Average Daily Carb Intake?

The hot topic threads of the past couple of days have made me think a lot about our approach. As I've already said, we used almond flour/coconut flour, etc. already pre-diabetes due to multiple allergies. We have found these to be very BG-friendly, and my daughter has found that when she eats fairly low-glycemic, she feels much better. Now we're experimenting with extended boluses which we'd never used and didn't think would help because her boluses were bringing her down to target at the 4 hour mark. While we do eat low-glycemic most of the time, I don't limit carbs. Last night she had 45 g. of chicken with marinara sauce, baked potato, green beans, and an apple for supper and her top spike was a 129. Lots of good nutrients and a spike that isn't much above what a non-D's post-prandial is. I'd call that amazing success for that meal. (I wish they all were like that!)

Her average carb intake for the day is around 120. Is that low, medium, or high carb? I realized I don't even have a frame of reference of what is typical. I know she eats a lot and always has, but she has an extremely high metabolism.

I'm so thankful for all I've learned here as far as strategies to manage better. I'd love to learn more about the extended bolus if anyone wants to share.

 

We don't limit carbs either, but definitely have an eye on the overall picture. When baking for instance, I always reduce sugar about 25% and up protein and fiber content - but I always did that before D came into our house as well.

My son will be 5 next month and averages 120-140g a day. I don't worry about the number of carbs in his diet in and of itself, but it is a secondary consideration when looking at our families' diet as a whole. For instance, before D and now... the kids are limited to 1 small glass of juice a day (my D son gets fruitables or equivalent). Could I just bolus him for the regular juice box? Sure.. but have less possibility of a timing spike with fruitables, and he likes them, so it's not an issue. Same goes for the lower sugar baking.. no one even knows that I'm making these changes behind the scenes, so no issues created.

We tend to eat fairly low GI foods as well, having mostly whole grain bread, noodles etc and a good amount of protein and fat with each meal. I have found though that too low GI can be a bit of a problem for us though, as we have a tendency to get lows with/just after the meal - especially lunch and supper. Even with bolusing at the time he starts eating, we often end up low in the short term. I have actually had to start adding some high GI foods to every meal, so that there's more of a balanced glycemic effect. For instance if we have a very low GI meal (like black bean burritos with guacamole and salsa), in order to avoid lows I have to start the meal with some grapes or a few ounces of juice.

No interest here in moving to a 'low carb' diet either for my son or my whole family, as, in addition to all the emotional issues that would bring up, I think it would take a complete overhaul of how we manage his diabetes. And some of our trickiest meals are the high protein ones - like if we have a steak bbq with salad for dinner. Even though the carbs are quite low for the meal, my son ends up spiking to the teens and staying there for hours in the 3-6 hour period after eating. His body manages to convert a heck of a lot of protein into carbs. Wouldn't want to contend with this on a daily basis!

 

120-150 g of carbs. DD is 14.

 

Do you subtract fiber? We saw more stability when we started doing so. I fought the concept for a while as too much work and another learning curve, but once we took the plunge and did it and figured out her adjusted carb ratios, it really helped.

 

120 carbs is statistically lower than the average American eats (which could easily exceed the US gov recommended 300 carbs per day). There are members on this site who eat about what your eating, some who eat less and some who eat what a typical American would eat. At 120 carbs per day you are presently eating a lower carb diet without "limiting carbs." Mark Sisson recommends 50 to 100 for adults. How cool is that that you can accomplish that without feeling limited.

I don't know that the pre-diabetes is due to allergies but it seems reasonable that it could be and that would make a great hypothesis for a study. If I were in your shoes I would probably do the same thing while others would take a different approach.

In your case it seems like eating lower carb would stress the beta cells less than high carb, allow for less error in carb counting, reduce testosterone if pcos, coupled with a reduction in PUFA's and trans fats might lower risk of heart disease and cancer, and coupled with reduction/elimination of allergens, lectins, gluten, and casein, just might delay or head off the development of type 1. A lower carb diet necessitates the inclusion of more vegetables, and can allow you to focus on healthy fats and proteins.

The downside of course is that you will be eating differently than most people, might feel limited, or might miss high carb/high glycemic foods. If you are an athlete it might be hard to fuel intense exercise without more fast carbs.

So where do you buy the almond flour and coconut flour? Is it expensive?

So, to answer your question, my 9 year old daughter eats maybe 150 carbs per day with some days being much less and others being much more. My 13 year old son has chosen to avoid more of the foods with higher carb counts and he has a goal of about 60 carbs per day from sources other than fruits and vegetables - I don't know what his total would be since I don't count his carbs.

 

I have no idea what daily carbs are, to be honest. I know lunches, just because they get labled for school.

My best guesses on averages:
DS - breakfast is 80, lunch is 95, afternoon snack is 75, dinner is 60. Total of 310.
DD - breakfast is 60, lunch is 110, afternoon snack is 40, dinner is 70. Total of 280.

He's 12, she's 10. The numbers vary day to day (except lunch) but I'd say those are fairly good for averages.

I'm not sharing our food prep or food types or approaches to carbs or glycemic index, however. Group has been a little too judgmental on both sides lately and I'm staying out of that debate!

 

Ah, a reasonable discussion about carbs. How refreshing!

 

We limit carbs PER HOUR. My son has a 100 carb limit PER HOUR. So we tell him that he can't have more than 100 carbs per meal, but if we go out to a restaurant, and it's 120, we let it slide and cover a bit extra. If there's a party or something, we might let him have more than 100 per hour. But on a normal daily routine, meals don't top 100 carbs, and snacks don't top 40 carbs, and total per hour doesn't top 100 carbs. His average per day is about 300 carbs. My son is a growing teenage boy, and we encourage him to eat more. If I see 55 carbs on his plate, we'll probably say "That doesn't look like enough food. You have 45 carbs left, why don't you find some more food?" Half of his plate is veggies. Yesterday for lunch he had a sandwich, apple, broccoli, and cauliflower. At breakfast, he eats an entire cucumber (weighs about 200-300 grams I think, he gets it ready).

This is based off our last nutrition appointment, where the nutritionist told us (based on a whole bunch of calculations), that he shouldn't be eating more than 400 carbs a day on average, and that that leaves 100 per meal, and 100 total for snacks.

It works fine for my son, and he is never told he cannot have treats other kids are having. It does limit him to two slices of pizza per meal, and he gets cranky about that sometimes. Sometimes he is told he needs to wait 10 minutes. If he is told he can't have a treat, it's because of a non-diabetic reason, like he did something wrong, like "you hit your brother so you have to go to bed with no dessert" type of thing.

Edit to add: He's 15, 130 pounds, 5'8", pretty active with all his after school activities.

Also, breakfast is around 40-70, lunch 70-90, dinner varies so much. Snacks are normally around 15-25.

 

My nine year old son, Connor, consumes about 75 total carbs per day max. I attribute his eating habits to me as I am in my fortieth year as juvenile diabetic. Connor’s Endo admitted the low diagnosis Hba1c of 9 to our diet which was already established. Interestingly Connor’s Hba1c dropped to 6.3 on our ninety day follow up. I am thankful that we caught his diagnosis early. Looking back the signs were already there and I was surprised that I did not catch it sooner. All is good now!

 

I haven't really thought about how many carbs he gets on a daily basis.

A high-carb breakfast for us is 42 and that includes grits and milk. A normal lunch is around 70, and dinner can range from 20-70. Dinners are typically meat and veggies, but sometimes pasta or rice. He probably has no more than 200 grams of carbs a day and that would be unusual to go that high.

I don't consciously limit his carbs.

 

That is awesome, a cph limit My oldest son could use a CPH limit with his never ending appetite!

We don't try to limit but my youngest son with t1d had a very adverse reaction to wheat/grain based carbs for a long time and other than rice and fruit he'd refuse most other carbs - we found out it was due to celiac disease and we are still slowly adding a larger variety of carbs back into his diet. At this point his typical daily carb intake is about 80 grams, and is usually eaten as a variety of homemade gluten free baked goods, plain potato chips, fruits and high fat yogurt(...and rice!) Our GF baked goods are a mix of almont, coconut and a few other GF flours so they are lower GI than most baked goods, we also ususally sweeten most foods with agave nectar which seems to help.

 

I honestly had no idea, but I checked the pump software - over the last 30 days, my daughter averaged 218.8 carbs per day. Who knew?

 

I am so relieved to hear that a lot of (can I venture a guess and say "most") other parents here are not ANCHF (almost no-carb, high fat) Whack-Jobs, and that I am not poisoning my child and dooming her to a life of peripheral neuropathy, blindness, dialysis, and no feet because I let her eat carbs. I am now willing to listen and begin taking baby steps down a reasonable path to pare down (slightly and gradually) the average number of carbs my daughter with T1D and our whole family consumes on a daily basis. I still firmly believe that a LCHF diet is not a healthy one, either physically or psychologically, for a growing child (especially one with T1D.)

Does anyone have a recipe for a lower-carb pizza? Even though my daughter is on her honeymoon and even with pre-bolusing (we are not yet on a pump [G_d only knows it's not for lack of trying] so we can't do extended bolusing), pizza results in hours of elevated BGs.

 

I have found eating thin crust pizza helps a bit, but pizza is always a challenge for her. She doesn't eat it very often so it is not a big deal most times. One other point, you can do an "extended bolus" on MDI, but it requires an extra shot and some trial and error. Figure out the total amount of carbs for the pizza/meal. Then try giving 1/3 of that amount during the meal and then the other 2/3 several hours later when you would expect to see the spike. It is not 100% foolproof, but many people have success with it. You may have to play around with the amount you give upfront and the amount you give later on. And you may want to check her bg more often than usual later on, to make sure the second bolus doesn't make her go too low.

Good luck and I am glad to hear that you are taking a sensible, (emotionally) healthy approach to your child's diet.

 

I sometimes do th e cauliflower pizza crust, no carbs! But like others, I did that before E had D - just to be a bit healthier. And when baking about 1/3 of the flour I use almond flour or flax to reduce carbs a bit. That was pre-D too.

My DD is 3. Her carbs are not limited, but s he is offered many non or lower carb options (pre-D as well) like veggies. She averages around 70 carbs/day. I feel like thta is pretty average for her age ??

 

My son is 10 and our carb break down looks something like this:-

Breakfast 45g
Snack 15g
Lunch 45g
snack 15g
snack 15g
Dinner 50-60g

I don't limit carbs but since diagnosis I have tried to avoid overly high carb meals, as i'm a bit scared of increasing the insulin by so much compared to his usual doses, i'm hoping this is something I feel more comfortable with in time.

 

My best guess is 80 to 120 carbs a day for our 40-lb 4-year-old. I have a hazy memory that a prior CDE said that a reasonable top daily number for a growing preschooler would be about 130, which is a number we rarely approach.

We don't limit, and in fact there have been points that we actively push carbs because my daughter got pretty lean in the couple of months before her celiac diagnosis, and we felt like we had a little catching up to do. At the same time, I also think that her diabetes diagnosis has made us more carb and GI conscious, and overall nutrition conscious, than we would have been otherwise. We try to rely as much as possible on fruit and whole grains (a new challenge on the GF diet) for carbs, and we stock far less junk food in our house than we probably would have without T1.

While we don't limit total carb intake, we have grown wary of super high- carb meals that far exceed the norm; when our daughter eats a big carb-bomb meal, like a Tex-Mex dinner out we did last week, we find her insulin needs are less predictable and her bgs are more erratic afterwards (e.g., a fairly comforting post-prandial number, followed by a huge spike a couple hours later).

 

This is my pizza recipe. Mainly we use it because 2 of my kids are GF but it ends up being low carb too.

GF pizza crust.

Ingredients:

1 c tapioca starch

1 c millet flour

2 c garbanzo bean flour

1 1/2 tsp Italian seasoning

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp xantham gum

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 c olive oil

2-3 c water or milk



Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450. If you have a pizza stone, put it in the oven while it preheats; if not, place a cookie sheet in the oven to preheat. I find using the stone makes for a less soggy crust.

2. In a bowl, mix dry ingredients.

3. Add oil and water and mix thoroughly. I usually add the oil and 2 cups of liquid and then end

up adding another cup. You want a very moist sticky dough. Even times I have thought my dough was way too sticky it turned out fine.

4. On a piece of parchment paper, spread out about half the dough (I usually have enough to make 2 bigger pizzas plus one little one for Gloria). You want to make the pizza about the size and shape of your pizza stone or cookie sheet. It may spread with a rubber spatula or you can get messy and use your hands.

5. Bake each crust on the preheated stone/sheet for approx. 15 minutes until it is well set but not getting too brown. You just keep it right on the parchment. It will stick to it before you bake it but once it is all done, it will come off easily.

6. Remove crust from oven, put on your toppings, and return to oven (still on the parchment and on the stone or cookie sheet) for another 7 minutes until cheese is melted.

The beauty of this crust is that it is also pretty low carb. The whole recipe is 300g of carbs so if you make 2 pizzas and cut them into 8 slices each, that is less than 20g of carbs per slice. I should say this would be with water (or almond milk) but milk would not add many more carbs.

 

I am new here. What is bolus? I have seen it in many of the replies here and don't know what you mean by it.

Stephen eats about 200 carbs per day. (I have been tracking everything since we found out a week ago) but I was told to feed him normally and not make any changes to his diet.

 

Roberta, I just printed this recipe and will give it a try! Have you ever tried freezing one of these pizzas (after pre-baking and adding toppings but before the final baking?) I have little time to cook and would like to be able to make a bazillion of these pizzas on a Sunday and freeze them for future use.

Thanks again!