Hope Warshaw currently applies more than twenty-five years of expertise in her work as a diabetes educator, nutrition consultant, and freelance writer.Hope Warshaw Associates Alexandria, Virginia Hope Warshaw currently applies more than twenty-five years of expertise in her work as a diabetes educator, nutrition consultant, and freelance writer. This lecture is intended to give practitioners an in-depth introduction to the increasingly popular diabetes meal planning approach of carbohydrate counting. The lecture begins by establishing the rationale for the use of carbohydrate counting in diabetes management. It continues with a review of current the carbohydrate recommendations for healthy eating and diabetes management. The majority of time in this lecture is spent on defining basic through advanced carbohydrate counting and describing the key knowledge and skills necessary for people with diabetes to implement this approach. The lecture concludes with a discussion of available resources to obtain the carbohydrate counts of foods and describes a method by which practitioners can teach people to build their personal food and carbohydrate database. Lastly, a discussion of the impact of carbohydrate, protein, fat and other intrinsic and extrinsic factors on glycemic rise is provided.