Diet with GD

[PrettyCandles]

A friend with GD is coming to stay, what sort of meals should I prepare, and what sort of things have available for snacks?

bump?

Is there really nobody around with experience of gestational diabetes?

Hi pretty candles, the GI diet thread has some awesome recipes - low GI recipes are great for keeping blood sugar levels stable.
Pop onto the whatever weightloss board and look for the GI recipes....
HTH

Hi there!
I had GD recently. I am not sure I can be very helpful though, because in my experience different food trigger high sugar in different people.

The official advice is no sweets, each meal should consist half of complex carbohidrates (no white flour things...), and generally low fat. In other words, all vegetables great! Lean meat should be OK. Nuts is supposed to be great snacks. Not too much fruit, specially sweet ones (e.g. grapes).

However... if she is in insullin (which I was at the end...) then any healthy meals would be fine!

HTH

Hi there!
I had GD recently. I am not sure I can be very helpful though, because in my experience different food trigger high sugar in different people.

The official advice is no sweets, each meal should consist half of complex carbohidrates (no white flour things...), and generally low fat. In other words, all vegetables great! Lean meat should be OK. Nuts is supposed to be great snacks. Not too much fruit, specially sweet ones (e.g. grapes).

However... if she is in insullin (which I was at the end...) then any healthy meals would be fine!

HTH

I controlled my GD with diet, and it was basically a case of following a healthy, balanced diet, low fat, with plenty of complex carbohydrate like wholemeal bread, wholemeal pasta, cereals and pulses and so on, plenty of fruit and vegetables, and no sugary stuff.

Oh, is that all I need to do - just to serve low GI meals? I can do that!

Phew - a relief!

Yep :)
I have erratic blood sugar levels (undiagnosed no idea why) - it runs high and then drops quickly, with the GI recipes I am steady now, no highs and lows.

Oh, more responses - thanks!

What fruits are best? I presume low fat plain yogurt is OK, so fruit salad with yogurt for pudding OK? Is there any form of sugar that is preferable to common-or-garden cane sugar?

A friend of mine is diabetic and she uses fructose instead of sugar - I don't know whether that's something that is recommended though.

I have to say that I felt that as long as I was generally controlling my blood sugars well, then the odd treat wasn't going to hurt.

Some fruit are less well regarded by Gi afficionados. In my Rick Gallop book it says
Red light (very bad)
cantaloupe melon /dates/honeydew melon/watermelon raisins

Yellow Light( less bad but in moderation)
fresh apricots/bananas/kiwi/mano/papaya/pineapple

Green light

apples/blackberries/blueberries/cherries/grapefruit/grapes/lemon/oranges/peaches/plums/pears/raspberries/strawberries

A nice crumble or whole meal pancakes with blueberry sauce are our favourite puds...
With creme fraiche or cream (low fat if dieting :))

Pc - actually check the labels. A lot of low fat this and that is actually higher in sugar. Specially yougurts. I think whrn they say low fat, they mean don't eat only cheese and red meat kind of thig. Not that you really have to go the artificially low fat stuff, iYSWIM....

citric fruit would be your best guess! But agin, as long as you don;'t have bananas and grapes the whole day long she should be fine!

fructose is sold as fruisana in your sugar aisle at supermarket, it does metabolise more slowly than sugar hence it's appeal to GI folks.

Excellent. Thanks all v much.