~primal/paleo pregnancy~ - Page 4

[simplified]

So we had pertussis here for the last few weeks.  That was fun.  Not.  Pulled a rib muscle and popped my sternum and ribs out of place from all the coughing.  Thank God for the chiropractor.  So after all that I have been in love with scallops.  Then my husband told me to wrap them in bacon, so I did.  Oh dear, outstanding.  They're expensive, of course, so I don't feed them to the kids.  I tell them it's mommy's pregnant food.  lol.

[RosieL]

Originally Posted by simplified 

They're expensive, of course, so I don't feed them to the kids.  I tell them it's mommy's pregnant food.  lol.

 I love it! 

[saudade]

Is it safe to be in ketosis during pregnancy? I am not very familiar with paleo/primal diet...can you recommend good reading on it?

Edited to add that I should have read the whole thread before asking. Nevermind!

[moss]

saudade, did you find what you needed?  imho, it's completely safe and even beneficial to be in ketosis during pregnancy, but like anything else about being a mom, it's important to do your own research and make up your own mind.  the only studies that i could find that said that ketosis was dangerous in pregnancy were based on women with diabetic ketoacidosis which is completely different than benign dietary ketosis.

[saudade]

Yes, I've been reading a lot about paleo eating over the last couple days now and I agree with you. I'm very interested in striving to eat as close to paleo as possible! Thanks for this thread. :)

[NZPixie]

 Hi all,

Glad to find this forum. I am usually primal/ weston a price, without eating much grain at all, and if I do it's usually white rice. HOWEVER this pregnancy (coming into week 8 now) has turned all that on it's head. I can't stomach meat or eggs (major diet staples) and just want to eat bread and butter and fruit juice. Also have nasty morning sickness with vomiting. I'd have to disagree that morning sickness is related to micronutrient profile before pregnancy as I have eaten very well for at least 2 years, plus have taken very high quality nutritional supplements for over a year. Sigh, I hear it gets better in 2nd trimester, just guess I'm wondering if others who are lower carb eaters (I eat around 100gms per day usually) have struggled with getting down the meat/fat/protein or the way they usually eat.

[moss]

hi NZpixie, welcome to the forums :)

hm, i wonder what causes the meat aversion thing.  i've run across a few other women who are eating primal/lowcarb who have the same thing happen.  for me, i was finding that meats, etc were tasting bland/tasteless/cardboardy, etc, but then i started taking a bit of extra zinc here and there and everything went back to normal.  zinc helps with taste, but i've had side effects in the past from taking too much zinc, so i use it with caution now.

i stay very low carb or else i regret it.  :(  if i were to up my carbs to 100/day, i'd be puking my guts out.  ask me how i know.  LOL.  over halloween i had some major slip ups and really paid the price.  i'd rather stay under 40/day and eat healthy real foods, lots of veggies, etc and actually keep my food down. 

i suppose raw eggs are probably a big no no during pregnancy, but i've really been enjoying an eggnog in the mornings lately, made with almond/coconut milk and stevia.  yumm :)

[LaRue]

Hi NZPixie,

I'm having the exact same experience.  I was always low carb/paleo, big on all kinds of meat, and though I'd heard people have an aversion to meat in pregnancy I thought it could never happen to me.  But it did.  The idea of meat was nauseating and the idea of a plain peice of toast was the only thing I thought I could stomach.  I also had plenty of nausea/vomitting.  The good news is now I'm almost 16 weeks and though the nausea still comes and goes, I find I can eat enough meat now and I'm able to eat normally again, back to low carb.  In fact, eating too many carbs now causes me to become seriously nauseated, exhausted and throw up.  Pregnancy has definitely made my blood sugar more senstive than it ever was before, so beware once you're further along, you may have to go back to paleo, not just want to.

Hope that helps a little, I know its tough when you KNOW a certain way of eating is best but you can't stomach it... I was very frustrated for a while too.

[moss]

LaRue, could you eat any broths in your first trimester? 

when i had the tasteless meat thing, i was eating crunchy dry almonds instead of toast (i cant do gluten) or meat and that was working ok (or i'd make myself eat meat or fish or whatever anyways).  i've seen some really great looking recipes for almond crackers too, that looked like they'd work for a dry, bland food..

[LaRue]

Moss, unfortunately I couldn't even stand the smell of meat broths.  I made a lamb roast at (Canadian) Thanksgiving, and we made a broth afterwards which I would normally enjoy but even the smell put me over the edge.  Thankfully that won't happen at Christmas now that I'm much better.  Interesting about cooking with almonds, I've been meaning to look around for some almond flower and some recipes to make with it.  Any suggestions?

[moss]

http://cavemanfood.blogspot.com/2009/04/grain-free-almond-crackers.html

this one looks like a perfect bland cracker (would probably be really yummy with some garlic/onion powder too), i havent tried it yet, but keep meaning to pick up some almond flour...i have to put in an order soon for some other things anyways...

there's a coconut 'bread' that i make sometimes, it's not dry and crunchy like crackers, but it's bland and has no gluten, etc in it, and it's pretty low in carbs too:

coconut bread

1T fat
1T water
1 egg
1T coconut flour
1/4 tsp baking powder

bullet blend
i like to make a 4x's batch and bake in the oven on parchment lined cookie sheet until set.  it's really good with poached eggs :)

[LaRue]

That sounds delicious, I will try that!  Might have to hunt around for the ingredients but that's ok.  Thanks!

[Itsasecret]

bumping for snack ideas

[RosieL]

What do you do for car trips? I took a trip to a conference over the weekend. 7 hour car rides each way, and three days of hotel rooms. I admit I didn't prepare well. Had I been on top of my game I'd have had a cooler full of foods I needed. 

When you're on the road and find yourself foodless, what do you do? 

[moss]

re car trips: i carry food with us at all times (ds cant really eat restaurant food, there are rare exceptions, but i cant count on them for road trips), so a cooler with all kinds of goodies like chopped fresh veggies, peeled boiled eggs, cooked meat, etc...

i recently saw an ad for an app called paleogogo (or something like that), that has suggestions for paleo friendly meals at restaurants across the states.  the only review i saw said that it needed more entries for canada, lol, so i didnt fork out the 5 bucks to get it.

if we're really stuck, i'll stop at a grocery store...  my husband had to go away for work recently and ended up eating a lot of gluteny foods that he's no longer used to.  he felt gross for days after he got back.

re snack ideas:  i'm really boring, i usually just snack on leftovers, avocadoes, almonds, sometimes i'll scramble an egg or two or have an eggnog.  i always make extra meat when i'm cooking and then freeze the leftovers in single portion size containers, so there's always easy to heat up meat in the house.  i'm sure other people have more exciting ideas. LOL

[Itsasecret]

Originally Posted by saudade 

Is it safe to be in ketosis during pregnancy? I am not very familiar with paleo/primal diet...can you recommend good reading on it?

Edited to add that I should have read the whole thread before asking. Nevermind!

Originally Posted by moss 

saudade, did you find what you needed?  imho, it's completely safe and even beneficial to be in ketosis during pregnancy, but like anything else about being a mom, it's important to do your own research and make up your own mind.  the only studies that i could find that said that ketosis was dangerous in pregnancy were based on women with diabetic ketoacidosis which is completely different than benign dietary ketosis.

Saudade, you got a much better answer than I did! I got a somewhat snarky one, even though I was just asking a question. Nice to know that there is a difference between ketosis and ketoacidosis. Now I can do some research ...

[moss]

saw this article the other day, thought some of the other lc/paleo mama's would be interested.  i'm specifically trying to prevent autism in this baby, so this was great validation for me as i've been actively trying to prevent hyperinsulinemia etc for the baby by eating lowcarb. 

i've also read that high testosterone levels in pregnancy can be a contributing factor to autism in kids.  (i have pcos, too many carbs lead to hyperinsulinemia, which leads to high testosterone, bla bla bla...)

http://blogs.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/11/17/common-link-between-autism-diabetes.aspx [QUOTE]

A review of genetic and biochemical abnormalities has revealed a possible link between autism and type 2 diabetes.

It's still only a hypothesis, but according to Rice University biochemist Michael Stern, author of

the opinion paper, these two conditions may have a common underlying mechanism: impaired glucose tolerance and hyperinsulinemia.

Hyperinsulinemia, a common precursor to insulin resistance, is characterized by excess levels of insulin in your bloodstream.

Insulin resistance, in turn, is associated with type 2 diabetes, obesity, and many other chronic diseases.

Could it also be associated with autism?

According to Stern:

"It will be very easy for clinicians to test my hypothesis.

They could do this by putting autistic children on low-carbohydrate diets that minimize insulin secretion and see if their symptoms improve."
  Sterns hypothesis also suggests that glucose tolerance in pregnant women may need to be addressed more seriously than it is now, in order to decrease the child's risk of autism.

As reported by Science Daily:

"... [A]t least four genes associated with increased frequency in autism are known to produce proteins that play key roles in a biochemical pathway known as PI3K/Tor ... PI3K/Tor [is] the major pathway for insulin signals within cells, and insulin [can] affect synapses in a remarkably similar way to the mGluR defects associated with autism.

… "I discovered that gestational diabetes was the most important identified maternal risk factor for autism, but that 'no known mechanism could account for this,'" Stern recalled. "When I read this, I was speechless. That's when I realized that this was not obvious to others in the field, so I decided to write this up with the hope that clinicians might become aware of this and treat their patients accordingly."

In writing the article, Stern said he learned that the role of insulin in cognitive function is becoming more widely accepted… Stern said he also found preliminary studies that indicated that low-carb diets were therapeutic for some individuals with autism and ASD.

"Based on what's already in the literature, insulin needs to be taken seriously as a causative element in autism," Stern said."
  [/QUOTE]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

more snack ideas:

creamed coconut cut into cubes

~protein bars~

blend:

6 eggs

2 c coconut, shredded, unsweetened

stevia

cinnamon

bake on parchment until set, cut into bars.  super easy, portable, and delicious.

[joy2grow]

Hello,

I just got my BFP earlier this morning!  I don't have time to catch up and read through this thread at the moment but look forward to doing it as soon as I can. I've been eating Primal for 6 months and am very excited about having a Primal pregnancy.  I've never felt or looked better in my life and that's a good place to be while growing a baby!  I look forward to getting to know you all

~ Heather

[moss]

Hi joy2grow and welcome!

i know exactly what you mean about being healthier than ever.  i feel exactly the same way. 

hmm, I wonder if i should ask a moderator to move this thread out of the apr ddc and into general pregnancy forum.

[RosieL]

moss - I think it makes sense to move this to the general pregnancy forum. It's a great thread that spans beyond our DDC in particular.

That said, I'm curious is paleo moms get the gestational diabetes screening?