Counting Carbohydrates

Hi, I'm wondering how others count their carbohydrates:
- by reading the nutritional labels on packages
- by estimating the carbohydrate content or
- by weighing food

I nearly always
- read the nutritional labels on packages or
- estimate the carbohydrate content using my carbs and cals app or book

As you said Whiskysmum, estimate with carbs and cals and using packages. I do weigh food when home especially pasta and potatoes.

haveing just graduated i agree with what you both say i bought some new scales and i'am finding them invalueable for weighing and working out carbs..

I do find labels can be a bit misleading though, if its a ready meal with veg in they have to count the carbs in tomatoes and such which in a salad I wouldn't count as my BI should cover little bits like this so they are often a bit higher than I would guesstimate at. Say it says half portion is 39g (who eats just half?) I would probably inject for 7CP rounding off as I have found I often go hypo using the exact figures.

Just my 2p

I weigh food and use labels mostly. If I have any doubt, I mark it as guesswork on my diary and try to learn from the results.

I have lots of labels on my fridge - mostly of similiar brand stuff so makes dose testing much easier. We aim to buy same where we can so I'm not always having to look stuff up. It amazes me how much stuff like bread and yogurt varies from brand to brand despite all saying "medium"!

Some foods, such as jackets, pasta and rice, I will try to weigh before cooking because water loss/gain makes the cooked weight very unreliable. If I get cooked ready made of pasta or rice, I rely on the labels. Jackets are very hard for me to guesstimate so like a lot of things, I tend to pass unless its only option or I really want to run the risk.

The joys of D life and carb counting. Heh.

Hi wiskeysmum,
I have used all the methods you describe. When I started carbohydrate counting in 1967, I was given some kitchen scales from the diabetes ward and used to weight everything. I have over the years tended to estimate CHO especially when not at home but since the DAFNE course in October I have been much stricter and have started using nutritional scales at home. I have found the scales from Lloyds pharmacy a help. It will even calculate the carbohydrate content of weighed food. I find I am very sensitive to insulin and am managing on an insulin pump which delivers fractions of a unit. Mistakes in carbohydrate counting can cause havok with blood sugars !
Best wishes,
Stephenbrowne

Hi ive just completed dafne and im useless at math. Ive been lookin at labels and using my scales but im still confused. How exactly do o calcilate the cps? Wot is the formula? I just weigh on my scales nd divide the grams by 10 as 10gs is 1 cp. But den how is 60gs potatoes 1 cp if 30gs rice is 1 cp. Im so confused please help

Each food contains a different amount of carbs.
I use carbs and cals to aid me. I weigh my food portion and then use the book/app to work out actual carbohydrate value of portion then divide by 10 to get cps.
It's not too difficult maths just remember that each food stuff carries it's own cp value. If you know 60g potatoes is 1cp and you weigh out 120g then you know you have 2cps of potatoes, but if you were having rice 60g 2cps.
It takes a bit of practice, been a year since I did my DAFNE course and I still get it wrong, but can kinda guess better now, especially when I am out...carbsandcals app if fab when out for meals. Stick at it

Welcome celinep
Lets focus on potatoes, as you mentioned them.
Within your online Carb Counter list, which I think you have found by clicking the blue hyperlink near the top right of this page, there is a further hyperlink in the next list that appears for Potatoes.
If we look at this table in isolation we are able to see lots of values listed, which might seem a bit confusing, but lets only look at the ones for potatoes only, prepared in different ways, which show in the list as 100g.
So if we go to Potato(Raw) we see 1.5 CPs. Then compare that with mashed potato and boiled potato, further up the list, we see both contain 1.5 CPs...so the carbohydrate in the potato has not really changed even though it is cooked. OK so far?
However if we then look at 100g values for jacket potato and chips in the list, we see both contain 3.0 CPs! how can that be...the carbohydrate in the potato cannot increase...and it doesn't.
What has changed is that the amount of water remaining in the cooked potato has gone down during cooking. This effectively means that the 'carbohydrate density' has increased in the preparation of this food. Our 100g weight of finished chips have come from cooking 200g of raw potato...and going back to our first CP values...that is 2 x 100g or 2 x 1.5 CPs - 3 CPs...just what we see in the list. Our boiled potatoes, as they have had no water cooked out of them, are still 1.5 CPs.
Now 100 g is the normal weight measurement shown that you can see on packaged food labelling, to demonstrate the carbohydrate value of the product inside.
Say a packet shows that for every 100g of product we get 64g carbohydrate and the packet weighs 400g - we know we are buying 4 times our listed carbohydrate value so we need use 4 x 64g or 256g CHO...which is 256 divided by 10 or 25.6 CPs...an awful lot of carbohydrate...better not eat that on my own!
Lot to take in I know, but as Vickyp mentioned we all get it wrong sometimes....but mostly it becomes second nature after a while.
Don't worry. You will soon have it.
Regards
Garry

I read but mostly scan the packaging and also weigh when I need to............