Real Food for Gestational Diabetes Quotes

“Despite all the medical warnings about ketones, it turns out the fetal brain actually gets approximately 30% of its energy from ketones.[142]”
― Lily Nichols, Real Food for Gestational Diabetes: An Effective Alternative to the Conventional Nutrition Approach

“studies have shown that even healthy, non-diabetic pregnant women will have marked elevation in ketones after a 12-18 hour fast, which is akin to eating dinner at 8pm and having breakfast at 8am (or skipping breakfast entirely).[129]  Compared to non-pregnant women, blood ketone concentrations are about 3-fold higher in healthy pregnant women after an overnight fast.[130] Knowing this, I would expect that every pregnant woman experiences ketosis at some point during her pregnancy.”
― Lily Nichols, Real Food for Gestational Diabetes: An Effective Alternative to the Conventional Nutrition Approach

“While we can’t guarantee one dietary pattern will work for all people, to arbitrarily set a minimum recommended level of carbohydrates for pregnancy when we have evidence of cultures reproducing successfully on lower carbohydrate intakes seems illogical.”
― Lily Nichols, Real Food for Gestational Diabetes: An Effective Alternative to the Conventional Nutrition Approach

“Suggesting the standard high-carbohydrate diet purely to keep women out of ketosis results in hyperglycemia and the need for medication, usually insulin, which often results in excess weight gain. With weight gain comes a worsening of peripheral insulin resistance, which results in higher blood sugar and the need for ever increasing doses of insulin and medication. It’s a vicious cycle. Plus, the majority of macrosomic babies are born to mothers with excessive weight gain and prepregnancy obesity, not gestational diabetes.[148]”
― Lily Nichols, Real Food for Gestational Diabetes: An Effective Alternative to the Conventional Nutrition Approach

“Ketosis may actually be beneficial for moms as well. A high percentage of women with gestational diabetes are overweight at conception or have exceeded their weight gain goals established by their doctor. These women have increased fat stores that can supply energy for the growing fetus and do not necessarily benefit from continued weight gain. Some studies actually found no weight gain or modest weight loss during pregnancy can improve outcomes in obese women.[147]”
― Lily Nichols, Real Food for Gestational Diabetes: An Effective Alternative to the Conventional Nutrition Approach

“In fact, during this study, the highest levels of blood ketones detected was 0.34mmol/L. True diabetic ketoacidosis typically appears at blood ketone levels of 10-20mmol/L, at least 30-fold higher than the highest level recorded throughout this study. That means that even women  subjected to very-low-calorie diets (which, in this case, were also low in carbohydrates) didn’t experience harmful levels of ketones in their blood.”
― Lily Nichols, Real Food for Gestational Diabetes: An Effective Alternative to the Conventional Nutrition Approach

“For comparison, you could eat 2 cups of non-starchy vegetables (such as broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, etc) to equal the carbohydrates in only ½ cup of cooked rice; or 10 cups of green, leafy vegetables (lettuce, spinach, kale, etc.)!”
― Lily Nichols, Real Food for Gestational Diabetes: An Effective Alternative to the Conventional Nutrition Approach