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confused

hi, im no expert and new to carb counting, most products have a list on the back of the packet with the carbohydrates, fat, sugar etc, its normally in a little box but occassionally written as i sentence (which i hate) in my very limited experience the lower amount of carbs the better,its worth researching because its amazing which foods are not as good as you would think, a banana for example has 30g carbs so i read the other day which was a total surprise for me as i always thought bananas were all good :( there are a zillion posts on here about carb counting, have a little look, maybee use the "search" good luck :)
 
Hi. You need to set yourself a daily target for carbs. For many on this forum it would be a lot less than 200gm/day. Having set a target you can then work out what you can eat during the day by reading the packaging or getting numbers for fruit etc from this forum or the web
 
I have bought the carbs and cals book you can also get this as an app. I found it very helpful it has pictures and weights so you know how much carbs is in a meal and helps you recognise portion sizes. It is the best thing I have found since being diagnosed a year ago.

Lucy
 
confused36 said:
I'm confused how can I see if everything has hhigh carbs n what's. A good carb number to look for on foods
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I don't count carbs but have cut out all sugary stuff, sweets, biscuits, chocolate bars and so on. Then, when I saw that I still got some high BG levels, I pinned it down to things like white bread. It was a surprise to me that it was the same as eating sugar. Same with mashed potatoes, very similar with white rice. When I moved onto unrefined carbs, brown rice, wholegrain bread, wholegrain pasta etc and restricted things like potatoes to say three small to medium new potatoes, the spikes stopped and my overall levels have come down further. If I need to, I can always start cutting down on those carbs too but, with exercise, I don't need to yet. Daily exercise helps to improve the insulin sensitivity and, together with losing weight, can make a big difference too. You have a number of weapons in your armoury !

Just to explain a little about carbs. Some carbs don't even get absorbed. If you look the sugar substitute Truvia or sweets for diabetics at the pharmacists, they are 'sugar free' but are also very high in carbs, 100g of Truvia for example has 99g of carbs. But none of it is absorbed. More regular foods like brown rice are absorbed but slowly so you tend to feel as if you have eaten something substantial, but it won't cause a sugar rush to the blood.
 
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