Sample Diet for Gestational Diabetes

About Gestational Diabetes

Gestational diabetes is a huge topic. To discuss it here would leave little room for actual diet planning resources. Still it’s important that you understand what gestational diabetes means to you, your baby, and your pregnancy. Hopefully, you’re already working closely with your pregnancy care providers. He or she should be an excellent resource for further information about gestation diabetes. In fact, your care provider can provide you with a sample diet for gestational diabetes.

To learn more about gestational diabetes try the following articles:

• Gestational Diabetes
• Controlling Gestational Diabetes
• Diabetes and Pregnancy

A Healthy Gestational Diabetes Diet Plan

All pregnant women need to eat a healthy pregnancy diet, but women experiencing gestational diabetes need to follow a very specific eating plan to maintain good health. Although you can find many sample diet plans for gestational diabetes on your own, you absolutely need to be working with your health care provider and perhaps a nutrition specialist. Planning your own diet plan if you have gestational diabetes is not recommended.

The Best Diet Plans

A great sample diet for gestational diabetes will cover at least the following components:

• Carbohydrates: Most sample diets for gestational diabetes focus on carbohydrates. Carbohydrates come from grains, fruits, and veggies. When your body digests these foods, they break down into simple sugars (glucose) and your body uses the sugars for energy. Carbohydrates affect your blood sugar, which in turn affects gestational diabetes. Normally, a diet will discuss carbohydrate counting.

• The exchange system: This is a system that breaks down the food groups appropriately for people with diabetes (or gestational diabetes). For further information about the exchange system, visit Emory Healthcare.
• Fiber: This is often a component of a diet plan because fiber slows digestion and thus makes it easier to control gestational diabetes blood sugar issues.

Where to Find a Sample Diet for Gestational Diabetes

There are many places to find a good plan. Be sure to let your care provider know about any new plan you find so they can make sure it safely fits your specific needs.

Books with Sample Diet Plans

• Diabetes & Pregnancy: What to Expect by The American Diabetes Association
• Your Gestational Diabetes: A Guide for You and Your Baby's Good Health by Lois Jovanovic-Peterson
• The Official Patient's Sourcebook on Gestational Diabetes by James N. Parker
• Tips for a Healthy Pregnancy with Diabetes by Patti Bazel Geil, Patricia Geil, Laura Hieronymus

Websites with Sample Diet Plans

• Diabetic Mommy is a website that offers a ton of information about pregnancy and diabetes as well as gestational diabetes. Offered on the site is a sample diet plan, information about adjustments, and how to stick to a proper diet.
• Med TV offers a sample plan for women with gestational diabetes – but with a catch. The diet was created for a woman who weighed 130-135 pounds before becoming pregnant. Still, it does offer a great look at what is typical for an entire daily menu from breakfast to dinner and snacks, as well.
• Diabetes Monitor has an excellent food chart] broken down by group and serving size, tips about diet, and ideas about nutrients and preparation of foods.
• The Los Angeles Chinese Learning Center is interesting because they’re actually an organization that offers language classes, but they have a very nice collection of diabetes pages on their website. Hey, good tips are good tips. Offered are different sorts of tips than on other pages including condiment suggestions and serving sizes of various food items.
• BD Consumer Healthcare has an entire PDF booklet you can download for free. It’s really informative and includes lots of basic information about gestational diabetes, including a great sample diet plan, nutrition tips, and even a handy log you can print out and use to help you keep track of your health.

Lastly, visit Universal Health Communications if you’d like to obtain a videos on gestational diabetes. They have numerous videos on diabetes in general and some specific to gestational diabetes, including diet planning videos. They’re a bit costly but worth it if you don’t feel like reading – some people learn better visually.

Don’t forget to always work with your care provider no matter which diet plan you decided to try. Managing gestational diabetes is a team -- not solo -- effort.