to provide a good nutritional environment for your growing baby, you don’t have to feel bad if you occasionally stray from our recommendations. The important thing is to eat well most of the time. Let good decisions comfort and satisfy your body, and they’ll do the same for your mind.
Shoot for Balance. We know that your eating habits can flip-flop more than an inexperienced councilman. And as we’ve outlined, you should expect times when you’ll feel like feasting and times when you feel like fainting. That said, it’s smart to be aware of what your basic nutritional goals should be (though not to feel guilty if you don’t hit them every day). You should strive for:
• nine or more serving (fistfuls) of fruits and vegetables
• three or more servings of whole grain and other grain products
• three or more servings of lean protein in the form of lean meat, skinless poultry, lowmercury fish, eggs, nuts, beans, lentils, and tofu
Your overall philosophy should be this: Eat foods that look like they did when they came out of the ground. (Last we checked, potatoes don’t grow with a layer of grease.) Why? Because those are the foods that the placenta recognizes as real food, and those are the foods that contribute the most to a healthy pregnancy.
Adopt the YOU-Turn Mantra. Along the dietary journey, you may make some wrong turns. Sometimes they’re A-OK. We just want you to make sure you don’t make a habit of it. Acknowledge that you will face obstacles, but instead of falling into the avoidant and defeatist mentality by drop-kicking healthy eating the moment you make one bad choice, act like a GPS system and tell yourself, “At the next available moment, make an authorized YOU-Turn.’ That is, if you have a day of indulgent, crazed eating, tell yourself that one day won’t hurt you and that you need to get back on track. What kills any regimen of healthy eating—whether for 1 or for 1.1—isn’t the occasional dessert or pizza binge, it’s the cascade of behavior that happens after the initial indulgence.
Eat Often. “Eat often” may sound like a contradiction when we’re asking you to be conscientious about any big changes in weight, but the truth is that it’s smarter to eat five or six small meals throughout the day rather than the traditional three squares. That will help you avoid drops in blood sugar, which can cause cravings. Maintaining an even blood sugar level will also help you avoid nausea. Mainly, though, it will help you feel satisfied so that you don’t have the urge to dive headfirst into a gallon of caramel-infused nougat. When you do, search for a food that will satisfy your craving without doing the damage. Some examples:
Stay Away. We know how hard it can be to stay away from foods when your brain is telling you that you have to have them. And every once in a while, it’s okay to indulge a craving; the damage really happens when you keep indulging. But we do think it’s important for you to familiarize yourself with a few nutritional demons* that you should avoid during pregnancy, in addition to alcohol, which we discussed in chapter 1. Be careful of these:
• Caffeine: Restrict soda, carbonated beverages, and all caffeine, especially during the first trimester, when miscarriage rates are highest. After that, up to 200 mg of caffeine a day (one cup of coffee or two cups of black tea) is considered okay.
• Risky Fish: Expert bodies such as the FDA have advised pregnant and nursing women to limit their consumption of certain types of fish due to potentially high levels of toxins such as mercury, a contaminant that when present at high levels can harm the developing nervous system of fetuses and newborns. All fish have traces of mercury, but large, bottom-dwelling, fatty fish like sharks, swordfish, king mackerel, tuna, and tilefish contain more mercury than other kinds because they eat smaller fish and live longer, thereby accumulating more of the toxin over time. And fish caught in the waters near coal-powered power plants are the worst. Pregnant women should avoid high-mercury fish and eat up to 12 ounces (two average portions) a week of a variety of fish (salmon and trout are the best commonly available for their omega-3 fat content) and occasionally shellfish that are lower in mercury. If you plan on eating fish caught in local rivers, lakes, or coastal areas, check local advisories about industrial or agricultural pollutants at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website (http://epa. gov/waterscience/fish/states.htm) before eating. It’s important to note that farm-raised fish can also be high in contaminants, so it’s best to choose “wild” varieties when available.
Know the Sweet Truth. Many of you surely have questions about the use of artificial sweeteners; those no-calorie, pretty pink and baby blue packets sure are tempting. And the truth is that we can’t say much good about artificial sugar substitutes, but we can’t say much bad either. While the evidence doesn’t show that they’re harmful to developing fetuses, we would simply make the point that virtually everything can pass through the placenta, so why would you want to muck up your baby’s blood with a bunch of chemicals?† We know you want to watch calories and avoid sugar, and that’s good. But now can also be a time for creativity in the kitchen. In many cases, fruit juice can be a nice substitute that helps curb your craving for sweets without pumping you full of chemicals or filling you with fat. Another good option: agave nectar, which isn’t fermented; otherwise, it’s called tequila. Unfermented, it has a cup of sweetness for a half teaspoon of calories (even fructose calories).
Go Organic. If there’s one time in your life when you should consider splurging on the often more expensive organic food, it’s now. Eating organic will help you avoid the toxins and pesticides that may be present in nonorganic foods. Even so, wash organic fruits and veggies three times in a salad spinner to remove all the natural stuff used as fertilizer. One other helpful tip we live by whether pregnant or not: Avoid waxed foods. You can tell if something is waxed by smelling the stem; if it doesn’t smell like the food, then it’s likely waxed. The problem with wax is that it locks in pesticides that can be found on fruits like apples, pears, and nectarines. Other big pesticide offenders include berries, potatoes, peppers, peaches, spinach, lettuce, and celery; during pregnancy, it is better to buy them organically grown. And while we’re talking about the produce aisle, we recommend that you choose frozen fruits and vegetables in the winter, since the fresh kind would be coming from remote locations. Frozen produce is picked at its peak and frozen immediately, often containing far more nutrients than out-of-season fresh produce that is trucked long distances. Freezing stores nutrients better than canning: Fruits and veggies often lose as much as 20 percent of total nutrients in the canning process.
Here are the fruits and vegetables with the highest and lowest pesticide contents, if you’re not going to go organic:
Control Your Sickness. In life, long lists can keep you organized. In magazines, long lists might sell copies. In medicine, a long list of solutions means that there’s no surefire one. Such is the case when it comes to morning sickness and nausea. A lot of things can help you feel better, but that doesn’t mean they all will. So, unfortunately, this is one of those areas in which you may have to play mad scientist and experiment a bit to see what therapy may be best for your body. Here are some things that have been shown to relieve the misery:
• Keep 100 percent whole grain crackers by your bed and eat
a few as soon as you wake, to get something in your stomach before you start moving around.
• Eat a diet high in protein and complex carbohydrates.
• Chicken broth, to help you get some calories in along with the liquid.
• Cold foods; hot foods have a stronger smell, which can trigger queasiness.
• Vitamin