Lush food...and navigating yogurt as a carbohydrate

My entire life I thought dairy was a protein. My mom often mentioned that milk itself wasn't a good thing to guzzle, because of sodium, etc., but otherwise I never considered it something to worry about. 

I did however learn how much hidden sugar is in many kinds of yogurt (as well as other foods), so I do read my labels. That's how I fell in love with Siggi's Dairy brand of yogurt. Even their brand I buy 'plain' though, for two reasons: 1) less sugar so I can put raw honey on top and feel really extravagant, and 2) it's more versatile, serving as a sour cream substitute for recipes when necessary. Pro tip: Plain does not equal vanilla. Vanilla can have loads of extra sugar in any yogurt, and while Siggi's is better, it's still more than I care to have for the reasons already mentioned.

When using the American Diabetes Association guidelines, "Choose Your Foods: Food Lists for Diabetes," we learn, "One milk choice has 12 grams of carbohydrates and 8 grams of protein..."

Um, what?

Milk is a carb?

Yup.

The guideline from my nutritionist is that every square meal, we can have up to 3 carbohydrate choices. Each carb choice equals 15 grams of carbohydrate. 

That is the formula for the entire GD diet. Up to 3 choices per meal and each choice is 15 grams. Bam. That's it. 

Forget fats and calories (they really will take care of themselves with this) or counting grams of sugar (something I'd done before but nothing else, this blog will explain how dumb that was of me).

And forget thinking of carbohydrates as merely starches (that's one category of several).

Okay, so yogurt is an awesome source of protein, but count the carbs! 

After you get used to counting your carb choices, you can mix it up. Nowhere in my book was listed 'hemp seed hearts,' but I learned enough about reading labels (a skill I thought I knew, but again, my nutritionist taught me how to use those numbers for this nutrition plan, big help!) to see that these are 3 grams of carb per serving of hemp seed hearts. Since my yogurt serving of 8 oz was just 11 grams of carbs, I added the 3 to make one carb choice. 

The honey I added was about 1 Tbsp, which is one carb choice, as well. (These are all listed in the book linked above, so simple! When you start with honey, use a measuring spoon to learn portion control--then you can skip it most of the time but recheck yourself regularly. Wishful thinking can creep in!)

Then I had two strawberries left in the fridge, which is much less than a full carb choice of strawberries (1 1/4 cup of whole berries). 

So this was my gorgeous, filling and lush breakfast. All in all about 2.5 carb choices, which is good, especially in the morning. At first my fasting morning blood sugar count was high (normal due to pregnancy hormones that are also high in the morning), but as I control my eating, I am seeing better numbers...and can have more than one carb choice at breakfast.

And I didn't feel deprived this morning at all. (Oh, and I added a dash or two of cinnamon...no need for counting most spices used that way.)

In fact, following this guide, my doctor was so impressed, he let me off the checking my sugar after each meal regimen for just doing morning and after supper. For this week anyways, but as you can see, that wasn't an excuse to throw all my carb counting out the window. (PS I still check my sugars when I experiment with a new food, especially a starch, that I'm not sure how I might react to.)

What do you think about yogurt and carbs? Were you as shocked as me? Or no? Leave a comment below!

PS Brands mentioned here are out of sheer love and are examples. I'm not affiliated with any of them. This post does contain a few Amazon Affiliate links when I felt they were useful.

Disclaimer: While I hope to give you a real world taste of how I'm implementing the guidelines given to me by medical and nutritional professionals to manage gestational diabetes, obviously I am not giving you medical advice. I just was shocked at how much I didn't know about managing my diet, even though I wasn't an idiot when it comes to nutrition, and how the new guidelines are so helpful and simple. Please seek out your own professionals to work with to count carbs and identify them for the purposes of managing gestational diabetes.