Besides trying to eat right and making sure we take the dreaded drugs every day, the most important thing we can do to fight diabetes is to begin counting the carbohydrates in the foods we eat and make sure we get the right amount of exercise every day. Then a third step will be to test our blood to see how we are doing—how high our blood sugar is. Okay, lets take it one step at a time. Let’s talk about carb counting.

 

Carb Counting

The amount of carbs that you consume each day will tell you how much sugar will go into your blood. When I first was told that I had diabetes, I was told by a nurse that I needed to start counting my carbs and to try not to consume any more than 150 carbs per day. And I found that when I did that, my blood sugar (glucose) went down. So, it’s really quite automatic. When you keep your carbs down your blood sugar will go down.

 

Here’s the best idea I have come up with to keep track of my carbs every day. For each day, I take a 3 by 4-inch card and record everything I eat, and list the carbs in each food item on the right side like so:

 

Monday

Oatmeal with fruit     50

Coffee with sugar       5

Subway sandwich     46

Cooked vegetables

with a potato             35

Chicken with bread  18

   Total Carbs        154

You can very easily find the carb amounts by Googling it. Just type in the kind of subway sandwich (6” wheat bread with roasted chicken and veggies) and ask for the carb amount. You may want to make a list of everything you usually eat with the amount of carbs in it, and tape it up somewhere in your kitchen where you will see it. Before long you will know that one cup of fruit is about 15 carbs. And the wheat bread I eat is 18 carbs per slice. You may also know that on most packaged food items are listed the amount of carbs for one serving.

 

Exercise

You should exercise every day. The days I work I don’t really have to worry too much because I walk around all day long. But the days I have off I usually go for at least a mile brisk walk. Swimming is also very good exercise. It is up to you what you do, but the more you exercise the better things will be for you—the lower your blood sugar will be.

 

Blood Sugar Testing

The most common way to test your blood sugar is to get yourself a meter, some test strips, a lancing device, and a box of lancets (the needles). These things can be purchased at any drug store, but your doctor may also prescribe these things for you. The process is to insert a lancet into the lancing device, then take a test strip and insert that into the slot in your meter. Then, after cleaning one of your fingers with alcohol, shoot the lancet into your finger. You will get a little blood, and then apply that blood to the tip of the test strip, and the meter will tell you how much sugar (glucose) is in your blood. The average is from 70 to 100. So, if you get anywhere close to 100 you are doing good. But if you are over 200, that’s not good. You need to lower your carbs and get more exercise. Of course, you also need to keep on your Metformin (or whatever you are taking) until your doctor tells you anything different.