Baked chicken and rice I think is carby/fatty, baked chicken and salad though would be lower carbs.
My guess is that the insulin can’t handle an escalating high carb load even when a lot of insulin is injected. I liken it to pain medication for head aches. If you take the med as soon as the headache starts you control it much better than if you wait until the headache is full-blown. People will take their Tylenol with cola to help the pain killer work more quickly. Is this why people get better results with Fiasp? Because it is fast acting? Anyways I am not a scientist or health professional, just anecdotally noticing a pattern.
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One possible explanation is that having that amount of carbs being digested to sugar causes the insulin receptors cells to resist the insulin as a protective measure. This would then cause our blood sugar levels to spike.
I understand completely!!
Yes! Real New York style cheesecake, cannelloni! https://venierospastry.com/ -they ship them. I ordered and had shipped a NY Style Cheesecake to Alaska when my son was interning there. It’s probably better to order on a Monday so that you don’t get caught up in weekend non delivery.
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I don’t think that I have been able to get back to 85.
Today’s lunch was a Wendy’s small crispy chicken sandwich, I estimated 40g carbs and dosed 4 units. Was it too low an estimate? 3 hours later BG:194. yuk.
Tonight’s dinner was homemade stir fried pork, marinated in cornstarch-soysauce and spices with rice and stir fried green leafy vegetables. I can’t even begin to count or estimate the carbs. Rice is about 1/4 cup, but the cornstarch marinade is tricky. No added sugar.
I bolused 3 units for the food at 6;30 pm BG- 140 premeal
1 hour later, at 7:30 pm BG- 113 ; bolused 1 unit - ate 2 wedges of grapefruit and 3 strawberries, dark chocolate - estimate less than 20 g carbs. Did I underdose? I estimated the dark chocolate as ~ 20g carbs. What would be your estimate for the grapefruit and strawberries?
(FYI : For quite some time: I’ve been eyeballing, estimating my meals and insulin requirements , eating pretty low carb, protein, vegetables, no bread rice for awhile. BG’s were decent. But more recently, I just wanted to relax and eat more liberally- rice; not even alot, about 1/4 cup of cooked rice. And therefore, the BG’s have been varying much more than previously. )
8:30 pm BG 177 - what would be the explanation for this number?
10:30 pm BG 138. This number looks ok.
If I ate the same lower carb “stuff”- BG’s are decent. But I seriously want to REBEL and am having a hard time.
I’ll keep everyone posted. Thanks for your help and patience with me.
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I don’t think carb counting really works, it’s just the best we had up until CGMs and a good starting point. Carbs just aren’t equivalent, I can’t use a ratio that would work for 2 slices of bread for something else that is ~30g of carbs and expect the same result. Also the body seems to process larger amounts of carbs very differently from smaller amounts, and the variables including digestion timing, how insulin is absorbed/dealt with by the immune system at the injection site, insulin resistance, etc. etc. are absolutely infinite. It’s like with corrections, 1 unit may reliably bring me down ~3mmol/L if my BG is 9 or below, but once I hit 10 I need more and more and I just can’t calculate how much more according to a ratio.
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Yep, I think you need to make your IC stronger!
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The old Cozmo pump actually had this as a feature, you could program different correction ratios for different BG ranges. Then again, sometimes I’m high and a single standard correction does work the first time to bring me down…but sometimes I’m high and I spend the entire day doing correction after correction and temporary basals to get it down and it still takes allllll day…
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I think it helps but, yes, it doesn’t work. Part of the reason is that the food labeling standards in the US require an under estimate of the carbs we T1Ds typically ingest, part of the reason is that most of the time we don’t eat stuff with a label on it and both vegetables and fruit have an amount of carbohydrate that varies enormously, part of the reason is that eyeballing a plate of spinach really isn’t very accurate.
On the other hand, I do actually have a 100% accurate carb counter. It is my own body. It doesn’t merely measure carbs, as recorded on that fake news FDA nutrition label, it also reveals, completely accurately, the rate of adsorption. It is wonderful, amazing, I just have to find out how to use it. Looping is one obvious answer.
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The most accurate way to count carbohydrates, especially for foods without labels, is by using a kitchen scale and carbohydrate factors. I actually have a spare kitchen scale, if anyone wants it (just PM me). I just put the plate on the scale, zero out the weight of the plate, and then do the same as I add each type of food to the plate. I have a pocket scale that I bring travelling to measure things like fruit. I can’t say I measure things all the time, but there’s a noticeable improvement in my control when I do take the few extra seconds to calculate exactly how many carbohydrates I’m eating. (This is probably a bit easier for me because I almost never eat out, and the couple times a year I might eat out I tend to be limited to very simple custom-made meals due to my food allergies.)
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I asked a friend who runs a commercial bakery about the process for nutrition labelling. He said everybody (at least in his circle) uses the same software to generate the labels based on the recipe for each item…and the federal rules allow +/- 20%. So not precise at all.
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I like the picture apps like bitesnap, although I still estimate and often forget to take the pic prior to the bolus…but i use it for extremely high carb items like 97 gram muffins, etc
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I am almost the same. If I were to have 50g of carbs the 1:10 would not work. I would also have a high BG level. I usually have 35g of carbs for each meal. I take 4U of Humalog before each meal. If my BG level is high before a meal I add one U for each 30 BG above 100 or subtract the same amount below 100. I try to keep my Postprandial less than 140 after each meal. This has been a very successful approach to keep my A1C less than 6.0, between 5.3 and 5.9. I have been a T1D for 46 years with no complications. I also exercise by running or doing other physical workouts. The workouts also help to reduce a high BG level. I do use a Dexcom CGM with a smartwatch as my primary collector using xDrip.
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Yikes…you may be correct about making the IC stronger.
This morning pre breakfast BG 114, bolused 2 units instead of the usual 1.5 units for the usual yogurt/flaxseed/walnut breakfast. pre lunch number BG 113.
Perhaps you are correct. If I am increasing my bolus, do I need to tweak up slightly my basal? Previously, I was on 4 units Tresiba basal, about 5 units Novolog…I will see if 5 units of Tresiba and the slightly stronger IC units will lead to tighter BG numbers.
Most likely the other way round. I think most T1Ds have the basal set high to soak up carbs from proteins and fats and that probably covers some amount of underestimate. It’s a decision; I make my basal be such that I have to bolus for everything, other people have the fats and proteins covered. Your basal might be fine or it might be that it is correcting for under-bolus. If it is the latter you will find you have to decrease the basal.
There’s no magic here and no right numbers. The correct I/C is dependent on whether or not the C estimates are spot on, consistently high, or consistently low. I think some of the more innovative developers who have posted on fudiabetes since I have been reading it are acknowledging this and just trying to work out the right number for the individual, not taking some ivory tower viewpoint about it all being hard math.
My approach is to tweak the numbers until they work, for me.
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I like my basal to be as accurate as possible without food in the mix so I do a basal fasting test every 2-4 months. My I/C ratio doesn’t change with the amount of carbs, so much as the time of day is significant to me and the amount of fat in whatever I am eating. Honestly pre bolusing is the most important thing for me in controlling my levels with exercise being next.
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This sandwich would not bother me much at all if I was exercising or doing yard work. Exercise makes all the difference in the world for me and how I handle any type of carbs.
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Sorry to vent, but why didn’t anyone tell me what an evil food onion rings are? 
Thought I’d treat myself to an occasional serving. I weighed them and used their carb content, and prebolused about 30 minutes. I got a peak of about 170 and then a drop down to 123, which I thought was pretty good. Yay, successful!
Then I went to bed and zoomed to the moon, and spent all night over 300.
Anyone else have trouble with onion rings? I don’t have them very often.
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Not with those specifically, but yes with very high fat, high carb foods in general. As a fellow MDI-er, they usually require a second much later bolus to cover the major spike due to the fat. Also in my experience, those are foods where the carb estimates are likely to be too low and wrong anyway, which is often the case with restaurant food, so I tend to tack on a bunch of extra units to my estimate than I would with food prepped at home, but distribute the total between initial and later dose.
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I’ve split it into two parts, at times, 1.5 hours apart. It seems like I may need a third or fourth bolus.
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