How to Calculate Carbs for Diabetics

Carbohydrates are a major concern for people with diabetes. Carbohydrates break down into sugar, which increase your blood glucose. For anyone with diabetes, this means always knowing how many carbohydrates you are consuming, and if you are on insulin, dosing to match those carbohydrates. The only way to be certain of your carbohydrate intake is to understand nutrition labels and how to read them. Following a few simple steps when preparing food will help you maintain better control over your blood glucose readings.

Things You'll Need

• Calculator
• Nutrition labels

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Instructions

• 1

  Determine how many grams of carbohydrates you will be eating for this meal, based on your per meal or daily recommendations. Your diabetic nutritionist can provide you with a specific recommendation for your diet plan.

• 2

  Determine your insulin requirement for the grams of carbohydrates you will be eating, based on your insulin to carbohydrate ratio. If you are unsure of your ratio, you should talk with your doctor. For diabetics who are not prescribed insulin, you can skip this step.

• 3

  Select the foods you wish to eat, and have the nutrition labels for each one ready. The nutrition information will help you identify many things, including the recommended serving size as well as the fat, calories, and carbohydrate content per serving.

• 4

  Locate the serving size information on the nutrition label. This will tell you how much of the food you can eat for the values provided in the nutrition information.

• 5

  Look at the total carbohydrate count per serving, along with the dietary fiber amount. If there is more than 5 grams of dietary fiber per serving, reduce the total carbohydrate count by the total grams of fiber. The result of this provides you with your net carbohydrates per serving.

• 6

  Multiply the net carbohydrates by the number of servings you plan to have. This equals the total number of grams of carbohydrates you will be consuming.