How much should I be eating during pregnancy?
Pregnancy is a time when your once relatively stable eating habits can go out the window with the dramatic change in hormones causing all sorts of upsets. This can include nausea, vomiting, constipation, hunger, heartburn, aversions, cravings just to name a few. Yet it’s also a time when we all want to do our best for not only our own health, but for our baby’s as well.
While our bodies need more of some things in pregnancy and breastfeeding (especially micronutrients eg. folic acid) it doesn’t necessarily mean a lot more food!
Pregnancy should certainly lead to some healthy weight gain (blood volume, a baby, a placenta, and some fat) but not too much. Let’s start by debunking one common myth – that when you are pregnant you are eating for two!
How much to eat when you’re pregnant
Let’s look at the extra energy requirements for pregnancy broken down by trimester, and some examples of how you could meet those needs.
First trimester: Zero!
That first trimester surge in progesterone can leave you feeling unable to eat or unable to stop eating. However, the extra energy intake for pregnancy in the first trimester (0-12 weeks) is zero. This means your body does not require you to eat more food in your first trimester.
Second Trimester: An extra 1400kj
Once you reach your second trimester the energy requirement for growing your baby, a placenta and more blood does mean that your require on average 1400 kJ (340 kcal) over the day.
So what does this look like in real food? It’s about one large or two smaller snacks such as – a smoothie (banana, yoghurt/protein powder, berries, milk), or two pieces of wholegrain toast with peanut butter (*2Tbsp), or greek yoghurt with banana and a dozen almonds.
Third Trimester: An extra 1900kj per day
By the third trimester (28 weeks onwards) that bumps up again to 1900kJ (450 kcal). This can look like half a cup of mixed nuts and a banana, 2 eggs on wholegrain toast with hummus or cottage cheese, or ½ cup of granola with 2/3 cup of Greek yoghurt and berries.
Breastfeeding: 2000 - 2100kj per day
Once baby arrives, if you are breastfeeding this too comes with increased energy intake requirements of 2000-2100 kJ (476-500kcal) per day as well as significant hydration requirements. It is important to have three good meals and two substantial snacks per day at regular intervals to meet these needs.
Extra requirements for exercising pregnant women
Keep in mind when looking at these numbers (for energy intake) that they don’t include the additional energy to cover cost of exercise. So if you are an exercising pregnant woman (which is highly recommended!) you will also need to take this into consideration and bump up your nutrition intake in and around your exercise as well as considering your hydration (more on pregnancy and exercise in a future article!)
You will be doing both yourself and your baby a huge favour if you consider the nutritional quality and quantity of your diet when pregnant. Although it can be an easy time to snack away on energy dense nutrient poor foods, it couldn’t be a better time to focus on nutrient dense healthy foods to optimise both your baby’s and your own health.
If you would like support to figure out your nutrition requirements while pregnant, please book a free introductory call to see how I can help.