My son is able to eat a lot of green vegetables, in moderation, without dosing. He can also eat limited amount of proteins (1 deli slice at a time).
He can probably eat 2-3 carbs without dosing, but he will see the effect. His ICR varies btw 1:7 and 1:10 depending on the meal right now (breakfast 1:7).
1 carb takes him up 4-6 mg/dl most of the time, but sometimes much more for some reason.
Wow! I am so excited for you and totally support this. Iām proud of you for making that commitment to yourself and look forward to hearing about how youāre progressing and what youāre learning.
Yeah, I avoid things like that pre-shredded cheese for the most part when I can because of the sneaky carbs and who knows what else is in there. Where I work has a cafeteria that does made-to-order omelets some mornings, and I either skip the cheese or only have them use a tiny bit. If I just get eggs, bacon, and veggies, I can just take a couple of units after eating, and it covers the protein/fat beautifully. Re: deli meats though, it similar to what I posted somewhere else re: hot dogs, that some of the organic or natural brands skip all the carbs and gluten-y fillers, but are more expensive. Not sure whether they are 100% potato-free thoughānot something Iāve had reason to be checking for.
We have some local farms that make some potato- and preservative-free meats. But Iāve found, if anything, the āhealthierā ones are often worse, maybe because āpotatoā is more natural. I know places like Whole Foods I canāt eat many of their prepared products because of potato starch. I generally try to avoid processed meat lately, though, and I almost never eat out, so not hard for me to avoid.
Ah that makes senseāI bet they use potato starch in lieu of gluten/flour for a lot of things these days.
I had no idea that deli meats had potato starch additives. What is the purpose?
Liam eats all cheeses and deli meats as zero carb snacks and he never goes up. So if there is any type of starch in the products itās minimal at best; otherwise, someone his size would see a big spike.
The only type of cheese Iāve seen where it impacts the carb count is some shredded cheeses, although itās still relatively low carb (just not no carb like it would be without that stuff). Generally though cheese is great for me for not needing insulin. Also Iāve found that the processed/reconstituted-type meats tend to be pretty good carb-wise (allergen-wise is obviously a much different thing), but it is interesting that some have a lot more fillers (leading to some carbs) whereas some have no carbs whatsoever.
I doubt the amount is much, maybe 1-2 grams of carbs worth if that. Iām allergic to potato, so any microscopic amount of potato will cause a reaction for me. Also, the ultra-low-carb T1 group Iām in probably would say the amount of starch in deli meats and cheeses does cause an impact. But 1-2 gram of carbs on a 30 grams a day diet is much more impactful than on a 150+ grams per day diet (or whatever Liam eats).
Iāve been LADA for 6 years now and I pretty much have to bolus for anything. My routine is I check before I eat then calculate how what I am going to eat will effect my levels. Then I load up for that. What i donāt do is eat tons of carbs figuring I can cover it with Novolog. I often hear T1Dās eating things like spagetti. Man, I just canāt do it as the amount of insulin Iād have to take to cover for it would be outlandish and downright scary. Plus Iāve learned over the years that consuming big carb meals and trying to cover it with large amounts of insulin didnāt seem to cut it. Maybe I was getting hit with insulin resistance but the huge carb load just shot my numbers to the high 300ās followed by a coma-like daze. Itās just not worth it so I minimize carbs as much as possible.
With that said I donāt worry too much about veggie based meals. So for instance a chicken salad with a balsamic dressing. Maybe a 1.5 units just for the chicken, depends on where I am at before I eat.
Do you need to use a lot of insulin? I know some LADA patients need to inject a really large amount of insulin for carbs, as opposed to non-LADA patients.
Also, what is so fascinating on this site is that there are people with amazing A1cās eating high carb, others (like us) eat low carb, and of course some are successful with the Bernstein approach.
We test every 6 months or so to try and raise my sonās daily carb limit, but it hasnāt changed much in the last few years.
Chris,
I use at max 4units for meals. 24 for the basal. And yes, I wish I had an amazing A1c on a high carb diet but the more carbs I take in, the harder it is for me to maintain a steady bg. Iām betting one of those fancy CGMāswould help me to better numbers and possibly a little more carb intake, but those things are ultra expensive. So, for now, Iām sticking to less carbs, finger pricks and a Walgreens meter. On a side note the meterās test strips costs about $28 for 200 strips on Amazon.
just FYI, i get my Contour strips on Amazon; 600 strips for $ 145 should you ever decide to change meters 
i know its still more $$$, but it is a lot more reasonable than many other companyās strips.
are you on a pump? b/c if you are, there are many many ways that you can manipulate your insulin boluses to accomodate high carbs meals. just a thought.
also, if you are not on a pump, there are also many people on FUD who have great systems for figuring out how to eat high carbs diets with just MDI.
just ask around; maybe start a thread of your own. people here always want to help out. dont deprive yourself of yummy foods just because you are having a hard and challenging time of managing your D they way that you want to.
On openAPS we could let Samson freely snack on anything that had about 4 carbs or less- a handful of Cheezits, any amount of green veggies, bell pepper slices, cucumber, hummus, cashews and a handful of raisins, walnuts, almonds, cheese slices, tomato, glass of almond milk, a few bites of popcorn or cheddar bunnies. We donāt bolus at all for high fat snacks if theyāre on their own, but high-fat plus high-carb requires almost 3 to 4 times the insulin as the same number of carbs without the fat. He has never eaten enough high-protein foods for us to know how to bolus for them; that said, the few times weāve given him something like scrambled eggs and heās eaten it, we need to bolus way more insulin than we would for a more high-carb meal. Basically, for snacks a lot of things work. If heās eating a meal with larger volumes, than we worry about protein and fat, though we donāt have set methods for bolusing for them on their own.
That said, we have a pretty wide target range and donāt worry if he spikes up to 140 before drifting down. Now that weāre on manual mode weāve been bolusing for more small snacks, but heās also been running pretty low.
We understand. My teenager eats approx. 100 carbs a day, except for one cheat day a month, when we attempt the milkshake and pizza challenge. The results arenāt often great, but the smile and full belly is fun. We have tried a number of things to be able to increase his carb intake, but are unable to maintain good control with any more carbs on a regular basis.
Individual glucose responses to carbs vary widelyā¦research studies have shown this. I think there are people out there who can eat basically whatever carbs they want and learn to bolus for them, and there are others who cannot keep their blood sugar in range after high-carb meals regardless of what they try. Iām in the latter category. I donāt think it implies anything about a personās skill in using insulin if they choose to eat a lower-carb diet, it just means they have a different physiology than the people who can eat high-carb foods and successful cover them to stay in range.
Thanks Jen, that matches my thinking, but if people think it is because my son isnāt skilled in insulin dosing, so be it.
I am in the club of eating around 20-30g of carbs per meal max with fairly good control. That works out to an average of about 80g of carbs per day. With that said, if I am doing a lot of physical activity I can pretty much eat as many carbs as I want per meal (with appropriate insulin) and do not get spikes. As you can imagine that usually means only high carb eating on the weekends as I do not have an active job.
When I really want that milkshake (which is not often but it does happen), I usually use pump tricks like a superbolus or splitting my carbs - in other words bolus up front for all the carbs but eat some as a meal and then have carbs in a snack about 1.5 to 2 hours later.
We are hopeful for my son that his carb senstivity changes. i.e. when he was first diagnosed when we tried to use the 15/15 rule we noted that he can go from 50-300 on 15 grams of carbs. He is sensitive enough that when he seeās a rapid increase in his CGM from a low treatment he immediately adds insulin.
When he was running cross-country earlier this year, he was able to eat more carbs, but nowhere near a milk-shakes worth. But the super-bolus strategy works well for us for both milkshakes and for pizza, but doesnāt work so well when he does both at the same time.
Aināt diabetes grand.