Pregnant women usually waver between the worry of becoming
obese and the risk of fetal malnutrition if they don’t eat enough.
Gaining too many weights during pregnancy has become an
obsession for many pregnant women, as it doesn’t only affect directly to the
health such as increasing the risk of getting diabetes, hypertension which
dangerous complications are pre-eclampsia, oversized fetus that creates
difficulties at delivery…, but it also makes pregnant women difficult to take
back their shape as they used to have before giving birth. Therefore, choosing
a suitable food to make sure that the baby can develop well, and the mother can
keep her shape is still a huge challenge.
Gaining too much
weight, aside from causing a bad effect to the health of pregnant women and
fetus, but it also makes pregnant women lose their confidence, shape and hard
to recover after delivery.
In fact, ensuring your menu to be healthy and have
sufficient nutrition so as to gain weight properly and make the fetus absorb
the nutrition well during pregnancy is not too difficult as many women think. There’re
rules for choosing and using foods that are quite easy and effective which
pregnant women can refer:
“Eating for two”
It doesn’t mean that you’re free to eat whatever you like,
whether they’re nutritious or just contain fat and sugar, and include doubling
the portion for each meal. Eating for 2 is just simply that everything you eat
needs to be nutritious form yourself and the baby. During pregnancy, you’re the
only source of nutrition for the baby. Each calorie, vitamin or protein your
baby need is from what you eat. Therefore, choose the source of food as diversified
as you can, and you will satisfy the baby’s requirements if you eat lots of
fruits, vegetables, beans, whole-grain cereal, meat, fish, low-fat dairy
products…
Supervise the daily calorie consumption
The bigger the fetus grows, the faster you feel hungry, but
that doesn’t encourage you to eat as much food containing energy as possible.
Normally, your energy requirements when being pregnant just need to increase by
15%, which is not much compared to the assumption that you need to double the
normal amount of food. Instead of choosing nutrition-poor yet sugar-rich,
fat-rich foods, make sure that you need to supply enough protein, carbohydrate
and energy, in which protein plays an important role in being themain
structural factor in the formation of the cells, tissues, creation of muscles, connective
tissues, bones and the organs for the baby. The requirements of pregnant women
for protein are about 3 portions, with sugar and carbohydrate being about 4-5 portions/day.
Sweets, despite
being made from any kind of sugar, give pregnant women the risk of uncontrolled
weight gain if eaten too much during pregnancy.
Stay away from the nutrition-poor foods
Normally, though the foods as follows may be delicious, they
make you miserable as you get portlier due to having a high amount of fat,
sugar and low amount of nutrition for the developing baby: sweets containing
white sugar, yellow sugar, syrup, honey or artificial sweeteners, candy, milk
chocolate, soft drink, bottled juice, biscuit, cakes, jam, fruits mixing with
boiled sugar, ice cream, spaghetti, mayonnaise, chips. If you have excessive
sugar cravings, you should choose snacks tasting sweet but containing lots of
nutrition such as yoghurt, sweet fruits, black chocolate, cookie containing
molasses, banana and dried fruits… at moderate amount during a day.
Food closest to their natural state
This is a kind of food having high content of nutriments as
well as providing the highest nutrition fact for both mother and baby, ranked
in order of priority from fresh food, frozen food,and canned food. With
vegetables, fruits, you should choose the fresh ones according to their season.
If you buy fish, you need to choose a reliable place to avoid the germs. With
processed food, you need to check the label to avoid things having genetic
modifications, which is GM for short.
Reducing the
amount of oil as much as possible when cooking, choosing the kind of food that
is closest to their natural state such as eating green vegetables, steamed or
boiled meat… are smart ways to supplement nutrition for both mom and baby
without the fear of losing your shape.
