How to have a healthy diet in pregnancy
When you are pregnant there are heavy demands on your body. You need to ensure your diet meets these demands. Even if you are fit and healthy you will meed to make some minor or major changes in what you eat, and you will need to be more cautious about what you eat and drink. It can be quite challenging to do this especially when you experience a lot of food cravings. Great tasting foods not only fill your cravings, they also provide comfort when we are stressed.
The following are useful hints that will help you to have a healthy diet and to enjoy it.
- Know what you eat and why you eat it. Many of us don’t really know what we eat or why we eat it. Some health care providers recommend a pregnant woman to keep a food journal for one week. This will help you to keep track of what you eat and of your feelings before, during and afterwards. It sounds like a tedious task but is really quite simple and once you do it you will have a good understanding of what you eat and why. This will make it much easier to work out what foods affect you and your body and feelings. It will also help you to see that oftentimes your eating is not driven by hunger.
- Know your eating pattern. The food journal will help you to see your eating pattern. You will see where there is an imbalance in your diet – you will see which food or food groups you eat too much of and which ones you eat too little of. Recognising this makes it easier to make the changes to a balanced nutritious diet.
- Be realistic. Establish a practical goal and slowly work towards it. When you see where you need to make changes set about making them slowly. If you change too many of your eating habits at once you may become discouraged or you may find you no longer enjoy your food.
- Make it fun. Changing your diet can be stressful. There is already enough happening in your body and mind so don’t put too much pressure on yourself to change too quickly. Understand that you may go two steps forward and one backwards. This is natural. Make it fun and involve other members of the family.
- Have a breakout occasionally. If you are finding it difficult to stick to the new diet, breakout occasionally and have you favourite junk food or sugary snack. Find the right balance. Reward yourself with these foods when you have been eating the right foods for a period of time.