Hey Ladies-
My sister is pregnant with her first child due in October. I want to fill her freezer with quick and easy meals for when the baby is born. The hard part is her diet restrictions. She has gestational diabetes and will be on a strict diet for 6 weeks after the baby is born. The biggest limit is that at each meal she has to eat at least 45 carbs but no more than 60.
I am not sure where to start. Do any of you know of any good cookbooks that list the nutritional information? I've heard the Atkins diet is similar to the diet for those with gestational diabetes, is that true? If anyone can recommend a cookbook, recipes, websites, or whatever I would appreciate it!
Thanks!
Betty Crocker's Best of Healthy and Hearty cookbook has nutrition information/serving on each of the recipe pages. They're pretty good recipes too. Not geared toward gestational diabetes, but at least you know what's in them all.
My husband has type 1 diabetes, so even though he is insulin dependent I still have to watch the nutritional fact so he knows how many carbs are in the meal to make sure he takes enough insulin to balance it out. I've found a recipe calculator where you can enter in your recipe and serving sizes and it will calculate nutritional fact for you! It makes my life a little easier!... http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calculator.asp. Hopefully this helps. That website also offers recipes there for diabetics that other people have liked and wanted to shared. What a great sister! Good Luck!
One good cookbook is the "Fix it and forget it cookbook for diabetes." It's a crockpot book. I gave the original as a gift once, and later when I became pregnant (I get get. diab, too), I found the diabetes edition. I thought it was pretty good, and it lists carbs etc. Great idea for your sis!
A.
There are tons of meals you could make. I had gestational diabetes and now have type II diabetes. The general idea is less carbs and more veggies and meat. You could make frozen lasagna bake kind of meals, but instead of so much pasta use zucchini or eggplant or any other vegetables. There are also plenty of casseroles out there, I recently made a broccoli and chicken casserole. You can always google low carb meals or low carb casseroles. I ate this sort of diet after my baby was born and I lost 30 lbs in 3 weeks and then a total of 50 lbs to bring me lower than I was before I was pregnant. It's so nice of you to make meals for your sister! Good luck.
www.allrecipes.com lists nutritional info on their recipes. If you're following it to a T, you should be good. I don't know of any cookbooks though. Have you checked the diabetes websites? I'm sure they'd have info for you, or at the very least you could contact them & see what they suggest...
How nice of you!
I had gestational diabetes and the diet is low carb, moderate protein and lots of veggies. Atkins doesn't have many veggies in it and is pretty high in fat as well. I follow the diet from Curves and have 2 membership books that have great recipes. I also found a great cookbook on the website flylady.com called "Saving Dinner the Low Carb Way" that is great for families.
I have found most frozen meals are casseroles and are loaded with fillers which are generally carbs such as pasta, bread. What would work better for her in my opinion would be to stalk her freezer with meat such as chicken, steak, ground turkey and buffalo, pork chops, etc and lots of frozen vegetables to go with them. I find I make simple carb sides for my family such as risoto, rice, mac and cheese, etc that I don't eat so they don't all lose weight (very important for my very thin 7 year old).
What a wonderful sister you are!
