Gestational Diabetes... - Bennett,CO

I was diagnosed close to the end of my pregnancy. I basically just stayed away from carbs. If I ate bread, I would eat wheat. I only noticed if I ate fast food, my glucose levels went up. My only problem from with GD was for the last month of my pregnancy I didn't gain any weight- it was nice in the fact I lost all the weight quick, but my son was only 6 lbs 5oz when he was born 10 days early. I tried to do a high protein low carb diet.

easy, peasy! It truly is simple. Check out the American Diabetes Assoc's website for great ideas.

Breakfast: I was allowed 2 carbs....& rotated cereal, bagels, granola, oatmeal, etc. Total carb on this should = 30g....so be sure to read the labels for serving sizes. For example, my normal serving of cereal was over, & I ended up having to use a measuring cup to govern myself. :)
With this, I would have a fruit & a milk. On shaky (low blood sugar count) mornings, I would add in protein. As my #s improved, I found that I had to add protein to my breakfast each day. I relied on P.B, lean ham, & eggs for this all-important morning protein.

A.M. Snack: a carb & a milk. For this, I used a good carb such as graham crackers....& avoided bad carbs such as pretzels, chips, etc. Sometimes I would do apple slices & P.B., but also learned to love lime juice squeezed over green apples! Quite often I did sub fruit for the carb since it was summer & the fresh fruit was awesome. Really watch those serving sizes on the fruit, though. :)

Lunch: I rotated lean ham, baked/grilled chicken breast, tuna (in water) & lean hamburger for most of my meals. I made sure I had only 1 carb....focusing my carb choice on pasta, potatoes, etc. Rarely did I have bread at lunch. I loaded up on vegies, trying to have both cooked & fresh with lunch....& had a lot of salads. If I had subbed fruit for my a.m. snack, then I avoided fruit at lunch time.....unless I had 4oz of juice. But most of the time I drank unsweetened, decaf tea.

P.M. Snack: I always had 1 carb + protein + milk for this snack. Fresh, zero/low calorie vegies too. I'd do a 1/2 sandwich of lean ham or PB most days. The reason I added in protein was the timing between lunch & dinner....some days it was 6 hours or more!

Dinner: 1 carb, again - usually pasta, potatoes, etc. 2 servings of protein, a fruit, & again...a ton of fresh/cooked vegies. Dinner was a ton of food! & the reason for 2 servings of protein was due to it's stabilizing effect on my #s. I simply did better with 2 servings.

Bedtime Snack: almost every single night, I had graham crackers & milk. This combo was simply the best choice for stabile #s in the morning.

Hope this breakdown helps! A lot of what I learned from the dietician has followed me these past 16 years. When my DH was diagnosed with diabetes, this training proved to be a Godsend! Good Luck & feel free to PM me if you have questions.

EDIT: my dietician did allow carbs like pasta, potatoes, etc. As long as the serving size was appropriate & I ate the rest of my meal, these were okay. My DH is a diabetic, & he is also allowed carbs such as this - in moderation. :)

I was just diagnosed two weeks ago with gestational diabetes and have been on the diabetes diet for a week now. My diabetes specialist gave me a booklet that explains the diet in detail. I'm assuming you are on the same kind of diet since this is directly from the American Diabetes Association. You should be able to eat up to 45 grams of carbs per breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and eat 15 grams of carbs at snack times between breakfast and lunch and then lunch and dinner (for the 1800 calorie diet--it's different based on the calorie allowance). Your after dinner snack should be 15-20 grams of carbs (this one is given more allowance so your fasting blood sugar is stable in the morning).

You should have a chart of carbs portions and exchanges in the literature you received. The main thing is to make sure you are eating the proper portions of everything. You should technically be able to eat anything, but the better your food choices, the more satisfying your meals and snacks will be (short and long term). Get used to reading labels on everything and measuring things correctly. It will make a huge difference.

I've actually been very happy with the diet. Having done more restrictive ones in the past, it is a relief to be able to eat whatever (but in the right amounts). Some examples: breakfast is usually a couple of eggs, some cheese, and yogurt with blueberries. I could have a slice of toast with it if I wanted, but I don't like to push my carb servings. For snacks, I've had lots of different things, but since it's summer, I'm really enjoying the fresh fruit. You can eat one and a fourth cup of sliced watermelon, for instance, and that is a full carb serving. Just make sure with your snacks that you eat both a protein and a carb (sometimes just a TBSP of peanut butter with some fruit is quite satisfying). For lunch, I usually have leftovers from previous dinners, so lunch and dinners are usually things like a pork chop (or a piece of chicken, or other lean meat), green beans (or broccoli, squash, zucchini, etc.), and usually fruit or rice. You can eat lots of raw vegetables for "free" and lots of cooked vegetables for "free", with a limit of 3 cups of raw vegetables before they count as a carb serving and a limit of 1.5 cups of cooked veggies before it counts as a carb.

You are also not limited to home cooked meals. We've been in the middle of moving for the past week, so we've had to eat out a few times. If you don't have one already, ask your doctor for a fast food diet guide. I got a very handy little booklet with carb servings for every restaurant we eat in. So one day we had Taco Bell (there are burritos that are allowed on the carb allowance), another day Wendy's (Baja salad-half size--I could only eat half of it before I was stuffed, so it was only a 15 gram carb dinner), and last night ate at a pizza restaurant we enjoy. In these cases, it's really been all about picking lower carb items and limiting myself to the correct portion. So, last night for instance, I split a chef salad with my husband and had one slice of thin crust supreme pizza. It was not as much as I would normally eat but still satisfying and kept my blood sugar in check. In fact, I've only had one time that my blood sugar reading has been high, and that was not due to food.

I think my response has been too long already, but if you want anymore suggestions, please feel free to send me a private message. Good luck!

I used the portion guide/meal plan that the dietician gave me and adapted with things I actually eat.

Having trouble remembering examples but one for breakfast I ate was a scrambled egg w/ cheese, slice of toast, and 4 oz of milk. One alternative was fried egg w/ cheese on one slice of bread (still had the milk). A snack was crackers w/ peanut butter (or 1 oz of cheese such as a stick of cheese) or small 1/2 bagel with cream cheese or peanut butter. For dinner, I was able to eat alot of the same things as normal but I had to adjust my portions because I love the starches and they cause spikes in your levels. I measured or counted my portions but paid attention to the items that I could eat more of without raising my levels.

The hardest two things for me were cutting back on the starches and rethinking what each food was (some dairy items can also be counted as proteins...like cheese). Proteins and vegetables are the items you can eat more of and the proteins will help fill you up better. Pay attention to the dietician's paperwork because some beans are starches while others are not.

I had GD with my second pregnancy, and I was able to control it with diet. Unfortunately I can't remember what I ate. I know I followed the suggestions given to me by the nutritionist, and I didn't have much trouble. Even though I can't be any practical help to you, I wanted to respond to this to give you words of encouragement. I know that I was worried when I was diagnosed with GD, and everything ended up fine. I had many other complications, but the GD was fine, and I haven't had any issues with diabetes since then.

Congratulations on your pregnancy, and good luck figuring out what to eat! :)

hi P., i'm so sorry that you have GD. I had it twice. With our first, I had it for the last 4 months (during which time we took a babymoon to Paris--can you imagine being in Paris with GD???). With our second, I had it for 6 months and ended up having to take insulin shots daily. I had to keep a food diary, which maybe you have to as well? I ate 6 times a day. small meals.

You're basically on a modified Atkins diet. Low carb, low sugar. Anything protein is fine.

Breakfast--wheat toast with a piece of cheese melted on top (I used a toaster oven). Sometimes I would do half an english muffin--same topping, sometimes with a piece of ham and/or a fried egg. Eggs--any style. Bacon, meat.

Snacks--Luna bars are great. I ate one almost daily. Nuts, Dannon Light & Fit yogurt. Broccoli and hummus. Jerky.

The other key to having GD is walking after you eat, esp lunch and dinner. It helps control your blood sugar.

Honestly, I was hungry all the time and being Asian and not being able to eat rice really was horrible. On the bright side, I only gained 15 pounds with each pregnancy and my babies were both tiny so delivery was more palpable. :)

Best to you, and I truly hope you can avoid taking insulin shots!

I don't know what and RD is, but I ended up meeting with a nutritionist when I had GD. The obstetrician had just given me a list of stuff to avoid and I had lost 5 lbs trying to figure out what to eat!
She went over a sample diet and gave me a booklet that listed various foods and how many calories they are, how much of it to eat etc.
If you can't do that, I'd get a book on eating for diabetes.

For breakfast...I had orange crystal light, turkey bacon and/or egg(s).

Morning snack was peanut butter on crackers.

Lunch was meat/cheese maybe as a sandwich, (I can't remember if I could have fruit with lunch or not till afternoon snack), and a small salad.

Afternoon snack was a banana with peanut butter or an apple with cheese slices, maybe crackers if there was a carb.

Dinner...was a meat (chicken, fish, beef), two veggies, one fruit and two carbs.

Bedtime snack...cheese and crackers or half a peanut butter/ sugar free jelly sandwich and a glass of milk.

There were five things I was told to never ever eat...
1. Cereal (boxed cereal)
2. Potatoes
3. Rice
4. Pasta
5. Chinese food (really high in carbs and salt).

Some evenings if my sugar was really good...I would have a sugar free chocolate fudge bar (like a Popsicle) made by blue bunny brand.

Each of my meals and snacks were broken up by protein servings, carb servings, fruit servings, and veggie servings.

I even bought a food scale to get the serving sizes correct...for the most part a serving size is much much smaller than you think...