Resource 1
Meals
Graph Method
Background
I did a carb-counting course a few years back at the hospital. I still use the info I learned, but it can be tricky to do the maths for meals. And protein/fat can throw challenges into things.
As a supplement to carb-counting, I’m going to go into my GRAPH method.
(See main Resources page for a link to the file itself).
1. The Meal
3. Hourly BGL
5. Rule of Thumb
2. Insulin
4. BGL vs Insulin Graph
Step-by-Step
Let’s go through a real-life example step-by-step.
1. Meal Details
I write a few details about the meal like:
- What & when
- A nice picture &/or short codename
2. Insulin Details
I write about the insulin injection. Things like:
- Units of insulin & type (if I use more than 1 type)
- Timing of injection (eg 30 minutes before eating)
- Potential confounders (like a walk, stress, heat)
3. Hourly Change in BGL
- I record my BGLs at the start (on the vertical axis when time is zero) and keep going until BGL is more stable (usually around 4.5-5 hours for fast-acting for me)
- I make any useful notes (like my walk above)
- Lastly I calculate the difference between the 1st and last BGLs:
for the square it’s 8-14 = -6
for the circle it’s 7-16 = -9
4. End Change in BGL vs Insulin
The orange line is a Guess-Line or “Line of Best Fit” – it’ll almost never go through zero (like here)!
Step 2 = Units of insulin
Step 3 = End Change in BGL
The shape (square, circle etc) is drawn at the intersection of those two bits of info.
5. Rule of Thumb
This is where all the previous stuff pays off and I write my ‘best’ conclusion from my data.
I try and keep the rule-of-thumb simple and usable. For example, units of insulin per piece of pizza is pretty usable.
Lastly…
There are a couple of final points I want to make about how I use this graph method.
- I calculate for as many meals as I find convenient. I don’t eat a big variety, hence a few meals covers 90% of what I eat, which is good enough for me. Some ‘meals’ are very vague, such as ‘party food’.
- The ‘line of best fit’ (could be straight, curved etc) is quite useful for correcting hypers.