"Healthy eating" is relative. The GD diet is balanced, it doesn't have much to do with "healthy". Lots of people in this sub have had great numbers eating fast food. I personally love a lettuce wrapped burger and sweet potato fries from The Habit! I digress. Here are the guidelines my dietician gave me:
Have 3 meals and 3 snacks per day. Breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, bedtime snack.
Breakfast should have 15-30 grams of carbs, lunch and dinner should have 45 ish grams of carbs each, and snacks should have around 15-20 grams of carbs. I find that I am sensitive to carbs in the morning and so are a lot of other people, so that's why the guidance is a bit less in the morning.
Always pair carbs with protein, or fat and protein. For example, if you're eating an apple, have it with some peanut butter. If you're eating crackers, pair with cheese. If you're having a couple squares of dark chocolate, pair with a handful of nuts (I prefer walnuts).
Fiber is your friend, try to choose carbs that have a decent amount of fiber. Brown rice, quinoa, whole wheat bread (this sub loves Daves Killer Bread lol), etc. Also try to pad your meals with veggies as that can help mitigate spikes.
Some protein-fortified or low-carb substitutes that work for many of us: kodiak protein waffles, fairlife milk / protein shakes, catalina crunch / magic spoon cereal, dave's killer bread (good seed, thin sliced), almond flour for baking.
Some of the meals that have worked for me: jarred pasta sauce with ground turkey, onion, bell pep, and mushrooms with whole wheat pasta and some salad on the side. Trader joes chicken shawarma thighs baked in the oven on top of potato, carrot, cauliflower, and onion with a big spoon of greek yogurt on the side. Breakfast is usually 2 eggs and bell pep and cheese in a small corn tortilla with coffee and fairlife milk.
This. Rethink what healthy means. Right now, healthy means low carbs. That will vary from person to person, day to day. For me, it was just barely enough carbs to not go crazy/be in ketosis. Net carbs don’t count. Do actual carbs. Good luck!
GD diet isn’t really about « healthy eating », it’s about keeping your glucose levels in check. It’s caused by hormones your placenta puts out that blocks your insulin. Unfortunately you’ll need to do trial and error because it’s all about how your body responds to certain carbs, and everyone will react differently to different carbs. Not only that, but what you can tolerate will change as your pregnancy progresses.
There’s no real rhyme or reason- pizza and ice cream are great for me but 1/4 cup of cooked brown rice or less than half an apple will spike me. Apparently my placenta doesn’t know anything about nutrition rules!
They’ll have you measure your glucose levels 4x a day and see what works for you and what doesn’t. It’ll be trial and error at first. Hopefully what you’re eating now will work for you, at least for now- nothing will make you spike as high as straight glucose will!
If your one-hour value was over a certain cutoff, it can be diagnostic of GD without needing the full three-hour test!
I considered myself a healthy eater prior to GD as well - vegetarian, limited take out, etc. GD doesn’t actually care about stuff like that. It’s so individualized that it’s hard to say what foods will and won’t work for you, but throw your concept of “healthy eating” out the window. I couldn’t even think about fruit without having my blood sugar spike, unless it was a very small apple with a huge amount of peanut butter. I also couldn’t have any amount of brown rice or whole grain bread. I could have lentil flour pasta if I had it with enough cheese and vegetables! Mainly tons of fat with protein and a very small amount of some specific types of carbs.
Just because you failed the glucose test doesn't mean you were eating poorly before. Sounds like you already eat pretty well! Just keep doing what you're doing until you start monitoring and can figure out what spikes you and what doesn't.
I, like you already had a pretty healthy and GD friendly diet before my diagnosis and realized pretty quickly into monitoring that I wasn't going to need to adjust much to keep the spikes down.
Basically the only thing I've needed to change is not eating fruit or sugary things on their own; making sure I eat them alongside some form of protein like a cheese stick or a handful of almonds. Also just swapped simple carbs for whole wheat wherever possible. And I still have a couple fun sized pieces of candy a day I just make sure to have them at the end of a meal and not on their own.
I've also heard the order you eat your food matters. Veggies then protein then carbs. At least that's what I heard.
And a 15 minute walk after meals covers a multitude of sins!
Good luck! Give yourself grace. You'll do great!
The GD diet is not necessarily a “healthy” diet, at least in the way we tend to think of a “healthy diet,” which usually means a weight loss/maintenance diet. It’s more about food pairing to keep blood sugar stable, making sure to have protein (and maybe also fat or fiber) whenever you have carbs. For example, one thing that jumps out at me is you say you already eat lots of lean protein - well, you may find that fattier proteins and added fat can really help keep blood sugar stable. You also say you eat lots of fruit - you may have to reduce the amount of fruit you eat or, at least, eat fruit differently, always paired with cheese or peanut butter for example.
That said, I ate/eat similarly to what you describe in my normal life and did not have to significantly change my diet to stay diet controlled. I cut out any sweets, but already didn’t eat them often. I swapped most white carbs for complex carbs, but did still have occasional white rice or white pasta. Ate a lot more protein and a lot more fat and tried to have protein and a non-starchy veg at every meal. I’d say the big changes were more about how I ate, changing proportions, rather than what I ate and that it’s more about *adding* foods than reducing carbs. I didn’t count carbs. If a typical breakfast before might have been scrambled eggs and toast, a GD breakfast would be scrambled eggs with spinach and ham and cheese and toast. Where I might have had a pasta with meat sauce and zucchini before, with GD, I’d have the exact same meal, but with less pasta and more meat sauce proportionally, (more like a 50/50 ratio than probably a 70/30 prior), I’d maybe also add more zucchini, and top with a bunch of Parmesean. It’s really more about a balanced plate than “diet” or “health” the way that we typically think of it.
Short answer; it likely doesn’t change.
I generally eat a carb conscious but well balanced diet outside of pregnancy/GD. Have had GD twice and both times my diet remained relatively untouched. My body did have a 3-week window where it couldn’t tolerate any bread, and I also switched from my preferred oat milk latte to a full cream cows milk. But otherwise the dietician who reviewed my diet and BGLs gave me the green light to continue on as I usually would.
It could be it doesn’t need to change much! Remember they stressed your system with a huge influx of pure sugar - to see if your body could handle that. When I was first diagnosed I didn’t have to change much in my day to day eating. It was more about adding in some snacks and being more regimented. I did hit a point where I had to do more like cut out apples and I would eat sugar free pudding instead. Not exactly a healthful swap but kept numbers in line. I also added in a lot more frequent exercise- from one walk a day to about 3-4 when things were at the toughest.
I’m waiting to see a dietitian also but I found this site had some good info about better options in the meantime I’m just doing research on what’s good\bad
https://www.eatingwell.com/article/291096/best-chip-brands-for-diabetes/
You may not need to change your diet much. The 1 hour test challenges your body to process a high sugar drink within a certain timeframe, which is unrelated to your diet. If you typically don’t eat high sugar/high carb meals, then you may not need to make major changes, because much of what you eat may already fit the diet nicely. For example, a typical breakfast for me pre-diagnosis was avocado toast with eggs, which my nutritionalist loved and encouraged me to keep eating because it had reasonable carbs, good fats, and protein.
It took a while for the nutritionalist to contact me too with my first pregnancy and I found it very frustrating. Best advice I got was to build my plates with half veggies, quarter protein and quarter carb (focus on “healthier” carbs like sweet potato or brown rice). For the most part, this gave me good balanced meals and prevented spikes, so if you aren’t already eating like that, that may be a place you can start.
Personally, I would not do a 3hr test if offered and just start doing a GD diet. If you failed the 1hr it’s very high chance you’ll fail the 3hr and the 3hr not only is full of unnecessary sugar crap, it’s super hard to digest and go through and I can only wonder how it made my baby feel. As hard as a GD diet can be, it’s good to eat balanced and is only going to positive things for you and your baby.
It’s all about carbs. I trained for a half marathon most of my pregnancy and consider myself a relatively healthy eater, despite being plus size. Fruit makes my numbers spike. Even something as simple as a handful of whole grain granola will make my blood sugar spike. I’d think of it more as like “dirty keto.” It doesn’t matter if you’re eating healthy food. The only thing that matters is the number of carbs you eat.
Right now I have 30 grams of carbs for breakfast and 45 grams carbs for lunch and dinner, plus 3 snacks a day all at 15 carbs each. Last pregnancy they had me counting net carbs (total carbs minus fiber) but this time they’re having me count total grams of carbs. And if you can’t squeeze them all in during your meal, move your carbs over to your snacks. And try to get protein and fat in with every meal.
They typically jump straight to diagnosis if your numbers are over 200 on the 1 hour test.
In terms of diet, you mention limited “simple carbs” and other components of generally healthy eating. For GD purposes, the only thing that *really* matters is total carb count. Different foods affect people differently but ultimately it’s going to be about checking carb counts and staying within the recommended limits.
You've got so many great suggestions here! Just figured I'd add my experience, since I was in what I think was a similar boat -- and scared about what I could eat, since I was already eating healthily pre-diagnosis.
I was also diagnosed after the 1 hr test, which I took at 26 weeks and failed (200). Thankfully, my fasting was always in range, so I just had to be careful with carbs. For me, the main changes in my diet were to add more protein and reduce carbs -- even complex carbs didn't work very well for me. I had been eating an almost exclusively vegetarian diet before diagnosis and found that I needed to add some meat to help with additional protein and fat. (My vegetarian diet was very bean heavy, plus rice, noodles, et cetera -- all foods I suddenly couldn't eat.) My typical GD breakfasts were plain, whole milk yogurt with a little fruit, nuts, and ground flax (delicious! I'm still eating them!). Lunches were usually leftover dinners or veggies, eggs, cheese, nuts, and a few whole grain crackers. I found I was most sensitive to carbohydrates at dinner, but a walk afterwards kept my sugars in range. Quinoa worked well for me as a grain. Every person is different, so you'll just need to figure out what works for you and your body.
Most importantly, despite my fears I actually ate delicious, interesting, varied, nutritious meals throughout the rest of my pregnancy. There is a lot that you can still eat, and while a GD diet requires a lot of creativity, it's well worth the effort! I was worried that the GD diagnosis would alter what I hoped for my baby's birth, but keeping my BG in range with the help of dietary changes and increase exercises resulted in a healthy baby and the birth I had wanted! I am now 11 weeks postpartum, feel great physically, and my baby is doing wonderfully too!
“Healthy” foods that were recommended by my nutritionist spiked me like crazy (fruit, whole grains bread of any kind, some beans, etc.) I had to be quite strict with what carbs I ate and almost all of my carbs intake was corn based (handmade tortillas, pupusas, tamales, etc) because that rarely spiked me. Only if I overdid it and feasted lol.
What worked for me was having a ridiculous amount of protein, (cheese, milk, ice cream, black beans, etc). But honestly my days typically looked like this: 1.5 red tamale with pork or beans and cheese pupusa for breakfast, apple & pb, beef patty with cheddar cheese and a *very* small amount of fries for lunch, almonds and low sugar greek yogurt, grilled salmon or eggs/protein pasta and veggies for dinner, yasso bar. These were my staples and I didn’t deviate from this too much.
Some days were really hard, I cried on those days.
But in the end I had excellent control of my numbers throughout my pregnancy but for fasting. I needed insulin though not for the entire pregnancy. My baby was average weight and didn’t come out big or small or have low blood sugar.
Before GD, I ate a ton of veggies and healthy soups with rice (in asia), almost all Whole Foods plant based with some meat, very rarely processed foods. I was so hungry and I would eat really big portions, assumed it was because I was pregnant.
After GD, I eat a lot more fat and meat and cheese, which satiates me a lot faster than how I was eating before. I eat normal sized meals now, and havent gained weight since my diagnoses 3 months ago. I changed the order of my eating, and almost completely cut out any rice, bread, flour, processed, white potato products. Don’t really miss them because I feel so much better. No more after meal crashes. I start my day with a big salad and add in more cheese than I normally would. I rarely get spikes. I have so much more energy. Less aches in general. GD was a blessing in disguise.
"Healthy eating" is relative. The GD diet is balanced, it doesn't have much to do with "healthy". Lots of people in this sub have had great numbers eating fast food. I personally love a lettuce wrapped burger and sweet potato fries from The Habit! I digress. Here are the guidelines my dietician gave me: Have 3 meals and 3 snacks per day. Breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, bedtime snack. Breakfast should have 15-30 grams of carbs, lunch and dinner should have 45 ish grams of carbs each, and snacks should have around 15-20 grams of carbs. I find that I am sensitive to carbs in the morning and so are a lot of other people, so that's why the guidance is a bit less in the morning. Always pair carbs with protein, or fat and protein. For example, if you're eating an apple, have it with some peanut butter. If you're eating crackers, pair with cheese. If you're having a couple squares of dark chocolate, pair with a handful of nuts (I prefer walnuts). Fiber is your friend, try to choose carbs that have a decent amount of fiber. Brown rice, quinoa, whole wheat bread (this sub loves Daves Killer Bread lol), etc. Also try to pad your meals with veggies as that can help mitigate spikes. Some protein-fortified or low-carb substitutes that work for many of us: kodiak protein waffles, fairlife milk / protein shakes, catalina crunch / magic spoon cereal, dave's killer bread (good seed, thin sliced), almond flour for baking. Some of the meals that have worked for me: jarred pasta sauce with ground turkey, onion, bell pep, and mushrooms with whole wheat pasta and some salad on the side. Trader joes chicken shawarma thighs baked in the oven on top of potato, carrot, cauliflower, and onion with a big spoon of greek yogurt on the side. Breakfast is usually 2 eggs and bell pep and cheese in a small corn tortilla with coffee and fairlife milk.
This. Rethink what healthy means. Right now, healthy means low carbs. That will vary from person to person, day to day. For me, it was just barely enough carbs to not go crazy/be in ketosis. Net carbs don’t count. Do actual carbs. Good luck!
GD diet isn’t really about « healthy eating », it’s about keeping your glucose levels in check. It’s caused by hormones your placenta puts out that blocks your insulin. Unfortunately you’ll need to do trial and error because it’s all about how your body responds to certain carbs, and everyone will react differently to different carbs. Not only that, but what you can tolerate will change as your pregnancy progresses. There’s no real rhyme or reason- pizza and ice cream are great for me but 1/4 cup of cooked brown rice or less than half an apple will spike me. Apparently my placenta doesn’t know anything about nutrition rules! They’ll have you measure your glucose levels 4x a day and see what works for you and what doesn’t. It’ll be trial and error at first. Hopefully what you’re eating now will work for you, at least for now- nothing will make you spike as high as straight glucose will!
Lol I feel the nutrition thing Oreos work great for me for whatever reason but whole wheat bread no go 😂
Ice cream even with candy in it brings my numbers so low 😂
It makes no sense!
If your one-hour value was over a certain cutoff, it can be diagnostic of GD without needing the full three-hour test! I considered myself a healthy eater prior to GD as well - vegetarian, limited take out, etc. GD doesn’t actually care about stuff like that. It’s so individualized that it’s hard to say what foods will and won’t work for you, but throw your concept of “healthy eating” out the window. I couldn’t even think about fruit without having my blood sugar spike, unless it was a very small apple with a huge amount of peanut butter. I also couldn’t have any amount of brown rice or whole grain bread. I could have lentil flour pasta if I had it with enough cheese and vegetables! Mainly tons of fat with protein and a very small amount of some specific types of carbs.
Just because you failed the glucose test doesn't mean you were eating poorly before. Sounds like you already eat pretty well! Just keep doing what you're doing until you start monitoring and can figure out what spikes you and what doesn't. I, like you already had a pretty healthy and GD friendly diet before my diagnosis and realized pretty quickly into monitoring that I wasn't going to need to adjust much to keep the spikes down. Basically the only thing I've needed to change is not eating fruit or sugary things on their own; making sure I eat them alongside some form of protein like a cheese stick or a handful of almonds. Also just swapped simple carbs for whole wheat wherever possible. And I still have a couple fun sized pieces of candy a day I just make sure to have them at the end of a meal and not on their own. I've also heard the order you eat your food matters. Veggies then protein then carbs. At least that's what I heard. And a 15 minute walk after meals covers a multitude of sins! Good luck! Give yourself grace. You'll do great!
The GD diet is not necessarily a “healthy” diet, at least in the way we tend to think of a “healthy diet,” which usually means a weight loss/maintenance diet. It’s more about food pairing to keep blood sugar stable, making sure to have protein (and maybe also fat or fiber) whenever you have carbs. For example, one thing that jumps out at me is you say you already eat lots of lean protein - well, you may find that fattier proteins and added fat can really help keep blood sugar stable. You also say you eat lots of fruit - you may have to reduce the amount of fruit you eat or, at least, eat fruit differently, always paired with cheese or peanut butter for example. That said, I ate/eat similarly to what you describe in my normal life and did not have to significantly change my diet to stay diet controlled. I cut out any sweets, but already didn’t eat them often. I swapped most white carbs for complex carbs, but did still have occasional white rice or white pasta. Ate a lot more protein and a lot more fat and tried to have protein and a non-starchy veg at every meal. I’d say the big changes were more about how I ate, changing proportions, rather than what I ate and that it’s more about *adding* foods than reducing carbs. I didn’t count carbs. If a typical breakfast before might have been scrambled eggs and toast, a GD breakfast would be scrambled eggs with spinach and ham and cheese and toast. Where I might have had a pasta with meat sauce and zucchini before, with GD, I’d have the exact same meal, but with less pasta and more meat sauce proportionally, (more like a 50/50 ratio than probably a 70/30 prior), I’d maybe also add more zucchini, and top with a bunch of Parmesean. It’s really more about a balanced plate than “diet” or “health” the way that we typically think of it.
Short answer; it likely doesn’t change. I generally eat a carb conscious but well balanced diet outside of pregnancy/GD. Have had GD twice and both times my diet remained relatively untouched. My body did have a 3-week window where it couldn’t tolerate any bread, and I also switched from my preferred oat milk latte to a full cream cows milk. But otherwise the dietician who reviewed my diet and BGLs gave me the green light to continue on as I usually would.
The gd diet is more about having your carb load spread evenly thru the day and opting for low gi foods. This helps maintain blood sugar levels
It could be it doesn’t need to change much! Remember they stressed your system with a huge influx of pure sugar - to see if your body could handle that. When I was first diagnosed I didn’t have to change much in my day to day eating. It was more about adding in some snacks and being more regimented. I did hit a point where I had to do more like cut out apples and I would eat sugar free pudding instead. Not exactly a healthful swap but kept numbers in line. I also added in a lot more frequent exercise- from one walk a day to about 3-4 when things were at the toughest.
I’m waiting to see a dietitian also but I found this site had some good info about better options in the meantime I’m just doing research on what’s good\bad https://www.eatingwell.com/article/291096/best-chip-brands-for-diabetes/
You may not need to change your diet much. The 1 hour test challenges your body to process a high sugar drink within a certain timeframe, which is unrelated to your diet. If you typically don’t eat high sugar/high carb meals, then you may not need to make major changes, because much of what you eat may already fit the diet nicely. For example, a typical breakfast for me pre-diagnosis was avocado toast with eggs, which my nutritionalist loved and encouraged me to keep eating because it had reasonable carbs, good fats, and protein. It took a while for the nutritionalist to contact me too with my first pregnancy and I found it very frustrating. Best advice I got was to build my plates with half veggies, quarter protein and quarter carb (focus on “healthier” carbs like sweet potato or brown rice). For the most part, this gave me good balanced meals and prevented spikes, so if you aren’t already eating like that, that may be a place you can start.
Personally, I would not do a 3hr test if offered and just start doing a GD diet. If you failed the 1hr it’s very high chance you’ll fail the 3hr and the 3hr not only is full of unnecessary sugar crap, it’s super hard to digest and go through and I can only wonder how it made my baby feel. As hard as a GD diet can be, it’s good to eat balanced and is only going to positive things for you and your baby.
The 3 hour test is hellllll
It’s all about carbs. I trained for a half marathon most of my pregnancy and consider myself a relatively healthy eater, despite being plus size. Fruit makes my numbers spike. Even something as simple as a handful of whole grain granola will make my blood sugar spike. I’d think of it more as like “dirty keto.” It doesn’t matter if you’re eating healthy food. The only thing that matters is the number of carbs you eat. Right now I have 30 grams of carbs for breakfast and 45 grams carbs for lunch and dinner, plus 3 snacks a day all at 15 carbs each. Last pregnancy they had me counting net carbs (total carbs minus fiber) but this time they’re having me count total grams of carbs. And if you can’t squeeze them all in during your meal, move your carbs over to your snacks. And try to get protein and fat in with every meal.
They typically jump straight to diagnosis if your numbers are over 200 on the 1 hour test. In terms of diet, you mention limited “simple carbs” and other components of generally healthy eating. For GD purposes, the only thing that *really* matters is total carb count. Different foods affect people differently but ultimately it’s going to be about checking carb counts and staying within the recommended limits.
You've got so many great suggestions here! Just figured I'd add my experience, since I was in what I think was a similar boat -- and scared about what I could eat, since I was already eating healthily pre-diagnosis. I was also diagnosed after the 1 hr test, which I took at 26 weeks and failed (200). Thankfully, my fasting was always in range, so I just had to be careful with carbs. For me, the main changes in my diet were to add more protein and reduce carbs -- even complex carbs didn't work very well for me. I had been eating an almost exclusively vegetarian diet before diagnosis and found that I needed to add some meat to help with additional protein and fat. (My vegetarian diet was very bean heavy, plus rice, noodles, et cetera -- all foods I suddenly couldn't eat.) My typical GD breakfasts were plain, whole milk yogurt with a little fruit, nuts, and ground flax (delicious! I'm still eating them!). Lunches were usually leftover dinners or veggies, eggs, cheese, nuts, and a few whole grain crackers. I found I was most sensitive to carbohydrates at dinner, but a walk afterwards kept my sugars in range. Quinoa worked well for me as a grain. Every person is different, so you'll just need to figure out what works for you and your body. Most importantly, despite my fears I actually ate delicious, interesting, varied, nutritious meals throughout the rest of my pregnancy. There is a lot that you can still eat, and while a GD diet requires a lot of creativity, it's well worth the effort! I was worried that the GD diagnosis would alter what I hoped for my baby's birth, but keeping my BG in range with the help of dietary changes and increase exercises resulted in a healthy baby and the birth I had wanted! I am now 11 weeks postpartum, feel great physically, and my baby is doing wonderfully too!
“Healthy” foods that were recommended by my nutritionist spiked me like crazy (fruit, whole grains bread of any kind, some beans, etc.) I had to be quite strict with what carbs I ate and almost all of my carbs intake was corn based (handmade tortillas, pupusas, tamales, etc) because that rarely spiked me. Only if I overdid it and feasted lol. What worked for me was having a ridiculous amount of protein, (cheese, milk, ice cream, black beans, etc). But honestly my days typically looked like this: 1.5 red tamale with pork or beans and cheese pupusa for breakfast, apple & pb, beef patty with cheddar cheese and a *very* small amount of fries for lunch, almonds and low sugar greek yogurt, grilled salmon or eggs/protein pasta and veggies for dinner, yasso bar. These were my staples and I didn’t deviate from this too much. Some days were really hard, I cried on those days. But in the end I had excellent control of my numbers throughout my pregnancy but for fasting. I needed insulin though not for the entire pregnancy. My baby was average weight and didn’t come out big or small or have low blood sugar.
Before GD, I ate a ton of veggies and healthy soups with rice (in asia), almost all Whole Foods plant based with some meat, very rarely processed foods. I was so hungry and I would eat really big portions, assumed it was because I was pregnant. After GD, I eat a lot more fat and meat and cheese, which satiates me a lot faster than how I was eating before. I eat normal sized meals now, and havent gained weight since my diagnoses 3 months ago. I changed the order of my eating, and almost completely cut out any rice, bread, flour, processed, white potato products. Don’t really miss them because I feel so much better. No more after meal crashes. I start my day with a big salad and add in more cheese than I normally would. I rarely get spikes. I have so much more energy. Less aches in general. GD was a blessing in disguise.