Carb counting help!!!

I have just done the Dafne course but am still having trouble with my food trying to work out bout the carbs etc to kno how much insulin to give
Does anyone kno any tips

In the majority of cases you should be using the packaging labels, for times when your out and about the carbs and cals book off amazon is really useful. It gives you a visual image of.different size portions in relation to a dinner plate.

Using this is much more effective than guessing...

The rule of 10grams = 1 unit still applies.........once you have your units, you then multiply them by your ratio......

What are your ratios currently.......?

I am on a 1:1 ratio I don't understand like if I have a bowl of pasta n the weight is 291 g how many carbohydrate grams is that or is that whatbi have to look up in the book
Just in case I am out dnt have the book n kno the weight of something how do I kno how many cp there is

It's just observation, memory and common sense. No-one knows all this stuff at the beginning and everyone has to estimate when eating out. Over time you will be able to make reasonable estimates. At home you can weigh your food and then look up the carb value of it in one of the reference works available. I am impressed with the one on this site. Having a smartphone or tablet with you makes things easier, if this app is loaded. This is where memory comes in. When you know the carb value of a certain amount of potato, or pasta or whatever, you need to remember what that looks like on the plate. If you can do that then you can make intelligent adjustments next time, is the portion bigger or smaller than the one you weighed at home? As novorapidboi said, many foods have the amount of carb stated on the package/ tin/bottle etc. This is sometimes given as a value per piece, sometimes as Xg of carb per 100g of the food. Every ten grams of carb being 1cp.
You'll get there! Just remember, practice makes perfect. :-)
Talk to your HCP, ask him/her to go over ratios again with you. That's what they are there for after all. This is important because you will require different amounts of insulin for every ten grams of carb at different times of the day.
I've just thought about sausages. You can be really caught out by sausages. Some of the sausages that we buy from supermarkets can be around 6g of carb per sausage, but the ones we get from the butcher are only about 1g per sausage. You can't assume that two things that look the same have the same value. Mistakes will be made. Don't worry about it. Keep checking values and trying to remember them and what they look like in terms of the volume of food on the plate.

Best of luck! :-)

I've just remembered your question about pasta. Firstly you need to be more specific. What kind of pasta? Fresh or cooked? The carb counter on this site shows that 100g of fresh pasta represents 5.5 cp's or 55g of carbohydrate. This means that your pasta, at 291g, if it is fresh, and of the same kind as in the list, would represent 160.05g of carbohydrate, or 16 cp's (2.91 x 55 = 160.05).

Thats a good point................

Cooked and Uncooked Pasta is tricky.................as the cooked stuff will have absorbed water and therefore become more heavy ,however will contain less carbs per 100g.

This will only apply in the house if the pasta is being cooked for more than one person, otherwise the uncooked carb amount would still be valid as you would be eating it all to yourself anyway..........

Ahmentep said:
Having a smartphone or tablet with you makes things easier, if this app is loaded.

As everyone says, its a matter of observation, memory and using the tools available. However the real beauty of DAFNE is the ability to correct later if you get it "wrong", without getting into the yo-yo ing cycle that many of us used to when (poorly) educated guesswork was the only thing available. Once you get your head round this it becomes possible to relax a bit when eating out, knowing that you can have a properly calculated next meal and quickly get back on track. If you're eating at one of the many chains of eating establishments its worth checking their website before you go. Many have nutritional info for their products, and you can print these off and take them with you.


Stew

Very true, thanks Stew.

at the moment it is unlikely there will be an app that runs on a Nokia. You can however access the mobile version of the site on your phone if it has internet access. This is a cut down version of the site designed to run on mobile phones. Obviously the downside is you need internet access to use it. If there is anyone out there that wants to develop a Java based app that will run on phones like this, we would of course be interested in hearing from them