im also low carbing-ish. i have a scrambled egg with cheese and veg-spinach, mushrooms-whatever is in the house-for breakfast with some wasa fibre crispbread-only 2.5CH. lunch and dinner-lots of salads with protein and fats like avocado, chicken, cheese, tuna.
when i snack, i try to go low carb-nuts, sliced red peppers, a bit of cheese, full fat greek yogurt. though sometimes it has to be chocolate.
Pancreaswanted is totally right. I also would recommend you look at using the more modern insulins (levemir or lantus) which give a much flatter profile and less lows and highs.
If you cannot use a modern insulin due to cost or some other reason, the NPH may work better if you do three doses a day instead of 2, but you would need to work out how much and when by experimenting. When I was on NPH, my morning dose would usually ācoverā a low carb breakfastā¦
You will also need to do basal and bolus testing to work out exactly how much you should dose and your carb to insulin ratio, so you can dose properly for meals.
Using a sliding scale is responding after the fact. With optimal basal and bolus dosing you can actually dose in anticipation of what you will eat and highs and lows will be much reduced.
I also second the books mentioned. They are very good.
IDK how carb counting works for anyone. I can eat the same thing, at the same time, 3 days in a row and need different amounts of bolus. So how can I have an !:C??
@Paige_Collett, I donāt look at the insulin to carb ratio as a precise formula that will deliver the perfect dose of insulin I need for every meal. With the arrival of the sugar surfing concept this year, I see such formulas as more elastic in nature.
They will serve me well if they can get me close enough to the right dose so that I can make adjustments post-meal that will dial in the balance of that perfect dose. These adjustments might be killing an extended bolus early, advancing the remainder of an extended bolus, going for a walk at just the right time, or adding a few more carbs. I see I:C and ISF (correction factor) as the coarse adjustments that are only intended to get me close and with post-meal fine tuning assumed to clean up and finish.
I think we in the diabetes community along with many of our supporting medical practitioners in the last 10 years or so were in constant search of the diabetes holy grail of the perfect dose. Mathematics can only take us so far. The variability inherent in our system due to inconsistencies in digestion, variance in the flow of other hormones, and inconsistent insulin site absorption, to name just a few, make it impossible to find a perfect math formula.
Itās our job to pay attention and effectively steer our metabolic ship once we take our best guess insulin dose and eat.