Finding out you have gestational diabetes can feel a little jarring at first. There's a lot to learn about new guidelines, but once you get in the hang of it, figuring out meals can be totally manageable. Snacks can feel a little trickier, but there are lots of good options out there for snacks that won't spike your blood sugar!
These are my favorite snack suggestions for folks with Gestational Diabetes:
Popcorn
Cheese Sticks
Carrots with peanut butter (or any nut/seed butter)
Cucumber with hummus
Plain Yogurt
Avocado
Eggs
- Hardboiled eggs
- Scrambled eggs
- Fried eggs (cooked over hard and not yolky)
- Omelet
- Frittata
- Amish pickled eggs
- Crustless quiche
- Avocado deviled eggs
- Egg Muffins, like these from Delish
Roasted chickpeas
Caprese Salad skewer
Seaweed snacks/Nori
Cottage Cheese
Kimchi
Parmesan crisps
Kale chips
Pickled ginger
Apples with peanut butter (or any nut/seed butter)
Handfull of berries
- blueberries
- raspberries
- strawberries
- gooseberries
- currants
Edamame
Dill Pickles (cucumber, okra, dilly beans, beets, carrots, peppers, onions, zucchini)
Nuts
- almonds
- cashews
- walnuts
- hazelnuts
- peanuts
- pine nuts
- brazil nuts
- pistachios
- pecans
- macadamia
Seeds
- Sunflower seeds
- pumpkin seeds
- chia seeds
- sesame seeds
- flaxseed
Fruit (this gets tricky because fruit can have quite a lot of sugar in it)
- half an apple
- half a mango
- 1 slice of watermelon
- kiwi
- plum
- clementine
Sliced Red Peppers with Salsa
Celery sticks with cream cheese or peanut butter (or any nut/seed butter)
Olives (possibly not the feta filled kind, depending on what your care provider recommends)
- black
- green
- kalamata
- nicoise
Mozzarella pearls
Half an english muffin
Guacamole with raw vegetables for dipping
Rice cakes with peanut butter (or any nut/seed butter)
Giardiniera
Sauerkraut
Grilled and marinated artichokes, mushrooms, or red peppers
Chia pudding
Energy Balls, like the recipe I have on my blog here
Trail Mix
Olive Tepenade with Veggies for dipping
Tzatziki with Veggies for dipping
Green smoothie, like this one
Let's be real, these snacks are going to sound pretty good to anyone. Not to mention, all the pickles on the list with help boost probiotics in your diet. The big thing to remember with any of these snack is the amount of carbohydrates in each serving, and that will let you know if your snack stays within the 10g to 15g carbohydrate recommendation for snacks. Figwee is a free app that is helpful for checking the amount of carbohydrates in an amount of food on a plate instead of measuring kitchen scales, measuring cups and spoons to find the exact total carbohydrates. Figwee is supposed to be a calorie counter, which I don't love, but it's a helpful tool for visually estimating carbohydrates temporarily while you have gestational diabetes.