T1's - do you count your fat/protein in your carb count? My team keeps telling me I don't need to, but i feel like if I have an excess of either, it makes a difference in my BS.
If you do count them, what's your formula?
thanks!
I don't count them but I try to keep the balance of carbs, protein and fat relatively constant so that the fat and protein is fairly accurately accounted for in my insulin to carb ratio. If I eat a low carb meal, I often go a bit high because the insulin dose isn't fully covering the protein. I'm willing to live with that - there is just so much effort that I want to put in calculating my insulin dose.
Maurie
Nah, I don't bother; I figure I have enough to think about. Bottom line is it will probably come out the same. My I:C ratio is covering those things now so it comes out right; if I counted them separately I'd have to alter the I:C.
Well, I'm T2, but I use insulin. I follow a low carb diet and protein matters. I count half of protein as carbs and I ignore all fat. Some people more precisely count 58% of protein as glucose, that figure comes originally from animal studes. Most people that follow a high carb diet will ignore the protein and fat. That is reasonable, their blood sugar is so swamped by the carbs that it doesn't matter. But if you follow a low carb diet and work towards tightly managed blood sugars, then it will matter. It also matters that protein and carb/fat meals digest over more extended periods of time.
There is a group here called Tagers that follows a modern version of the exchange diet called Total Available Glucose (TAG). I believe that the traditional TAG approach counts 100% of calories from carbs, 50% of calories from protein and 10% of calories from fat as contributing to blood glucose. Note that since a gram of fat is 7 calories and a gram of protein/fat is 4 calories, you count a gram of fat as 17.5% carbs (sometimes rounded to 15%).
Yes, I count half of the protein grams as if they were carbs. If the fat content is high I figure I may have to give myself some more Humalog in two hours so I test then and correct for whatever's happening..
I don't necessarily count protein and fat, but I try to eat about the same amount per meal. Because of this I have (to some extent) factored the protein/fat digestion into my normal basal rates. If I am eating something out of the ordinary that has a lot of fat and/or protein (pizza, steak, or fast food) I will certainly factor in protein/fat using methods based off TAG. I will often up my bolus amount 5-10% and use an extended bolus for 1-1.5 hours. Through trial and error I have found that an extended bolus of 0.5 to 0.65 U/hr is about what my body requires.
I recomend that you check out the TAGers group.
I don't. I'd say a good 95% of the time it works just fine for me not couting fat and protein. Im Type 1.
I don't count fat and protein, but I do count fiber. If the fiber content is >5gr., then I subtract that number from the carbs.
My team keeps telling me I don't need to also, but my blood glucose meter doesn't agree! In cases like this, I always go with the meter.
I think a lot depends on the amount of food eaten as well. A big salad of lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, smoked ham and shrimp eaten in one sitting can easily send me to 180, but snacking slowly and steadily on the same items over a number of hours, doesn't seem to affect my BG by too much.