Sugar

[NMc16]

I’m craving chocolate and sweets so much. I eat everyday but not in excess. I’m at low risk for diabetes. Does anyone know what the guidelines are for pregnant women on sugar intake? I am by no means trying to lose weight I’m just worried about sugar and it affecting the baby.

Not sure on any official guidelines but I've got such a sweet tooth this pregnancy!
If I could just gorge on cakes and chocolates every day I probably would - I'm having sugar in my hot drinks which is unheard of, craving sweet tasting drinks, biscuits..... everything.

I don't normally have a sweet tooth at all so this is a big change for me. I'm just trying to quench the cravings as much as I can with things like fruit and flavoured water.

My daughter is nearly 9 months old now but I asked about this when I was pregnant because I was also craving allll the sugar and was told the guidance is that while pregnant you shouldn’t have more than 30g of “free” sugars per day, free sugars meaning things like fizzy drinks, cakes, chocolate, not those that come naturally in fruit etc. Too much sugar increases the risk of gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia and there were some things she mentioned about impact on baby which I can’t remember now.

It is hard when it’s what you’re craving, I started eating more fruit instead so I still got that little hit and I did find that helped alot!

I’d actually never looked really at sugar content of things before and was really surprised when I did by how much is in some things. I’d have said I wasn’t eating to excess and then when I actually looked at the content of some of my fav snacks I’d realised actually even having my 1 bar of chocolate and little bag of jellys would have taken me over the limit.

Oh gosh I hadn’t even thought about stuff like gestational diabetes and pre eclampsia! I keep eating fizzy sweets. I’m trying to limit it to a small handful spread throughout the day, but I imagine combined with everything else I eat in the day it’s adding up! Eek!

I eat maybe a chocolate bar and one or two biscuits which I didn’t think was that much. I do go out walking when I can and hoping that this burns it off to balance it out. All my scans have shown a healthy baby so maybe im worrying too much. I did mention to midwife and she didn’t seem overly concerned. Did say to try and snack on nuts, fruits and yoghurts which I do do and have upped my fruit intake as well.

If your sugar intake has massively increased compared to before you were pregnant then you probably should try to get a handle on it.

But a chocolate bar and a couple of biscuits is probably fine, unless you're also having loads of white bread, pasta, UPF's etc.

Fruit is also sugar, don't forget. Your body treats sugar from fruit in basically the same way as any other sugar, it just has additional fibre, vitamins etc. It's still sugar.

Don’t eat white bread, not a lot of pasta and normally home cook my meals. Sometimes I would snack on the odd jambon or sausage rolls. I haven’t put on much weight tbh but not on purpose

I gorged on refined carbs and chocolate across the first 12 weeks of my pregnancy. Super cravings for big bars of galaxy etc... and I ended up with gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia. Don't do it! Dark chocolate is your friend xx

I don’t meet the risk factors for either so hoping I don’t get any

You can have no risk factors and have both if your diet is the cause