Healthy Pregnancy Diet: Calories
Healthy Pregnancy Diet: Calories
pregnancy shapes
One topic that is of extreme importance to pregnant ladies is that of calories. Nowadays, ludicrously skinny women are all the rage, and if you have any extra weight on you at all you’re thought of as a fat slob. This sort of mentality is damaging to the female psyche, it’s unfair, but even so, it definitely exists, and it causes a particularly troublesome cycle of thoughts for pregnant women.
Calories are simple enough to track – anyone can count, measure, burn, and factor calories until they’re blue in the face. The bottom line, however, is that pregnant women are going to need more calories than those who are not pregnant, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s even healthy for the baby for its mother to take on a few extra pounds. Also, be sure to get a lot of testing on to make sure your health is in good shape.
Healthy pregnancy
In fact, it’s an incredibly bad idea to count calories while being pregnant. Diets should be thrown out the window, and slimming down should be the last thing on your mind. The nine months of pregnancy should be some of the most stress-free, ironically, of a woman’s life because you don’t have to worry yourself with being beautiful and skinny. As a pregnant woman, your job is to nurture, carry and deliver a healthy baby, and to achieve that goal, all others must go to the wayside.
Not having enough calories can cause trouble for your baby. Low birth weight is common with mothers who starve themselves, but really there any an incredible number of awful birth defects that nutritionally deficient children face. Is it worth trashing your baby’s entire life just so you can avoid the maternity section of the clothing store for one more week? I don’t think so.
The first thing you should do is determine what your Recommended Daily Caloric Intake is for a pre-pregnancy situation. There are numerous websites you can Google to find this number, and it doesn’t matter where you get the information. The important thing is to know it, because this is how many calories you should be eating when you are not pregnant.
OK, so now you’re pregnant. The first three months of pregnancy shouldn’t usher in any extra calories, or any need to do so. The pre-pregnancy caloric intake will be fine for your baby at the moment, but don’t you dare diet! Keep eating like you normally do.
The second and third trimester will bring a few changes: increase that caloric intake by 300 calories to compensate for your baby’s sped up rate of growth. Don’t worry about putting on a few pounds – when you start breastfeeding, you will quickly burn all these calories off and regain your figure.