Real Life: All The Pregnancy Sugar

We’ve all seen it in movies and heard about the weird concoctions that pregnant women supposedly crave. Pickles and ice cream. Peanut butter and cream cheese. I’ve had *a lot* of people ask about my bizarre cravings and fortunately {or not!} I haven’t had anything super weird. That said, let’s not pretend that I’m eating all of my veggies and good fats without a thought for the tasty stuff!

And by tasty stuff, let me be clear; I’m talking about sugar.

I’m a sweets person when I’m not pregnant; I’ll always take a box of cookies over a bag of pretzels. But once I got pregnant, it was like the sugar switch got cranked up to a ridiculous level. In my first trimester, I was mowing down sugar ANYTHING like it was going out of style.

A particular favorite? Oreos!

Once I got into my second trimester, the fog cleared and I was able to have a semblance of control over what I put in my mouth. I started learning more about gestational diabetes and since I obviously wanted to minimize the chances of that happening, I reeled in what I ate. Sugar was still a huge craving, but I tried my best to curb the urges with healthier options as much as I could. {Although Oreos are still a staple around these parts.}

I swapped out ice cream for fruit bars and laid off my newly-preferred carbonated beverages. Overall, I tried to knock off the out-of-control eating habits that seemed to possess me during those first couple of months!

A large part of the transition came in the form of fruit. Yes, there is obviously sugar in fruit but I kinda figure if too much fruit is the worst thing I do during these 40 weeks, I’m going to be pretty okay with myself. So instead of a lot of the processed crap I was eating, I started to sub in fruit. Ditch an Oreo, grab a pear. Around this time was also when I heard about Nothing But The Fruit bites!

Remember those fruit snacks your mom would put in your lunch as a kid and you ate them because they were kind of like a treat but she gave them to you because they were actually much healthier? {Or was that only in my family?!} Nothing But The Fruit Bites are like that; they’re like fruit snacks for adults.

Owned by the National Grape Cooperative {905 American farmers who grow sustainably farmed Niagara and Concord grapes}, N.B.T.F. are made from 100% fruit with all flavors containing some grape. In short, the farmers pick, puree, and press the grapes {and other fruits} into the little bite-sized snacks before packaging them up and shipping ’em out.

Sometimes I don’t make it to the gym and the basement {with Tals!} has to do

For me, they arrived at my door step at a perfect time. I was trying to dial in what I ate to feed our unborn kiddo a bit more responsibly, but I was also trying to pack snacks to get me through long hours of work and/or coaching at the gym. Throwing one of these packages into my gym bag was super easy because I didn’t have to worry about mashing them like I did with my real fruit.

True story: I have one gym bag that I permanently ruined after I stepped on and then forgot about a banana inside one of the pockets. 

But seriously, my third trimester laziness has morphed into these bites coming with me everywhere. I throw one in my purse before heading to work in the morning; one in my gym bag before coaching; one in my backpack for our hiking adventures. I even had one the other night at the vet while we waited for Tally’s staples to get repaired! {More on that saga later!}

I will never be a cool kid who catches the snack IN her mouth

If you want to check Nothing But The Fruit out, you can find them at over 7500 Starbucks nationwide, as well as Target, Meijer, Winn Dixie, BI-LO, and Amazon. If you grab some, let me know what you think!

Or, if you’re on Instagram, head over that way and give ’em a follow!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Nothing But The Fruit. The opinions and text are all mine.

********************