Day 7-

The Carbohydrate… say it with me car-bo-hydrate. That little building block of energy that is necessary to survive. The fuel we need to live and function everyday starts with carbs and ends with carbs. Sure we need protein, fat, fiber… yes fiber is a good thing, but with out carbs our bodies can’t produce energy, without carbs we die. When carbs are digested by our bodies they are converted into glucose, which is then used by our bodies for energy. As I mentioned earlier if your body has an overabundance of glucose it stores it in your liver and muscle to use later when it is needed. How does your amazing body break carbohydrates down into the awesome fuel called glucose? So how a normal body works is you eat food, digestion begins actually in the mouth as you are chewing, then it travels to your stomach and the carbs are broken down by an enzyme called amylase, after that the glucose travels to your blood streams, your pancreas produces the right amount of insulin to break the glucose down, it uses what glucose it needs, and stores the rest, and live moves on. Great right? So if you have T1D you make a meal, before you eat you poke your finger and check your BG, then you have to count how many carbs you are eating in the meal…. ALL of them, then if you are on shots you have a sliding scale that tells you what insulin dose to use including your BG number, how many carbs (we call this the insulin to carb ratio), and sometimes the I:carbs ratio is different depending on the time of day. Also if you just gave yourself insulin for a BG correction less than 4 hours ago you may have to include that in your calculation…. And now your food is cold and you are super hungry right? For T1D that have pumps we do all this but there are already about 4 factors programmed into the pump that when you add in your BG the pump suggests a dose. Pumps can really fine tune things, but they are a ton of work to get started because there are about 20 different settings you have to get all figured out and that takes weeks. But that is another topic for another day. So counting carbs… yes there are different carbs but for T1Ds we have to count all carbs the same… a carb is a carb is a carb is a carb. I would gladly give up eating any sweet food if that meant I could eat fruit or an apple whenever I wanted but I can’t because a carb is a carb. So we count carbs… we memories carbs… we know exactly how many carbs are in an apple, a piece of white bread, a piece of wheat bread, a banana, a large banana (yes there is a difference), chocolate, pasta, everything. You may be wondering if simple carbs and complex carbs digest the same, that answer is no for a normal person, but kind of for a T1D. See a simple carb may digest a bit faster and might not last as long, but you still need the same amount of insulin for simple and complex carbs. Fat and protein actually effect digestion more because high fat or protein meals can slow your digestion wayyyy down.. fat more than protein. Have you ever wondered why when you eat really greasy pizza you feel it for half of a day… it is because you are literally digesting it for hours. When you have T1D and your insulin peaked at 2 hours when you eat that greasy pizza your BG will continue to rise for 6 HOURS and you feel awful. Now down to the nitty gritty, how many carbs do T1Ds eat a day… well I am about to blow your mind… we can eat what ever we want! Yes, we can… but there is a trade off. When you have T1D the effects of food are amplified.. so if I eat crappy food I really feel like crap. Also I usually eat about 50 or less carbs per meal and 3 meals a day. Yes, that is 150 carbs a day. But remember if I have a low BG I have to treat it with carbs.. so most days it is a bit more than that. Also a little note, a lot of T1D eat on the lower side of carbs because the more carbs we eat the more insulin we use and even though we need insulin there are side effects to insulin such as weight gain and hunger. Yes insulin can make you hungry. Being super hungry on a very restricted diet is super fun, I will tell you what. Want to play a fun game? Count how many carbs a day you eat, I will bet you $5 it is over 300. You do however get to subtract the amount of fiber from the number of carbs if it is over 4grams. Fiber changes the digestion of the carbs. Also make sure when you count you are counting serving sizes… not just that hand full of chips you grabbed… how many chips are in a serving? Depending on the type of chips usually only 11, YES 11. Oh sad day right? So as a T1D I can eat whatever I want, but say a 1/2c of ice cream, yes I get to measure EVERYTHING, has 30 carbs, well so does 2 slices of home made sourdough bread (the small loafs), and I would totally rather eat a whole sandwich instead of a tiny bit of ice cream. I do have a lot of people ask me how I eat, but as you go along it does get easier and fortunately I love to cook. So there you have it, and this is the shorter abridged version of carbs.