Real Food for Gestational Diabetes: An Effective Alternative to the Conventional Nutrition Approach Paperback – January 19, 2015

Amazing book! I was diagnosed with GD at 28 weeks and was spiraling. I remember seeing this book so ordered it. Within 2-3 hours of reading I felt better about things and how to manage my diet.It has been an easy read especially with my pregnancy brain.I’ve been able to map out meals and understand what might make my glucose levels spike. I feel much better about these next 8-10 weeks with this knowledge.

I had higher numbers with my second born during pregnancy. It would only occur after certain meals (white flour, rice, junk food), so my midwife recommended this to help manage and avoid any additional interventions. The book is well written, easy to follow and implement. A common sense approach. I was able to get my numbers under the threshold and have a successful pregnancy and home birth.

I am so happy to have discovered this book. When I got pregnant I had a good idea of how to eat to keep my blood sugar steady, but this guide was invaluable in its advice and insight on how to build a diet that not only kept blood sugar in a healthy range, but offered the most nutritional bang for your buck for mom and baby. The focus on what to ADD as opposed to just what to avoid was a welcome and insightful addition. Not to mention the fact that reading it made me feel understood and validated in my choices, when seemingly everyone around me was pushing the status quo.For the past four years I’ve been focusing on eating real, whole foods. I’ve cut out gluten and most grains, reduced my sugar intake drastically, and found a level of health and comfort in my body I never thought possible. Throughout this time, my husband and I were also trying to conceive. It took a long time, but we were thrilled to find out we are expecting our first child several months ago. Since then, I’ve continued eating pretty well. My appetite took quite a hit the first trimester, but I avoided morning sickness for the most part. I was surprised at my lack of crazy cravings.From my experience over the last few years, I knew my body does not handle refined sugar or processed grain products well. Those foods are also pretty devoid of nutrition so I keep these types of foods to a minimum, although I no longer think of them as “bad” or “never”. That tends to insight my inner toddler who doesn’t want to be told “no”. Instead, I try to eat what makes me feel best at any given time. It works for me!Knowing this, I had a bad, bad feeling about having to do the diabetes testing done during pregnancy. My doctor does the 1 hour glucose tolerance screening followed by the 3 hour test if your first results cause concern. I did the first screening (despite my reservations) and my results came back high. I was not surprised that my body didn’t know what to do with all that glucose all at once. Ironically, if I was taxing my body with a high carb diet on a daily basis, I’d probably do OK on the test. My body just wasn’t used to dealing with that load.At this point, I decided to take a stand and refuse the three hour test. It sounded miserable and I knew I’d fail. It took some serious negotiating, but my doctor finally allowed me to get a blood sugar meter and just test 4 times a day to see how I was handling the food I was actually eating (I requested this from the get-go but was shot down earlier). Basically, she agreed to treat me “like” a gestational diabetic but would hold off with an official diagnosis as long as my numbers stayed in range.That was when I found this wonderful book!As a result of following the advice in this book, I have kept my blood sugar steady and my doctor is happy! Whether you have an official diagnosis of GD or not, following this author’s protocol is perfect for any pregnant woman. We all want to do the best for ourselves and our new little ones. This is a great way to start! Thank you!

I was diagnosed with GD at 32 weeks. Got the phone call, and then they tell me I will them in almost a MONTH for my first appointment. Okay? GD is no joke, and I was so beyond frustrated that they would just leave me hanging for almost a full month after giving me a diagnosis like that and having a prescription for meter and strips sent to the pharmacy that day. Thank God for this book because I was able to start implementing the diet and blood sugar parameters immediately. Thanks to the information in it, I was able to be diet only controlled. So I get to the first meeting with the dietician and they were shocked at my numbers and that I had been tracking for 3 weeks on my own already. They then gave me their info and it was so bad. Sugar Free foods were all "freebies" so they pushed those. Except that I can't eat fake sugar because it literally makes me sick. Stevia makes me projectile vomit, aspertame gives me headaches. Aside from the fact that I don't believe in eating that stuff because it's so bad for you. The carb amounts were so high that I would have absolutely been on insulin [which is FINE if you need to be, but this was entirely preventable in my case] and the guidance looked like it came from the 60s. I spoke to a family member who was a diabetic counselor and she said everything I was doing from this book was spot on with what she recommends to people and that the outdated guidelines are really bad, and not to use those. So if you get diagnosed, buy yourself this book. It will give you clear info and is MUCH better and more current than most hospitals give. Our baby was NOT gigantic like everyone kept telling me. I did have high amniotic fluid, probably from GD. But I was diagnosed late, and baby was totally fine. She weighed 8 lbs and was totally normal. No blood sugar issues and mine returned completely to normal after she born. This book is absolutely worth every penny and gave me a clear plan when my hospital left me hanging.

If you are expecting a cookbook, like I was, I think you will be disappointed. However, I don't regret my purchase: This book is full of great information for women who have been diagnosed with prediabetes or gestational diabetes. I find Ms. Nichol's approach very reasonable, and I like her emphasis on mindful eating. She makes some very convincing arguments that challenge conventional GD treatment (see chapter 11). I like that she includes a list of foods to eat and foods to avoid. There's a fairly robust list of snack ideas,. which was really helpful as I try to figure out what/when to eat.A couple of things, though, that I didn't like about this book. There's little information about fruit. It's included in some of the meal plans and snack ideas, but it's not really addressed like other carb sources are. This was confusing. Secondly, I was hoping for more recipes to get me inspired. I was really disappointed by the number of recipes included. I think she is purposely trying not to make this a "what to eat / diet plan" book, but for people that really need to change how they're eating, a few weeks worth of ideas would be very welcome.