carbs are definitely good, tho some are better than others. carbs provide fuel for your body. without them, you have to start digesting fat. that's why low-carb diets let you lose weight so fast. you're basically starving yourself and tricking yourself into not feeling hungry by filling up on protien. from what i know, that's not exactly the healthiest thing to be doing on any count.
the thing with starches is to watch how much you have and what type. simple sugars (fruit, juice, candy, soda, etc) will raise your blood sugar quickly but will also leave your system quickly. so, if you have a low blood sugar, the first thing you want to go for is a simple sugar. in general, tho, you want to try to avoid them (they're okay in moderation, and can be good as part of a larger meal).
some foods like milk, white bread, cereal, muffins, and cake, have both simple sugars and complex carbs.
complex carbs (pasta, potatoes, rice, most breads, etc) digest more slowly. they raise your sugar gradually, but keep it there. so, when you have a low, it's good to get some complex carbs in after the sugar to keep you from going low again. they're also good as part of a meal to keep your blood sugar stable. they're especially good if you're going to be excersizing after the meal.
now, that's the other part of the equation... carbs are fuel, excersize is how you use it. if you excersize more, you may need to eat a bit more. the tricky thing is that the effects of excersize can last for hours afterwards. if you excersize in the afternoon, have a normal dinner, and go to sleep, you can feel fine have a normal test at bedtime, and then have a low blood sugar the next morning. it's happened to me more than once when i forgot to compensate. by the same token, if you excersize less, your sugar may be higher than usual the next morning.
now, most diets these days work by "carb counting." you're allowed a certain amount of carbs per day or you take a certain amount of medication per unit of carbs or something like that. i learned by the older system that counted simple sugars and complex carbs seperately. i think it's more accurate. in any case, if you're on a carb-counting diet, then any unit of carbs counts the same... an apple can be substituted for half a cup of pasta, a third of a cup of rice, an ounce of bread, etc. that'll usually work in the daytime, but you should watch what you have at night. try to have more complex carbs for dinner or at bedtime because they have to last you until breakfast. even though you don't burn that many calories while sleeping, you can still go low at night if you don't have enough slower-digesting foods.
another thing to watch out for is alcohol. it contains carbs in one form or another, but i'm also told that the alcohol itself tends to lower your blood sugar. i don't drink, so i don't know how that works, but that's what i've been told. you can still have alochol, but you should talk to someone who can help you plan for it.
as for quantities of food in general, the best thing to do is just stick to the diet you were given. you'll learn to cheat gradually and to estimate the content of complicated restaurant foods (pizza, for example, has complex carbs on the bottom, sugar in the sauce, and protein on top. plenty of other dishes have a bunch of things mixed together... rice and vegtables and chicken... makes it a bit trickier to estimate how much of what kind of food there is in your portion if you haven't cooked and measured it yourself).
incidentally, weight watchers, jenny craig, and a lot of other popular diet plans are based on the diabetic diet. the idea is the same - proper nutrition. have the right amount of the right kinds of food for your body type and activity level, and you can get your weight where it's supposed to be and have a healthy metabolism. as long as you can stick to the diet, that is. i never found the willpower to stick to any of those diets until i was diagnosed and they told me "stick to your diet. your life depends on it." amazing the motivating power of that phrase...
Paul
