Pregnancy is a blissful condition every woman yearns to experience at least once in her lifetime. But at the same time, this phase can bring about a host of doubts and worries as the body undergoes multiple changes in a short span of time.
The period is undoubtedly challenging as it puts the body under various forms of stress – emotional, physical and mental. Not only is it essential for the women to keep their fitness levels at their best while nurturing the baby in their womb, but also it is imperative to eat nutritional food to serve both the mother and the baby efficaciously.
Maintaining an optimum weight and fitness level during pregnancy goes a long way in helping the women combat the various complications associated with it while preventing several others during birth, postpartum and lactation periods. Additionally, it also helps battle every woman’s apprehension to achieve permanent weight loss after pregnancy.
Anaemia, intra-uterine growth retardation, pregnancy diabetes, hypertension, low liquor amnii volume and low birth weight infant, preterm labour are the most prevalent conditions associated with pregnancy.
Why a Healthy Diet is Beneficial for Mother
It is very important to eat healthy during pregnancy because of the following benefits.
Minimum Complications
Dealing with unhealthy pregnancy cravings may be challenging, but it is entirely useful in the long run for the health of your baby.
Enhanced Energy
Most women experience crippling fatigue during their pregnancies. Maintaining a healthy diet and eating every 3 to 4 hours will keep your energy levels high.
Fetal Development That Is Successful
A perfectly balanced diet is exactly what your baby requires to grow correctly.
Sleep Improvement
Numerous factors, such as bathroom breaks, nausea or aches and pains, can keep you awake at night during your pregnancy! Making sure you eat full and complete meals every day and avoiding too much caffeine will certainly help with your beauty sleep.
So, here’s a comprehensive guide to the superfoods that help you nourish your baby during pregnancy while keeping you fit and healthy – pre and postpartum. Knowing such things is always recommended if you want to live a healthy life.
Vegetables and fruits: Green leafy vegetables like kale, broccoli, spinach, lettuce are an excellent source of vitamins, minerals in proper amounts that help in the overall development of the baby’s body parts and avoid any birth disorders. Minerals like folic acid are essential for avoiding neural tube defects and other growth disorders, and are found in abundance in green leafy vegetables, broccoli, oranges, avocado, or fortified bread and cereals. Including such food in your diet is always benefits because it is one of the best tips to achieve permanent weight loss.
Legumes: Apart from vegetables, legumes are also rich sources of proteins that help build immunity and maintain optimum hormonal levels during all the pregnancy trimesters.
Whole grain foods: It’s best to consume high-fibre grains like multigrain bread, pasta, rice or cereal. Adding fibre to the diet helps prevent constipation which may get more troublesome as pregnancy proceeds due to the additional force exerted on the gut by the increasing size of the uterus.
Meat, fish and Poultry: Experts recommends 3 ½ serves of lean meats, poultry, fish, eggs, tofu, nuts/seeds or legumes/beans to deliver the protein requirement of the day. One serving ideally comprises of 65-80g cooked meat or poultry, 100g fish, 2 eggs, or 1 small handful of nuts/seeds. Poultry, red meat and tofu are rich sources of iron and help prevent iron deficiency anaemia.
Iodised Table Salt: Although an excessive amount of salt is best avoided, iodised varieties supply the much-needed iodine for preventing goitre and other disorders related to an underactive thyroid.
Prevention is always better than cure, so it’s advisable to consume the recommended foods in the right amounts during pregnancy. This not only ensures a healthy growth for the child but also an easy and rapid recovery for the mother.
