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Pregnancy is an exciting time filled with joyful anticipation, but it can also be an extremely overwhelming time! Amidst all the name-picking, baby showers, and room-painting, the main concern of every pregnant woman is ultimately the health and development of her growing baby. However, when it comes to eating the proper diet, many expectant mothers get inconsistent messages about what and how much to eat, as well as how much weight gain is considered “acceptable.” On the one hand, women are told to forget the rules and indulge in all the bonbons they want for the next nine months, but on the other hand, they are told to be neurotic about every morsel of food that goes in their mouths to ensure that it won’t have any harmful effects on the baby. In addition, pregnant women are told not to gain too much weight (with no concrete advice on exactly how to do that) and then to lose all the baby weight immediately after giving birth (if the celebrities can do it, why can’t we?).
To add to the mix, nausea and cravings can have dramatic effects on appetite. Pregnant women may limit certain foods (particularly if they develop an aversion to entire classes of foods, like meats), which can impact the mother’s ability to get all of the essential nutrients needed for her baby’s development. In contrast, intense food cravings can leave a mother-to-be feeling completely powerless when she comes face to face with her favorite pint of ice cream.
Thus, between social pressures, hormonal ups and downs, and mixed messages from the media as well as family and friends, pregnancy can be a challenging time for a woman’s body and body image. Enter my new book: What to Eat When you’re Pregnant, a week-by-week guide to what is happening with your growing baby and the nutrients (and foods that contain them) that may be helpful to support this development. And to make things easier, the book contains dozens of delicious recipes incorporating the different foods suggested. In addition to its focus on diet during pregnancy, the book also offers tips from recent research to help make gaining the proper amount of weight during pregnancy and losing it after the baby is born easier. Below is just a taste (pun-intended) of the helpful tips featured throughout the book:
- Contrary to what family and friends may say—and the extra goodies that they may try to push on a mother-to-be—there is no need to increase calories during the first trimester. Once the second trimester comes around, adding an extra 340 per day is recommended, and an extra 340-450 calories is the goal during the third trimester.
- Making sure that you receive enough folate during this time is paramount—this is needed for preventing brain and spinal cord defects. How? Spinach and kale are both great sources.
- Getting adequate omega 3 fatty acids is also vital as they are important for the baby’s developing brain and can be found in foods like salmon.
- Munching on some walnuts or indulging in an ounce of dark chocolate is a great way to get in an assortment of vitamins and minerals and also satisfy any cravings for crunchy or sweet foods you may have.
What to Eat When You're Pregnant is now available on Amazon!
Dr. Nicole Avena is a research neuroscientist, author and expert in the fields of nutrition, diet and addiction. She received a Ph.D. in Neuroscience and Psychology from Princeton University, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular biology at The Rockefeller University in New York City. She has published over 70 scholarly journal articles, as well as several book chapters and books, on topics related to food, addiction, obesity and eating disorders. She also edited the books, Animal Models of Eating Disorders (2012) and Hedonic Eating (2015), coauthored the popular book of food and addiction called Why Diets Fail (Ten Speed Press), and recently finished her new book, What to Eat When You're Pregnant. Her research achievements have been honored by awards from several groups including the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Psychological Association, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Eating Disorders Association.
Website: http://www.drnicoleavena.com
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