Proud to be a Bean Counter

bean count·er

noun informal derogator
a person, typically an accountant or bureaucrat, perceived as placing excessive emphasis on controlling expenditure and budgets.

If you are interested in taming diabetes, you need to become a proud bean (carb) counter. American Diabetic Association (ADA) recommends 30g/60g/60g of carbs for breakfast lunch and dinner respectively.

What I am going to be somewhat shocking when you start to overlay carb numbers over the items you eat…

Let us see how what you might consider a healthy breakfast from Carb Point of view

1. Cup of coffee : Coffee, Milk (12g per 8 oz) , Sugar (4g) — Total : 16 g (dude, you have already used up 50% of your breakfast allowance)
2. 1/3 bowl of Oatmeal : 40 g of carb !!
3. 1 banana : 30 gm of carb
4. 4 strawberry : 5 * 4 = 20 g carb

Total breakfast carbs : 86 g (remember the ADA number of 60)

Let us take Lunch
1. 1 cup of rice (45 g of carb)
2. Potatoe based subji (with one full potato) — 37 g
3. 2 chappati (16–3) 13 *2 = 26g of carbs !

Unless you can try to eat Shirataki Noodle or Rice (both are 0 carb), you are going to find a tough time with most foods… Then what food options do we have ?

1. 3 crackers 13 g net carb (Crisp’n Light)
2. 1 g 8 oz — Unsweetened Original Almond Milk
3. 7 g for 6 oz — Greek Yoghurt
4. 1 net carb snack !! — Flackers crackers
5. 1 net gram drink mix (goes well with 1g almond milk) — Protein Powder

So what do I eat :
1. My typical breakfast is WASA cracker with almond milk
2. Mid morning snack is flax cracker
3. My lunch and dinner are similar: Salad (lots of cucumber, green beans), 1/3 rice with subji or sambar, 6 oz of Fahe Yogurt
4. Between times I take Whey drink with Almond milk and or snacking cheese (1g carb each)

By periodic poking, you can get real time feedback — you can try many variations : replace rice with quinoa, buckwheat or even smaller carb option by using cauliflower rice (ground cauliflower).

This is a guest post by Radha Venkat. She is recently diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and is a fan of data. Check out her blog here