New carb calculator apps and websites are making carb counting a lot easier, especially when you are eating out or on-the-go! Find a few that you trust. Technology can not only help count carbs on a meal-by-meal basis, but also keep a record of your diet throughout the week and even months.

There are recommended proportions of how carbohydrate, protein and fat can make up the daily diet of people with type 1 diabetes. With these as a guideline, you can find what works for you. While everyone needs the energy, vitamins and fiber of carbohydrates, you can decide your carbohydrate intake throughout the day.

If you want advice or a full-fledged plan, a dietitian or diabetes educator can help figure out which foods to eat, how much to eat and when to eat based on your body, lifestyle and blood sugar targets. Often carb counting is not as simple as reading a nutrition label.

When you are home, train your eye to measure food or use household items to estimate portions. Carb counting is both a science and an art and learning the carbs in food can be hard.

Meal planning is something a lot of busy and health-conscious people are doing these days, and for good reason. It can help you make healthy choices rather than succumbing to unhealthy cravings, especially helpful for those with type 1 diabetes.

A meal plan can take into account the timing of your meals, how much to eat and what foods to choose, taking the guesswork out of carb counting. Find meal inspiration from others in the JDRF community here or submit your own!

Ask about tasty, healthy recipes that can help you stay on top of your carb intake—which will make it easier to manage your blood sugar levels, too. Skip directly to site content Skip directly to search. Español Other Languages. Carb Counting.

Español Spanish. Minus Related Pages. Added Sugar Is Hiding in Your Food. What are the different types of carbs? There are 3 types of carbs: Sugars , such as the natural sugar in fruit and milk or the added sugar in soda and many other packaged foods.

Starches , including wheat, oats, and other grains; starchy vegetables such as corn and potatoes; and dried beans, lentils, and peas. How are carbs measured? This sample menu has about 1, calories, grams of carbs, and about 13 carb servings. plain fat-free Greek yogurt 7g ¾ cup blueberries 15g Total carbs: 59 grams, about 4 carb servings Dinner 6 ounces baked chicken breast 0g 1 cup brown rice 45g 1 cup steamed broccoli 12g 2 TBS margarine 0g Total carbs: 57 grams, about 4 carb servings Snack 1 low-fat string cheese stick 1g 2 tangerines 18g Total carbs: 19 grams, about 1 carb serving How many carbs should I eat?

How can I find out more about carb counting? More Information. Last Reviewed: April 19, Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Whether you count each carb gram or use one of the other meal planning methods, you'll want to choose foods that are rich in nutrients.

Opt for whole foods that are unprocessed and in their natural state, such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains and lean proteins. Processed foods, such as packaged cookies, crackers and other snack foods, usually contain added salt, sugar, carbohydrates, fat or preservatives.

Even small changes can have huge results! Breadcrumb Home Navigating Nutrition Understanding Carbs Carb Counting and Diabetes. Type 1: If you have type 1 diabetes, your pancreas no longer makes insulin, so you need to take background insulin as well as offset the carbs in your food with mealtime insulin doses.

To do this, you have to know exactly how many carbohydrate grams are in your meal—cue carb counting! To avoid blood sugar spikes, it helps to eat a consistent amount of carbs at meals throughout the day, rather than all at once.

People taking oral medications may use a more basic form of carb counting than those on insulin. How do you count carbs? How many carbs should I eat? How many carbs are in my food? The serving size refers to how much a person usually eats or drinks, and all the information on the label is about this specific amount of food.

If you eat more, you will need to account for the additional nutrients. For example, eating two or three servings of something, means you will need to double or triple the amount of grams of carbs and all other nutrients on the label in your calculations.

There is no recommended amount of sugar, and no nutritional value in sugar. You would be best off having no sugar at all, but that would be very difficult. Not only are human beings hard-wired to like sugar, but it is present in almost all processed foods, from spaghetti sauce to salad dressing.

Fiber is good for your digestion and your heart health. You should aim for 25 to 35 grams per day of fiber. Whole grains like brown rice, legumes like beans and lentils, fruits like berries and apples, and vegetables like artichokes and broccoli are all good sources of fiber.

Starches can be healthful or not. Starchy vegetables like baked potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, peas, and squash are highly nutritious.

Refined starches like white rice, refined flour, and breakfast cereals are low in nutritional value. With too few carbs, it can be hard for you to exercise vigorously and feel well. This group of foods, along with a serving of fish or other lean protein without any carbs added in cooking, adds up to 58 carbs.

This group of foods, even if you add a diet soda, also totals 58 grams of carbs. This is handy to know when you have home-made white bread, or store-bought white buns with no carb information on them. Weigh the slice in grams , multiply this weight by 0.

If your suspicious slice of bread weighs 30g, that means it will contain approximately 15 grams of carbs. So if the bag says 45g like a bread package once told me then you know that something is wrong, and you can avoid what would have been a dangerously low blood sugar.

For example, if you have g of mashed potatoes, you can estimate that there is about 20g of carbs in that serving. As an illustration:. In terms of salad dressing and other condiments, the fat contained in the regular, full-fat version isn't enough to raise blood sugar.

And chocolate pancakes are yummy! While the carb content of a food determines how much it will raise blood sugar, the Glycemic Index GI of a food focuses on how quickly it will raise blood sugar.

A food with a low GI value will be digested more slowly than a food with a high GI value; thus a low GI food such as oatmeal will raise blood sugar slowly, while a high GI food such as Cheerios will raise blood sugar quickly and probably raise it higher, too, as the food snowballs and the insulin cannot match that fast rate of digestion.

In short, to a effectively deal with carbs, you need count them, plus take into account how quickly they will raise blood sugar.

Glycemic Index Explained. Taming Post-Meal Spikes Caused by GI. Pizza is a tricky food to carb count and to bolus insulin for. There are a few reasons for this. How Fat and Protein Affect Blood Glucose. Reduce Post-Meal Spikes Caused by Fat and Protein. Extended Bolus: How, When and Why. There are times when the carb count you calculate may seem too high or too low — trust your gut and do some more research before giving your child insulin based on this result.

Double-check the carb count using a different method of carb calculation see Introduction to Counting Carbs and Carb Factoring. Then if the carb count was too high, you can catch the fall with fast-acting sugar like juice ; if the carb count was too low, you can give correction insulin earlier and get things back on track.

The standard serving size in the nutritional panel may not reflect the actual contents of a given package. For example, in single serving packages such as chips or snack crackers , the amount of product contained in the package can, within the law, vary by a small percentage.

This percentage of error may be enough to affect blood sugar. Further, some companies concern themselves with making sure the package contains at least the stated amount of product, but if there is extra product in the bag they see that as a bonus for the consumer.

This may mean that your child is not getting enough insulin for the amount of product she has eaten, resulting in post-snack highs. If you see out-of-target blood sugars often in relation to a certain packaged food, next time you may want to check the actual weight of the serving size using a kitchen scale or nutritional scale to make sure the resulting carb count for the portion is correct.

There is great variety in mixed recipes such as lasagna, cinnamon buns, or baked beans: some lasagna recipes are heavy on the noodles, some heavy on the ground beef; some baked bean recipes go for the sweet effect with lots of molasses or sugar, others go for the savoury effect, focusing on lower-carb tomato sauce.

Some pizza slices have thick crusts with few toppings, others weigh the same but have thin crusts with lots of toppings. Some cinnamon buns have tons of icing. So when you use the built-in database in a nutritional scale to find the carb content of mixed dishes, the results may - or may not - be accurate.

So take the scale results with a grain of salt. Note that the results for individual foods, such as fruits and vegetables, do not present this problem.

Unlike lasagna, a strawberry is a strawberry is a strawberry. Be wary of the stated carbs in products purchased at grocery store bakeries. The carb info listed on the package may not be as precise as you need it to be for dosing insulin.

Carb content may be stated based on a certain portion size, but this may not be consistent with the portion size contained in a given package. But which cheese stick? The 6-inch one or the 8-inch one? A package that gives the carb amount in terms of weight will be more reliable.

In addition, a bakery label may reflect an average carb content across several different variations on a product, like cookies for example. But you can get closer and closer with practice. When in doubt, start with as accurate of a carb count as you can get, then document what you did, as well as the resulting blood glucose.

With that, you're well on your way to taming the diabetes dragon! Advanced Carb Counting. Calculating carbs by weight is more reliable than by volume. What do we do with a cob, core or rind?

Tips from the Trenches When our family eats corn on the cob, we follow the above process. Visual estimation. In fact, the net carb claims on packaged foods may not reflect the number of carbs your body actually absorbs. Luckily, knowing how your body processes different types of carbs may help you achieve your target blood sugar, weight loss and health goals.

This article looks at the science behind net carbs, provides simple calculations for determining your intake and discusses the pros and cons of counting net carbs. Net carbs are sometimes referred to as digestible or impact carbs. The terms refer to carbs that are absorbed by the body, including both simple and complex carbs.

Simple carbs contain one or two sugar units linked together and are found in foods like fruits, vegetables, milk, sugar, honey and syrup. Complex carbs contain many sugar units linked together and are found in grains and starchy vegetables like potatoes.

When you eat a carb-containing food, most of the carbs are broken down into individual sugar units by enzymes produced in your small intestine. Your body can only absorb individual sugar units. These include fiber and sugar alcohols.

Because of this, most fiber and sugar alcohols can be subtracted from total carbs when calculating net carbs. Net digestible carbs are broken down into individual sugar units and absorbed into your bloodstream.

However, your body processes fiber and sugar alcohol carbs differently than digestible carbs. Fiber is a unique form of carbs in terms of its digestion and effects on your body. Therefore, fiber passes directly into the colon 1.

However, its fate after that depends on what type of fiber it is. There are two broad categories of fiber: insoluble and soluble. About two-thirds of the fiber you eat is insoluble, while the other third is soluble. Insoluble fiber does not dissolve in water.

It creates a bulkier stool and can help prevent constipation. This type of fiber leaves the colon unchanged, provides no calories and has no effect on blood sugar or insulin levels 2. After arriving in your colon, soluble fibers are fermented into short-chain fatty acids SCFAs by bacteria.

These SCFAs help keep your gut healthy and may also provide a number of other health benefits. Studies have shown that the fermentation of 1 gram of soluble fiber to SCFAs provides about 1—2 calories, depending on the type of fiber 4 , 5.

Since about one-third of the fiber in most foods is soluble, a serving of food containing 6 grams of fiber would contribute up to 4 calories in the form of SCFAs. In fact, the most recent research suggests that its effects in the gut help reduce blood sugar levels 6 , 7. Many studies have shown that soluble fiber may lead to better blood sugar control, increased insulin sensitivity and the absorption of fewer calories 8 , 9 , 10 , On the other hand, one processed fiber called isomaltooligosaccharide IMO seems to be partially absorbed in the small intestine like non-fiber carbs, which may raise blood sugar 12 , Recently, several food manufacturers replaced IMO with other forms of fiber in their products.

Naturally occurring fiber is not absorbed in the small intestine. Gut bacteria ferment soluble fiber into SCFAs, which contribute minimal calories and have neutral or beneficial effects on blood sugar. Sugar alcohols are processed similarly to fiber, with a few important differences.

Many sugar alcohols are only partially absorbed in the small intestine, and there is a lot of variation among different types. However, some are only briefly absorbed into the bloodstream and then excreted in urine In addition, these sugar alcohols can have varying effects on blood sugar and insulin levels, although all are considerably lower than sugar.

Here is a list of the glycemic and insulin indexes for the most common sugar alcohols. Maltitol is the most commonly used sugar alcohol in processed foods, including low-carb protein bars and sugar-free candy.

Anecdotally, maltitol has been reported to increase blood sugar levels in people with diabetes and prediabetes.

For example, the U. The good news is, the longer you practice carb counting, the more you'll remember the carb content of the foods you commonly eat. Carb counting would be simple if we only ate carbohydrate foods, but meals are usually a mix of carbohydrate, protein and fat.

A meal high in protein and fat can change how quickly the body absorbs carbs, which impacts blood sugar levels. Continuous glucose monitoring CGM or self-monitoring of blood glucose can also help, especially for insulin dosing. Whether you count each carb gram or use one of the other meal planning methods, you'll want to choose foods that are rich in nutrients.

Opt for whole foods that are unprocessed and in their natural state, such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains and lean proteins. Processed foods, such as packaged cookies, crackers and other snack foods, usually contain added salt, sugar, carbohydrates, fat or preservatives.

Even small changes can have huge results! Breadcrumb Home Navigating Nutrition Understanding Carbs Carb Counting and Diabetes.

Type 1: If you have type 1 diabetes, your pancreas no longer makes insulin, so you need to take background insulin as well as offset the carbs in your food with mealtime insulin doses. To do this, you have to know exactly how many carbohydrate grams are in your meal—cue carb counting!

To avoid blood sugar spikes, it helps to eat a consistent amount of carbs at meals throughout the day, rather than all at once. People taking oral medications may use a more basic form of carb counting than those on insulin. How do you count carbs?

How many carbs should I eat? How many carbs are in my food? The serving size refers to how much a person usually eats or drinks, and all the information on the label is about this specific amount of food.

If you eat more, you will need to account for the additional nutrients. For example, eating two or three servings of something, means you will need to double or triple the amount of grams of carbs and all other nutrients on the label in your calculations.

Grams of total carbohydrate. This number includes all carbs: sugar, starch and fiber. What about protein and fat? If a food does not have a label, check a food journal app that lets you input foods and portion sizes to find the approximate number of carbs they have.

The combination slows glucose uptake in your bloodstream. Some people with diabetes benefit from eating the same amount of carbs at each meal. You might find that this eating routine takes the guesswork out of managing your insulin medication, especially if you take fixed doses.

Most processed and packaged foods are made with refined carbs, including:. Complex carbohydrates are slower-burning starches like whole grains. These carbs have more nutrients than simple carbs, as well as more fiber, which can make you feel fuller for longer.

Examples of complex carbs include:. Even though complex carbs offer more nutrition, you still need to be mindful of portion sizes.

The glycemic index GI is a system that ranks foods based on how quickly they cause your blood sugar to rise. Foods with a high GI, like refined carbs, make your blood sugar rise faster than foods with a low GI, like complex carbs. If you eat something with a higher GI, combine it with a lower GI food to lessen its effect on your blood sugar.

Working with a registered dietitian nutritionist can help you come up with a diabetes eating plan that works with your budget, preferences, and needs. This sample diabetes meal plan provides roughly 45 to 60 grams of carbs per meal and 15 to 30 grams of carbs per snack.

The number of carbs per item is listed in parentheses. Total carbohydrates : 45 g. Total carbohydrates : 50 g. Total carbohydrates : 18 g. Total carbohydrates : 55 g.

Total carbohydrates : 22 g. High-quality fats and proteins play a big role in diabetes management because they provide the body with energy and can slow the entry of glucose into the bloodstream. There is no current guidance for added sugars for adults with diabetes. Specifically, the recommendations advise:.

If you have diabetes, you will work with your provider to find out the daily amount of added sugar you can have while still meeting your goals. Protein and healthy fats keep you feeling fuller longer and can help you keep your blood sugar levels in check.

Proteins to include:. Fats to include:. Diabetes self-management education DSME is an effective tool that provides resources and support to people living with diabetes. DSME has been proven to help diabetes outcomes. If you have not had this type of education, ask your healthcare provider where you can find a certified diabetes educator where you live.

Figuring out the right amount of carbohydrates you can have each day is an important part of crafting a diabetes meal plan. Try to avoid eating refined carbs like white bread and white rice because they lack important nutrients. Instead, choose nutritious complex carbs like whole grains and vegetables.

There is no exact definition of low-carb. Slavin J, Carlson J. Adv Nutr. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Carb counting. American Diabetes Association. Classification and diagnosis of diabetes: S tandards of Medical Care in Diabetes— Diabetes Care. Facilitating behavior change and well-being to improve health outcomes: Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes— Glycemic targets: Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes— Meal planning.

Harvard T. Chan School of Public Health. Carbohydrates and blood sugar. Chang CR, Francois ME, Little JP. Restricting carbohydrates at breakfast is sufficient to reduce hour exposure to postprandial hyperglycemia and improve glycemic variability.

Am J Clin Nutr. Sugary drinks. Department of Agriculture and U. Department of Health and Human Services. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, , 9th Edition.

American Heart Association. Federal dietary guidelines emphasize healthy eating habits but fall short on added sugars. Added sugars. Powers MA, Bardsley J, Cypress M, et al. Diabetes self-management education and support in type 2 diabetes: A joint position statement of the American Diabetes Association, the American Association of Diabetes Educators, and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

J Acad Nutr Diet. Shilpa J, Mohan V. Ketogenic diets: Boon or bane? Indian J Med Res. Carbohydrate counting. By Debra Manzella, RN Debra Manzella, MS, RN, is a corporate clinical educator at Catholic Health System in New York with extensive experience in diabetes care. Use limited data to select advertising.

Create profiles for personalised advertising. Use profiles to select personalised advertising. Create profiles to personalise content.

Very low carb diets may not be sustainable or appropriate for everyone. A carb serving is measured as 15 grams. Remember, a serving of carbs is not the same as a serving of food. However, these amounts depend on your age, weight, level of physical activity, individual health goals, BG targets, and current medications.

Spreading your carb intake out over all your meals and snacks instead of eating many or most of them at the same meal will help to keep your BG level. For foods that have nutrition labels, determining carb counts is easy.

But the ADA recommends using total carbs for carb counting rather than net carbs. Some reliable options include apps like MyFitnessPal or LoseIt! Restaurant chains with more than 20 locations will generally have nutritional information including carb counts for their menu items available upon request.

A serving size is the portion of food for which the nutrition information has been calculated. Pay close attention to serving size when counting carbs. Keeping good records is the key to accurate carb counting. Check your BG before the meal and 2 hours afterward. If your BG stays steady or goes down, pat yourself on the back!

Make a note of that meal and add it to your regular rotation. For the plate method , divide your plate in half and then divide one half in half. Fill the large section with non-starchy vegetables like salad greens, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, and cauliflower. Fill one of the smaller sections with lean protein like chicken breast, fish, or edamame.

Note that most plant-based proteins also contain carbs. Fill the other smaller section with starchy foods like brown rice, butternut squash, or sweet potato. Remember to pick foods that have lots of fiber. Foods in this category can contain a lot of carbs but few nutrients.

These would include those made with white sugar or white flour cookies, cakes, pies, bread, pasta, etc. Español Other Languages. Carb Counting. Español Spanish. Minus Related Pages. Added Sugar Is Hiding in Your Food. What are the different types of carbs?

There are 3 types of carbs: Sugars , such as the natural sugar in fruit and milk or the added sugar in soda and many other packaged foods. Starches , including wheat, oats, and other grains; starchy vegetables such as corn and potatoes; and dried beans, lentils, and peas.

How are carbs measured? This sample menu has about 1, calories, grams of carbs, and about 13 carb servings. plain fat-free Greek yogurt 7g ¾ cup blueberries 15g Total carbs: 59 grams, about 4 carb servings Dinner 6 ounces baked chicken breast 0g 1 cup brown rice 45g 1 cup steamed broccoli 12g 2 TBS margarine 0g Total carbs: 57 grams, about 4 carb servings Snack 1 low-fat string cheese stick 1g 2 tangerines 18g Total carbs: 19 grams, about 1 carb serving How many carbs should I eat?

How can I find out more about carb counting? More Information. Last Reviewed: April 19, Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate. home Diabetes Home. Becoming a pro at managing type 1 diabetes hinges on figuring out how many grams of carbs there are in what you eat, wherever you eat.

There are many tips and tricks that go beyond the basic rules of carb-counting to help us guesstimate through tricky situations that lead to high post-meal spikes. What do you do about a cob or a rind? Dry or cooked? How can we teach our T1D kids to visually estimate carbs?

What do most breads and buns have in common? What's the issue with "lite" products? Do chocolate pancakes have more carbs? Here we share with you the rules of thumb that have simplified our lives as D-parents, and made managing diabetes, well… more manageable!

Think about what happens when you fill a measuring cup with large or irregularly shaped items — such as dry cereal, or whole strawberries, or chunks of potato — the volume of food can vary each time you measure, depending on how big the pieces are and how the material settles.

The bigger the air spaces between the pieces of food, the less accurate your volume measure is. The weight of a given sample of food, however, is not affected by how big the pieces are, how the material settles, nor whether there are pockets of air between the pieces.

So weight is consistent, and thus is a more accurate and precise measure for carb counting. If you use a nutritional scale to calculate the carb content of a cob of corn, the weight of the cob is included in the calculation, even though it will not be eaten.

That is to say, if you place a full cob on the scale and enter the Cob Corn function, the scale output may say that there are 40g of carbs in the sample, but this calculation assumes that the full weight of the food on the scale is corn kernels, when in fact about half of the weight is the cob.

The same issue arises for apples on the core and watermelon on the rind. This calculates a carb count for just the amount that was actually consumed. The same process applies to whole apples and pears on the core, and watermelon on the rind.

This process also works if your child eats less of a given food than expected; if they eat half, but not all, of a banana, or pizza slice, or bowl of cereal: subtracting the "after" weight from the "before" weight will leave you with the amount that was actually eaten.

When our family eats corn on the cob, we follow the above process. But in order to calculate the meal insulin dose so our son receives insulin before he eats, we estimate the corn to contain 20g of carbs. Then, when the meal is done, we calculate the actual amount of corn consumed and give him more insulin if needed.

Visual estimation of carb content is a SUPER handy skill to develop. With a little practice and feedback, you can get close enough to the actual carb content of a food item by looking at a portion of food and using an educated guess about how many carbs that portion contains.

This helps at restaurants, at a friend's house, at a party, or any other time when you are away from your carb-counting tools scales, measuring cups, books and apps.

Visual estimation is a learned skill. Over time, your guesses will be closer and closer to the actual carb content. Once you find that your guesses are often "close enough" for a certain food, your confidence in your visual estimation skills will allow you to save time and hassle by skipping the scale.

By using this "guess and check" approach, you will get better and better at visually estimating carb content. Another approach to visual estimation involves using your body parts to estimate the size of a serving, and so the amount of carbs.

For example, a pancake the size of my palm with my hand spread out flat contains about 10g of carbs; one the size of my husband's palm contains about 15g of carbs.

My closed fist is about the same size as a cup, so I can compare the mound of rice on my son's plate to my fist to judge whether it's the same size, half as big, or twice as big as my fist.

I then calculate the carbs based on 45g of carbs per cup of rice. If my son's portion is twice as big as my closed fist, he would bolus for 90g of carbs. A half-fist of mashed potatoes contains about 15g of carbs.

You can figure out how your hand - or your child's smaller hand - compares to pancakes, rice and potatoes by creating a mound of mashed potatoes the size of your hand, and then measuring the carbs in it.

You can then use that rule of thumb for future guesstimates. Each food entry includes a picture of different size portions of that food, with the corresponding carb content given. You compare the portion on your plate with the closest portion in the pictures, and use the listed carbs to inform your educated guess for your own portion.

A Carb Factor is a number which describes what percentage of a given food is carbohydrate. Why is this handy to know? A carb factor tells us the carb content of any serving size, whether it matches the serving size given on the package or not.

Carb Factors also saves us time and hassle: we can calculate the carb factor once for a given food, and then write that number on the package of cereal, or crackers, or yogurt, or anything.

Then we don't have to do the math every time our kids eat that food. We just weigh a portion of that food and multiply by the carb factor to determine the carb content.

We can also keep a list of known carb factors for easy reference. For example, if my son gives himself insulin for 50g of carbs for a bowl of chips, but then can't finish them all, I don't have to know if he ate half of the chips, or two-thirds. I simply weigh the chips that are left, multiply by the carb factor, and then know that he needs to have, say, 11g of juice, to avoid a low BG.

Introduction to Counting Carbohydrates Carb Factoring.