I think every pregnant woman imagines she’ll spend 9 months gorging herself on anything her heart desires without a care in the world: ice cream, big fat burgers, jars of pickles (like my sister in law did). Fortunately for me, my cravings have been leaning toward the healthy realm and have had me chomping on pineapple, strawberries, Honeycrisp apples and yogurt of every flavor and variety.
My problem thus far with this whole pregnancy nutrition thing isn’t trying to keep my hand out of the cookie jar, but in fitting in all my calories and nutrients every day! The pregnancy books say you only need an extra 300 calories a day for baby. Figure in that I used to have about 1400 to maintain my weight + 300 calories for baby = 1700 daily intake. Factor in those days when I go for walks or lift weights and I need to add in at least another 300 calories to make up for the burn factor. That’s 1900 calories on the typical day!
I’m a grazer. I don’t eat huge meals – but snack throughout the day with a bowl of oatmeal here, salad there, apple with peanut butter … so it’s been hard to keep track of what I’m eating.
Enter the really cool website www.BabyFit.com. On BabyFit, you can create your unique user profile with your goals, etc. but all the nutrtion is geared toward pregnant women. You can either follow their daily meal plans (there’s not a vegetarian option, so it didn’t work for me) or add your own foods each day. I’ve been adding my meals as I eat them and it gives you a running total of your calories, fat, carbs, protein, iron, folate, calcium and how you’re doing at reaching your goals. It’s been great for me because there are some days when I feel like I’ve eaten so much, but the handy charting will show me where I’m falling short – so I know to have a yogurt for a snack or to stock up broccoli for dinner.
