Just found your site. New to blogging. Will be going to Boston to get a pump next month (July 07)!! Am excited, scared, wary, ignorant, … I need help carbohydrate counting. I mean, it would be easy if I ate prepackaged meals that were all the same, but who does?! It is discouraging when I grab a handful of trail mix, or share an apple with my husband, or get served a bowl of soba, and realize that I have NO IDEA how many carbs I just ate! Will they even ALLOW me to get a pump? How does everyone else do it?
- Are you really in Japan?
- If so, COOL.
- RE: Carbs – go visit www.calorieking.com. You can look up foods by name or, in some instances, brand. A huge aid is the visual – they’ll show you what a half a cup of the food looks like, or a cup, etc… Also, the new pumps have built-in food banks which are way cool. I’ve been playing with that all day today.
Yeah Kimberly, I actually am. But it is not really so unusual. But getting a pump in Japan is! 
Thanks for the info. I will definitely check that out. And I still haven’t found the time to really start playing with my pump. Maybe I should be doing that instead of this!!!
Renee
I’m not very good at carb counting myself. But there are scales that help figure out the carbs for many foods. One trick (I have yet to learn) is to compare portions to the size of your fist, or the palm of your hand. So if you weigh cooked rice at home and figure out how much carbs are in a serving the size of your fist, then you can use that when you’re eating away from home.
I’ve been reading the book Think Like a Pancreas and it’s got some good ideas about carb counting and a lot of other things about diabetes.
Let us know how the pump works out.
Once I got my pump and started testing 2 hours after every meal, I realized I was a petty poor judge of some carbs.
Make sure you have a couple sets of measure cups, 1/2 cups, 1/4 cups, etc. and read the labels (although in Japan that might be difficult).
One thing that helped me was getting a Salter 1450 Digital Nutrional Scale. It has the carb (& other nutrients) build-in, so I just put my plate on the scale, add a single food type, key it in, and it displays the carbs. This has really helped me guess better even when I’m at a restaurant.
Hi Ken.
Yeah, I actually got a similar scale some years back and have been able to bring it back to use. I have even seen that frequently what I thought was 1 cup is WAY over what 1 cup is supposed to weigh! The endo from Joslin’s has me testing 3 hrs after the meal. Since my pump prompts me to test, I find that I am testing LOTS more, so that alone is going to improve my control. Plus the fact that with the pump I can give a correction bolus immediately. Eventually I want to be testing 2 hrs post prandial, but right now I know that those are high. I think I need to get the 3hr pp in line first.
Reading labels is fine (I can even get the carbs from a Japanese label!), but I eat a lot of my own concoctions. Think I’ll just have to stick to meals with labels until I have a better handle on it.
Hey Renee,
I searched Misawa and your name came up! My name is Richard(T2) and was born on Misawa AFB(1959). My mother was Japanese too. I was also stationed at Misawa, Yakota, and Tachikawa AFB.
I am now in California, but miss Japan a lot. I have relatives there to. I was last there in 1984.
I hope you and your family enjoy the duty while you can get it. Best of luck with your diabetes and watch that late night soba!!!
Good Luck,
Richard