Odds and Ends

What a difference two weeks makes.

We've been in the new place a week now. Still getting things arranged and unpacked, but already we're SO. MUCH. HAPPIER. And not just because we are finished with the crazy landlord.

The house itself is amazing, if a little dated. I like to think of that as "old fashioned charm." Well, 70's era old fashioned charm, as opposed to little house on the prairie charm. It really is perfect for us - we have more room than before, and the house is chock full of hidden little storage areas and built-ins (some of which we had to conference with a group of people just to figure out what exactly it was, like the old school can opener in the pantry). My kitchen actually has enough shelving for my humoungous collection of cooking paraphenalia - a definite first of anywhere we've lived! There is a little trash chute next to the stove top that goes to a garbage can in the garage - absolutely brilliant! I actually have a pantry in this house, which is a huge plus. The baby's room is a good size - we can fit the furniture we've already bought in it. And our bathroom is so big, I feel like we have a whole wing to ourselves. The only negative comment I can make on the place in that the oven and stovetop are 60's era tiny. I own pans that are too wide to fit the oven. So no giant hams or roasted turkeys for me for the moment.

(Room for more random cooking supplies!!)

My handy cookbook shelf in the kitchen, for easy recipe access. And, no, this is not all of my cookbooks. :)

(And check out the awesome 70's bar. Love, love, love the wall paper back here. I look at it and feel the urge to put on some bell bottoms and polyester.)


It's hard to believe that everything managed to come together in the span of a week. I'm not gonna lie - it was a rough, rough week. Between the rental market being very tight right now, our ridiculous time table, realtors and landlords not returning calls, and then at the end of the week, my poor husband came down with the stomach flu - I was ready to pull my hair out. Or plot numerous ways to painfully torture the ex-landlord. To top it all off, Friday morning before the big move, my Dexcom broke. Normally not a big deal - you call the help line and they overnight you a new receiver. That is, as long as your current receiver is still under warranty.... and guess what? Mine wasn't. Which means I'd have to go through the long drawn out insurance approval process for getting a new dex, which could take weeks... or months. Have I mentioned how ABSOLUTELY DEPENDENT I am on the Dexcom? The idea of not having it at work, where I tend to run on the lower side anyway, petrified me. Plus, I would have no good blood sugar information on moving day - a day of lifting, pulling, running around, eating quick and easy and probably not easily countable things.... Yikes. Talk about crappy timing.

Anyway, I want to give a big shout out to the slew of people who showed up to help us out. Even more so because I felt a little useless, being unable to lift any of the boxes and such. It definitely made me feel like we are finally starting to have a little bit of a community here. Moving a town over, out of the cornfields and closer to where everyone else already is, has already added to that feeling immensely.

Back to the move though - it was one of the craziest things I have ever seen. The guys were moving furniture out as another friend and I were frantically dumping things willy nilly into suitcases - no order to it whatsoever. (I'm still paying for that in the unpacking phase. Where the heck are my plastic ware lids? And it took me a day and a half to find the suitcase with all my underwear, hidden in a closet.) Also, moving that quickly allows no time for thought about how you want to arrange and organize the new place... So when the poor guys come lugging in heavy furniture and ask, "Where do you want this?", I generally stood there looking dumb and saying things like, "Ummm... well... maybe.... gee, how much does that weigh?" So thanks for putting up with me, boys. I also had some fabulous girlfriends (pregnant and on no-lifting duty like me) who stayed at the new place and not only unpacked, but organized my kitchen and dining room shelves!!!!!! I am not the queen of organization - I would have ended up just throwing things in the shelves to get them out of sight. My friend, however, is a whiz at this apparently - I now have a very thoughtfully laid out kitchen that makes so much sense - I can actually get to everything I need without digging through drawers cursing. (Yes, I'm thinking of you, old spice drawer. DID I MENTION THE WORLD'S MOST GIGANTIC LAZY SUSAN THAT'S BIG ENOUGH FOR ALL MY SPICES? That's really saying something, if you are familiar with my spice collection. I got a lot of flack for that in the move... it took three bins to move them all.)

I am so amazed and so thankful to everyone and with how everything turned out. I simply can't say it enough. Once again taken care of and provided for. It honestly blows my mind.

So now I can move on to other things! Like baby news. Again, another area where I feel like things are just way too good to be possible or true, and I want to shout about how incredibly blessed I feel. I feel awesome. I never had the awful nausea and sickness my friends have been plagued with. The worst pregnancy symptom I can complain about is some seriously dry eyes (which, if I hadn't read about it on a pregnancy website, I'd have chocked up to allergies anyway). Things are going well from a diabetes standpoint. I made the drive to Ann Arbor for my biweekly appointment - an important appointment because the OB was going to evaluate whether or not I needed to start driving down weekly for check ups. And I suppose here is where I finally get an award for my type A personality - because I am so... well, anal, about sending in my blood sugars weekly and downloading the dexcom, he decided that not only do I not have to come in weekly.... we can stretch out my appointments to 4 weeks! Ah, less time in the car! Less money on gas! Sometimes it pays to be neurotic. (The flip side of that coin is when I start to notice a blood sugar pattern, I send in the numbers wanting the issues to be addressed right away, and no one calls me for three days. ACK! Drives me a tad bit insane.) Oh, and the other awesome D-related news? My last A1C - 5.9!!! I'm ecstatic. And let me give a quick kudos to my doctors for just a minute too - they are very much of the "eat healthy but don't drive yourself insane" mindset. Never once have they made even a single comment about the contents of my food diaries, even when I was prepared with explanations (pizza on moving weekend? Pastries? Ice cream?). This has had an amazing affect on my overall psyche... No judgements. Things happen. Blood sugars (and basals, coreection factors, and I:C ratios) change weekly. The most important peice is counting the carb correctly and covering with insulin accordingly. I've calmed down about the food issue a lot and am instead focusing on healthy nutrition for baby. One more stressor removed! We can eat out with friends and enjoy ourselves without freaking out about the consequences.

Some days are beautiful, like this one...

Other days I feel like I'm mountain climbing.



I'm starting to feel what I think are tiny little kicks... Which is strange when you don't know what you're really looking for... Is that gas? My stomach rumbing? A random muscle twitch? They don't come very often, but I find myself stopping...waiting...watching for them.

Next week is the big ultrasound. We've decided to find out what we're having... Mostly because I want to decorate a cute nursery and I find the gender neutral patterns... well, boring. But the more I think about it the more I like the idea. Picking out a name. Bonding with my child over that new identity. Part of me hopes that that might make this a little more *real* to me. I still have moments where I think, "Am I totally making this up??" I need the outside confirmation - and I still don't really look pregnant, so that confirmation can be hard to come by. (I find that a little odd, too. If I'm just barely shy of the halfway mark, shouldn't I start really showing???)

(Yes, that's a bump. Really.)

I'm stoked about getting another photo of the little one, too. One where he/she looks less like a gummy bear and more like... well, a baby! :)

Stress

I have every intention of writing a post dealing with the ins and outs of pregnancy and diabetes. I also have every intention of eventually posting another recipe on this so-called "foodie" website.

I've been momentarily sidetracked.

A call from our landlord at 4 pm Friday evening kinda flipped our world around for a little while.

Long story short - the house we have lived in for the past year has been "sold", and he wants us out. In 13 days. No questions asked. If we're not, he'll begin eviction proceedings.

I'm not going to focus on all the minutae in this whole ridiculous scenario, the legalities, yada, yada, yada. We've spent too much time and emotion this weekend on those things all ready.

Fact: if it is AT ALL possible for us to find a place that is move-in ready and be out of our place in that miniscule amount of time, I want to just do it. I'm tired of dealing with this guy and the crazy, unrealistic world he lives in. I want to be done with him.

Is this demand even possible?

We've spent all weekend fretting, worrying, laying multiple contigency plans, calling realtors, driving aimlessly around the little communites around us looking for rental signs, tossing and turning, dealing with the anxiety of an unrealistic time table, and fishing through craig's list for something appropriate for our family and safe enough that we'd want to bring a baby home there. (Not as easy as it sounds, when you live close to a prison and in a town that is ranked one of the top 10 most dangerous in the US).

I've lost track of who I've called, who I've emailed, what we've looked at where. Even while we understand that we aren't in a position to be picky, our few leads have turned to dead ends mostly due to the time table - "WHAT? You want to move in NEXT weekend????!!! This won't be ready till April 1st...."

The other thing I'm sick of hearing - "Why don't you just buy? You both have good jobs." If we had wanted to buy, if we were in a position to buy, we would have done it all ready. As it is, buying something in two weeks really isn't an option. So shut it.

I know everyone always says, "Stress is bad for the baby!" Stress has a way of reflecting itself in my blood sugar. After all day of driving around town and making phone calls saturday, a quick fingerstick turned up a shocking 280. Totally out of nowhere, and of course I had left the dexcom out of range so I never heard an alarm. See the feed-back loop set up here? Stress = high, which stresses me more as I imagine it hurting my child. Add in the likelihood of stress lowering your immunity and posibly making me sick, and sickness = higher blood sugar... and it's really a recipe for disaster. Oh yeah, and all that cortisol floating around my blood stream makes me crave sugar, chocolate, fried food, and grease. Again, not great for the ole numbers game.

So this morning, my husband and I piled back in the car to randomly drive some more in hopes of finding "the one". Both of us moody, sleep-deprived, emotionally charged, and anxious. After a less than productive day, as I found myself slipping further down an emotional hole, my husband turned to me and said, "Okay. Let's do a little attitude readjustment. We're in a shitty situation, yes. But we are so much luckier than so many other people who have found themselves in a similar place. We can afford to move. We can afford to put our stuff in storage for awhile, if we need to stay with friends for a while if we need more time to find a place. We can be a little pickier about the place we're looking for, even with the time crunch - we aren't forced into taking the first thing just because it's the only thing. We're going to be ok."

And that led me to remember the numerous other times we have found ourselves looking for a home. We have moved a lot - in the last few years we've been through this at least three times (although maybe not this drastically). And each time, I have had the same response - I get so upset, so anxious, so convinced that nothing appropriate is out there, I make myself sick over it. And every time, at seemingly the last moment, something seems to fall out of the sky that is exactly what we need. We are taken care of. We are provided for.

Why is my memory so short? Three times. Three prayers answered in sometimes crazy ways. Why do I still doubt?

It's time to have a little faith. Even if things don't end up as I planned, we will be better off at the end of all this. We will be better off for going through this together. And in the midst of this choas, I am still so blessed - with a husband who can point my attention to the things that really matter, who loves and defends his growing family. We are blessed with jobs that allows us the resources to find safe and appropriate housing, no matter how long that process takes. We are blessed with amazing family and friends who have offered us their own homes to crash in and their manpower to help us move (possibly twice!!). And we are blessed with a little life, who depends on his mommy to talk a breathe, calm down, and take care of herself during this whirlwind. I guess that's probably good practice for later. :)

It's really, really amazing what a few months can do to your whole outlook.

I can't really remember a time when I have felt so blessed. As corny as it may sound, there is a background tune of happiness to my days now - a complete 180 from just a couple months back.

We found out I was pregnant a few days before Christmas. The most perfect Christmas present ever. A little, happy secret just the two of us knew.

I just officially hit the 13th week mark. Yay, second trimester! This was full of good things for us - a collective sigh of relief from my husband and I as we past the point of possible miscarriage. Starting to tell our families and friends. Realizing just how big an outpouring of love and support we have, and that our baby will have.

I have been so lucky with a relatively easy pregnancy so far. Or maybe, because we waited for so long and wanted this so badly, the normal pregnancy symptoms people complain about became just another source of joy to us. Which sounds crazy, I know - but it's absolutely true. For my husband, especially - because to him, those symptoms meant things were ok. That everything was progressing normally. We would sit together on the couch as my nausea prevented me from cooking dinner (because my "morning sickness" was always in the early evenings) and be excited because I felt gross. :) If I was feeling good and energetic, I would hear, "Is everything OK??" with a little frantic undertone.

Today was the first day I couldn't button my jeans. But I don't look pregnant.... I just look... well, chubby. :) But I'm ok with that, too. For once, I actually think it's kinda funny and endearing. Sweats are definitely my friend these days. Oddly enough, it's actually the lack of shirts that fit me that's sending me out to the maternity stores with a friend this week. Darn fitted shirts. :)

The diabetes part of things has been a bit of a roller coaster, both from a numbers angle and an emotional angle. Finally, after guilt-ridden tear fest over post prandial blood sugar numbers, my husband made a good point. "Don't get so wrapped up in the diabetes stuff that you forget to enjoy being pregnant." Well said, baby. And that's definitely not to say that I'm not trying. That I'm not obsessively poking my fingers and adjusting, adjusting, adjusting. That I'm weighing everything that goes into my mouth and doing my best not to SWAG bolus. But my husband is a pretty smart guy - he knows if left to my own devices, my type A personality will drive myself batty analyzing the numbers and then never feeling like they are "good enough". So at some point, it is in my (and my baby's) best interest just to stop the constant flow of worry, let it go, trust that everything will go as it should, and just be IN this beautiful, incredible, amazing moment.

Miracle

I have a lot I want to say about this, obviously. There is so much rolling around in my head, I hardly know where to begin.

But for now, just this -

Pure Joy.

My Awesome Dad

I am just recently back from a trip home. I love going home, and yes, I make that 5 1/2 hour drive willingly rather too often. Any excuse is good enough for me. My latest is a fun one though - my dad and I have been taking some cooking classes together, which has been an absolute blast. This one was "Spanish" themed - lots of sherry vinegar, garlic, roasted red peppers, and paprika on the ingredient list. Good stuff.

I definitely am, and always have been, a daddy's girl. Ever since my dad retired a couple years back, we have had a morning tradition when I'm at home. We head down to the local Starbucks, order our lattes, and sit for an hour or two - just talking. I absolutely adore this routine of ours - I get to hear all about my dad's painting and art classes and his latest trips camping out west. And my dad gets to learn a little about my life, and a lot about diabetes.

When I was diagnosed with type 1, I was two months away from turning 19. Two months away from leaving for college, and living on my own. My pump was a rushed delivery and then a crash course in learning to use it. From day 1, I was in control of my health outcomes. I guess because of the timing of everything, my parents never really absorbed the diabetes memos. They knew vaguely what it was, and that it was bad. But they never had to stick my finger, or give me an insulin injection, or figure out a carb ratio, or learn to carb count like so many parents of diabetics do. So until recently, they were really still in the dark about the realities of my chronic disease, and what it entails.

Over our morning coffee, my dad discovered all about my CGM and how it works. I think he was really blown away by the technology. We talked about the auto-immune part of diabetes, and how that is different than type 2. And he learned how another of our shared activities, running, isn't so cut and dry for me - it takes a lot of planning and testing and replanning.

And I'm excited that he now understands so much more about me.

Who's complaining about an A1C?

I just had my all my regular three month blood work drawn. Along with that dreaded measuring stick, the A1C.

My A1c result was 6.3.

I should be ecstatic. That's a really great number. Anything under 7 is good control, and anything under 6.5 is pretty stellar. (A normal A1C for a nondiabetic is around 5.)

I'm stressing over decimal points. At this point, I really, really want to be at a flat 6. Decimal by decimal, I seem to be creeping up again, even with my new initiatives of measuring everything and watching what I eat like a hawk.

One of my friends awhile back wrote a great blog post about measuring sticks, and how women especially are always comparing themselves to others and finding themselves lacking. This idea is stuck in my head today as I compare myself to other diabetics. As if diabetes is a contest to be won.

I know I have said this before, but again I am struck by what a judging disease this is. Doctors judging you by your numbers. You judging yourself by those numbers too, and how you stand next to other members of this community. Judging yourself constantly by that piece of pizza you ate, feeling guilty over it. Misinformed people judging you over your food choices as well. Worrying, worrying, worrying, that none of this will be enough to ward off eye disease. Kidney disease. Heart disease. Vascular problems. Causing damage to someone else, to your family.

And then, when you get great results, when you see your hard work paying off..... It's ...still...not....good enough.

Reveries on Pizza and Ice Cream

Have you ever noticed that the minute someone tells you you can't have something, that is the second you start to crave it unbearably? Or, the minute you tell yourself something is off limits, it's all you can think about. Of course. Everyone in the world has noted this phenomenon, especially around this time of the year, a time of resolution making. A time of becoming "better versions" of ourselves. Personally, I admit that I am a person of very little will power. That's why, in general, it is far better for me to have nothing that is off limits. My motto has always been, for the most part, everything in moderation (except, of course, those absolutely ridiculous brownies my friend made that I COULD NOT stop eating.. But I digress.).

Well, even with moderation in mind, I have been doing some diet overhauling lately. Not in terms of a resolution, per se, but really just in search of some stellar blood sugars. A worthy pursuit to start off the year. Anyway, one easy way to quickly and markedly lower my blood sugar numbers is for me to get rid of anything difficult to carb count, or anything that I tend to "guesstimate" on. The more exact I can count my carbs, the easier I can predict the insulin I need to cover the meal and my blood sugar response afterwards. In my particular diet, the big change that this meant was to really limit the amount that I go out to eat. Ok, no big deal. A good excuse to try out some new recipes at home. And really who am I kidding? Sans going all the way to Ann Arbor, there aren't a lot of restaurants around here that really excite me. This also means that things like french fries and pizza are pretty much out. These two foods are really an achille's heel to me. Because of their fat content, I always have to give more insulin than that amount of carb would normally call for. But how much more? And how to deliver it? All at once? (Doing this runs the risk of going low an hour after eating, as the fat slows down digestion yet the insulin is already working in your blood stream.) A square wave bolus, where my pump delivers the *hopefully* right amount of insulin over a specified time? But how long does it really take to fully digest that pizza? Or I could do a dual wave bolus, where part of the insulin is given right away while the other part is given over a time frame. But that just leads to more questions for me: How do I break up the insulin amounts? Do I choose 70% now and 30% over a few hours? Or vice versa? Over three hours? Over 6 hours? And then there is the last method, the one I have had the closest amount of success with, where you give yourself the actual insulin dose for the carbs consumed, all at once, and then increase your basal rate to accomodate the fat content - so, let's say, a temporary basal rate of 135% for 6 hours. Honestly, just writing all this down makes my brain hurt. I never was much of a math guru. Afterwards is usually still a crapshoot, too, taking meter readings for the next 6 hours trying to see if you got it right - which, more often then not, I then spend making corrections one way or the other. So you see, it's complicated. Can you really blame me for saying goodbye to pizza?

Now I know there are those of you out there that COULD NOT LIVE without pizza. It seems like it's everyone's favorite food. Easy, cheap, cheesy, comforting goodness. But me? I've always liked pizza, don't get me wrong. But I just don't seem to fawn over it like some of my girlfriends do. I don't really argue the merits of this crust over that, or this pizza house compared to the other local joint. But really, if I was only ever a fair weather fan to begin with, and I only ever ate pizza at the urging of a group of friends anyway, and then to have to deal with all of the blood sugar repercussions on top of that? Just not worth it, in my opinion.

So I gave it up.

And of course, that's when the craving set in. The weirdest, oddest craving for a food item I have hitherto not cared one iota about. Literally, the idea that I couldn't have it meant that everytime a pizza hut commercial came on TV, I was drooling like Pavlov's dog. (And yes! Pizza Hut, of all places. Of all the chain pizza houses, I especially despise Pizza Hut! Yet, here they have me firmly in their grasp.) I want ooey, gooey, cheese falling off the end, grease pooling on the top pizza. What has come over me???!!!!

I lasted about 4 weeks before caving to psychology. At first I thought, how about a good pizza stand in? Something enough "pizza-like" to get this itch out of my system? I went for the Lean Cuisine pepperoni pizza. It definitely doesn't qualify as "real", but it tastes pizza-ish, and while it's not grand on the carb scale (about 56 grams in one personal size), it definitely beats all the guess work of the real thing.

Guess what?

It didn't cut it. No where near. So, all I obtained out of this whole excercise was 56 grams of carb in one sitting plus a still unabated need for cheesy-tomato-grease.

Of course, as fate would have it, the very next day on one of my numerous Ann Arbor trips, I found myself at a Costco. And this is where I reveal just how low my taste in pizza is, because of all the good pizza out there, I really love the Costco food court's pizza. Ridiculous. Embarrassing. Yeah, I know. And I caved. I got a gigantic, steaming, bigger than the grease-stained paper plate peice of goodness. I fought with the mental math. And I scarfed that sucker down within 10 minutes.

Of course, after all that comes the myriad of reasons why I didn't want to eat the pizza in the first place. First, it hit my stomach like a lead weight, that sat there for HOURS. Then, of course, the guilt set in. And of course, this was more than just "you said you weren't going to eat that" kinda guilt. This was true dia-guilt. As in being glued to your dexcom the rest of the afternoon, eyeing the screen and the trend graph marches ever upwards and you panic because you have crushed your commitment to good glucose control. Ok, looking back, I can see I was just being slightly dramatic. I did crash low and then have a rebound high as the pizza worked it's way through my system - but all in all, it wasn't a major high, never even getting over 170, which for pizza, is a flat-out miracle. So the whole experience brought me back exactly to where I started - learning the beauty of moderation. I had the "off limits" food and got that craziness out of my system. And while I won't swear off pizza again, I can't really see myself indulging any time soon - with the clear memory of blood sugar panic combined with the gross feeling of too much grease right in the forefront of my mind.

So that was a very long diatribe on a food I don't care that much about, in theory. Now comes something a little trickier - a food that I do care an awful lot about. A food that I LOVE.

Ice Cream.

I adore it. I can eat it straight out of the carton (in fact, I think it tastes better that way). I can eat it in winter during a snowstorm with negative windchills. I can (and for me, the queen of variety, this is a very big thing) eat it every, single day.

While not as difficult to carb count as pizza is, given almost all nutritional information is listed on the side of the packaging, ice cream has it's own challenges. Such as the fact that even with it's substantial amount of fat, it's a pretty concentrated source of sugar, meaning it raises blood sugar pretty intensely and quickly. And heck, if I'm going to clean up my eating habits, why not clear house entirely?

Now, I'm smart enough to know that there is NO FLIPPIN WAY I am giving up ice cream for good. That is just not happening. But I got to thinking, for the time being, was there a way I could make ice cream a little healthier? A little easier on my carb sensitive system?

Of course, the starting place of this question lands you squarely at, "How bout sorbet?" I like sorbet. But it lacks the richness, the creaminess, and that satisfying mouthfeel of ice cream. And honestly, it still contains quite a bit of sugar - often more than it's ice cream counterpart.

My answer fell into my lap while eating one of my (other) favorite snacks - plain greek yogurt and fruit. Wait a minute here. If I could make my own plain frozen yogurt, it would have less sugar than ice cream, plus be more satisfying than sorbet. Not too mention an added bonus - all the extra protein from the greek yogurt will act to slow down the sugar hitting my bloodstream! Add my own fruit for some fiber, and I see a win-win-win situation!

Now, duh, I know that frozen yogurt places have been doing this for years. But I have no pinkberry type places around me. Mid-michiganders are certainly not the type to pay 4+ dollars for something that could qualify as healthy. A hunt through local grocery stores revealed that no one sold *plain* frozen yogurt. (Flavorings usually equal more sugar, thus negating the whole plan.)

So that is how, in the middle of a snowy afternoon in January, I found myself dragging out the ice cream maker. (Shout out to my absolutely awesome girlfriend who just happened to get me one for my birthday back in August!)

Now, of course, I wanted the absolutely easiest recipe that yielded smooth, but tangy and distinctively yogurt-y flavor. I was not about to stand over a stove cooking eggs yolks for this. I'm just too darn lazy. And let me tell you friends, this was it. Three ingredients, and close to zero effort on my part led to some amazing yogurt that pinkberry would be jealous of. And I can mix in strawberries, peaches, raspberries, whatever and be free of dia-guilt!

I found this recipe on the internet, and I am sad to say, that I accidently closed the window before noting the website name. I feel horrible about that because I like to give credit where credit is due.

Homemade Frozen Yogurt

3 cups whole milk greek yogurt - * a couple of notes here. Yes, you do want full fat. And yes, you do want the thicker greek version to cut down on steps. If you use low fat yogurt, your finished product will have a thinner texture, and texture is a major thing I was going for here. And if you use regular yogurt, you will need to start with 6 cups and strain it in cheesecloth over a bowl to drain the extra liquid off. See? Just use the greek style where that is already done for you.

2/3 cup sugar (you can use up to 3/4, but i found 2/3 to be perfect and still let the flavor of the yogurt to shine.)

1 teaspoon vanilla

Yup. That's it. Most ice cream recipes aren't even this simple. Just combine all three ingredients until well blended and then park it in the refrigerator for 1 hour. Then pour it in your ice cream maker and flip it on. 30 minutes later and voila! Tasty treat. Eat as it is if you like a more soft serve consistency or pack it up into the freezer for a few hours to let it ripen. Then let the creativity of toppings begin!

According to my calculations, this makes a yogurt that has 28 grams of carb in 4 ounces, but with the added bonus of 4 grams of protein. This is an exchange I can live with!