My Raw Fed Companions

Just as we humans were not made to run on soda and junk food, our pets were not made to run on kibble. In this country the incidence of cancers and auto-immune disease in domestic animals has reached epic proportions. Only a few decades ago, these conditions were unheard of in animals. I am sure that nutrition plays an important role.

I firmly believe in a species-appropriate diet, both for our pets and for our livestock. The pet food industry would have us believe that their products provide perfect nutrition for every single pet, regardless of the needs of an individual animal. Yet again we are talking about highly processed “pseudo-food” stripped of all the nutrients, enzymes and vital energy that nature provided, and enriched with a handful of synthetic vitamins and minerals. That iss why I feed my dogs and my cat an organic raw meat diet.

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Gestational Diabetes – Part 5

In case you missed it:
– Part 1 What is it and how to test
Part 2 Let’s talk about diet 
Part 3 How to navigate the supermarket 
Part 4 What to eat when suffering from GD 

Supplements To Manage GD And Tips To Fight Cravings

There is very little research done on pregnant women because, as you can imagine, it is unethical to conduct tests on pregnant women. There are though several supplements that have been used for years on pregnant women and are regarded as safe.

My advice is to work with a professional who will help you find what your body needs specifically. A practitioner trained in disorders of blood sugar metabolism will be able to support all three organs of blood sugar, gently and safely for you and baby.

If you were to use food as medicine, I would recommend eating organ meats 2-3 times a week. Organic liver is a powerhouse of nutrients that will help your body regulate glucose levels. If you dislike liver, you can take it in forms of desiccated liver tablets.

Another good supplement to take is chromium picolinate. Chromium is a key mineral that helps the body better & more efficiently utilize glucose.

As far as herbs are concerned, you really need to be cautious and only work with a practitioner who is knowledgeable in herbalism, as too many herbs are contraindicated in pregnancy and can be very dangerous to the fetus and to bring the pregnancy to term.

An herb that is safe to use is cinnamon bark standardized pure extract. Another safe herb is Gymnema Sylvestre. This is a great herb to manage blood glucose level; it is also a great herb to help you curb sugar cravings. A little trick for you mamas, and everyone out there, if you have a sweet tooth, what you can do is open a capsule of gymnema and sprinkle it on your tongue. It will numb your taste buds so the next time you take a spoonful of whatever sugary treats you want to eat, it won’t taste sweet anymore. If you are unable to detect the sweet taste, you may not want to eat it after all. This is a little trick that can often help.

As far as cravings are concerned, a spoonful of coconut oil with a little bit of honey or a spoonful of coconut oil with a spoonful of almond butter will do wonders! The fatty acid and the little sweet taste of the almond butter or honey, will curb the cravings fast.

Remember that cravings are often a sign that the body is missing some nutrients. That is how our physiology evolved.

It takes time for your taste buds to cleanse and time for your body to switch from running on sugar to running on fatty acids.

Ideally, a woman will want to switch to a healthy diet prior trying to conceive. But of course that is not always the case. Please know that a good practitioner will work with you and help you manage your GD, but you need to know that you may experience some cravings. They are a natural part of transitioning to a better diet.

In normal circumstances, I would help a client implement baby steps, changing just one or two things a week, and she would be able to eat a great diet in just a few months. The baby steps would add up, so that the transition would not be overwhelming, but unfortunately, when we have a diagnosis like Gestational Diabetes, most often, the choice is between a radical changes of diet or take medications like insulin or metformin. While it can feel like a lot to make changes faster and almost overnight, a good diet and a good supplement will ensure that you’re building a healthy baby.

The conventional GD diet can be brutal… I can only think of all those women out there who are eating the wrong kind of diet who are drinking diet soda pop because it has no sugar; women who are told to eat sugar-free Jell-O. These foodstuffs do not build healthy babies.

Gestational Diabetes – Part 4

In case you missed it:
– Part 1 What is it and how to test
Part 2 Let’s talk about diet 
Part 3 How to navigate the supermarket 

What To Eat When Suffering From GD

Let’s see what kind of carbohydrates a woman suffering from Gestational Diabetes should eat. When we hear the word carbohydrate, we tend to think about grains, breads, cereals, bagels, and we forget that fruits and vegetables are also carbohydrate foods.

When the diagnosis of GD is made, women are advised to keep their carbohydrate intake below 15 grams per meal and they are counseled into counting carbs. Unfortunately this advice does not keep into consideration biochemical individuality and what works for a one woman, may not work for another.

There are some women who can manage their blood sugar while eating a little bit of whole grains or starches, when these foods are paired with fats and proteins. For example, they can eat a wonderful grilled salmon with some roasted Brussel sprouts and a little side of quinoa, and their postprandial blood sugar would measure just fine.

But there is a percentage of women out there who were diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes who cannot handle even that small quantity of grains and starches. That is when it gets difficult to manage the diet, because these women need to get enough carbohydrates from plant matter without “getting sick” of veggies and we know that is the struggle that many women have, especially when food aversions set in.

My advice is to eat cooked veggies in a way that is tasty.

Working with a practitioner experienced in GD is also a must. I have several clients who can eat starchy vegetables in the form of potatoes, sweet potatoes or winter squash but they cannot do rice. Working with a clinician will help you find the best diet for you based on how your pregnant body responds to foods. It will take a little bit of trial and error because we have to figure out what your body can handle.

Women who can handle some whole grains, will want to eat grains that have been soaked & sprouted. They will want to consume the grains as a side dish, instead of having a bowl of pasta.

How a healthy diet for the management of GD looks like? Ideally your plate should be half filled with low glycemic vegetables dressed with plenty of healthy fats (pastured butter, unrefined coconut oil, EVOO), which allow the body to assimilate the wonderful fat-soluble nutrients that are contained in the vegetables.

We need to eat foods that won’t spike blood sugar. Low glycemic fruits: berries, apples, coconuts and tomatoes, and low-glycemic veggies. If you crave a banana, have only half and eat it with some nut butter. The fat & protein in peanut butter will help modulate the blood sugar response. If you would like some pineapple, it at the end of your meal! The enzymes in the pineapple will help you digest your meal, and eating on a full stomach will help prevent blood sugar spikes.

The rest of your plate should he composed of healthy protein (grass-fed, organic, pastured, try to get the best quality you can afford) and healthy fats.

Gestational Diabetes – Part 3

In case you missed it:
– Part 1 What is it and how to test
Part 2 Let’s talk about diet 

How To Navigate The Supermarket

Remember that during pregnancy you are building a human being “from scratch”. To build a healthy baby you need to consume high quality proteins and fats. I would like all of my pregnant clients to eat foods as they come in nature, as close as they can get to their natural state.

One trustworthy principle I always tell my clients (pregnant and not) is to remember that real food doesn’t come in a box.  Real food is what you find along the perimeter of a supermarket, the fruits and veggies, the dairy, the fish, the beef and other animal products, the eggs, the butter, the olive oil.

When we enter the aisles of the supermarkets, we generally find shiny packages that “scream” to be low fat, low cholesterol, low this, high in that, those foods have been processed, they have been stripped and refined, and then they have been enriched with a handful of synthetic vitamins & minerals that have no place in our body. Our body does not know how to use them and our baby’s body doesn’t know how to use them either.

Let’s start with this, real food doesn’t have a label. But if you do eat something out of a package, look for a food that has 5 or fewer ingredients, ingredients that you can pronounce. Make sure that you do not need a biochemistry degree to read a label. Such food has no place is your pregnant body.

If you buy a packaged food, check the label and look at the grams of sugar. Particularly if you are diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes, the food must have 6 grams of sugar or less. But remember, every carbohydrate is converted into glucose in the body. So if you look at the label & it has 0 grams of sugar but 40 grams of carbohydrates, you have to know that those 40 grams of carbohydrate will be converted into sugar. So, per this example, if a food label lists 0 grams of sugar but 40 grams of carbohydrates, you probably don’t want to eat it & you want to look for something that has 15 grams of carbohydrates or less.

Another thing to pay attention to when eating out of a box is portion size. A portion of Pringles is a small handful of chips. But some people can easily get to the end of the can without even realizing it. So you are probably getting 4, 5, 6 times the amount of macronutrients that are listed on the label.  In addition to this, by law, manufacturers are allowed to list 0 grams of trans fat even though a portion size may contain up to 0.5 grams of trans fat.  Nobody eats 5 Pringles, so by the time you are done with your can of Pringles, you’ve eaten 3, 4, 5 grams of trans fat. Trans fats are a poison that we all should aim at avoiding, especially when we are expecting.

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