I crave chips, pizza and cereal constant

Tonight, do not cut out sugar again — keep eating your normal meals and just put the protein snack in front of the craving. Four days from now you want to walk into that test as a normal eater, not a starving one.

Cravings like this are common in pregnancy, and your Monday test is a screening test done *around* your ordinary eating, not a punishment for it. So the goal this week is steady meals with protein attached to whatever you eat — not white-knuckling three days of nothing sweet and then losing it on a bag of chips at 9pm.

I am not diagnosing you and I am not changing anything you take. What follows is kitchen and household routine only.

1) What you already tried, and what to do instead

"Nothing sweet for three days." That is the wrong lever. All-or-nothing almost always ends in a bigger binge, and it leaves you genuinely hungry on the morning of the test. Better lever: structure + one planned sweet thing a day, not zero.

The under-25-minute version, all from food already in the house:

• Protein before the craving, not after. When the first "I need chips" thought lands, eat a protein snack first (yogurt, eggs, cheese, nuts, leftover chicken), drink a glass of water, and give it 15 minutes. Many cravings are hunger and thirst in disguise. If it's still there, eat it — deliberately, sitting down.
• Never eat the craving standing at the counter or out of the bag. Portion it into a bowl, add something with protein to it, and eat it sitting down. Same chips, different evening.
• Give the cereal a job instead of a ban. Evening cereal with milk/yogurt and fruit, in a measured bowl, is a fine plan — the problem was never the cereal, it was the box.
• Keep the protein snacks at eye level and pre-portioned. Four small cups in the front of the fridge. If the snack lives at the back of a cupboard, it will not happen on a school-night week.
• The household version (caregiver-friendly): one sheet pan of veg and one protein cooking once, a shared bowl of the salty stuff on the counter that everyone takes from, and cereal portioned at bedtime instead of free-for-all. You are not cooking a separate diet for yourself while feeding a school week — you are restructuring what the house already eats.

2) Constraints and what to avoid

• Don't crash-diet, fast, or skip meals before Monday to "clean up" the numbers. If your clinic gave you written prep instructions, follow those; if not, eat normally and ask them.
• No juice, sweet drinks, or "health" drinks as a substitute — liquid sugar is the fastest of the lot. Water, milk, or unsweetened drinks for the fluid.
• No mystery "blood sugar" powders, herbal blends, metabolic supplements, or anything bought online without a prescription — nothing your midwife or doctor hasn't seen. Nothing about cravings or the test is a reason to start or stop a medicine or a supplement; that is their call.
• No sugar-free substitutes as the fix. They keep the snacking loop going.
• Don't make the whole household eat differently. One person's restriction becomes everybody's resentment.
• No fasting, no extreme low-carb cut, and no skipping your prescribed medicines.

3) Red flags — when to stop the food plan and get help now

Stop everything above and contact your maternity unit or local emergency service now if you have any of these:

• vaginal bleeding, or leaking fluid
• a seizure or fit
• a severe headache with blurred or flashing vision
• pain high in the belly, especially under the right ribs, with feeling sick
• fever plus being too weak to get out of bed
• fast or difficult breathing
• sudden swelling of the face or hands, or a ring that no longer fits
• the baby moving less than usual, or not moving at all

Also: if the cravings come with vomiting that will not stop, dizziness when you stand, or very little urine all day, call your clinic or maternity unit the same day rather than managing it as a food problem.

Decision tree — screenshot this

```
Any red flag above? → YES: call the maternity unit / emergency number now. Food plan stops.
→ NO ↓
Craving hits? → Protein snack + water, wait 15 min
→ still there: eat it, seated, portioned, with protein
→ gone: good, it was hunger
Same craving again within the hour, and it never settles?
→ tell your midwife or clinic — that's a conversation, not a willpower problem
Monday morning → normal eating, the drink/lab instructions the clinic gave you,
and nothing extra. Ask them if anything is unclear.
```

Caregiver script — screenshot this

> "Before we talk food: any bleeding or leaking, bad headache with vision change, pain high in the belly, trouble breathing, new swelling in the face or hands, or the baby moving less? If yes, we are calling the maternity unit now — not sorting tonight's menu. If no, then here's the food plan for the week and I need you to do the shared-bowl part."

What success looks like in the next 24 hours

Not a perfect week. It looks like: you ate three meals, you used the protein snack twice instead of the packet, you had one planned sweet thing instead of none, and the household still ate normally. That's the whole target — and it doesn't promise any particular result on Monday, because that result belongs to the test and your clinician, not to this list.

My one question: is Monday the one-hour drink screening test or the longer three-hour one, and did the clinic give you written instructions to follow beforehand? That changes what I tell you about Monday morning.