Gestational diabetes meal ideas

having recently been diagnosed with gest ational diabetes i am finding my meals more and more BORING! even a drop of sugar seems to send my levels into over drve so i have cut it out all together. Anyone got any simple meal ideas? My breaky usually consists of special K with a pottle of live lite yoghurt and some times a whole grain piece of toast, im so over it! when i have weetbix or porridge or cornflakes etc my levels rise. Dinners not too bad, i have mastered beef stirfry and chicken burgers, but thats about it lol. What simple quick recipes do you have up your sleeve for me? :o)

I had gd- I found a poached egg on wholegrain toast for breakfast was good - and filled me up too, so I didn't get mid-morning cravings... .
Pasta and rice dishes are still okay aren't they? - as long as you watch the carb portions- half a cup of rice or pasta I think I was told. .
Just think about getting plenty of protein( chicken/fish/meat) a little bit of carbs - preferably whole-grain, no too much fat and lots of veg and you should be ok. Good luck!

Trythinking of each meal as protein , plus veggies. Breakfastcould be an omelette, or scrambled eggs with tomatoes or mushrooms on the side, lunch tuna with a salad, that sort of thing. I found roasted pumpkin orcauliflower a great substitute for potatoes. Don't think you have to eat normal breakfast food either, I found cooking extra dinnerand eating it for breakfast worked really well.
Also be careful about coffee, it can causea blood sugar spike, like sugar. If you drinkit, only do so aftera meal, as protein and fatwill slowdown the reaction in your body.
I managed to control the gd by diet for my firstpregnancyand didn't get it at all for my 2nd pregnancy, because I atethe same way as soon as I knew I was pregnant.

Tekeflapz - may I ask who recommended you eat these foods please?

the foods i mentioned like the chicken burger and stirfry and special k with yoghurt are foods i just tried myself and succceeded with

loving the idea of cooking extra at dinner for breaky! not once did i think of that.

Fantastic advice!

Have you been given a meal plan and have you been to see a deitician. They do help a lot. I had gd and found that if I stuck to the meal plan, I could keep my sugar levels low. Also going for a walk with the whole family is a good idea. My dinner sugar levels were always high so we all went for a walk after dinner before I had to do my test. LOL the memory of waddling down the street in my last month of pregnancy. My husband said I looked like a duck out for a leisurely stroll. I just could not walk fast enough. For breakfast I always had porridge which seemed to work for me. The key was not to have a big snack before going to bed the night before. That skyrocketed my sugar levels in the morning.

If I was in a position to provide advice I'd probably plump more for enlightenment rather than trying to tell people what they should and shouldn't eat. Once someone knows just exactly what diabetes is then creating the ideal diet is pretty straightforward IMO.

Diabetes is diagnosed in normal people after a long period of, first, insulin resistance and secondly, hyperinsulinemia.

Insulin Resistance - Insulin is the master hormone responsible for taking up blood glucose and depositing it into cells. It also does the same for protein and fat, but mainly it is glucose. Once in each cell the glucose, fat and protein act as fuel to power the cells. When there is too much glucose in the bloodstream (serum glucose) for long periods of time our bodies try hard to reduce it so we produce more insulin. After a while, our cells become resistant to the effects of all that insulin so, in a vicious circle, we produce more insulin, because blood serum still needs to be reduced as too much is toxic.

Insulinemia - This is when insulin resistance is at its peak (so to speak) and the body is overproducing insulin which cannot actually do the job our bodies are making it for. This is a pre-diabetic condition and there is too much unused insulin in the blood stream. Eventually the pancrease beta cells (which produce the insulin) burn out and insulin production rapidly falls.

Diabetes - At this point, without glucose, or only tiny amounts of glucose, the human body then cannot harness the blood glucose for cellular energy and without medication many harmful effects occur in the body - retinal myopathy, gluconeogenesis, liver and kidney damage, etc, etc.

The Cause of Too much Glucose:

Fat, if not eaten with an overabundance of carbs, is actually metabolically inert, providing only energy for cells and the rest being either oxidised and released in the breath or excreted via the liver. It plays no part in glucose production. So it is not too much of that

Protein is vital for cell reconstruction, muscle repair and as an energy source. It doesn't create glucose unless our bodies are starving, in which case gluconeogenesis (breakdown of muscle tissue back into glucose with the aid of glucagon) occurs. So protein is not the cause of excess serum glucose.

Carbohydrates - Carbohydrates is the sole source of glucose in the blood stream. If you have excess blood glucose then you are eating too many carbohydrates. IMO, and that of ethical doctors, a diabetic should be limiting their carb intake to somewhere between 30 and 55grms a day, depending on their circumstances.

So saying all that, someone with a baby onboard, would probably need to take in more carbs than someone without. This is where you need expert guidance from the medical profession. Just too bad that there aren't too many doctors out there who can provide expert and ethical guidance.

tekeflapz you probably will be sent to Auckland Hospital (guessing here) and they have a good dietician who provided me with a lot of information and the midwife gave me a meal and excercise plan. They are good and ask them all sorts of questions and they can help you. Carbs and fats are to be eaten in balance as is the need to provide good nutrition to your baby. Ask your midwife you recomend a dietician if she/he has not already.

The best piece of advice was given to me by Claire Darling at NWH, way back when.
To check the back labels and look for those that had 10 or less in Sugars.
I also found that I was either eating, or taking bloods or getting ready to eat again. But was lucky in that I had GD during spring, so had plenty of berries and salad stuff, but will admit I got very tired of Grilled Chicken and salad.
Good Luck