HI Esther,
The BDEC link Phoenix posted is an excellent resource until you can get on a formal course.
There are a couple of things that you need to get figured out really.
1) What does 1U of insulin do to your blood sugar
2) What does 1CP (~10G Carbs) do to your blood sugar.
Once you have those two it becomes pretty easy maths to figure it all out. One thing to bear in mind is that sometimes the ratios between CP and Insulin change depending on your activity levels, time of year, time of day, illness.. phase of the moon (laugh now, who knows what they may yet find
)
Anyways the thing is if your yummy cake is home made (or even if it isn't) you can still work it all out. The thing with the home cooking is to check the total carbohydrate content for ALL the ingredients, you want total Carb, not just the sugar.
So for a chocolate cate you will probably need to count:
- Sugar (obviously)
- Flour
- Cocoa (check the Carb content per 100g, you may be surprised)
- Milk
I know there are other things like Eggs, Butter etc but they don't count
One thing to bear in mind with the artificial sweeteners is that they are not actually Zero Carb, just VERY VERY low. Check the packaging, they often are the same gram for gram, the only difference is you usually use a tenth or less compared to regular sugar, though often you need to tweak the recipe to compensate for the bulk and using flour means you don't really win.
One thing I did was to work through all my various recipies and make note in my book for the total carb for the whole thing and then an approximate carb value for a "typical" portion. I also did this for many of my wifes recipies so now she can just cook and then check the scribbles I made and let me know.
The key thing is that with MDI you can have pretty much what you would like as long as you can count it accurately enough and dose for it. You just need to learn how count it all and also to wait and ignore the intermediate highs and trust that levels will come down as expected.
For example, today before I left work I was 9.5, which was a surprise as I espexted to be around 6. When I got home I was 6.5. I put this down to the fact that lunch included some home made soup and home made whole grain bread that I know is quite a low GI.
The temptation can be to "chase your sugars" where you end up correcting for a high blood sugar that is not actually a real high.
Good luck and make sure to enjoy the chocolate. My dietician told me that choloclate, and other such treats, are also a VERY important food group because there is no point living healthy and for ever if you are miserable
/A