Product Description

Are you worried about gaining too much weight when you're pregnant -- or not losing enough weight after the baby arrives?

Let's face it: to make sure you and your baby are as healthy as possible, you need to be concerned with eating right while you're expecting. Yet a comprehensive guide to healthy weight gain -- including a total pregnancy eating plan -- hasn't been made available to women. Until now.

In this first and only book of its kind, Eileen Behan, registered dietitian and mother of two, answers every imaginable question related to proper, healthy weight gain and the best nutrition for your baby, including exactly what to eat (and what not to eat) as well as how you can return to your pre-pregnancy weight after your baby's birth.

Working hand-in-hand with your obstetrician's advice, this wonderful book is chock full of helpful information (what to eat during morning sickness when you don't want to eat at all), and facts you need to know (is a vegetarian diet safe for your baby?). Complete with an exciting eating program based on six easy-to-understand food groups -- and delicious, healthy recipes that you'll love, The Pregnancy Diet understands a woman's real-life needs. You'll find:

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #674183 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01-01
• Released on: 1982-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
Eileen Behan is a member of the American Dietetic Association, a registered dietitian, and the mother of two. This is her fifth book about nutrition and family. She has written for Newsweek, Parents magazine, The Washington Post, and Tufts University Diet and Nutrition Letter. She holds a degree in home economics from River College in Nashua, New Hampshire, and completed a traineeship in nutrition at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. She has worked for the Harvard School of Public Health and the Veterans Administration, and for five years her show Food for Talk aired on Boston public radio. Ms. Behan currently works as a nutrition consultant, helping families to improve health through diet. She lives with her family in New Hampshire.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One: Heavy Issues

Many people believe that pregnancy contributes to obesity. However, research shows that women who gain as recommended while they are pregnant have no greater reason to fear a permanent battle with obesity than nonpregnant women of the same age. Instead, pregnant women should take comfort in knowing that by gaining that recommended 25 to 35 pounds they have made an important contribution to the health of their baby.

HOW MUCH WEIGHT

The current weight gain recommendations for women of normal weight during pregnancy are at a higher level than they have been in the past 20 to 30 years. In the 1960s, the typical expectant mother was told to limit her weight gain to 15 to 20 pounds. She was even encouraged to use appetite suppressants and low-calorie diets to limit her weight gain, thereby preventing weight-related health problems and making her delivery easier. In the 1970s, researchers saw a connection between low weight gain and the birth of preterm, low-birth-weight babies. As a result, the 1970s mom was told to gain 20 to 25 pounds. In the 1980s researchers saw a 20 percent reduction in low-birthweight babies among white mothers and a 7 percent reduction among black mothers who gained eight to ten pounds more than their 1970s counter-parts. As a result, weight-gain recommendations were increased even further. Today, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) offers a general weight-gain recommendation during pregnancy of 25 to 35 pounds, plus three different weight-gain guidelines based on a woman's weight for height before conception.

Weight-gain ranges are based on prepregnancy body mass index (BMI). BMI is defined as body weight divided by height squared, and it is considered a better indicator of nutritional status than weight alone. Use your prepregnancy weight to calculate your BMI with the help of the chart on page 3. Once you determine your prepregnancy BMI, select the interpretation that describes you: underweight, normal, overweight, or obese. A 5'8" woman weighing 140 pounds at conception has a "normal" BMI of 21.5. A 5'8" woman weighing 120 pounds, with a BMI of less than 19 is described as "underweight." Once your BMI is determined, select the recommended weight gain that matches your description.

HOW FAST SHOULD I GAIN?

Your doctor will weigh you at every visit. Some women hate these weight checks and feel they are the doctor's way of checking up on them to see whether they have been "good" or "bad." The truth is that your doctor is checking up on you, but only to look for signs of good or bad health. Weight can be a very effective tool when evaluating the progress of a pregnancy.

A gradual, steady weight gain is ideal. In the first 13 weeks most obstetricians like to see a weight gain of two to five pounds, followed by a steady increase of approximately one pound per week until delivery. A gradual gain in weight suggests that both lean and fat tissue are being added, whereas an erratic and sudden increase can indicate a dangerous problem, such as the retention of fluid that is one of the symptoms of preeclampsia.

Though the ideal might be a nice, steady, even weight gain, in reality most women will not gain weight in such a uniform manner. The British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology published a 1991 study that took a retrospective look at how mothers with a normal pregnancy outcome gain weight, and found that there was a wide variation in weight gain over the course of pregnancy. The slowest weight gain occurred before 16 weeks, after 35 weeks, and right before the eighth month between week 28 and week 32. The differences in average weekly weight gain among the mothers studied were related to number of pregnancies, BMI, smoking habits, and history of high blood pressure.

Many things can make it difficult to interpret weight gain. If the date of conception is uncertain, it is difficult to assess weight-gain patterns. In some cases, an unexpected weight gain can be related to how much food or liquid was consumed before a weight check. Whether a mother has a full or empty bladder or has had a bowel movement will affect the recorded weight. Even clothing and time of day affect weight measurements. The point is, a jump in weight does not always mean you ate too much or that something is wrong. In some cases it is a fluke in the weighing technique. As always, talk to your health-care provider and focus on the trend in weight gain, not just one reading.

To help practitioners and women make sense of what is considered a healthy weight-gain trend, the IOM has suggested recommended weight-gain patterns. With the help of your doctor, use these to establish a weight-gain goal that is right for you.

Adolescent women need to aim for the high end of the recommended weight ranges, and women under 5'2" should attempt to keep to the lower end. Women who are carrying twins may be advised to gain 35 to 45 pounds. The IOM suggests that women of normal weight who gain less that two pounds per month should investigate the reasons for slow weight gain with their doctor. And women who do not gain at least ten pounds by midpregnancy need to receive nutrition counselling. Gains of over six and a half pounds per month may need to be monitored, but food intake should not automatically be reduced. Weight gain continues to be important until the end of pregnancy. For instance, a low weight gain in normal-weight women in the last three months of pregnancy may be a cause of early delivery.

Is gaining above the recommended weight-gain levels even better for baby? The answer is, probably not. In a study of over 53,000 infants it was found that low birth weight decreased with increasing weight gain in average-weight women, but there was no further reduction in low birth weight when weight gains were higher than 30 to 40 pounds. Women with high weight gains are at increased risk for high-birth-weight babies, which can make delivery difficult. If you have a BMI higher than 29 you may be advised by your doctor to limit your weight gain to 15 to 25 pounds. (Some physicians may recommend an even lower weight gain based on a woman's medical history.) A lower weight gain may reduce an overweight woman's risk for a high-birth-weight infant.

AFTER DELIVERY

No one can predict exactly how any individual woman will gain or lose weight but a review of the research can give mothers some reassuring news. In 1993, Sally Ann Lederman, Ph.D., then of Columbia University's School of Public Health, reviewed the pregnancy-related research to determine whether one's weight increases permanently as a result of pregnancy. The studies showed that the average woman generally retains less than three pounds of added weight (from before pregnancy to one year after delivery). A small number of women may retain a lot of their pregnancy weight, but this is more likely due to having been overweight at conception and to lifestyle changes rather than to pregnancy itself. The woman who begins her pregnancy overweight may be at greater risk for being heavier after delivery.

A study of 1,423 Swedish mothers who averaged the recommended 30-pound gain during pregnancy found that the average weight gain was only three pounds one year after delivery. In another study the weight-gain patterns of 795 American women who gained approximately 28 pounds during pregnancy were examined. It was found that they averaged only three pounds above their initial weight at their six-month postpartum visit. This research suggests that for an average-weight woman, weight retention related to pregnancy is about three pounds, six months to one year after delivery. It is important to note that there are big differences among the women in these studies. In the Swedish study, for example, 2 percent of the mothers gained 20 pounds from before pregnancy to one year after delivery. T

Customer Reviews

great book for pregnant women
As a health care professional, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in nutrition during pregnancy. The meal planning guides and recipes are great for moms! I use this book in my nursing practice!

Good Information; Mediocre Recipes
This book, while providing very good information on nutrition recommendations during pregnancy, falls short on the recipes. I tried several of the recipes, and each one left out pertinent information. I would also say that I have read the same nutrition information in other pregnancy books, so it is not really worth buying, in my opinion.

Same old, same old
There is no information in this book that I haven't read or been told before. This morning I tried to make one of the recipes from the book, the "Wholesome Whole-Grain Muffins" and they were a disaster. Behan instructs that this recipe makes 18 muffins, but I used 18 muffin cups and the batter overflowed and made my kitchen smell terrible (not great when a pregnant woman is feeling nauseous anyway) and they are burnt on the edges and not quite cooked in the middles. This is coming from someone who loves to bake and has a little experience behind making muffins. The batter was very watery and the small taste I took (what I could stand after smelling burnt batter all morning) was very, very sweet. I would not recommend purchasing this book.