Who here can eat Indian food without issues?

20 years on and I still haven't worked out curry dosing. I don't eat it often and just accept the highs (15+) that will come later, sometimes much later.

ElizabethMcCallister said:

I'm here again..

I don't know if it's the rice or just the predominance of carb heavy food but every single time I eat it I'm up in the 12-14mmol/l hours later. No matter how I dose.

Do I need to avoid? It's so hard to carb count.

Click to expand...

As @ianf0ster says, avoiding or reducing the higher carb components is one way to go at it (and also the way I usually choose, I'm not good at all at dosing for high carb foods).
The other way is getting very good at timing and calculating your dose.

Some foods do better with a split bolus, part taken before and part taken after food. Things like pizza and lasagne are typical foods many people find raise them slow but for a long time due to the combination of carbs and fats, and those are the kind of foods where a split bolus can come in useful.
In this case, if it happens every single time, you already know something in your dosing doesn't match the food. So either the food or the dosing needs a tweek.

Tagging @In Response , who knows much more than I do about dosing for higher carb meals

I treat curry’s like I treat pasta , I dose about 2 hours after I’ve eaten it , if I don’t my insulin has run out by the time the carbs have affected my bs and it raises to “ stupid” levels

Thanks for the tag @Antje77
Whilst I eat higher carb meals like pasta and pizza, when eating curry, I find the carbs rather dull so apart from a bit of naan to clean the plate, I focus on the curry part and limit the rice and breads. This is not a low carb thing but a food enjoyment thing.

However, I still need to split my insulin dose: most curries are pretty high in fat which slows down any carb absorption,
As I use a pump, I do not need to worry about split dosing. Instead I use an extended dose : about 30% up from and the rest over the next 2.5 hours.

And on the food enjoyment theme, I definitely avoid cauliflower in any form. The sauce would have to have a very strong flavour to hide the taste of the cauli. i guess that’s another example of us all being different.

the high fat and protein in an Indian meal will have an affect on your blood sugars long after a 4 hour bolus dose ... for me i do a split and usually add a 3rd dose as well ---- getiing the timings and the exact dosing is a bit of trial and error but i am able to eat this food and not go out of range on the high side........and i normally have a curry , some pilau rice and some naan ... my normal estimate is around 110 carbs that i base my bolus doses on

For a typical DIY "curry", for which I partly cheat and use a jar of sauce for the main flavour plus some chicken, and then bulk it out with more chopped tomatoes, peppers, chickpeas, etc., I find that the jar of sauce plus chickpeas provides sufficient carbs.

I often eat it with poppadums as they are fairly carb light, and would never eat rice and certainly not a naan bread in addition as otherwise I'd need loads of insulin. Which is asking for a long night of trying to balance running low vs correction doses and just lots of general monitoring.

If I'm out for a curry (in the UK) then I'm happy to eat rice and a naan in addition to whatever main I get as I always go low (when out, rather than when eating curries that is!)

When in India, I don't recall having any problems. I do remember the food was lovely (I only ate vegetarian to avoid problems with meat), and that portions were smaller and more varied and that because of this and the very high levels of spices, I certainly wasn't all that hungry for carb-heavy fillers like rice and naan bread.