A (3:04)

It's funny you said that. I want to, I want a crunchier fry too. I don't want soft, like I don't want a mashed potato in a shell. No, no. You know what I'm saying?

B (3:12)

It's got to have a nice crispy outside. And thankfully my got a new oven that's got an air fryer in it.

A (3:18)

Okay.

B (3:19)

Which is super exciting. It takes care of one thing on my counter that I very happily gave away.

A (3:26)

The giant air fryer.

B (3:27)

The giant air fryer. Right. But then you know, you can make healthier option while still having that.

A (3:33)

Yeah.

B (3:34)

In your diet.

A (3:35)

So it's a good idea. I will tell you, when I was growing up in the malls, there was a french fry place, they only made french fries. Surfside fry, I don't remember. But they came off very much like you were at a fair, like in a paper cone. Very salty, like you're talking about crispy. Those felt right to me. But we'll see. But let's just say you just eat a potato. So. Okay, I have here a medium potato is between 18 and 22 grams of carbs. Do you think that's pretty accurate? That hard to even know.

B (4:08)

That's kind of. That is the hard one. And that's why I, I don't love some of the food lists for looking up items because it gives it to you as a medium. Well, a medium to a child might look very different to an adult who is a 6 foot 6 man who's 210 pounds. You know what I mean? So I think those size guides are really.

A (4:35)

You want to do it by cup.

B (4:36)

Then kind of want to do it by cup. Almost makes it a little bit easier for especially I mean starchy foods in general, like the potatoes, the corn, the peas. They're similar enough in terms of portion by cup. And cups are easy to eyeball. A woman's fist is like the size of a 1 cup portion.

A (4:55)

Okay. All right.

B (4:56)

So that's an easy eyeball.

A (4:58)

So cooked potatoes at about a cup, I'm seeing a range here between 20 and 37. Do you have like a go to number for carbs?

B (5:06)

Actually for carbs that fist size portion of like mashed potatoes, for example, 30 grams. It's a good estimate 30 a cup of potatoes.

A (5:15)

We'll call it 30 grams.

B (5:17)

Yep.

A (5:18)

I don't think anybody boils a potato, but the same idea. If you were going to boil a potato and then kind of fork mash it. Are you talking about a cup mashed or a cup prior to mashing it?

B (5:28)

That's a great question. Because if you mash it. Yeah, right. You could really, really mash it and.

A (5:34)

Jam a lot more into the cup.

B (5:36)

And jam potentially a lot more in the cup than little chunks that maybe you have three chunks compared to the mashed in, which is 10 chunks. When I'm talking mashed, I mean a one cup mashed portion is about 30 grams. Yes.

A (5:51)

Let's say we're just going to sit down and eat mashed potatoes in a cup, which I think we've all done after Thanksgiving once or twice. So don't you think somebody's. Does not everybody pull out the mashed potatoes, a tiny bit of gravy, a little bit of turkey, mix it up in a bowl and heat it back up again and eat it?

B (6:05)

You might.

A (6:06)

I mean, I do, Scott. Might. That's how I do my leftovers after Thanksgiving. It's like a thick turkey. Mashed potato soup is how I handle it.

B (6:14)

There you go.

A (6:15)

Yeah.

B (6:15)

So with port. So we've got portion.

A (6:17)

Yep, we got the portion.

B (6:19)

When we're talking about bolusing for your typical baked potato, white baked potato kind of thing.

A (6:26)

Right.

B (6:28)

What impacts how you plan tabolis for it? Like if you go through your list of your acronym. Right.

A (6:36)

Measure first. Measure first, evaluate. So where's my blood sugar at? Which way is it moving? Do I have any planned activity coming up, like those kinds of ideas? So we've been generally just putting ourselves at like a hundred blood sugar. It's pretty stable.

B (6:54)

Yep.

A (6:55)

I'd prefer it to be a little lower than that, but. Okay, so we're gonna bolus now for the potato and you know, maybe a little bit to get that blood sugar down to 80. That'd be nice too. Go ahead, do it for me. How would you bolus for it?

B (7:06)

In that evaluation and even in the measuring. What's the hit factor? When we talk about carbohydrates. Right. We talk about glycemic index.

A (7:16)

Yeah. A potato is not gonna hit that quickly.

B (7:19)

Well, if you eat it alone.

A (7:21)

Yeah.

B (7:21)

What's the glycemic index of like baked mashed potatoes? Do you know, Scott?

A (7:25)

No, but we could figure it out together. By that, I mean, you could tell me or I can find out, it's up to you.

B (7:30)

It's actually fairly high glycemic.

A (7:32)

Is it? There's a lot of sugar in a baked potato.

B (7:35)

Baked potato is all carbohydrate. A fiber, too. If you eat the skin and all of that kind of stuff, sure, there's definitely fiber in it, but it is pretty high glycemic.

A (7:46)

Okay.

B (7:46)

So the glycemic nature goes down when you start to add in the other pieces. Like we talked about fries to begin with.

A (7:53)

Right.

B (7:53)

You might talk about baked potato being glycemic index around 85 to 90 ish if you look at most lists. But when we talk about fries, the glycemic index goes down into like 70ish.

A (8:07)

Okay. Why does it drop?

B (8:09)

Because of the fat. The fat slows down the glycemic hit.

A (8:13)

So if I take that same baked potato and I slop some sour cream on top of it, is it more like a French fry then?

B (8:19)

Or butter. Or butter, Exactly. Yep. Stuffed baked potatoes, cheese, sour cream, all those kind of addeds in, they will slow it down.

A (8:29)

Now you're making me think. I'm sorry, no, you're making me think about a twice baked potato. That's a nice. Yeah, they're not bad. It's a very handy vegetable for something that's not really all that nutritious or good for you. Huh.

B (8:41)

It's a handy vegetable. I mean, you could use it in a lot of different ways.

A (8:44)

Yeah, you can julienne your fries. Yeah. I'm expecting. You're expecting the potato to hit pretty quickly. So we want a nice little pre bolus on there.

B (8:53)

Correct.

A (8:53)

Okay, then is it going to hit long too? Or does it depend on what we put on top of it?

B (8:59)

Well, it kind of goes into, you know, our. What is it? B. Building. We build the bowl is one of them. Right, Right. So we decide is the. Am I just sitting down and eating a potato mostly? Like, you're not gonna just have a potato as a snack. Right. So we build the bolus around the shape of the rest of the meal. If you were, however, in a single food environment, just eating this potato pre bolus is the huge focus. And you're gonna need the whole bolus upfront. Absolutely.

A (9:31)

Right in.

B (9:32)

Yep.

A (9:32)

You think you'll see a rise later.

B (9:34)

Again, just eating alone, maybe with a little bit of salt and seasoning on it.

A (9:39)

Yeah.

B (9:40)

You're gonna see a rise sooner than later. And if your bolus ratio is correct and your bolus timing is pretty good, you're gonna see that typical. What we Call a bell curve. Right up, comes down, lands you really nice.

A (9:52)

Okay. All right. And so we don't really do this usually in this series, but if I take this baked potato and I have it with a steak or I have it with chicken or, you know, something else.

B (10:06)

Mm.

A (10:07)

I'm. I. The way I think about it, like, let's say there was a plate that had, I don't know, chicken tenders on it that I made. So it's chicken breast and it's breaded. It's a baked potato and. Or mashed potatoes and, I don't know, green beans or broccoli. Like, we had broccoli the other night. So when I'm bolusing that plate, I personally think most about the potato. And then. So I hit the potato just the way you just said to. And then I do a little bit in my mind for the protein in the. In the chicken. And the carbs, I believe, are in the broccoli. And broccoli's pretty. I mean, what, six, eight grams? Maybe for.

B (10:40)

In a cooked cup, it's maybe six to eight grams of carb. Yeah.

A (10:44)

But you find people miss that, like, so, though sometimes they see green and they don't bolus. Right. So I would look at that plate that I just made up and think, okay, here's the bolus for the potato with the pre bolus. And then, you know, like, sometimes for nuggets, I just kind of go, 3, 6, 9, 12. Like, or, like, you know, I think there's four or five carbs in this.

B (11:02)

Right.

A (11:03)

Maybe the breading, et cetera. Knock it on top. I put the whole thing in at once for that plate. Is that what you would handle? Yeah.

B (11:10)

And if you're talking about. That's the way I would handle that particular meal. Yes.

A (11:15)

Okay.

B (11:15)

If we were talking about the loaded baked potato or the twice baked, as you're thinking about now, what do we add on top of it that would change the way that you build your bolus plan? It would really be, gosh, I'm having a loaded baked potato. It probably has bacon on it and sour cream and probably cheese of some kind. I guarantee, if it was from a restaurant, it probably had butter added to it while it was baking or after. All of these pieces are fat.

A (11:45)

Yeah. You could be talking about 40 or 50 grams of fat by the time you're done.

B (11:49)

You could be. And so does that change the idea of your bolus strategy? How much upfront, how much over a period of time? Maybe an extended bolus if you're Using multiple daily injections, you might actually do some upfront and some at the end of the meal. Again, there are a lot of strategies that you can use, but you do have to think about those added pieces. When we're just looking at bolusing for.

A (12:15)

Carbohydrate, how much fat on that potato leads to not needing the entire amount upfront because it's going to slow it down so much. So there's a little bit of a science experiment in there for you. So if there's some fat, maybe adjust your pre bolus and work on an extended bolus or a secondary infusion.

B (12:34)

Yeah.

A (12:35)

Okay. All right. Well, thank you. This was awesome. Good.

B (12:38)

Yay.

A (12:48)

In each episode of the Bolus four series, Jenny Smith and I are going to pick one food and talk through the bolusing for that food. We hope you find it valuable. Generally speaking, we're going to follow a bit of a formula, the Meal Bolt formula. M, E, A, L, B, O, L, T. You can learn more about it@juiceboxpodcast.com meal-bolt but here's what it is. Step 1. M Measure the meal. E evaluate yourself A, add the base units. L layer A correction. B, build the bolus shape. O offset the timing. L look at the CGM&T tweak for next time. In a nutshell, we measure our meal total carbohydrates, protein, fat. Consider the glycemic index and the glycemic load. And then we evaluate yourself. What's your current blood sugar, how much insulin's on board, and what kind of activity are you going to be involved in or not involved in? Do you have any stress hormones, illness, what's going on with you? Then a, we add the base units, your carbs divided by insulin to carb ratio. Just a simple bolus. L layer a correction. Right? Do you have to add or subtract insulin based on your current blood sugar? Build the bolus shape. Are we going to give it all up front 100% for a fast digesting meal, or is there going to be like a combo or a square wave bolus? Does it have to be extended? I'll set the timing. This is about pre bolusing. Does it take a couple of minutes this meal, or maybe 20 minutes? Are we going to have to again consider combo, square wave boluses and meals? Figure out the timing of that meal and then l look at the CGM. An hour later, was there a fast spike? Three hours later, was there a delayed rise? Five hours later, is there any lingering effect from fat and protein. Tweak, tweak for next time. T what did you eat? How much insulin and when? What did your blood sugar curve look like? What would you do next time? This is what we're going to talk about in every episode of Bolus 4. Measure the meal, evaluate yourself, add the base units, layer a correction, build the bolus shape, offset the timing, look at the cgm, tweak for next time. But it's not going to be that confusing and we're not going to ask you to remember all of that stuff. But that's the pathway that Jenny and I are going to use to speak about each bolus. And hey, thanks for listening all the way to the end. I really appreciate your loyalty and listenership. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of the Juice Box Podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording wrongwayrecording.com.