There are a few of those pregnancy stereotypes that are absolutely true. One of these very true stereotypes is pregnancy cravings. Although each woman is different in what she craves, the vast majority of pregnant women everywhere report strong cravings during their pregnancies.
Of course, it would be too easy if everyone craved healthy foods like salad and grilled chicken. These women certainly exist, but it seems they are in the minority. A lot of women instead have intense cravings for fast food and sweet treats. The cravings for sweets can be especially intense and hard not to succumb to.
While many women certainly do indulge in every craving, it is unfortunately not the healthiest thing to do. Especially if you have gestational diabetes, you have to really work to curb those sweet cravings and learn how to deal with them in different ways.
With gestational diabetes, your body is not able to convert glucose into energy. This leads to elevated blood sugar, which can cause a host of complications. Some complications of high blood sugar include dizziness, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, and even coma. High blood sugar spikes can also affect your unborn child.
There are ways to help control your sweet cravings during pregnancy. Some of them require quite a bit of willpower, but just thinking about the health of your sweet baby should help with that some.
Don’t Skip Meals: One way to curb cravings is to make sure you never get hungry enough to get desperate. People make poor dietary decisions when they are hungry, especially desperately hungry pregnant women. Hunger can absolutely overpower your thoughts of health foods, so it’s best to avoid skipping meals or snacks.
Get Some Exercise: Exercising regularly can help to regulate your blood sugar, which can help lessen sweet cravings. Talk to your doctor about how much exercise you can handle, and ideas for low impact workouts such as walking and swimming.
Stick to Your Prescribed Diet: As difficult as it may be sometimes, you will deal with less hardcore cravings overall if you stick to your prescribed gestational diabetes diet.
Make Substitutions: When you just need to indulge, try to think of some substitutions that would make your choices a little healthier. For example, instead of a huge ice cream sundae, have a scoop or two of reduced sugar sorbet. As always, watch your carbohydrate intake throughout the day to allot for the extra sugar and calories.
Rethink Sweet: To help yourself avoid the perils of cake, candy, and other really bad for you sweets starts to rethink your sweets. Let naturally sweet fruits be your go to indulgence when you are having trouble curbing the cravings.
Gestational diabetes can be a difficult condition to deal with, especially if you have tough cravings for sweets like many pregnant women do. These tips and techniques should help you be better able to curb those cravings. For more information about gestational diabetes, click here.
