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Friday 4 May 2012

A New Direction

After having my consultants appointment and booking in for my Glucose Tolerance Test (test for gestational diabetes) and being told by the nurse she would be surprised if I didn't get it due to having three risk factors I have decided I have to do something to try and prevent it happening or at least be in control of my eating before my test and possible meetings with dietician.

I have been doing a bit of research and have decided that I don't think Slimming World is the best plan for me to follow for managing my sugar levels. Reasons for this are:


  • I eat a lot of carbohydrates as I love my green days, now, I am not aiming for low carb or no carb just more sensible choices when choosing what I eat. 
  • Portion control is not really part of Slimming World apart from healthy extras and syns
  • A lot of foods contain sweeteners i.e. yoghurts
Don't get me wrong I love the Slimming World plan but at this moment in my life I feel it is not going to serve me well. 

I am still at the early stages of my research and a lot of things I have found have been American and I don't know how much 1/2 a cup is and I don't even think I've ever tasted peanut butter! Also, a lot of information I have doesn't give any ideas of portions, just suggestions of what to eat. 

So my new direction is to try and follow a diet suitable for balancing my sugar levels, a plan where I eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, choose my carbs wisely (wholemeal mainly). I am also going to have to seriously limit my chocolate and cakes which have kept me good company for the last few weeks! So all in all I have a lot more to think about before I can put a shopping list together. 

Lastly, I am sorry if you follow this blog for Slimming World, whenever I do meals I will inform of what parts are Slimming World friendly and I am sure most of them will be more or less Slimming World I just need to approach things differently for a while. 

3 comments:

  1. Gemma,

    You may want to consult a registered dietician (or the UK equivalent) and devise some meal plan ideas. But I found some useful and trustworthy information from our National Institute of Health website: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/007429.htm

    It sounds like the general advice is to limit sugar (maybe just outright avoid?) and go for unprocessed foods as much as possible, heavy on vegetables and whole fruits (not juice). I guess carbs are ok but my guess would be you need to eat the complex carbs and whole foods with lots of fiber, to slow the absorption of the sugars. Even for non-diabetics, that's kind of the approach.

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    1. Thanks for that website. I'm hopefully going to my doctors next week if I can get an appointment as I've gone deaf in one ear again so will ask him about dieticians, I don't really want to pay to see one. Failing that I am seeing my midwife in a couple of weeks so will ask her.

      Looking at things it seems I might be best doing the 6 meals a day to ensure that my blood sugar is stable and making sure that I eat fruit and vegetables with high water content.

      It is weird as I have been doing something completely different for the last year, I haven't really looked at nutritional balance of my meals and even though I eat plenty of fruit and vegetables I never really take notice of the content of sugar, fats, salt etc.

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    2. I haven't been that good at that either. It becomes a full-on research project after awhile to micro manage every aspect of everything and I doubt anyone really does that. Even the dieticians. I'm sure as long as you get close to the better way of eating you'll be much better off, even if you're not 100%. Good luck!

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