Down for the Count: How to Figure Out Carbs in THM Recipes

Updated: Dec 4, 2022

Hi Cheerful Health friends!

I've current got several 1-1 clients who either are diabetic of some sort or have family members who are diabetic so I thought I'd do a tutorial on how I help them AND help myself to find the carb counts for the THM recipes which is helpful in figuring out insulin doses (amongst other things!).

This can easily overwhelm you if you're just at the beginning of your diabetes journey, but don't let it be. You're working on 1 recipe at a time--not a whole cookbook! And if we're talking about THM cookbooks then it's really only the E meals you would need to worry about the carbs in so that cuts down significantly on the work load. If you make notes of carb counts as you make different recipes then in not very long you'll have all the information you need to know how much insulin to give. Unfortunately, this is just part of being an insulin dependent diabetic. BUT a little work goes a long way so it's absolutely worth the time and effort to do this with each E recipe you make.

I've made this video which uses a public facing E (carb based) recipe to show you how I go about figuring out the number of carbs in each E meal.

Here is the formula for doing this:

1) You will need to look up the total number of carbs for the amount of each ingredient that you're using. In this recipe I used the only things that had carbs were the oats and the low fat cottage cheese.

2) Add up all the carbs from all ingredients.

3) Divide by the number of servings in the recipes (for things like casseroles or soups) or number of the recipe yield (if it is something like pancakes, cookies, etc).

4) The number you come up with gives you the number of carbs in 1 serving or one thing (like one cookie).

5) Then you will use that number of carbs per one thing to find the total carbs in the serving size (in the case of something like cookies or pancakes, etc).

Here is the example I use in the video:

1) 84g carbs in the oats + 24g carbs in the low fat cottage cheese.

2) 108g carbs total

3) I see the recipe yield is 18 pancakes so I will divide 108g carbs/18 pancakes.

4) 108/18=6g carbs per pancake

5) A Serving size is 3 pancakes so 6g carbs X pancakes=18g carbs per serving.

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