Many people decide to change their eating style to take care of their health. Diets such as keto or ketogenic, which are low in carbohydrates, have more and more followers. However, It is possible that there are women who are following this style of eating and want to stay or have become pregnant and are wondering if they can continue to eat this way or not.
Therefore, in today's article we are going to talk about the ketogenic diet in pregnant women to try to solve any possible doubts that may exist.
Getting pregnant on keto?
Difficulty getting pregnant has a lot to do with insulin resistance, obsession, diabetes or prediabetes. Most of the cases are not diagnosed as they are not serious cases. Hence a diet low in carbohydrates and sugars is beneficial in achieving pregnancy.
It is possible to be scared if you talk about keto in pregnancy, but this is usually when nutritional ketosis (metabolic flexibility) is confused with ketoacidosis, which is a disease.
If we go to the doctor and ask him about this diet and tell him that during pregnancy we are going to eat meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, healthy fats and avoid sugars, ultra-processed, fast carbohydrates. If we put it like this you can see that it is a diet with real and nutritious food, so it is totally beneficial for anyone who wants to follow it regardless of their age or whether or not they are pregnant.
It must be borne in mind that this type of diet is not intended as a slimming diet, but rather as a style of eating with food that is as real as possible, eliminating those foods that the human body does not tolerate as well and usually cause inflammation and other problems. .
You can learn more about this type of diet in women in the following article: Keto or low-carb dieting for women
Keto and pregnancy
During pregnancy, what is known as gestational diabetes can develop. During pregnancy, progesterone levels rise, this hormone raises insulin levels. This is because the body wants to bring its full nutritional potential to the fetus. It is therefore natural for an increase in blood glucose and increased resistance to insulin to occur during pregnancy.
Now, knowing that this is going to happen, we must avoid getting gestational diabetes. If to this process of increasing glucose and insulin we add a diet high in carbohydrates and sugars, which are converted into glucose in our body, it is easier to reach gestational diabetes. So again we see a benefit from a low carbohydrate and low sugar diet.
The ideal would be moderate carbohydrates to stay below minus 90 milligrams per deciliter on an empty stomach. You can measure your blood glucose every morning with a very simple test that can be done at home. Also keep in mind that they must be above 81 milligrams per deciliter.
The glucose test is easily achievable and works with a drop of blood.
In addition, with this type of diet, nausea and vomiting are reduced, which are usually related to hypoglycemia, so consuming low-carbohydrate foods greatly reduces these nausea and vomiting.
Other Benefits of Low Carb Real Food Eating Styles During Pregnancy
There are several studies on the relationship between diet and the proper development of pregnancy that indicate that healthy eating styles such as the one we are proposing have numerous benefits and help reduce many risks such as:
- Reduce the chances of miscarriages.
- Decrease in preeclampsia.
- Avoid the chances of having gestational diabetes.
- There are fewer emergency cesarean sections.
- There are fewer birth defects, fetal macrosomia is also reduced (the fetus is too big when it is born)
- The chances that both the mother and the fetus can develop type 2 diabetes are reduced.
- Decrease in high blood pressure.
How to do keto during pregnancy
Ideally, you should have started this type of diet between 2 and 3 months before becoming pregnant., so if you are considering getting pregnant, it is time to change your eating style. If you are already pregnant, nothing happens to start the change either.
By starting pregnancy without insulin resistance and with a flexible metabolism, we can benefit from all these advantages that we have discussed about this style of eating.
If you are considering getting pregnant, it is advisable to go to the doctor for an analysis. In this analysis, you have to look at HbA1c (that is, the glucose levels of the last months) it is a test that gives an average, said average should be below 5,7%. You can also start doing the fasting glucose test to monitor how you are. Ideally, you should consider becoming pregnant when your glucose has remained below 100 milligrams per deciliter for a couple of weeks.
We will keep these tests during pregnancy to continue monitoring ourselves. In this case, let's remember that we have to stay between 81 and 90 milligrams per deciliters as ideal or at least below 100.
We must record our daily glucose, so that we can show it to our doctor and not having the need to do the glucose tolerance test, which can be harmful at that time for our body as it has been with a low glucose consumption for a long time.
Act quickly. avoid fasting when we are pregnant, we must listen to our body and eat a good diet whenever your body feels hungry. Don't count calories, don't diet, and don't take supplements without medical supervision.
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