The GD diet #1: A few of my fav-or-ite things

If you've ever been pregnant, or female, you know that snacks are very important.  When you have GD, they are important for a different reason: to maintain somewhat stable blood sugar, you need to be eating approximately every 2 hours, and ideally, your snacks should be healthy (and under 20g of carbs).  The best snacks are healthy snacks that make you feel excited, so here are a few treats that really get me going.

1. True North Nut Clusters: 9g for Almond Pecan, 12g for Chocolate Nut.  These are exceptional because they satisfy your candy bar cravings without killing your diet.  They are, however, slightly dangerous if not divided up into single-serving baggies.  5 clusters sounds depressing, but it's actually quite satisfying.

2. Kashi Oatmeal Dark Chocolate Cookie- 1 is 20g.  This one is my absolute favorite.  Full of whole grains and dietary fiber, this filling cookie is BETTER (no joke) than it's unhealthy counterparts.  A few weeks of these and chips ahoy will start to taste like buttery chemicals.

3. Carrots and Peanut Butter- JIF to go and 3/4 cup carrots = 18g  (Or you can do ants on a log if you can stomach disgusting, awful celery).  Now, JIF to go is the EASIEST option, but not the only option.  There are healthier peanut (or almond) butters out there that have no added salt or sugar.  If you have the patience, get some tiny Tupperware, and fill it with your fave nut butter, and bring that along instead.  I'm just going to eat this JIF til my midwife spots it and calls me out.  (Don't tell!)

4. Berries! ...and other fruit, but be sure to look any up for carb count, some unexpectedly have A LOT of sugar.  Strawberries are about 1g each, blueberries are about 10g to 1/2 cup.  Plums are surprisingly low at 8g per fruit, and so are peaches!  Indulge in an entire peach for the price of only 14g!  Cantaloupes (14g per cup) and oranges(11g) are also good.  Apples (24g), pineapples (22g per cup), bananas (25g), pears (27g) and watermelon (22g per wedge... you know you can't limit yourself to a cup) are all high in sugar, and therefore should be used sparingly (see #5).  Of course, it's the expensive fruit that you can eat...

5. Bananas are high in carbs, but fabulous for a lot of other reasons, like the fact that they come in their own wrapper.  If you are getting a lot of leg cramps, bananas can really help.  A great snack is 1/2 a banana and 1 hard boiled egg- about 14g.  That little yellow thing in the picture?  That's a Nana-saver, and its a $3 wonder of modern science (its a clip you put on the 1/2 of the banana you didn't eat to keep it from getting all crusty and brown.  Or you can use a little piece of plastic wrap if you're not a gadget-loving jackass like I am)

6.  Nature's Bakery Fig Bar- 2 bars in a pack- 20g.  Made with stone ground wheat and so delicious.  They come 2 to a pack and you can split them up if 20g of carbs are making you a little uncomfortable.  Lots of flavors to choose from, and if you are lucky enough to have a Wegmans near you, you can pick up a 24 pack variety box for less than $10.  Way cheaper than online.

7.  Kind bar- dark chocolate, nuts and sea salt- 16g.  If you have other favorite KIND bars, just be sure to check the label, they are all different for carb count.

NOT SHOWN:
8. Dark Chocolate Covered Anything.  I especially like walnuts covered in dark chocolate because every "eating for pregnancy" book out there suggests walnuts, but by themselves they taste like licking a tin can.  Walnuts are especially high in DHA which is super fantastic for your baby's brain development in the 3rd trimester, which is probably when you found out you had GD in the first place.  Next Organics Dark Chocolate Covered Walnuts- 9g per serving

9. And a suggestion from Steph: Light n fit Greek Yogurt by Dannon.  Lots of flavors to choose from, only 9g of carbs, and 12g of protein to balance it out.  I can't wait to try it!!!  ...Um.... and they have a flavor called Caramel Macchiato.... oh no...

The Good News and the Bad News

At the end of the day last Wednesday, I got the call from my midwife that I had been fearing for a little over a week:  I DO have gestational diabetes.   The bad news is, that means counting carbs, testing my blood sugar 4x a day, and avoiding most things that have any resemblance to bread or sweets.  The good news is, I have the best possible over-achiever mentality to absolutely nail this diet and get an A+ in baby-building.
The first day with the news was pretty rough.  I choked through the over-the-phone directions I was given by one of the nurses at the midwives office, and started bawling into my husband's chest after I hung up the phone.  The only thing I could think about was how relatively well I thought I had been eating, and that I still screwed up.  That all of my fears about the delivery process were going to come true; the baby would be huge, unhealthy, and doomed to be unhappy for the rest of his life and it would be all my fault.  After a few minutes of pretty serious sobbing (I know, people have MUCH bigger problems in the world), we took a long walk around the park and ended up at the Rite Aid, where I would pick up my glucose meter and get some additional instructions from the pharmacist.
I was still fighting back some tears when he started his schpiel about which lancets hurt more and what meters could be afforded with crappy health insurance policies.  About 30 seconds in, I think he noticed the tears welling up in my eyes and started to rush through the rest of the info, grabbing a silver meter and some test strips and heading toward the back, at which point I squeaked in a shaky voice, "Well if you're going to give me that one, at least give me the pink one!"
Surprisingly, the lancets don't hurt too much, and the testing gives me a way to prove to my midwives and doctors that I am, in fact, doing a fuckingfantastic job of building this baby, and I always like making proof.
The other good news is that I think that I have always had a sensitivity to carbohydrates (see post about the gluten-free cleanse), and the diet I need to adhere to for the duration of my pregnancy will help me deal with that sensitivity after the baby is born.  Further, I will have the tools necessary to deal with the fact that 1 in 3 children born to women with gestational diabetes will develop type 2 diabetes before they are out of school.  This is not a temporary diagnosis.  It is a call to take nutrition more seriously.

Here are the basic details that I have absorbed over the last 10 days:
1.  Try to limit your carbs to 25-30g for breakfast, and 30-45g for lunch and dinner.
2.  Try to eat a little something every 2 hours.  Great snacks are made from less-processed grains, low-carb fruits, crudite, nuts, or other protein sources.
3.  Take a walk after you eat.  Or, if you can't leave the house, or the weather is bad, get up and do laundry or vacuum.  Resist the urge to sit still or take a nap after eating.  Light exercise will help your body metabolize your food more quickly, leaving you less susceptible to sugar spikes.
4.  Drink lots of water.  If your pregnant, more than the recommended 64 ounces is usually good.
5.  For the most part, don't worry about the carbs in vegetables.  They are the absolute best place to get nutrients for your amazing baby.  Do not, however, be fooled by starches that pose as vegetables, like sweet potatoes.  These are ok to eat as long as you measure your servings and stick to the allotted g of carbs per meal.  WARNING:  some fruits also masquerade as vegetables... shady-ass tomatoes.
6.  Pay attention to your body and your readings.  If you know you are obeying the rules and you still have seemingly random spikes in your blood sugar, try to connect the dots.  Some people are more sensitive to certain types of carbs than others.  One thing that I have noticed about my own body is that, for the most part, I do not seem to be sensitive to fructose or lactose.  Bread products have a dramatic impact on my blood sugar, but I can go to the top end of my carb allotment with fruit and it doesn't seem to touch my readings.  Look out, bananas, here I come!

I guess I wanted to let you all know this because the next few posts will focus on eating to support a diabetic system.  I will label them as such (the GD diet #1, etc.) and will try to post at least weekly with delicious and filling recipes that I have discovered.