Gestational Diabetes help

Cat Melodeon

Hi girls, I know a few of you on here have Gestational Diabetes (GD) and that it's been discussed on the main thread, but I was wondering if anyone could share any tips for menu planning or meal ideas and thought it could do with a thread of it's own.

I've been to the GD clinic, spoken with the doctor & nurse and had the official advice (I'm borderline so didn't get a referral to the dietician but have to do the daily monitoring) but found the detail a bit lacking. I was given a list of foods to avoid but not much in the way of meal suggestions.

Can anyone recommend any links or recipes that they've found help keep the sugar levels low? Any ideas would be much appreciated, I haven't found much online and could really do with some help!

foxinsocks

The best thing to do for the first few days is to monitor your blood sugar levels, and keep a VERY good record of what you eat, and what your sugar levels are afterwards. How many times a day do you have to check? Even if they only want you to check for one or two meals, while you're learning exactly how the diabetes affects you, it's best to test after every meal, just for a few days.

After you get some idea of cause and effect, then it'll be easier to make plans, and to decide how much you need to cut out. I had to be BRUTAL with my carb intake, but most with GD don't have to be nearly as tough on themselves. You might find that cutting out sugary foods will be enough, or you may end up like me (counting carbs like a crazy person), or you may discover you're somewhere in between.

A few VERY general tips:

For now, just stick to avoiding the foods you've been told to, and try to just make your meals healthier. Eat more veg, and choose wholemeal (brown) carbs instead of white (bread, pasta, rice etc) You'll have a better idea in a few days. I can't eat much of any carb, wholemeal or not, but you may be luckier! I assume they warned you about grapes, but I'll add strawberries to the 'BEWARE' list, and bananas can be really unpredictable too. Cous cous nearly broke my glucose machine, but I seem to do ok with apples.

You can snack on nuts, just not peanuts or cashew nuts, as they both have a relatively high carb content. I use hazelnuts or brazil nuts. They're both highish in fat, but they give me the boost I need when i just NEED TO EAT SOMETHING OMG. Walnuts are slightly higher carb, but full of all kinds of other goodness, so snacking in moderation will be ok. So long as you aren't eating them by the kilo, they should be ok. Also, a tip via Hannibal, keep a box of hard boiled eggs in the fridge, they're just about a 'free' food, pure protein, so they have a negligible effect on blood sugar. The same goes for meat. Some cheeses and meats (the very processed kind) are high in carbohydrates, so read the labels before you eat.

Weight watchers summer fruit layered fromage frais, and their citrus flavoured yoghurt are both relatively low in sugar, and have no fat, and they taste great (they do have some sugar, so they aren't free, but they work just fine for a treat). Weight watchers bacon is super low in fat, so works well for breakfast (if you end up unable to eat carb in the morning, like me). Their sausages are very low in carb too.

Good luck, and keep us posted

Hannibal Smith

Hi Cat

First of all, if you're borderline you may not actually need to change all that much, or be as drastic about it as others. Maybe for the first day or so eat what you would normally eat, take your blood sugars an hour later and see how you’re doing. If after an hour your level is 7 or below, what you’ve eaten is fine, if it’s slightly above there’s something in the meal that you’ve eaten that’s not quite right, maybe the amount of carbs is too high, or your portion size is too high. If the reading is well above 7 then there’s something definitely wrong with that meal, so scrap it and try something else.

Carbs seem to effect people differently. Foxinsocks and myself have worked closely over the passed few weeks and it seems that carbs that she can eat I can’t and vice versa. A bowl of All Bran with lowfat supermilk send my carbs through the roof, yet when I was going to the diabetic clinic I saw others horsing into a bowl.

I’m not the best cook in the world, so I just got into my head that it’s no longer about taste its about blood sugars, so I had to take it on the chin that somethings I was just going to have to eat whether I liked it or not
My daily menu is like this:-

Breakfast


2 weight watchers rashers* and 2 sausages* and one slice of McCambridges bread. This meant I was getting protein and a small amount of carbs together which really is a fantastic energy boost.

You could add eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, anything else that has no carbs in it. Or you could have All Bran or 2 slices of wholegrain toast, depending on how your blood sugars react.

* you may not have to use weightwatchers at all, you may need the calories of full fat ones, but the WW ones are delicious!

Mid morning snack


You could have:-

- a glass of low fat super milk and 1 Belvita biscuit or
- 2 Belvita biscuits by themselves or
- 1 0% vitalinea yoghurt with a piece of fruit (vitalinea with peaches is delicious and you could add some all bran to it and have it for your breakfast if you wanted to make a meal of it)
- 1 babybel light

Lunch


I make a bit pot of vegetable soup at the weekends, freeze it, and have that with 1 slice of mccambridges. I stick every vegetable in it I can find and leave it chunky so it feels like a meal. Otherwise I have a sandwich with wholegrain bread 1 portion of meat and load it up with tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce etc.

Afternoon snack


I just pick something from the mid morning snack list

Dinner


For your dinner your plate should be divided into one half for vegetables, one quarter protein and one quarter carbs. So the protein would obviously be your lean meat, chicken, pork, fish etc and your carbs would be your wholegrain pasta, rice, 2 potatoes etc and then stack as many vegetables as you can onto the other side. I found broccoli fantastic. It was filling and it really kicked the blood sugars into gear. And aubergines are fantastic too.

There is one recipe that Foxinsocks gave me, that I used and tweaked a little bit…..1 aubergine, carrots (cooked in the microwave for 5 mins), 2 tins of tomatoes, courgettes, onions already fried, garlic, basil and coriander and whatever other vegetable you like…chuck them all in a roasting dish and roast in the oven for 20 mins. Take it out chuck in some spinach, grated mozzarella cheese and grated parmesan, put it back in the oven for 5-10 mins, take it out and that’s your half plate of veg and its delicious. Divide it up into portions and freeze it.

Also Fox discovered that if you want a Chinese, you can go for a chow mein…just pass half the noodles to some one else and dig into the rest and you’ll be delighted with the results!

Mid evening snack


Again, I pick something from the mid morning snack list.

The trick is to keep yourself topped up. Don’t let yourself get hungry or you’ll end up eating something silly.

And finally, the most important part 30 mins exercise a day, depending on whether you suffer from SPD or anything else that restricts your movement, just get out for 30 mins and that really does make a HUGE difference.

I’ve typed all this out so I hope it lets me post and I hope it’s of some use. If I’ve left anything out, or there’s anything else you need to know just let me know.

Cat Melodeon

Girls if I could thank your posts x1000 I would! Fantastic help, thanks so much! Hannibal, that roast veg dish sounds delicious - I'll be trying that tonight. And fox, I also have moments of MUST EAT so the nuts sound like a plan.

I'm testing 7 times per day - before and 1 hour after breakfast, lunch and dinner and then before bed. My 1st test in the morning (the fasting one) seems to be the problem one as even fasting it's around 5.7. Maybe it'll start to come down as the changes take effect and I boost up the exercise a bit. Today I managed to keep the post breakfast one at 6.7 (thrilled!) by having that really dark bread from Aldi (think it's sunflower seed and rye) with a boiled egg. I guess I just need to approach it the way you guys did - one meal at a time, trial and error - and not get overwhelmed by the long-term. Happily I don't have to go back for 3 weeks, hopefully that will give me a chance to get settled in to the new regime.

Hannibal Smith

I know Cat, in the beginning it does seem like a huge task ahead and extremely daunting, but you do get into the swing of it and you feel get a new lease of life from the diet.

There always seems to be one blood sugar that drives people to despair, for me it was the evening one. I can never get it right and I found that by obsessing over that i was knocking my morning level out.

I always found with the morning one that the later I tested the higher the number. The dietitian said that this was because when you leave it too long between meals your body starts producing it's own sugars. So basically don't leave it to long before your have your breakkie.

foxinsocks

One thing I will also say though, is not to get disheartened if you seem to be getting the odd seemingly random spike. I've had the exact same breakfast 6 out of 7 days for the last 6 weeks, and I get wildly varying results (from 5.2 up to 7.5). It's just hormone related, and nothing we can really do about it. Also, I know that I felt hungry and weepy and really seriously sorry for myself almost all the time for the first week. This is NORMAL, and you are entitled. GD sucks!

Before they started me on the insulin I had to restrict my breakfast carbs to below 5g (your average slice of bread has 12-17g) but I found I was able to have more with lunch, and a few more again with dinner. Also, I've discovered I can't have banana with breakfast ever, but I can have a half one at lunch with no ill effects.

Now that I'm on insulin, if I have no (or very low) carbs with my food, I risk a hypo. Insulin was the only thing that got my morning fasting number under 5.

There's something called the dawn phenomenon, which explains the morning fast problem. Basically, around 4/5am your body excretes a wake up cocktail of hormones, including adrenalin, norepinephrine (sp?), and at least one other which are designed to reactivate you after sleep. This will cause your body to release glucose into your blood, prompting the higher numbers. So basically, even if you haven't eaten, your numbers can still be high. Having a carby snack last thing at night can help your fasting numbers (it fools your body into thinking you don't need extra before you wake up), but it might not help either. It's worth trying basically Have a wholegrain rice cake for example, or if you don't like those, a small amount of other carb.

You're right though, trial and error is absolutely the key!

Cat Melodeon

Well, it all seems to be going well, that's my first 8 days done and I haven't had any major spikes. The first 2 days I had a couple of 7.7s after meals but they've all been below 7 since thanks to the tips you gave for dinners etc. That first morning one can still be stubbornly high though. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it at all, I have exactly the same thing in the evening, get the same pre-bedtime readings and then the mornings can be anywhere from 4.0 to 5.9. I guess it's just hormones, won't be back to the clinic for another 2 weeks so I'll give it a chance to stabilise and ask them about it then.
Hope ye're all doing well.

Hannibal Smith

Cat Melodeon wrote: »

Well, it all seems to be going well, that's my first 8 days done and I haven't had any major spikes. The first 2 days I had a couple of 7.7s after meals but they've all been below 7 since thanks to the tips you gave for dinners etc. That first morning one can still be stubbornly high though. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to it at all, I have exactly the same thing in the evening, get the same pre-bedtime readings and then the mornings can be anywhere from 4.0 to 5.9. I guess it's just hormones, won't be back to the clinic for another 2 weeks so I'll give it a chance to stabilise and ask them about it then.
Hope ye're all doing well.

That's brilliant Cat. Hopefully the morning numbers come down for you. Have they asked you to organise an ultrasound? Because if you have your numbers under such control and the baby is measuring okay they might just discharge you from the Diabetes Clinic.

Cat Melodeon

Hannibal Smith wrote: »

That's brilliant Cat. Hopefully the morning numbers come down for you. Have they asked you to organise an ultrasound? Because if you have your numbers under such control and the baby is measuring okay they might just discharge you from the Diabetes Clinic.

No, but I've only been to my GP since I got the monitor and won't be back at the clinic until next week. The GP was pretty dismissive of the whole thing, my urine has always been clear and she thinks they were definitely erring on the side of caution. I'm actually not as annoyed about it as I was at the start - it's kind of good to be taking myself in hand. I'd probably be piling on the weight if there wasn't an enforced discipline in place and as it stands, I'm the same weight now as I was at 18 weeks. And it's easier than weightwatchers! I am seriously going to enjoy pigging out over Christmas though... apple & cinnamon cake with fresh custard nom nom nom.

foxinsocks

Today all I wanted in the whole world was to eat hot buttery toast until I burst.

I did allow myself one slice though.

Sometimes the only thing that curbs the severe pregnancy hunger pangs is carbs