Not So Short And Not So Sweet..

This is quite a long post – not so short… and ends with some points about sugar…. not so sweet! I’ve tried to comment on a few important issues…. Feel free to comment!!

You’re pregnant. You’re concerned to eat well for you and your baby. What now? What do you eat? Do you need to make changes to your diet? What foods do you need to avoid? Or eat more of?

Maybe you’ve turned to good old Google, or social media. And you perhaps have friends and family keen to give you their thoughts.

Perhaps you’re feeling sick – or even being sick (poor you!) so all bets are off in terms of what you normally fancy… or eat… as your usual healthy choices. Maybe you’re craving certain things… Should you follow those cravings?

If you’ve already met your midwife, maybe you asked her about what you should be eating, prioritising and avoiding. What info did you get?

Going forward, what about weight gain? Perhaps you were trying to lose weight before you got pregnant. Maybe you weren’t. But what now? How much weight should you expect to gain in pregnancy and is it different advice if you’re plus size? How much should you eat to gain the ‘right’ amount of weight and make sure you’re getting everything your baby needs?

It can be bewildering, right?

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. And having begun this little Blog post I am now thinking this is not going to be ‘Short and Sweet’, the questions and answers on this could fill a book! (Now there’s an idea!)

Firstly, full disclosure here from a former NHS midwife, who loves to speak from the FACTS, and who has two decades of expertise under her belt. The knowledge, info, recommendations, guidance, advice you’ll get on all of the above from the NHS will frustrate you at best! It is all severely lacking…

For a start, the UK has no formal recommended pregnancy weight gain guidelines. That’s great for some people who really do not want to focus on their weight, but then not so much for others who would like a guide. Lots of women have told me they’ve asked their midwife for guidance, that they wanted a guide to give them an idea. In the USA, there are Institute of Medicine (IoM) guidelines, and you can access them online, and sometimes midwives in the UK quote them, but the health experts that decides on our guidelines, NICE (National Institute of Health & Care Excellence), have up to now decided the US population is very different, and the guidance shouldn’t be applied here. Frustrating maybe? Or perhaps you like not having guidelines? Whatever your feelings, it is important to know that there is no formal guidance from the NHS on this one.

So, what about more general dietary and lifestyle advice for plus size women in pregnancy? Well, there tends to be no specific guidance other than ‘eat a healthy, balanced diet’ and the usual advice given about foods to avoid. Some women have said they’d like a more tailored eating plan, others have said they like not having to think about restrictions, or feeling guilty about what they eat.

Some women, like those at the specialist plus size clinic where I worked for many years, got offered appointments with a dietitian. And you know what? In genera they HATED this appointment! Why? Well, precisely because there is no special, evidence-based advice to give for plus-size pregnancy! And when the dietitian gave them more general healthy eating advice, like portion size, food groups, eating fruit & veg etc. women felt patronised and, frankly, offended. And I totally get that! I have yet to meet a plus size woman who does not know about healthy eating, or food groups, or calories, or any of that stuff. Most I’ve met are total experts!

So, I really shy away from offering one-size-fits-all advice to women about diet, nutrition and weight gain in pregnancy, because these things are all really individual, there isn’t any evidence-based advice, and I know that women know about what ‘healthy eating’ is!

But I do have one exception – just ONE one-size-fits-all piece of advice, for ALL pregnant women, no matter their weight or size. And it’s this: SUGAR is your enemy and sugar is your baby’s enemy. Avoid sugar. Avoid added sugar. Avoid sugary treats.

Let me qualify this: eating too much sugar is not a problem for some women – maybe you don’t eat a lot of sugar. I am not making assumptions here. But some women love sugar and find it hard to resist (me included). And friends and family can be less than helpful when you’re pregnant in encouraging you to ‘treat yourself’. And do not even get me started on the sugar industry giants who hide sugar in processed food, push sugar with clever marketing, and want us all to keep on eating as much sugar as we possibly can!

It’s like one plus size mum said to me: ‘I like sugar, sugar is easy’. It is so easy to eat too much sugar!

And diabetes is a risk to all pregnant women. Put simply, pregnancy itself is a risk factor for diabetes because pregnancy can alter how well our bodies process sugar. By really focussing on cutting sugar as the NUMBER 1 dietary priority for pregnancy, you can really cut the chances of developing diabetes.

Contact me if you want to talk in detail about this.

So, this Blog post is not so short and not so sweet,, but if you want Heavyweight advice about your diet – This is my #1 absolute priority to recommend to you.