When Your Numbers Will Not Come Down

A frustrating and very common situation: you have changed how you eat, you are walking after meals, and your readings are still above target.

Work through the obvious things first. Are the after-meal readings timed from your first bite? Are your strips within date and stored away from heat? Is the fasting reading truly fasting, taken before morning tea?

Then look at the meal itself rather than only its size. A smaller portion of the same carbohydrate-heavy meal may still spike you, while the same amount eaten with more protein, vegetables and curd behaves differently. Fasting readings in particular respond less to what you eat than people expect.

This is the part worth hearing clearly: fasting numbers are often the hardest to move with diet at all, because they are driven by your liver and your placental hormones overnight rather than by dinner. A high fasting reading is frequently the reason insulin is started, and it is not evidence that you have been careless.

So do not keep cutting food in an attempt to fix it. Under-eating in pregnancy has its own risks, and it does not reliably work.

Take a week of readings with the meals noted to your team and let them adjust the plan. If medication is needed, that is the treatment working as designed.