Eating out and covering starters with insulin

[Riri]

Hi - can people tell me what they do when eating out?

Say Ive chosen a starter and a main (skipped the pudd) and I estimate that the starter will be 20g carbs and the main say 50g. Do other people generally wait until they see the starter and then take a glucose reading and then take inslin at this point and then do another insulin adjustment (both courses worked out by carb counting) when the mains arrive?

Or do you generally take your full insulin dose at the start of the meal when the starters arrive?

 

[copepod]

Depends on the type of place, how busy it is, if all members of my party are having starters and mains etc, as all those factors can affect timing. If unsure, I play safe and test before and inject for starter when it arrives / ready to start eating (in case of waiting for all the party's starters to arrive), and then do the same again for main. I don't bother to test again between starter and main. However, all this applies to my MDI - surely your pump gives you even more options for managing the situation eg aborting bolus if main is delayed?

 

[borderter]

I always wait until meal is on the table ,but as I dont have starters thats easy even if food cools a bit but with a starter would probably wait until main course to inject

 

[noblehead]

Riri,

What I do when eating out is have the starter then only inject when the main arrives, often (depending how busy they are) the wait between starter and main arriving can be anything up to an hour so injecting before the starter could potentially lead to hypo's.

 

[Riri]

Thanks peeps. Pump - you can't abort the bolus once you've programmed it to go. You can suspend whilst it was delivering insulin which takes a minute or two. (I know you can use a square wave or dual bolus but these ar options on the pump which I havent tried yet due to it being fairly new). I think waiting until the main seems the safe option as you say.

Do you carb count Noblehead? The reason I ask is I was wondering if you test your blood before the starter to work out the carbs/insulin required for the whole meal? Hope you know what I mean! :crazy:

 

[noblehead]

Yes I do carb count otherwise I wouldn't know how much insulin to give. I do test upon arriving at a restaurant and adjust my dose according to how many carbs I'll eat, this is why I said earlier that I'll wait for the main to arrive so I can guesstimate as near as possible.

Trying to pre-guess how many carbs is in a main is a tricky business as portion sizes vary from each establishment, I don't worry about deserts as I don't eat them but have occasionally gone for a fruit salad, on these occasions I include a couple of units in with the previous dose.

 

[leggott]

There is a book called 'carbs and cals' which is also available as an app. It is a great book for eating out and helps in guesstimating the carbs.

 

[paula1974]

Dont know if this is right but I used to wait until I'd eaten before injecting. I say used to because I am only on long acting injection at night now.

Merry Christmas,
Paula x