What Can I Eat If I Have Gestational Diabetes? Food List And More

What Can I Eat if I Have Gestational Diabetes? Food List and More

Gestational diabetes is diabetes that only occurs in pregnant women. That means you can't get gestational diabetes unless you’re pregnant. You may develop gestational diabetes for the first time during pregnancy or you might have a mild undiagnosed case of diabetes that gets worse when you’re pregnant.
During pregnancy, the way your body uses insulin changes. Insulin is a hormone that breaks the foods you eat down into glucose, or sugar. You then use that glucose for energy.
You’ll naturally become more resistant to insulin when you’re pregnant to help provide your baby with more glucose. In some women, the process goes wrong and your body either stops responding to insulin or doesn't make enough insulin to give you the glucose you need. When that happens, you’ll have too much sugar in your blood. That causes gestational diabetes.
If you have recently been diagnosed with gestational diabetes, or are curious about what will happen if you are diagnosed with it, keep reading to learn more about maintaining a healthy pregnancy.
Eat protein with every meal.
Include daily fruits and vegetables in your diet.
Thirty percent or less of your diet should be made up of fat.
Limit or avoid processed foods.
Pay attention to portion sizes to avoid overeating.
If you have gestational diabetes, maintaining a healthy, balanced diet may help you manage your symptoms without needing medication. In general, your diet should include protein plus the right mix of carbohydrates and fats.
Once you are diagnosed with gestational diabetes, ask your doctor about working with a registered die Continue reading

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11 Symptoms of Type 2 Diabetes

Learning about the symptoms of type 2 diabetes brings you closer to having a better understanding of the condition.
Known as “the silent killer” because it doesn’t necessarily cause any obvious symptoms, type 2 diabetes is often diagnosed when a doctor orders blood tests. In some cases, doctors don’t detect diabetes until long-term complications associated with the disease develop, like eye diseases and heart problems.
Most symptoms of type 2 diabetes can be easily managed or prevented by checking your blood sugar levels tested regularly. If you think you may have diabetes, seek treatment as soon as possible. The better you manage diabetes over time, the less like you are to develop serious complications.
1. Frequent Need to Urinate
Medically known as polyuria, this symptom can be an early sign of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. When blood sugar levels became elevated (above 160-180 mg/dL), glucose starts to leak into the urine. As the amount of glucose in the urine increases, the kidneys start to work harder to eliminate more water in an attempt to dilute the urine. As a result, a diabetic will feel the urge to urinate more often. Continue reading

Diabetes diet - gestational

For a balanced diet, you need to eat a variety of healthy foods. Reading food labels can help you make healthy choices when you shop.
If you are a vegetarian or on a special diet, talk with your health care provider to make sure you're getting a balanced diet.
In general, you should eat:
Plenty of whole fruits and vegetables
Moderate amounts of lean proteins and healthy fats
Moderate amounts of whole grains, such as bread, cereal, pasta, and rice, plus starchy vegetables, such as corn and peas
Fewer foods that have a lot of sugar, such as soft drinks, fruit juices, and pastries
You should eat three small- to moderate-sized meals and one or more snacks each day. Do not skip meals and snacks. Keep the amount and types of food (carbohydrates, fats, and proteins) the same from day to day. This can help you keep your blood sugar stable.
CARBOHYDRATES
Less than half the calories you eat should come from carbohydrates.
Most carbohydrates are found in starchy or sugary foods. They include bread, rice, pasta, cereal, potatoes, peas, corn, fruit, fruit juice, milk, yogurt, cookies, candy, soda, and other sweets.
High-fiber, whole-grain carbohydrates are healthy choices.
Vegetables are good for your health and your blood sugar. Enjoy lots of them.
Carbohydrates in food are measured in grams. You can learn to count the amount of carbohydrates in the foods that you eat.
GRAINS, BEANS, AND STARCHY VEGETABLES
Eat 6 or more servings a day. One serving equals:
1 slice bread
1 ounce (28 grams) ready-to-eat cereal
1/2 cup (105 grams) cooked rice or pasta
1 English muffin
Choose foods loaded w Continue reading

Real Food For Gestational Diabetes: What You Need To Know

Note From Mommypotamus: When I wrote about natural alternatives to the glucola test, many of you asked what to do if gestational diabetes is diagnosed and confirmed. Today I am so excited to welcome Lily Nichols, RDN, CDE, CLT, a registered nutritionist and gestational diabetes educator, who will be filling us in on how to take a real food approach to GD.
Lily is the author of Real Food for Gestational Diabetes, a thoroughly researched guide filled with practical guidance and easy-to-follow instructions. It is, hands down, the best resource on the subject that I have found so far. If you or someone you know is looking for information on managing GD with real food, I highly recommend it!
Gestational diabetes is never part of any mom’s plan . . .
But it is the most common complication of pregnancy, affecting up to 18% of pregnant women. Yet there are many misconceptions about this diagnosis, both in conventional health care and the integrative medicine world. As a registered dietician/nutritionist and certified diabetes educator who specializes in gestational diabetes, I’m going to clear up some of the confusion for you today.
Whether or not you have gestational diabetes, this post will help you understand how it develops and why it’s important to maintain normal blood sugar (for all pregnant women, really). I’ll also be sharing why the typical gestational diabetes diet fails and why a real food, nutrient-dense, lower carbohydrate approach is ideal for managing gestational diabetes.
What is Gestational Diabetes?
Gestational diabetes is usually defined as diabetes that Continue reading

How a Thin Diabetic Reversed Her Type 2 Diabetes

I received a letter from reader Sarah, who has successfully used low-carbohydrate high-fat diets and intermittent fasting to reverse her type 2 diabetes. Interestingly, she is not particularly overweight as measured by body mass index, yet still suffered from T2D. At her heaviest, she only had a BMI of 24.9, which puts her in the ‘normal’ range. She writes:
The letter
I immigrated to US from P.R. China in the end of 1998 when I was 31 years old; I weighed about 55 kg (121 lbs). While I was in China, I lived thousands of miles away from my family, so I had sort of an intermittent fasting life style from age 19 to 31 years old. The meals in China were mostly vegetables and very little protein. I had an annual physical check up every year, but was never told of any abnormal blood results.
After I immigrated to the U.S., my lifestyle suddenly changed from one meal per day to three meals consisting of mainly grains with little fat and protein. I gained about 25 pounds (11 kg) in a couple of years, my weight did not continue going up. My heaviest was about 145 pounds (66 kg). When I was diagnosed with diabetes in Dec 2004:
Weight: 142 pounds (64 kg)
Height: 5 feet 4 inches (163 cm)
HbA1c: 9.4
FG: 214
I was told to exercise, so I started yoga shortly after my diagnose. I lost about 10 pounds (5 kg) and 2 inches (5 cm) from my waist but still required metformin. In the spring of 2005, I relocated to Galveston from Houston because of my work as an engineer. My endocrinologist sent me to a nutritionist who measured my after meal glucose in her office, it was near 200 mg/dl (11.1 Continue reading