Ratios when eating less carbs

[fairylights]

My ratios for breakfast, lunch and dinner normally work quite well as long as I eat enough carbs around 5CPs (50g) - I am trying to cut back and eat less carbs as I really need to lose some weight - so today and last week at work I was only having 1CP at lunch but then my ratios just don't work at all.

Today at lunchtime my BGL was 5.5, I had a small salad, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, avocado with 2 cooked chicken thighs, and around 150g greek yogurt. My usual lunch ratio is 2:1 so that would be 2 units of humalog, I actually had 4 units because of this issue but by the time I get home from work 5 hours later I am 10.1.

I think my basal is okay, my breakfast to lunch ration still works although I always have to do a big correction and this time as I have bad Dawn Phenomenon so maybe that is masking something.

Do you think I need to bolus for protein?
How do you work out how much to bolus?
Or should I be counting the salad? (They told me not to on DAFNE)

 

[Spiker]

If your ratios don't work for a broad range of carbs then basically your ratios are wrong. Having said that you might need to bolus for protein if you are eating very low carb. Though 150 grams a day (?) is probably not low enough to need to bolus for protein. Check your ratios first.

 

[noblehead]

Just be sure also to count the carbs correctly and don't think that salad ingredients are free of carbs, try the same lunch again tomorrow and increase the bolus, if your basal insulin was fine before today it's unlikely to have changed, but if you want do some basal checks just to be sure.

Many of us type 1's do need to bolus for protein in the absence of carbs so if you go lower do keep this in mind.