Cravings, Sweets and Festivals
Reviewed by CDE Mehandi Sharma · Updated
A GDM diagnosis in September, with the festival season ahead, is a particular kind of bad timing. And a plan that requires you to eat nothing sweet for five months tends not to survive.
The general guidance for diabetes is more forgiving than most people assume: favourite foods can stay, in smaller portions and less often. In GDM the same holds, with tighter targets and a shorter timeframe.
For cravings, the useful distinction is between a small planned sweet and an unplanned one. Decide in advance, keep it small, eat it as part of a meal rather than alone on an empty stomach, and test an hour later so you know what it actually did.
Things that reliably cause trouble: sugary drinks and packaged juices, which deliver a large fast glucose load with no fullness at all; and mithai eaten by itself between meals.
Things that often work better: fruit with curd or nuts rather than fruit alone, and a couple of bites of a shared sweet rather than a whole one.
Be sceptical of sweets marketed as sugar-free or diabetic-friendly. Many are still made largely of refined flour, and jaggery and honey raise blood glucose much like sugar does.
The general approach to weddings and festivals applies here, with tighter targets and a walk afterwards.