Diet, Nutrition, and Pregnancy

Remember breakfasts that you actually sat down to eat? Lunches that didn't involve Styrofoam packaging? What about home-cooked dinners at six every night? Old fashioned? These things may not be part of your life, but they should be. Humans are meant to eat fresh fruits, vegetables, and lean meats. That's what keeps us at optimal health. Are you at your optimal health? You certainly want your baby to be, and while she's inside you, your health is her health.

Good nutrition is vital to your health, pregnant or not. But when you're pregnant, even more so.

What you choose to put into your mouth affects two people now, not just one, so pay careful attention to your choices. Your already formed body may crave French fries morning, noon, and night, but it's not what your son or daughter's growing brain, lungs, heart should be nourished on. You know you're going to be cautious about what baby eats when you're spooning the food into his mouth, think about that as you spoon it into your own, because even though you're doing the chewing, you're both metabolizing the food.

Hopefully, you already eat a really healthy (or at least a relatively healthy) diet. If that's the case, consider this affirmation of your healthy decision. Use this chapter to boost your nutrition know-how. Make sure that you're getting enough of the good things you're eating everyday. In addition to your own store house of wonderful recipes, I've included a few which are quite tasty and good for you both. Share them with Dad-to-be, since you both want him healthy, too.

If you could use a little work in the dietary portion of your life, you're in luck. The information in this chapter could be just what you need to get you on track nutrition wise. While you may feel motivated by love for your baby, you will soon see that making the lifestyle changes to eat well may take a few minutes a day more than you're used to, but fresh food is delicious, and your healthy body will be a great reward.

Once you make the decision to eat healthfully, you will wonder what you once found so appealing about fast food restaurants and the partially or fully prepared foods you used to buy for meals to "cook" yourself. Fresh does not have to mean complicated to prepare. It simply means fresh, as in not packaged and loaded with preservatives. As in you may need to go to the market a little more often, but you'll end up glad you did. Fresh food prepared intelligently is the right choice for mom and baby. Take a careful look at the lists of foods which should be a part of your diet. Experiment with the recipes included in the chapter. Everything listed is healthy and easy. No gourmet cooking skills required.

Eating for two

You are eating for one full grown woman and one small baby. Eating for two is about eating foods which will nourish you both through a healthy pregnancy and delivery, resulting in a healthy baby and a healthy mother. Not a healthy baby and an overweight mother. Not a sickly baby and a somewhat physically okay mother. Not an underweight baby and an underweight mother.

Some women hear the phrase "eating for two" and interpret it in unhealthy ways. Either they are so afraid of gaining too much weight, so fearful of looking as though they ate for two grown women, that they are too "careful" about their meals or they use it as an excuse to overindulge, which is not healthy for mother or child.

Women who get caught up in calorie count rather than in good nutrition are just as much in danger of harming their babies and themselves as women who overeat and gain too much weight during pregnancy. Some moms-to-be feel that if they keep their weight under the average pregnancy weight gain for their body types that they've "beat" pregnancy somehow.

Yes, women who gain forty or fifty pounds during pregnancy put themselves and their babies at risk, but so do women who only gain fifteen pounds. Just as the mother who eats French fries three times a day is not doing her family any favors, neither is the mother who eats only the healthiest foods in the world, but too little at each sitting to avoid weight gain. Both are practicing malnutrition. It sounds harsh, but it's true.

Increased food intake and weight gain are part of pregnancy. But, their part should be based on moderation.

Three meals a day are not enough; you need three healthy snacks in order to keep yourself in tip-top shape.

Eating six times a day (smaller meals spread out over the course of your day) helps with morning sickness, fatigue, and many other things which accompany pregnancy.

You'll still be eating breakfast, lunch and dinner. You'll also be eating a mid-morning snack, an afternoon snack, and an evening snack. Think of all the opportunities you'll have to incorporate the food groups into your day.