Clean it up, will ya!?

Bite This: Gestational diabetes.

I had lunch with another dear friend today and we talked about blogging (among other things), which made me think to myself, “hey, I have one of those!” Which then led me to read my past posts, which then brought me here.

My eating and fitness habits have totally changed since having kids. I can relate to those people who have a difficult time managing their own health while taking care of other people. Not making excuses, because it can still be done, it is just difficult. My bad habits began during my last pregnancy – being pretty strict on my eating habits prior to pregnancy, I kind of “let loose” a little during pregnancy. Maybe a little too much. In no time, my healthy eating habits had turned into a little less fruits/veggies and a little more cookies, milkshakes. Then breastfeeding made them even worse – I found I lost the pregnancy weight without trying too hard, so I allowed even more bad habits to develop during breastfeeding. Especially because I was really too tired to care. The problem then is that those bad habits stuck with me and the good habits died hard.

Now it’s my second go-around with pregnancy. I told myself I was going to eat well because I know how important it is for the baby. But again, I had an aversion to vegetables and a craving for sweets, so I mostly feasted on chocolate and peanut butter. But I continued to exercise and relatively speaking, I think I still ate better than the first pregnancy. So, I was completely surprised, shocked, and upset when I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Blame the pregnancy hormones, but I am pretty sure I cried all day. All I kept thinking was, “how could I, a dietitian, who eats relatively healthy compared to most, be diagnosed with gestational diabetes?” But, who am I kidding? I wasn’t eating relatively healthy. I even admitted to my OB in weeks prior that I was concerned about my pregnancy weight gain – which is still in the normal range.

I know there are certain risk factors for developing gestational diabetes like being overweight pre-pregnancy, gaining too much weight during pregnancy, having a history of it, etc, but even without these risk factors, it can just be a placental hormonal thing and I just had to accept it.

The good news is that maybe it was a blessing in disguise because it forced me to clean up my diet a bit, stop snacking on sweets and sugar and my kid’s snacks, and eat more protein and vegetables. Even with these minimal changes I have been able to control my blood sugar and it has decreased my cravings for anything sweet. Except for these amazing sea salt and turbinado sugar dark chocolate almonds that I am eating right now – but I did portion them out so that it’s only 19 grams of carbs. I am hoping that this will help build my healthy eating habits again and help squash the bad habits I developed during pregnancy and parenting. The other thing it has forced me to do is wait 2 hours between eating times, which in turn has probably forced me to eat a little less overall.

So, my point is, it is possible to break bad habits. You just have to work a little. It isn’t hard. There are certain things that are hard in life, but saying no to a cookie every now and again is not hard. Raising twins is hard. Raising twins while being pregnant is hard. Waiting 2 hours to eat a snack after lunch is not hard.

Sound Bite:  Have you changed any eating or exercise habits over the past few months? For better or for worse?