My Best Tips for Managing Gestational Diabetes with Your Diet Alone
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If you find yourself here you’re looking for tips for managing gestational diabetes by using diet alone so that you can stay off of insulin. After two pregnancies that I was able to successfully stay off of insulin, I compiled my best tips for managing gestational diabetes using your diet alone which I hope can help others that receive this diagnosis.
It’s usually around week 27-30 that you’ll find out if you have gestational diabetes. If your preference is to stay off of insulin, you may need to make some dietary changes. Sometimes, you will need to make drastic changes and this can be hard and emotional
By the third trimester it’s likely you’ve found a rhythm in your eating and have settled into foods that feel comforting and nourishing to eat. If all of the sudden you find these foods are causing out of range blood glucose readings, it can feel overwhelming to change your diet at this point.
Once you find out you failed your first gestational diabetes test, I recommend that you start tracking your regular food you eat every day. Record the time of day you’re eating, the meal, and a measurement if possible. Knowing where you are starting from will help you make changes as you go.
If you fail your second gestational diabetes test, this is where you’ll have to start monitoring your blood glucose readings after meals and you’ll have to start making changes if those are too high.
Including in this blog post are my top tips for managing gestational diabetes with diet alone.
Tracking your blood sugar using a continuous glucose monitor
After I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes I was giving a meter that involved me pricking my finger and putting blood on a measuring tool. I found this very frustrating because it didn’t provide me the full picture. So I took matters into my own hands and purchased a continuous glucose monitor through Veri to help monitor my blood sugar 24/7. If you’d like to learn more about a continuous glucose monitor, you can read about it here and save 20% on your first subscription through Veri.
ONE: Start where you are and ease into the diet changes gently.
If you do decide you do want to change your diet to stay off of insulin, my first tip is to start where you are and ease gently into the diet changes.
To start making gentle changes, if you recorded that you were consuming around 200 total carbs a day, a gentle first change would be to cut to 150 carbs for a few days to see if that helps your after-meal and fasting glucose numbers.
If that doesn’t help your after meal numbers or fasting go down, you can then cut carbs further to about 100 total carbs over the next few days.
If that still doesn’t help, (in my case, it didn’t), then you can gently start to cut to 80 total carbs, then to 60, and then to 40 if you find you’re very sensitive to carbs.
Depending on how much time your provider gives you to alter your numbers, you may have to make these changes from 200 to 100 to 60 within a week or two. I often find that if the provider sees you’re making progress, they’ll let you continue to make the change slowly. And by incorporating some more of my tips, you should see quicker changes!
The other thing to note is when you start changing you diet and cutting carbs, you are going to feel hungrier than normal because you’re body is used to relying on carbohydrates for fuel. This is another reason I recommend making the gentle alterations of lowering carb intake over time so that you don’t feel such a sudden drop in energy and as major of hangry symptoms!
TIP: If you have tested positive for gestational diabetes in a previous pregnancy, ask your provide if you can start to to self test for gestational diabetes earlier in this pregnancy so that you can have more time to make the changes if you can already see your after meal and fasting numbers out of range. (I found out at week 22 my fasting were already out of range again so I started to make changes sooner!)
Personal experience: depending on how many of the next tips I incorporated into my day, I found that my carbohydrate limit needed to stay between 40- 60 total carbs per day, (25-35 NET CARBS) to maintain my fasting numbers under 100. My after meals were always under 120 keeping around 60 total carbs, but my fastings would fluctuate depending on the next tips I also used.
TWO: DRINK LOTS OF WATER anD cut caffeine.
I found that by drinking more water, I was able to stay more full during the day which helped reduce some of my cravings and also helped my blood sugar stay more steady. The water also helped me stay energized as dehydration can make you sleepy!
Cutting caffeine also seemed to help. To cut caffeine I started drinking a blend that was half decaf/half caffeine in the morning so that it naturally cut the caffeine for me without causing all of the side effects of caffeine withdrawal. For the first week in making this switch, I did find myself going to bed about an hour earlier and sleeping more deeply, which in turn, helped my fasting numbers also remain lower!
Three: wash your hands with soap and WARM water BEFORE TESTING
I know this third tip is going to seem obvious but I can’t tell you how many times my blood sugar was too high because I didn’t wash the soap off my hands well or I took a chance and skipped washing.
Be sure to wash your hands VERY well with soap and water but makes sure the soap is off completely before testing.
I noticed that soap could sometimes feel like it was still on my fingers, so thats why I advise using soap and water after the meal and then using just water before the test.
My fasting numbers seemed to be the hardest to control until I realized I was testing too late in the morning. Because I wore a continuous glucose monitor I could see that every morning my blood sugar would rise as I woke up about 3-7 points which could easily put me out of range from 95 to 102 or from 99 to 106, which is quite a difference!
Once I realized that there was a natural spike in the morning, (called the dawn phenomenon), I did my best to wake up earlier to test my blood sugar around 4 or 5 am (this was usually combined with a pee wake up!) and then once more when I woke up naturally at 6am. That way I had a better idea of if I was “sitting” in a higher number over night, or if I was catching the rise of the morning dawn phenomenon effect.
Usually, if I tested my 6 am as SOON as I woke up, those two numbers were within 1-2 points of each other. If I waited 10-12 minutes to test, there could sometimes be a 3-7 point range in those!
My fifth tip is to lean into greens! Green vegetables are most of the time your low carb veggies and are generally safe to eat!
Celery, cucumbers, mesculan mix, Boston Bibb lettuce and spinach were my go to favorites while managing my gestational diabetes. These were my crunchy and refreshing foods that helped fill my plate and fill my tummy!
Other favorite greens: Jalapeño peppers, Broccoli, Bok Choy, banana peppers and avocado!
My six tip is to save your higher carbohydrate food to the end of your meal if possible. I was pretty sensitive to carbs and could only eat about a 1/2 cup of berries a day (up to 1 cup if I followed all of my other tips well), but one thing that helped was eating them AFTER I ate my green vegetables, protein and fat.
Even though green vegetables are also carbs, they are much much lower than berries or cauliflower or other carb foods.
I don’t know what took me so long to realize but an after dinner brisk walk for at least 15 minutes seemed to help steady my fasting numbers even if I went a little over my carbohydrates for the day.
When you start removing carbohydrates from your diet you are going to get more tired and hungry than usual for the first two weeks as your body adjusts from using carbohydrates for fuel to now using fat for fuel!
The best way to help reduce hunger cravings and feel more full is to treat fat as your best friend. Use lots of butter to cook your vegetables, pour olive oil on your salad, eat lots of keto friendly higher fat, lower carb nuts like macadamia and brazilian nuts. As your adjusting those first weeks allow yourself to snack more freely on on cheese, prosciutto, sardines in olive oil, olives and things that will add more fat to your diet.
I found that by allowing myself to eat as much fat the first 10 days as I adjusted to the diet helped me feel better like I wasn’t restricting myself.
I learned tip eleven from following the glucose goddess on instagram: drink a little apple cider vinegar before a meal to help reduce the impact of the meal on your blood sugar. I wouldn’t use this tip all of the time, but I absolutely would dress my salad with apple cider vinegar and olive oil before dinner to help! Since I couldn’t use balsamic vinegar anymore, apple cider vinegar was an easy replacement and gave the salad a little tang while also helping reduce the impact of the food on my numbers!
My thirteenth tip for managing gestational diabetes using diet is to surround yourself with people who are going to be positively supporting you as you change your diet and keep healthy boundaries to places and people that will discourage you keeping your diet.
I absolutely had to say no to a few events/dinners/pizza party hang outs with friends at the beginning where it was harder for me to say no to foods I was craving. I also had to say no to people that didn’t feel good to hang out with as that could trigger me wanting to comfort myself with food. I also had my husband do the grocery shopping in the beginning so I wasn’t being tempted by the ice cream aisle!
I did surround myself with encouraging friends, a provider who supported me and my decisions, my family who was amazing at being sure keto friendly options were available, and so on.
I also found support in podcasts that talked about the keto diet and gave tips for working through the adjustment. I’d also search google for blogs with recipes and food ideas to help give me some insight on new foods I could bring into my diet. There is such a great community of people on low carb diets that are willing to help!
Once additional great resource for support is Real Food For Gestational Diabetes by Lily Nichols. You can also follow her on instagram for more information!
Changing your diet can feel overwhelming, hard, and a bit depressing! Especially when pregnant.
When I first started changing my diet, I leaned into appreciation to help me feel better and try to see all the good that was coming from this diet. Appreciation that there was another option. Appreciation that there were resources available to help me navigate the changes. Appreciation that my husband willingly cooked me keto friendly meals every night. Appreciation that my friends would make me keto-friendly special dishes. Appreciation that my family would alter recipes to help me stay on track. Appreciation for myself for attempting a big change. Appreciation for my provider for allowing me time to adjust. Appreciation for the nutritionist that gave me encouragement and more insight when I had a 5 day streak of high fasting numbers. Appreciation that I was learning more about my diet and foods that made me feel better. And so on… try making your own list of things to appreciate as you’re making these changes and remember that you’re not in these changes alone! There is often a team of co-creators helping you manage the changes and rooting you on!
Tip sixteen: Changing your diet is hard enough as it is, but changing it during pregnancy can feel like a mean trick the world is playing on you. While everyone else is enjoying their favorite foods, you are removing everything comforting like ice cream and bread!! How did I cope? In the beginning, I distracted myself a lot! Getting your mind off the fact that you feel like you’re being forbidden food is so helpful to coping!
At first, watching tv was hard for me because that’s usually when I’d snack on sweets at night. So instead of watching tv the first few weeks, I bought a bunch of “romance” novels that were super easy to read and distracted me with all their steaminess!
Then, as I returned to watching tv, night time was still a bit hard with cravings so I distracted myself with very interesting shows that kept my mind focused on anything else but food. Here is some tv I found super distracting that helped me forget I was craving ice cream: Emily in Paris, The Kardashians, Love is Blind, Bridgerton, Yellow Jackets, Dexter.
I also realized that I could distract myself with a good conversation and walk with a close friend, a game with my husband, a youtube video on something I was interested in, a bath, a massage, etc.
If you found this post helpful and would like to add any tips that you found worked for you, please email me at Christina@alignedandkind.com. I’d love to add as many resources as possible to this post to help other pregnant people control their gestational diabetes with food if they choose to!
Also, if you’re looking for support, I offer 1:1 life coaching that can be tailored to help you manage your diet and emotions around changing your lifestyle! Schedule a complimentary consult to learn more!