My son was just diagnosed a couple of weeks ago. Twice since then, we have ventured out for a meal for sit-down dining. We were with family, so we didn't want the rush of fast food. One experience (Red Lobster) was wonderful, but the other experience had us hopping from one restaurant to another because nobody had nutritional information.
What restaurants tend to make their nutritional information readily available for those of us who need to count carbs? I'd hate to think that I'm left with McDonalds and Red Lobster to choose from.
I always look it up before we leave online. I have her pick what she is going to eat before hand so we are ready. Or we look it up in the calorie king book.
We keep the calorid king book with us, but it doesn't seem to have a lot for children's menus. I guess we'll need to plan ahead and check online like you said. Thanks!
Honestly, I rarely ever know the EXACT nutritional value of all the foods that I'm eating at restaurants, but rather, just from experience I can get a pretty general idea of the amount of carbs in the food that I'm eating. Experience with the foods and educating yourself by researching charts with the amount of carbs in certain foods allows you to give yourself a pretty good estimate. Some people may be more sensitive than I am so 3-5 carbs off might make a big difference, but like I said, personally, I have few problems estimating.
well it might not be the EXACT amount of carbs but close if you ask your endo they might have calorie king books they can give you it has carbs for everything and fast food too
Au Bon Pain (at least near me) has kiosks in the restaurant w/ nutritional info. Love that if I'm not w/ my husband who has an iphone! Otherwise, I look up online for almost any chain -- panera, baja fresh, can't think of any others at the moment. For non-chains, you'll find it gets easier and easier (as someone already said) to make an estimate as you get more experience. I try to order something where I can identify each ingredient, so I can then add up the carbs for each ingredient. So, some casserole w/ various things and a random sauce is tougher for me than a piece of meat and 2 sides if that makes sense.
Glad you got out! Any "normal" things you can do will ease your transition back to "regular" life I hope!
P.S. The good thing about children's menus is they all seem to have the same items. (; You'll have the carbs for spaghetti and a hotdog bun memorized in no time, lol.
In the beginning i would carry around a nutritional guide book with me that listed basic things. After a while I find I just have a lot of things memorized like a cup of pasta or an apple. Although I do find restraunts quite difficult just because of hidden ingredients, personally I always guess a bit lower to be safe, I would rather be a bit high than low.
It gets much easier with time. If you have the Calorie King book, just look up the same thing at a similar restaurant or in the generic section (like a grilled cheese is probably 30 carbs, give or take a few, chicken strips will be about the same.) And as someone else noted, if in doubt, undercount and correct later.
It also helps when you are at home and measuring out food to look at it on the plate and get a sense for how much that is without the measuring cup, so you can better estimate if you don't know how much spaghetti or something is in the serving at the restaurant. LIke for me, a cup is about the size of my fist, and both my husband and I are getting pretty good at just looking at an amount of something and saying 1/4, 1/3 or 1/2 cup. :) What a skill. :)
Wow! Thanks for sharing all your experiences. We've done weight watchers, so we're used to the estimating. We were worried to approach this the same way because this is clearly more complicate and important that just weight loss. Good to know that you can estimate and don't always need to use great precision. Also, good to know that it's better to underestimate than overestimate. I guess that common sense would indicate that, since you don't want a low, but I hadn't thought of it, so it's likely I might have gone the other way.
I'm sure in time this will all become second nature. It's nice to know there's a community of people to call on for these questions. Maybe someday soon I can give people advice based on our experience!
we have a stash of nutritional guides from the places that have them (though i have them partially memorized-lol). usually there is some guessing involved at sit down places (I still carry the carb counting brochure we were given at diagnosis-its falling apart, but we still use it sometimes). one thing to watch though as we had this experience once. we went to a restaurant we had been to before. our son ordered a meal he had had before. after we ordered, we calculated carbs, included a stop for ice cream on the way home and gave his insulin. well, our meals took an hour (very unexpectedly) to come and his was dead last. he had spaghetti and garlic toast. he ate it all (almost- what he usually eats anyway) we did stop for ice cream and as soon as we walked in the door he said he felt low. I thought how can he be low after a big spaghetti dinner and ice cream? but we checked he was 3 point something (canadian, sorry don't know how to convert it). we figure since his food took so long to arrive his insulin peaked long before the food got into his system. the next morning he was high. go figure. we don't give insulin right after ordering anymore.
Hi, my son is the same age as yours - dx at 3 though. We were given advice at the beginning that has really worked for us. ALWAYS measure or weigh at home - this way when you are out you are a better estimator. i.e. you really know what a cup of pasta looks like spread out on a plate. We also make sure we do extra bg checks after eating out - restaurant food has a lot of fat typically which slows the absorbtion of carbs - so while he may be fine after 2 hours he will often run high at 4 hours. It sounds like you are off to a good start though - I was not even sure what exactly a carb was when Lucas was dx!!
personally, i just look at the food and do an estimate in my head based on what i know. i don't measure food, never will, and i can't picture what a cup of pasta looks like..but i've never had a lot of trouble when eating out. i've only been carb counting for about 2years now, and i've never used a book.
just do it based off of the sheet i got that listed the amount of some general food that was 15gs..like half a cup of pasta, a piece of bread, etc. as long as you aren't over estimating or extremely under estimating, it's nothing that can't be fixed a few hours later and it's not gonna cause a lot of problems. i haven't been told to do it otherwise by my endo. you learn pretty quick what needs more insulin than others and how each food effects the levels.
i would never force people to switch restaurants just because it doesn't have that information for me. even if i was eating alone i wouldn't switch restaurants cuz of that. i don't know a single place in town that actually can give you that information..and if they do, it's only an "estimate" which is exactly what you'd be doing if the information wasn't available.
Don't know if this interests you but, a friend of mine recently got the iphone and has an app for nutritional info for loads of restaurants! I am considering switching to one of these new phones to have some info right at my finger tips! Also, they have apps for tracking bllod sugars? We carry the Calorie King book with us everywhere we go. (even have one stashed in the car)...It does get easier. Its almost second nature now to look at something and have a good estimate of how many carbs may be in it...
I guess nearly every time I eat something. :X I'm usually right though, and I continue to brush up on my carb counting by looking things up every once in a while. It's much better to take a guess than to not take any insulin at all. I agree with what previous posters said..if you have to guess, just underestimate and check his blood sugar later. Don't worry...it sounds like you're figuring things out just fine. Oh, and I definitely recommend the Calorie King book! They have so many food places in there!
I have an iPhone and it really helps me keep track of my diabetes. I tried a couple of paid apps, but then I found one called Glucose Buddy that works very well and is free. You can even sync your data to their website and it'll graph out all of your numbers for you. There's also an app called restaurant nutrition that has quite a few menus for popular national chains and they even update information periodically. Some of the apps have food databases too, similar to the Calorie King books.
I look up restaurants on line before we go out to see if I can find their nutrional info. If not, I call there as well to see. We had tickets to go to dinner show and the location didn't have any info. Well I called corporate and got it. Same with another restaurant by me that is a chain. The location didn't have it, it wasn't listed online, but I called their corporate office and they faxed it to me. I've done this numerous times and I keep the info in our "to go" bag so it is always there. Good luck with it.
The iphone has been a life saver for us. I can access Calorie King online, there is a fast food app that has lots of restaurants listed plus going to restaurant web sites. There are several apps for tracking data. The easiest one for my daughter was diabetes pilot. She put her bs, insulins, carbs, shot locations all on one screen. It would show her a picture of her body with shot areas highlighted. She could see if she was overdoing an area. My favorite part was she could email the information to me. She just got an Omnipod pump so she doesn't need this anymore....but it was crucial when she was on shots.
The iphone has been a life saver for us. I can access Calorie King online, there is a fast food app that has lots of restaurants listed plus going to restaurant web sites. There are several apps for tracking data. The easiest one for my daughter was diabetes pilot. She put her bs, insulins, carbs, shot locations all on one screen. It would show her a picture of her body with shot areas highlighted. She could see if she was overdoing an area. My favorite part was she could email the information to me. She just got an Omnipod pump so she doesn't need this anymore....but it was crucial when she was on shots.
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I'm really impressed your daughter put in the work to enter all that data. She must be very responsible and motivated! I still write down my numbers in a little book and don't even bother to upload my meter readings b/c I'm too lazy to do anything after jotting it down.