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Breastfeeding with low carb

Raerose

Member
Messages
6
Type of diabetes
Prediabetes
Treatment type
Diet only
Hi all.
I have been recommended to follow low carb diet as my blood sugar is rising following GD in both my pregnancies.
The nurse I saw (who was excellent) said to just eat foods completely from her green list she gave me for two weeks so these have extremely little to no carbs.
I completely forgot to tell her that I am still breastfeeding and now she is on holiday. Does anyone know if this would be safe for just two weeks then add other low carb foods or should I do this immediately?
Thanks
 
Hi @Raerose, Welcome to the forum! Over on the Gestational Diabetes sub-forum there is a thread on breastfeeding and low-carb, with a variety of (all positive as far as I can see) responses on related baby and pregnancy topics as well .

But as our bodies are adapted to, and adapt to, eating low-carb, there should be no reason not to begin as your GD recommended, and start immediately, looking out for having 'low carb/keto flu' - but not everyone does. I am not quite sure what you mean about "then add other low carb foods or..." I guess this refers to what is on the nurse's green list?

When it comes to low carbing I operate more on what not to eat, other than what to eat, but I can see how a 'green list' could be very convenient. I hope you are enjoying eating without raising your blood glucose too much? And enjoying breastfeeding still, of course.

The biggest problem I would have with breastfeeding and low-carbing is the additional cooking involved with making low-carb food I like from scratch. But the additional cooking is well worth it, for health and well-being reasons, and for your family, which is a very good when it comes to food?
 
I recently had reason to read up about LCHF and breastfeeding (have no kids myself). It can be done, just don't dip under 50 grams of carbs a day. Once you're done with the breastfeeding it's fine to go lower: https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/when-breastfeeding
 
PS: I don't know what a green list entails... What's on there?
 
Thanks for your replies. I shall check out the forum sections you recommended. Luckily my baby isn't a newborn so I'm OK with the cooking aspect, I've always made meals from scratch. I'll probably stop in a couple of months when I return to work.

I couldn't think how to explain the green list in a better way without my message being too long initially! I cant link the list either as it appears to be from a subscribed website I cant access. It's like a traffic light system where the "red list " has your obvious foods to avoid like potatoes, bread, icecream etc and an amber list of inbetween foods.

So the green list has veg up and fruit up to 5g carb/100g. Meat, cheese, cream, whole milk (and similar items), nuts up to 8g/100g few basics like tinned fish, herbs and spices. It excludes processed meat like bacon, cured meats and mayo, nut butters, sugar free drinks so presumably that's for other reasons other than carb content.
She also recommended intermittent fasting so with only having 2 meals a day I'm not having 50g carb in that at all.
I think I'll try to increase carbs a little until I stop breastfeeding. I am also monitoring my blood sugars which have been between 4-5 before meals and only up to 5.6 after meals too.
 

Aaaw, that's too bad... The green list sounded good until the bacon, mayo etc... Sugar free drinks can be problematic because for some people, artificial sugars prompt high blood sugars in spite of them not actually being sugary. Plus, in large quantities they kill off gut bacteria (as I found out to my detriment last summer... Still healing, and it's taking forever!). Bacon's alright, if it's not the Americanized stuff that's covered in maple syrup or similar sweet stuff. (I have it once or twice a day, actually). The list seems to go in the right direction, but it's what we Dutch call, "limping on two thoughts". Serving two masters, basically. With the mayo, bacon, nut butters and the like nixed, they're basically still going with the old "fats are bad" thing. And they're not, and especially for a T2, they're absolutely vital. You can't cut carbs and not up the fats, you'd first get hungry, and then, after a while, severely malnourished. Have a read over at dietdoctor.com, this forum's website, diabetes.co.uk (not .org!!!), and here; https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/blog-entry/the-nutritional-thingy.2330/ It's my own little quick start guide. My blogpost doesn't consider breastfeeding though, so yeah... Better not dip below 50 grams of carbs a day. And Intermittent Fasting is never recommended to breastfeeding mothers. (https://www.dietdoctor.com/intermittent-fasting#not <-- this site is a big advocate of IF and keto, and even they are against it when breastfeeding.) So you might want to go back to three meals a day for the time being.
 
 
Not sure that last message worked properly!


Thanks so much for the links. I've had a quick read and will have another look later. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing I've just got to carry on with it now!
 
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