I have been doing a great job with my sugars lately. But, I fear that I have been setting myself up for failure. Counting carbs is tedious. Going to lunch and sitting there for 10 minutes looking my food up in a carb guide gets pretty old. As a result, I find myself often eating the same selections. It's easy. Oh, that particular sandwich is 30g of carbs. That equals two units of insulin. Zing! Now, let's get on with the eatin'! Chain restaurants are the easiest because most of their nutrition info is available on the internet. Panera Cobb Salad with Avocado equals 8g of carbs. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy (as my friend Mary likes to say).
Easy may bring efficiency, but it also ends up being pretty boring. So, today I ventured out of my comfort zone. My friend Lisa and I went to lunch. She was having a hectic day and didn't want to make decisions about where to go, so I suggested sushi.
I love maki rolls. I was introduced to them back in 2001 and my love for them has increased over the years. I have a few friends that will eat them with me, and one of them is Lisa. So off we went. Found the maki lunch special on the menu, ordered, and then made quick work of trying to figure out how many carbs I would be consuming. Maki is rolled in a white, sticky rice and is pretty starchy. The meal comes with two rolls (eight pieces per roll), a clear soup that has some sherry in it, and a salad with a ginger dressing. I searched through the nutrition database on my iphone and found another restaurant's version of the rolls I ordered. I added in the soup and the salad and the grand total was 68g of carbs. My sugar was 119, which is awesome, so all I had to do was divide 68 by 15 and administer that much insulin — 4.5 units. The insulin pen doesn't let you administer a half a unit, so I gave myself 4 and held back on the salad.
Two hours later I tested and my sugar was 325. Obviously all of that calculating went haywire somewhere. So I corrected and checked again an hour later. Still high. Finally around dinner time it was down to normal.
All of this is to say that the next time I eat sushi, I'll be a little more generous with the insulin.
Last night I made chili from a recipe I found on the internet a couple of years ago. Chili is one of those dishes that's pretty fattening, but surprisingly healthy for diabetics as long as you use beans that are high in fiber. Fiber is a diabetic's best friend. I sat and pondered the recipe and then got my computer out and did a quick internet search. I stumbled upon a website, www.myfitnesspal.com (you probably have already heard of it — I'm not usually spending my internet time looking for fitness plans, if you know what I mean). Anyway, on this site there is a recipe calculator. You add in all of the ingredients of your recipe and it tells you how many calories, fat grams, carbs and grams of protein are in your meal. You divide it by the number of servings and there's your nutrition info!
I am so happy with this little find. I may have mentioned that I regularly frequent a little deli that's a block away from where I work. The proprietress makes excellent soups. Now I can ask her for the ingredients of her soups (which I am hoping she will share) so I can calculate the nutrition information. Not just for me, but for all of her customers should they want to know.
Remember my most recent post about Halloween? Well, you might want to take a look at the carb counts of those fun-sized candies. You might reconsider how fun they are. You can find the American Diabetes Association's list by clicking here.
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