Diet Planning
A good nutrition pregnancy guide needs planning together with your doctor or health care provider. In any pregnancy nutrition guide, it will include enough calories for adequate weight gain, as well as a variety of foods from each food group. A pregnancy nutrition guide helps you in eating right but with very limited use of oils and solid fats.
Also, with the guide, you have to follow a regular meal time and snacking time where the pregnancy nutrition guide provides you with suggestions on what healthy snacks can be taken to maintain your energy levels throughout the day as well as how often you are recommended to be snacking.
Food cravings or bound to come up so snacking on the occasional chocolate cake or butterscotch ice cream is fine. Just don’t do it too often with the excuse of being pregnant. Just as how you maintain what you eat before pregnancy, you should continue healthy eating habits during pregnancy as well.
A pregnancy nutrition guide helps you in getting the recommended daily intake of calcium, protein, fats, carbohydrates and fiber. Most pregnancy nutrition guides stress on at least 30 grams of dietary fiber everyday, with more that 8 cups of water, reduced salt and sugar intake as well as absolutely no alcoholic beverages. You will also find that antenatal vitamins are recommended to be taken according to their daily dosage.
With your pregnancy nutrition guide, you can have a guideline to choose healthy foods to meet both your baby’s and your body’s needs. The guide formulated together with your doctor will also include recommendations to increase intake of nutrient-dense foods. Nutrient-dense foods are foods that are full with more nutrients for the calories than other foods that are mostly calories with few other nutrients. A nutrition pregnancy guide is also formulated based on your age and activity level while adding the additional 300 calories per day at the start of the second trimester; you can get the nourishment you need.
A mom-to-be needs these essential vitamins and minerals which are protein, foliate, calcium, zinc and iron. Protein is essentially needed for the buildup of your body’s muscles, uterus, breasts, blood supply, and baby’s tissues. If you have low protein intake, it can relate to smaller-than-average weight babies who may have health problems. A pregnant woman needs around 60 grams of protein per day to help in the growth of her baby as well as for her health maintenance. It is also important to eat enough foods high in foliate like broccoli, dark green vegetables, and oranges both before and during pregnancy. The dietary reference intake for foliate is 400 milligrams per day. Calcium should be taken for about 1,000 milligrams per day or 1,300 milligrams per day for women under 18 years of age for the development of strong bones and teeth.
Zinc deficiency during pregnancy can cause long labor and small babies who may have health problems. Zinc can be obtained very easily and the dietary reference intake for zinc is 11 milligrams per day or 12 milligrams per day for women under 18 years of age whereas the dietary reference intake for iron is 27 milligrams per day for all pregnant women.
