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how do you track your carb intake ?

Brokenbill

Brokenbill

Well-Known Member
heya :) i see alot of people talking about tracking carbs and i was wondering how you track them ? do you use a website/app or do you read the food packaging and work it out that way ?
 
Brokenbill said:
heya :) i see alot of people talking about tracking carbs and i was wondering how you track them ? do you use a website/app or do you read the food packaging and work it out that way ?
Click to expand...

Hi,

There are a far few free phone apps. I use them to log my BGs, insulin dosage & carbs consumed.
The nutritional value can be found even in recipie cook books these days, so the carb content is easy to track.

There is also an app called "carbs & cals" that sort of "eyeballs" certain types of foods too..?
I didn't get on very well with that. But you might find it usefull.?
 
bulkbiker said:
Do you find it accurate?
Click to expand...

everything is pretty much spot on with the labels but on occasion there can be the odd item where someone has put the wrong information in and there’s multiple listed so you have to find the correct one, could be down to the weight and they used what their serving was.
 
Jaylee said:
Hi,

There are a far few free phone apps. I use them to log my BGs, insulin dosage & carbs consumed.
The nutritional value can be found even in recipie cook books these days, so the carb content is easy to track.

There is also an app called "carbs & cals" that sort of "eyeballs" certain types of foods too..?
I didn't get on very well with that. But you might find it usefull.?
Click to expand...

i felt the same with carbs & cals but the book is quite useful though
 
zeeeee said:
everything is pretty much spot on with the labels but on occasion there can be the odd item where someone has put the wrong information in and there’s multiple listed so you have to find the correct one, could be down to the weight and they used what their serving was.
Click to expand...
Maybe it's got better. When I first looked at it half the info was from the US so the carb counts were incorrect. That when combined with some of the info appearing to have been input by not very accurate people led me to dump it pretty quickly.
 
I use labels on packages, and google for unpackaged stuff. But I don't count very precise, for me it's more like mentally sorting food into no carb, very little carbs, moderate, high, and ridiculous.
 
zeeeee said:
i felt the same with carbs & cals but the book is quite useful though
Click to expand...

There have been a lot of favourable comments regarding the book.i prefer to travel light, with one less book?

Probably just me. But form memory there seemed to be a "commercial" element to free version of the app.
 
I got the book when I first went LC and it certainly helped me to visualise food portion sizes and the amount of carbs in the serving

i found it more educational rather than something to build a diet around
 
thank you all for your input :) i'm gonna try myfitnesspal and also check food packaging to double check its the correct info :) now i just need to get looking for some low carb meal ideas xD
 
Hi @Brokenbill . Like you I'm T2 and insulin dependent. I do like to track my carb intake but am no longer wedded to a low carb diet, in fact I need to keep my carb intake reasonably moderate in order to maintain weight so I balance my carb intake with my insulin. I do use Carbs and Cals as it gives a pretty good insight into carbs of many meals and I also use the packaging info on foods. Over the past 18 months I've maintained a notebook where I've noted the carbs in food portions that I've had to calculate by weighing and using data from Carbs and Cals or other sources. What I find hardest is calculating/estimating the carbs in home cooked meals e.g. the chicken and sweetcorn soup I had at lunchtime or the tuna, sweetcorn, cheese and tomato bake my wife made.
Like bulkbiker I use an Excel spreadsheet to do some calculations for me and I've a handy little Excel calculator that lets me input carbs per 100g of the food item, weight of the item and then calculates the carbs I'm about to consume. But nowadays I seldom have to resort to this as I've got a lot of the calcs recorded in my notebook.
 
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