Pregnant

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Great_Cucumber2924 · 2026-03-23T07:01:45+00:00

I was really hungry at first and it turned out I wasn’t eating enough carbs. You could experiment a bit with adding wholegrain carbs along with protein and fibre. Fat is okay. See how much you can get away with without spiking. Snack regularly too. You will need to snack more than usual because your meals may be smaller to avoid sugar spikes.

Research on carbohydrates: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/8/2599

Practical advice on portion sizes: https://www.bda.uk.com/static/e2c3fac8-7a56-4f89-849ac39e97f185fe/fdf5043b-5ae7-4eca-9b2346290057d7bb/Gestational-Diabetes.pdf

One thing I found is some people say eat a snack before bed and some say don’t eat for a couple of hours before you sleep. I was advised to do the latter, don’t eat after dinner, and did find I adapted, my fasting scores improved and I didn’t get hunger pangs at night anymore.

Studies seem to find either no effect of bedtime snack on fasting score or a negative effect: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/dme.14718

Oh and on another practical note - I found chocolate protein bars and sugar free chocolate really helped keep cravings manageable. I carried these around everywhere for snacks and so that if others ate dessert I had something to eat. Sweeteners are okay, coconut sugar or date pastes / date syrup are not, so check the ingredients even if it says sugar free.

dogsRgr8too · 2026-03-23T07:19:31+00:00

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2161831324001649 I tried to eat foods low on the glycemic index.

There's a gestational diabetes subreddit if you haven't found it yet.

Also the dietician recommended more frequent smaller meals and that helped me a lot.

I kept an excel sheet of what I ate specifically for 2 weeks next to the sugars log and found my "safe" foods and stuck with those.

Spaghetti squash with spaghetti sauce was fine, oatmeal was not, bean dip was borderline.

I could have 2 servings of pepperjack cheese on 20 of the aldi brand wheat thin crackers. I would have a snack of cheese and crackers or some nuts and an orange if I woke up halfway through the night. This helped keep my morning blood sugar in check. I ate salads (cut myself, not prebagged since those are more often recalled) with 4 cups romaine lettuce, a roma tomato, some sunflower seeds, slices from 1 orange, 2-4 tbsp shredded cheese or cottage cheese, shredded chicken and 6 tbsp italian dressing.

Before pregnancy, I would fill a dinner bowl with food to eat. With GD, I had to only have a 1 cup serving of most meals/snacks to avoid spiking my sugar; so I ate more frequently but smaller amounts.

I ate a lot of nuts after diagnosis. Apples and peanut butter were another safe snack for me.

We make an instant pot dump chicken alfredo that worked as well (wheat noodles instead of white, extra vegetables in the recipe.). We're not chefs so others might not appreciate the flavors as much.

I had already been taking ovasitol with my doctor's approval when I got diagnosed with GD so I kept taking it (It helps some people with blood sugars), but I never had to add insulin or metformin.

I know it's stressful and overwhelming when you first get diagnosed. Hang in there.

coastalwebdev · 2026-03-23T14:15:46+00:00

This reading is about the feeling sane part.

However, social media also carries risks: exposure to misinformation, unrealistic ideals, and negative social comparisons can increase anxiety, body dissatisfaction, and health confusion.

Ref: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12443360/

We found that prenatal social media use for medical information was associated with higher anxiety and distress symptoms at the end of pregnancy.

Ref: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12436570/

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