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Hi, it's Tracy. What are the best snacks to eat for gestational diabetes? I'm going to tell you that, but first, I'm going to try to convince you not to snack very much. When you. I have diabetes and pregnancy and you get dietary information or diabetic counseling. A lot of times they will tell you to eat three meals a day plus three snacks. And I will tell you that that's good advice for some people with a really rapid metabolism, but it's not good advice for everybody. And if you're going to have less than four hours between meals, if you have breakfast at seven and you're going to have lunch at 11 or 1130, you may not need a snack, but if you're going to have lunch at 1130 and you're not going to eat dinner until six o'clock, that's a reasonable time to put a snack in, in the mid to late afternoon, snacks are overrated and not everybody needs to eat a snack between every meal.
Whenever you eat food of any kind, your body starts to make insulin. And it does that mostly in response to carbohydrate load. But insulin is an anabolic hormone. It does plenty of good things, it helps glucose move inside the cells. So you have plenty of energy, but it also promotes fat storage. Especially if you eat food in excess of what you need.
So you want to give insulin production a little bit of a break. So taking a few hours between meals. And if you skip a snack and go at least four hours in between meals that can help cool off your insulin production, which means you're going to be more sensitive to it when mealtime comes around. So I'm not saying eliminate all snacks. Certainly if you're hungry, you should eat, but just try to space them out a little bit. You really don't need to eat every two to three hours. If you are going to snack, here are some great examples. Um, nuts are probably the best snack there is. It's one of nature's perfect foods. They're high in healthy fats, um, and they have lots of great nutrition. The best nuts to snack on are almonds, also walnuts and Brazil nuts. Those are pretty high in healthy, fat and low in carbohydrate. Next is dairy and cheese. So I have these little Peppadew peppers that I put cream cheese in, and they are just delicious. And they're a little spicy, which means you don't tend to eat them as quickly.
And you don't really binge on these. This is butter Casa cheese, which is my favorite cheese, and it's not available at every time of year. Remember that you want to eat hard cheeses in pregnancy. No blue cheese, no Brie, no soft cheeses because you are at risk for developing bacterial infections with those, but knock yourself out on cheddar cheese and Swiss cheese. Those are great in pregnancy. Deli meats you want to be careful of, but meat in general is pretty good. So some leftovers from last night's dinner, a little bit of chicken. That's a great snack for you. Lots protein, not a lot of carbs. Next is Oh, tuna fish. Remember we talked about in our Southern salads, tuna fish, chicken salad, and things like that. If you make them properly, they're very low in carbs and they're pretty high in protein.
They make a great snack! To wrap it up. Remember, you may not need a snack. Maybe you're thirsty and you should have a glass of water and then see if you're hungry again. But if you're hungry and it's going to be a while until your next meal, eat a healthy snack, just make sure it's got protein and fat and fiber, in addition to just the carbs. I'm excited to announce that I'm introducing a course in September called conquering diabetes in pregnancy. It has a ton of information about diet, exercise, downloadable, diet forms, all kinds of things that are going to help you manage your diabetes in pregnancy. More information on that coming up, but for now, head on over to the blog, drtracypapa.com/dietguide for your guide to healthy eating in pregnancy.
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