Carbohydrate Counting & the Diabetes Diet

"Hi, I'm Brenda Thompson, registered dietitian and owner of Life Skills Nutrition. In this segment I'm going to talk about carbohydrate counting in controlling blood sugars. Carbohydrate counting is less restrictive than the exchange method because you're basically just counting the amount of carbohydrates you're eating at each meal. Consulting your dietitian will help you determine how many carbohydrates you should have for each meal and each snack. Generally a meal might consist of sixty grams of carbohydrates or maybe even fifteen to thirty grams of carbohydrates depending on what your calorie needs are and your carbohydrates needs are. As we used this for the exchange system, you may also use this in carbohydrate counting. If you look here each one of these food groups provides you with the amount of carbohydrates that each one of these servings provide. The starch, each serving provides fifteen grams. So if you were allowed up to sixty grams of carbohydrates for lunch, then you can decide how many starches you wanted and then maybe you would want to come down, maybe you would want to add two starches and then come down and add a fruit. For another and then you may want to come down and add some milk to that meal as well which provides twelve grams of carbohydrates. Vegetables only provides five grams of carbohydrates and this is why it is recommended that you consume a large amount of vegetables among other health benefits such as the benefits antioxidants and vitamins and minerals provide in the vegetables. Meats do not have any carbohydrates so you would not need to count that in your carbohydrate counting method. Fats also do not have any carbohydrates. Free foods here are foods that are basically your sugar free foods and these should be eating in moderation however, because they don't always contain a lot of nutrients. And down in this list you have other foods that are provided such as soups and pizzas, and doughnuts and things like that. Consulting with your dietitian and diabetes educator will help you decide which method works for you and carbohydrate counting maybe the best method for you in controlling your blood sugars."