie based then that is less of a concern than if I am having
40g of starches of any type.  So I will vary from 20 to 50 and
occasionally 60.  But this is all down to experience on how individual
foods and the combination of various meals affect me.  It is something
which can only really be done by experience and meter watching.

I also have the complication of the dawn phenomenon and increased
insulin resistance in the morning.  So breakfast is a problem.  These
days it tends to be egg based whenever possible so the carb count will
tend to be in the region of < 10.  Alternatively I will have something
with bread, but this would normally be rye bread (burgen) so although a
couple of slices is around 25g carbs, the low GI of the bread means that
I can get away with it without a huge spike.

If I am exercising in the morning I will go for porridge about 30 mins
before but that is because I know I will burn off the carbs at the time
when they hit the bloodstream as glucose.

So when it comes to all these recommendations on how many carbs to have,
who is right?

None of them.  YOU are.

The task is to work out what you can eat without raising your BG.  All
the recommendations are based on eating what they expect you to eat.
Follow their diet recommendations then it will work - to a point.  If
they are expecting you to eat brown starches (brown bread, brown rice
etc) and you actually eat white then their carb figure will not work.

But you also have to bear in mind that they deal with mass populations.
 So although a diet change will improve the overall health of thousands
of people, the health of the individual may actually get worse if it
does not work for you.  Everybody's body reacts differently.  The
numbers they give are very rough based on a rough idea of what you are
eating.

They also expect a large number of people to "fail" and just grab a
cream cake once in a while - I'm exaggerating but you know what I mean.

The numbers they give are useful for initial guidance, to give an
approximate idea.  What really matters is working out what your body can
deal with and which foods work best for you.

So it is a matter of testing for as many meals as possible, knowing how
foods affect you and what is a "safe" meal.  The more effort you take to
learn about it then the easier time you have because after some time
then you will be able to just eat a particular meal and know that it
will not send your BG soaring.

I have not been in tight control for the last 6 months but I know I will
not be facing a disasterous A1c because I know the general rules for
what I can eat.  I have strayed from that but not too much and not too
often.

So if we are talking general guidelines I would suggest to try and limit
to 40 carbs at an individual meal and not eat any more carbs within an
hour.  Also make sure those carbs are as slow as possible (low GI).

Note:  When I talk about GI I mean real GI and GL numbers for individual
foodstuffs and products, not this traffic light bollocks.  That crap is
HORRENDOUSLY misleading.  I particularly liked the table I saw in one
book that had bread in all of the red, yellow and green columns.  Very
helpful!

Hope that loooong essay makes useful reading to some poor sod!  Thanks
for making it this far.  I feel a series of personal articles / blog
entries coming on.  Time to use that webspace I paid for and lies dormant ;)

VBH.