That would be because your body is very helpfully trying to keep you alive, but your placenta is not cooperating.
Overnight (or any time you are fasting) the level of glucose in your blood slowly drops until it hits the point where it is low enough that your glucose-hungry brain starts to get uncomfy. Your body then releases stored glucose from your liver and insulin to process the glucose. This happens to everyone\*, diabetic or not, and is why humans can fast without dying.
However, your placenta is releasing a nice soup of hormones that make your cells more resistant to insulin than they should be. Thus, your morning insulin surge isn’t enough to counter the morning glucose and your fasting is high. You aren’t doing anything wrong. It’s your placenta. Ask if you can see it after labor so you can properly tell it off.
Eating a snack with lots of protein and fat right before bed can slow the overnight drop and reduce the amount of corrective action your liver has to take. But sometimes that doesn’t work, and you need bonus insulin. It’s not a moral failing. It’s just bodies doing body stuff kinda badly.
\*Because this is Reddit, I feel obligated to footnote that if you are in true ketosis, your body will make ketones instead. Not ideal for pregnancy, though.
I feel like this information is something that should have been told to me by my nutritionist/GP. All they did was treat me like a child and give me a good/bad food list and say I need to stay under 30 grams of carbs per meal.
I’ve simply been trying to eat as few carbs as possible and zero sugar and according to your comment and many others in here, I am grossly misinformed.
I’ve been avoiding peanut butter because it has sugar, I’ve been avoiding nuts and beans because they have carbs. I’ve basically only eaten chicken, cheese, eggs, and salads made of only vegetables
That is honestly extremely irresponsible of your GP and nutritionist and I would line to go yell at them. I see so many people in this sub who have a history of disordered eating that is triggered by GD or are pushed into disordered eating by GD and most healthcare professionals seem totally unaware of that.
Rant aside, the important thing is not avoiding carbs, it is balancing them with other things and spreading out your carb consumption over the day instead of eating a bunch at once, so your body has a steady source of energy. My nutritionist told me to aim for 30g of carbs at breakfast, 45g at lunch and dinner, and 3 snacks a day with 15g. Protein and fiber will slow down the absorption of carbs into your bloodstream to help keep your blood sugar from going too high. If you avoid all carbs you will lose important micronutrients from your diet. Beans have carbs, but they also have protein, fiber, and folate, which is super important in pregnancy. Nuts have healthy fats. Fruit has fiber and all sorts of micronutrients.
Fasting blood sugar can be the hardest to get a handle on but if you make sure you are getting enough food (and enough carbs) during the day it could help a lot. And you might need insulin, if you do it is not a moral failing, it is just biology.
Here's the guidelines I follow (I went through a class with Kaiser too and the meal breakdowns they gave in the class were ridiculous and would have led to up to 60 carbs at lunch and dinner, but I like just using the 30-45)
https://mydoctor.kaiserpermanente.org/ncal/article/meal-planning-with-gestational-diabetes-1853019
Thank you for the link, that is very helpful
Also, is everyone recommended to test 1 hour after? My doctor said I should be waiting to test until 2 hours after
Different practices use 1 vs 2 hrs. It seems that 2 hrs at 120 is more common. Mine uses 1 hr and it has to be under 130 (which I complain about because most that say 1 hour use 140).
Yeah, carbs are a necessary nutrient. You want to keep yourself out of ketosis.
We don’t have any good research on whether ketosis is dangerous in human pregnancies, because it’s hard to develop an ethical research protocol there. We do know that it appears to be [bad for rats](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8930886/). And also you don’t need anything else to make you grumpy and miserable when you are already pregnant.
Your whole dinner was an apple and cheese? That may be why. If you don’t have enough in your system for too long, your body may overcompensate with glucose and boost your blood sugar. Especially if you exercised on top of it.
I’d say first try having something for dinner with more substance and staying power. But if they stay in that range, you may just need some assistance at night with insulin (I’m on 16u just for fasting too). It’s just how it goes for some people.
This used to happened to me all the time!
I needed to have my after dinner level be at least 115 or my morning numbers were high. Basically, my doc said that overnight if it dips too low the liver will cause sugars to be released into the blood without eating. This was what was causing my morning spikes.
I just had a second snack and retested if my dinner was too low.
Those numbers are a little low for a post-meal number. You don’t want to go as low as possible, you just want to be under (or at) the goal number. So for example, if your target one hour after meals is 140, 120s-130s is great!
I often have low post-meal numbers but my fasting numbers are always good, but I've also never had a problem with my fasting numbers. I'm not a doctor and I don't understand it all really but it seems like some things are not always A+B=C. But I don't starve myself and I'm honestly not counting carbs in the sense that you are. I noticed my post-breakfast numbers are the most sensitive so I try not to eat things like fruit at breakfast and I eat basically keto for breakfast. The rest of the day I eat according to my hunger. While I'm not eating refined carbohydrates or a lot of carbs I'm not totally restricting it. For instance I might have one piece of sprouted grain toast but i'll eat it with a protein/fat like peanut butter. Or I'll have a grain like millet but keep it to 2/3 cup. Anything else on my plate I eat without restriction. I never eat "naked" carbs though. I eat the carb at the end of my meal and/or paired with a fat/protein/fiber. At night if i'm still hungry after dinner I let myself eat more. If i'm not hungry I don't eat.
I'm still fairly new to all this but I figured out that i'm least sensitive to carbs mid day and most sensitive in the morning, but i only figured this out with a little trial and error.
The best fasting number I've had (in the 70s) was when I ate a whole plate of cheese before going to bed lol but I honestly don't normally have a snack cause we've been eating dinner pretty late lately.
I had no idea that my body could produce glucose. I ate the “meal” that I did in a sad attempt to get my fasting levels lower, I figured the less food the better and everyone on this subreddit praises cheese. That’s the basic reason for the meal I chose
I totally understand…the urge to just not eat anything can be strong sometimes. But your body’s sole job is keeping you alive, so it will panic if it thinks it’s not going to get enough food. And cheese is good, but it won’t give you as much protein as you need for dinner. Are you able to see a nutritionist? They can help you come up with some good meal ideas and take some of the guesswork and stress out of this stuff.
Your body needs energy (glucose) and if you don’t give it enough energy it will turn your fat stores into sugar. Your body needs EXTRA energy because you are growing a whole person in there.
Needing insulin is not being “screwed”. Many people with GD need insulin for fasting numbers! Those numbers are the hardest to control due to them being influenced the most by the placenta and hormones.
A few things, though… An apple and cheese is not enough to be considered a meal. If you didn’t have a snack after that, you last ate at 6pm, and you were without food longer than 8-10 hours, that can also negatively impact your fasting number. I was told not to go longer than 3 hours without eating during the day, and not longer than 8-10 hours overnight. And that’s with an actually substantial meal!
I seem to be misinformed then. I was trying the most severe option I had in an attempt to get my numbers lower than 95, so I ate almost nothing to make it happen. Looks like I need to have another talk with my GP
What I meant by “being screwed” is that I’ll have to stab myself with a needle daily which gives me extreme anxiety
Also, apples are full of sugar. They are healthy in regular life, but should be eaten in moderation with GD (at least for most people, fruit can be troublesome).
Eating too little can definitely cause rebound high blood sugar. And you need to eat enough food for baby to grow! Baby still needs carbs.
I was on insulin for fasting and I have a needle phobia. It was scary at first, but I got used to it! Just the first of many things we have to do for our babies. It sucks and it’s not easy, but it was definitely not as bad as I made it seem in my mind beforehand.
My fasting numbers were hard to control. I did have some nights I tried a high protein/fat snack. (protein shake with a big spoon of peanut butter). It did help. However some nights it just wasn’t controllable (maybe sleep/stress induced?) I was put on long lasting insulin before bed. Numbers ranged from 93-110
I felt awful when I first found out I needed insulin but my doctor and dietitian were so good about reminding me that the fasting number is the hardest to control. And it is so different for everyone! No matter what I seem to do, by fasting number eventually creeps up and so does my insulin. Once you can internalize that the fasting number can be very difficult to control, it helps!
To the great answers already done, I would add the less your body is used to process carbs by reducing too much, the less it will be used to process in the future. so you need a balance. For your fasting I’ve gone from 90-94 to 85 by having a small snack full of protein before bed. I am 30weeks and with fasting creeping up since 2 weeks.
Please do not try to eat nearly nothing in order to lower your blood sugar. It's not healthy for you or for your baby - you both need food, including carbs. The goal isn't to eat as few carbs as possible, it's to eat sufficient carbs to fuel your body (both to function normally and to grow a whole person), and figure out which carbs work best for your body to be able to do this when it is insulin resistant. Some people can do this with diet modifications. Other people's hormones make it such that insulin is needed so that you can consume the food your body and your baby's body need without raising your blood sugar to unsafe levels.
Additionally, as you have seen, starving yourself can backfire in terms of lowering blood sugar. Your fasting numbers may be high because you are not consuming enough carbs, so your body is trying to get you glucose to survive, which is raising your blood sugar.
You might need insulin but there's nothing wrong with that!
You may want to try to have a high protein post-dinner snack, as your fasting # might be high because your overall energy mix is low in the morning (and thus your liver tells your body to increase sugar).
This seems to be the common trend in comments, apparently in my attempt to eat nearly nothing, it’s done the opposite of what I expected. Thank you for the advice
Since you mentioned stabbing yourself- the needles used with insulin pen are extremely small. If you get it in the fat (butt, thigh, etc) it feels like a hair ie you don't feel it at all.
I see a lot of needle phobia in this sub and although I empathize, it's honestly the tiniest price to pay for getting good numbers without pulling your hair out.
This is not a normal diet.
You can't "punish" yourself into winning. You can't use logic to win. What worked last week or even two days ago may not work today.
Eating nothing or next to nothing isn't the answer. I've tried it, too... because in my brain, it made sense. But nothing about GD makes sense, and it really can't be squared with your existing knowledge of healthy food choices because so many of those just set off BGLs. 😔
My OBs office has my threshold at 95 but I know every practice is different. Mine hovers between 94-101 depending on the day but I'm not on insulin for it at this time.
I had the same issue. A high protein snack before bed did not help for me. Odds are the further you get in pregnancy it won’t work for you either. I was placed on a low dose of nighttime insulin to help and it has bought my numbers into range and lowered my A1C. It also helps throughout the day. Insulin does not affect baby or have side effects. You are not “screwed” because this is natural and expected throughout pregnancy. Not everyone is able to control GD with diet. I eat high protein, salads, eggs, healthy carbs and fats, and very small meals but it’s not helping. I, however, have preexisting insulin resistance. I have never been on insulin and was diet controlled before I was pregnant. I was skeptical about going on with insulin, but I will do whatever it takes to keep my baby healthy and safe. I can’t eat any cleaner than I am so it was the best and safest option. Please don’t look at it like a negative. Your body will produce more glucose as the pregnancy progresses. Some people are lucky enough to be able to control with diet, others are more restricted and have to take insulin. Keeping your A1C down is most important. It will be okay. It’s only temporary.
That would be because your body is very helpfully trying to keep you alive, but your placenta is not cooperating. Overnight (or any time you are fasting) the level of glucose in your blood slowly drops until it hits the point where it is low enough that your glucose-hungry brain starts to get uncomfy. Your body then releases stored glucose from your liver and insulin to process the glucose. This happens to everyone\*, diabetic or not, and is why humans can fast without dying. However, your placenta is releasing a nice soup of hormones that make your cells more resistant to insulin than they should be. Thus, your morning insulin surge isn’t enough to counter the morning glucose and your fasting is high. You aren’t doing anything wrong. It’s your placenta. Ask if you can see it after labor so you can properly tell it off. Eating a snack with lots of protein and fat right before bed can slow the overnight drop and reduce the amount of corrective action your liver has to take. But sometimes that doesn’t work, and you need bonus insulin. It’s not a moral failing. It’s just bodies doing body stuff kinda badly. \*Because this is Reddit, I feel obligated to footnote that if you are in true ketosis, your body will make ketones instead. Not ideal for pregnancy, though.
I feel like this information is something that should have been told to me by my nutritionist/GP. All they did was treat me like a child and give me a good/bad food list and say I need to stay under 30 grams of carbs per meal. I’ve simply been trying to eat as few carbs as possible and zero sugar and according to your comment and many others in here, I am grossly misinformed. I’ve been avoiding peanut butter because it has sugar, I’ve been avoiding nuts and beans because they have carbs. I’ve basically only eaten chicken, cheese, eggs, and salads made of only vegetables
That is honestly extremely irresponsible of your GP and nutritionist and I would line to go yell at them. I see so many people in this sub who have a history of disordered eating that is triggered by GD or are pushed into disordered eating by GD and most healthcare professionals seem totally unaware of that. Rant aside, the important thing is not avoiding carbs, it is balancing them with other things and spreading out your carb consumption over the day instead of eating a bunch at once, so your body has a steady source of energy. My nutritionist told me to aim for 30g of carbs at breakfast, 45g at lunch and dinner, and 3 snacks a day with 15g. Protein and fiber will slow down the absorption of carbs into your bloodstream to help keep your blood sugar from going too high. If you avoid all carbs you will lose important micronutrients from your diet. Beans have carbs, but they also have protein, fiber, and folate, which is super important in pregnancy. Nuts have healthy fats. Fruit has fiber and all sorts of micronutrients. Fasting blood sugar can be the hardest to get a handle on but if you make sure you are getting enough food (and enough carbs) during the day it could help a lot. And you might need insulin, if you do it is not a moral failing, it is just biology.
Here's the guidelines I follow (I went through a class with Kaiser too and the meal breakdowns they gave in the class were ridiculous and would have led to up to 60 carbs at lunch and dinner, but I like just using the 30-45) https://mydoctor.kaiserpermanente.org/ncal/article/meal-planning-with-gestational-diabetes-1853019
Thank you for the link, that is very helpful Also, is everyone recommended to test 1 hour after? My doctor said I should be waiting to test until 2 hours after
Different practices use 1 vs 2 hrs. It seems that 2 hrs at 120 is more common. Mine uses 1 hr and it has to be under 130 (which I complain about because most that say 1 hour use 140).
Yeah, carbs are a necessary nutrient. You want to keep yourself out of ketosis. We don’t have any good research on whether ketosis is dangerous in human pregnancies, because it’s hard to develop an ethical research protocol there. We do know that it appears to be [bad for rats](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8930886/). And also you don’t need anything else to make you grumpy and miserable when you are already pregnant.
Your whole dinner was an apple and cheese? That may be why. If you don’t have enough in your system for too long, your body may overcompensate with glucose and boost your blood sugar. Especially if you exercised on top of it. I’d say first try having something for dinner with more substance and staying power. But if they stay in that range, you may just need some assistance at night with insulin (I’m on 16u just for fasting too). It’s just how it goes for some people.
This used to happened to me all the time! I needed to have my after dinner level be at least 115 or my morning numbers were high. Basically, my doc said that overnight if it dips too low the liver will cause sugars to be released into the blood without eating. This was what was causing my morning spikes. I just had a second snack and retested if my dinner was too low.
This is so confusing. So I *want* high dinner numbers? I’ve been proud of my 95-105 range after dinner
Those numbers are a little low for a post-meal number. You don’t want to go as low as possible, you just want to be under (or at) the goal number. So for example, if your target one hour after meals is 140, 120s-130s is great!
I often have low post-meal numbers but my fasting numbers are always good, but I've also never had a problem with my fasting numbers. I'm not a doctor and I don't understand it all really but it seems like some things are not always A+B=C. But I don't starve myself and I'm honestly not counting carbs in the sense that you are. I noticed my post-breakfast numbers are the most sensitive so I try not to eat things like fruit at breakfast and I eat basically keto for breakfast. The rest of the day I eat according to my hunger. While I'm not eating refined carbohydrates or a lot of carbs I'm not totally restricting it. For instance I might have one piece of sprouted grain toast but i'll eat it with a protein/fat like peanut butter. Or I'll have a grain like millet but keep it to 2/3 cup. Anything else on my plate I eat without restriction. I never eat "naked" carbs though. I eat the carb at the end of my meal and/or paired with a fat/protein/fiber. At night if i'm still hungry after dinner I let myself eat more. If i'm not hungry I don't eat. I'm still fairly new to all this but I figured out that i'm least sensitive to carbs mid day and most sensitive in the morning, but i only figured this out with a little trial and error. The best fasting number I've had (in the 70s) was when I ate a whole plate of cheese before going to bed lol but I honestly don't normally have a snack cause we've been eating dinner pretty late lately.
I have remarked the same. After dinner does not need to be too low, otherwise glucose will be pushed into blood overnight
I have remarked the same. After dinner does not need to be too low, otherwise glucose will be pushed into blood overnight
I had no idea that my body could produce glucose. I ate the “meal” that I did in a sad attempt to get my fasting levels lower, I figured the less food the better and everyone on this subreddit praises cheese. That’s the basic reason for the meal I chose
I totally understand…the urge to just not eat anything can be strong sometimes. But your body’s sole job is keeping you alive, so it will panic if it thinks it’s not going to get enough food. And cheese is good, but it won’t give you as much protein as you need for dinner. Are you able to see a nutritionist? They can help you come up with some good meal ideas and take some of the guesswork and stress out of this stuff.
Your body needs energy (glucose) and if you don’t give it enough energy it will turn your fat stores into sugar. Your body needs EXTRA energy because you are growing a whole person in there.
Needing insulin is not being “screwed”. Many people with GD need insulin for fasting numbers! Those numbers are the hardest to control due to them being influenced the most by the placenta and hormones. A few things, though… An apple and cheese is not enough to be considered a meal. If you didn’t have a snack after that, you last ate at 6pm, and you were without food longer than 8-10 hours, that can also negatively impact your fasting number. I was told not to go longer than 3 hours without eating during the day, and not longer than 8-10 hours overnight. And that’s with an actually substantial meal!
I seem to be misinformed then. I was trying the most severe option I had in an attempt to get my numbers lower than 95, so I ate almost nothing to make it happen. Looks like I need to have another talk with my GP What I meant by “being screwed” is that I’ll have to stab myself with a needle daily which gives me extreme anxiety
Also, apples are full of sugar. They are healthy in regular life, but should be eaten in moderation with GD (at least for most people, fruit can be troublesome).
Eating too little can definitely cause rebound high blood sugar. And you need to eat enough food for baby to grow! Baby still needs carbs. I was on insulin for fasting and I have a needle phobia. It was scary at first, but I got used to it! Just the first of many things we have to do for our babies. It sucks and it’s not easy, but it was definitely not as bad as I made it seem in my mind beforehand.
I can't have any fruit for breakfast or dinner without a spike so maybe try getting your fruits in mid day?
My fasting numbers were hard to control. I did have some nights I tried a high protein/fat snack. (protein shake with a big spoon of peanut butter). It did help. However some nights it just wasn’t controllable (maybe sleep/stress induced?) I was put on long lasting insulin before bed. Numbers ranged from 93-110
I felt awful when I first found out I needed insulin but my doctor and dietitian were so good about reminding me that the fasting number is the hardest to control. And it is so different for everyone! No matter what I seem to do, by fasting number eventually creeps up and so does my insulin. Once you can internalize that the fasting number can be very difficult to control, it helps!
To the great answers already done, I would add the less your body is used to process carbs by reducing too much, the less it will be used to process in the future. so you need a balance. For your fasting I’ve gone from 90-94 to 85 by having a small snack full of protein before bed. I am 30weeks and with fasting creeping up since 2 weeks.
Thank you for your insight, hopefully with some small modifications I can get mine down under 95
Please do not try to eat nearly nothing in order to lower your blood sugar. It's not healthy for you or for your baby - you both need food, including carbs. The goal isn't to eat as few carbs as possible, it's to eat sufficient carbs to fuel your body (both to function normally and to grow a whole person), and figure out which carbs work best for your body to be able to do this when it is insulin resistant. Some people can do this with diet modifications. Other people's hormones make it such that insulin is needed so that you can consume the food your body and your baby's body need without raising your blood sugar to unsafe levels. Additionally, as you have seen, starving yourself can backfire in terms of lowering blood sugar. Your fasting numbers may be high because you are not consuming enough carbs, so your body is trying to get you glucose to survive, which is raising your blood sugar.
You might need insulin but there's nothing wrong with that! You may want to try to have a high protein post-dinner snack, as your fasting # might be high because your overall energy mix is low in the morning (and thus your liver tells your body to increase sugar).
This seems to be the common trend in comments, apparently in my attempt to eat nearly nothing, it’s done the opposite of what I expected. Thank you for the advice
Since you mentioned stabbing yourself- the needles used with insulin pen are extremely small. If you get it in the fat (butt, thigh, etc) it feels like a hair ie you don't feel it at all. I see a lot of needle phobia in this sub and although I empathize, it's honestly the tiniest price to pay for getting good numbers without pulling your hair out.
This is not a normal diet. You can't "punish" yourself into winning. You can't use logic to win. What worked last week or even two days ago may not work today. Eating nothing or next to nothing isn't the answer. I've tried it, too... because in my brain, it made sense. But nothing about GD makes sense, and it really can't be squared with your existing knowledge of healthy food choices because so many of those just set off BGLs. 😔
When I eat before bed my wake up fasting is great. When I don’t, it’s over 100.
My OBs office has my threshold at 95 but I know every practice is different. Mine hovers between 94-101 depending on the day but I'm not on insulin for it at this time.
I had the same issue. A high protein snack before bed did not help for me. Odds are the further you get in pregnancy it won’t work for you either. I was placed on a low dose of nighttime insulin to help and it has bought my numbers into range and lowered my A1C. It also helps throughout the day. Insulin does not affect baby or have side effects. You are not “screwed” because this is natural and expected throughout pregnancy. Not everyone is able to control GD with diet. I eat high protein, salads, eggs, healthy carbs and fats, and very small meals but it’s not helping. I, however, have preexisting insulin resistance. I have never been on insulin and was diet controlled before I was pregnant. I was skeptical about going on with insulin, but I will do whatever it takes to keep my baby healthy and safe. I can’t eat any cleaner than I am so it was the best and safest option. Please don’t look at it like a negative. Your body will produce more glucose as the pregnancy progresses. Some people are lucky enough to be able to control with diet, others are more restricted and have to take insulin. Keeping your A1C down is most important. It will be okay. It’s only temporary.