For example, if you are going to eat 50 grams of carbs and your I-to-C ratio is 1:8, you divide 50 by the denominator, 8, and get (rounding upward) 7 units of insulin. It is also permissible to round downward, to 6 units, if your blood sugar tends to drop into the hypoglycemic range with your given I-to-C ratio. (But see More on Insulin-To-Carb Ratios for a discussion of how your I-to-C ratio may vary from meal to meal.)
It is accordingly highly desirable to know how many carbs are in that meal you are anticipating eating.
Teresa recommended Calorie King Calorie Fat and Carbohydrate Counter 2007 for looking up carbs. It gives carb counts for generic foods (for instance, eggs), brand-name foods (for instance, Cheerios), and restaurant foods (for instance, spicy chicken stir-fry in a Thai restaurant). And it has carb counts for specific menu items in fast-food and chain restaurants such as McDonald's and Olive Garden.The generic and brand-name foods it covers fall in a wide range that includes all sorts of dairy products, including ice cream and yogurt; red meats, including deli; white meats, including poultry; fish and shellfish; frozen and packaged foods, including pizza; things made from grains, including bread, breakfast cereals, pancakes, waffles, desserts, donuts, etc.; sweets and snacks, including candy, chocolate, chewing gum, nuts, granola bars, and the like; beverages, including coffee, tea, soda, sports drinks; and even alcoholic libations, including beer and wine.
You can also find out how many carbs are in packaged foods simply by reading the nutrition label. First you determine what a "serving" is; it may be different from the amount you intend to eat. For example, a "serving" of Cheerios is officially 1 cup, which also happens to be 1 oz. It has 22 grams of carbs. If you intend to eat 1.5 cups, you'll have half again as many carbs, which come to 33 g.
If one serving of a given food has more than 5 g of dietary fiber, you'll subtract the amount of dietary fiber. Since a serving of Cheerios has only 3 g of fiber, you can ignore this. If you were eating All-Bran, you would honor it. If you were eating, say, kidney beans, the high fiber content would likewise cause you to subtract it out and work with "net carbs" instead of total carbs. For all other foods, ignore the net-carbs adjustment.
Some books on carb counting work with "exchange lists." Teresa gave me Carb Counting and Exchange Lists: Tools To Help You Plan Your Meals. An "exchange" is something like a "serving." Different types of foods have different numbers of grams of carbohydrates per exchange. Most cereal- and grain-based ("starchy") foods use 15 g per exchange, as do most fruits, "starchy" vegetables, sweets, desserts, and so forth. Non-starchy veggies of the type you would put in a garden salad use 5 g per exchange, one-third that of starchy foods. Milk: 8 g per exchange, one-half of a starch exchange. Meats: 0 g. Fatty foods such as nuts and oils: 0 g.
If you eat at a Chinese restaurant, Teresa told me, you can think of each 1/3 cup of rice that you eat with your main course as 1 exchange = 15 g. The main dish (if not breaded) is apt to be a mixture of meat (or seafood) and vegetables, and you will likely eat enough of it to account for 2 exchanges. If you eat it with a cup of rice, that's 5 exchanges. Each large egg roll appetizer is 2 exchanges. Small egg rolls are 1 exchange apiece. Most Chinese soups are 0, but wonton soup will give you 1 exchange for every 4 wontons, and egg drop soup with noodles is 1 exchange. Once you know the total number of exchanges in the meal, you can multiply that number by 15 grams to compute your carbs.
Thats where your insulin-to-carbs ratio comes in. If it is 1:8, and if your meal will comprise 7 exchanges (105 g), you will inject 13 or 14 units of insulin, depending on whether you round up or down.
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