I came across this; 90 to 95+% of the time, I’m within the guidelines. The gestational diabetes targets stayed with me, even to now.
It doesn’t happen too often:What do you do if the pre meal number is high, like 140, or higher? I’ve bolused extra, and it’s just a guess and then I eat anyway. The 2 hour number is usually below 180.
Wow that is tight control, which I understand for gestational diabetes, but that is not easily achievable.
For times my son is above 140, he just adds extra insulin, at this point it is a “feeling” of how much extra. If push comes to shove he would probably admit he could calculate a correction factor, but it is just easier to add a couple of units and eat out of it if he misjudges. He is also 17, so extra food is par for the course and easily added to his lifestyle without any weight gain possiblities.
Somewhere, along the way, I got into the habit of eating reduced carb because of having heard about Bernstein’s LCHF, and the theory of smaller quantity of insulin, lower probabilities of making errors. When I ate reduced carbs, I did not need to correct much, if at all. This seemed reasonable - I thought to myself. I tried strict LCHF and was a miserable person! I hope that no one is offended by my experience of LCHF; but I just wasn’t a happy camper. After being miserable on 20g a day, I loosened up to having about 20 g or more a meal; so more like 55-70g a day. I remained on what I estimate to be about 60 grams daily. The BG numbers were good. However, it came at a “price”. How did I wind up eating what I considered to be a rather limited “diet”? I recall very clearly my Endo saying that if I were putting so much effort into managing my BG, I may want to eat similar foods or meals to make the BG management easier, and to reduce the carbohydrates. My Endo and I had this conversation when I tried to have more carbs to eat, more like around 50-60 g of carbs per meal. He didn’t spend time to educate me about advanced bolus techniques, or pre bolus. There were no discussions about slow digesting foods.
Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries became the fruits that I ate. I never learned properly to bolus for fruits such as bananas, pears, apples (the whole fruit), rice, pasta, potato etc, or correction techniques. If it were a small slice of fruit, it was ok because my overall meal remained around 20-25 carbs. The Endo mentioned that perhaps rice, pasta, bread…etc weren’t worth all the effort that I was putting into to get them right. My “coping skills” became more like I was avoiding learning how to bolus for a whole fruit, and instead having a bite of the fruit, and avoiding the “white stuff” altogether.
Thanks for listening. I am grateful to everyone o
FUD for your support and encouragement that I can eat a “regular meal” with “white stuff” and 
rainbow cookie and have a BG less than 200! I feel like I need to learn diabetes- blood sugar management from scratch, as if I know nothing! This is probably pretty close to the truth 
. On a positive note, I have observed and learned that quinoa seems to be easier for me to dose for and that by reducing my “protein” at the meal slightly, there has not been as much of a delayed rise after 2 or 3 hours. This is a strange “discovery” for me. I’ve read about the pizza effect , I’ve experienced the pizza effect, the BG that keeps rising hours after the meal. Pizza, I generally avoid, however, did enjoy recently, and corrected multiple times. But wow… rice + protein + vegetables = delayed rise! I only learned through my friends on FUD
And this is what this forum is all about!
Today, (actually yesterday) was an entire day of Feels Great, <140. Fasting was 108. Breakfast of sausage and egg. I did not bolus, and forgot to take my after breakfast BG. Pre lunch BG 108. Bolused 2.5 units for a low carb lunch.
Late afternoon/Pre dinner BG 117. With a little help from Afrezza- 4 unit cartridge - had half of a pear.
One hour later BG.96 . It is now dinner time.
Took 5 units of insulin for dinner. It’s a meal that I am somewhat familiar with: 1 cup cooked quinoa, stirfried ground turkey with tomato and chili spice paste, carrots, broccoli, spinach, arugula. I reduced the “protein” just a little from previously. Previously, I likely ate more than one quarter pound of “protein” with 30+g of carbs. I’ve observed that if the protein is reduced to a quarter pound, there is either no delayed rise, or insignificant delayed rise.
A little less than 2 hours after dinner bolus BG 121 (yay! <140. Feels great! )
2 hours and 30 minutes after dinner bolus BG 98 (yes! <140 Feels great 
I had a few blueberries, one strawberry, a piece of Laughing Cow Cheese.
Midnight BG 109.
This is significant progress for me. 3-4 months ago, I would not have been able to have a cup of rice or quinoa without the BG going beyond 200 and then having a difficult time correcting it. Today, I’m confident that I can eat rice or quinoa and can be below 200. For me the bolus amount of insulin is somewhere between 5-8 for a meal that has ~ 30-40+ carb from quinoa/rice. I am truly inaccurate at carb counting, I cannot definitively say what my I:C ratio is; maybe 1:7?
For me as far as corrections go, I had to learn how much 1 unit of insulin would drop my BG. For years I thought it was 50 points and I was constantly over-correcting. then I learned that it was in fact 60 points, and just that little difference made my corrections much more accurate. now I am able to do mini-corrections and land rather softly.
as far as “perfection” goes, well I don’t think that there is any such thing 
just enjoy life to the fullest and don’t believe that you need to deprive yourself of anything. Even if something doesn’t work out on the first try, you’ll have the rest of your life to figure it out. there is always tomorrow (btw, I REALLY love the food at this one restaurant and it took me an entire year to figure out the proper blousing for it, but in the end, it was TOTALLY worth it!!! now I enjoy it as thoroughly as possible, and I savor every single bite 
.)