Answer:
Preventing excessive weight gain during your pregnancy will help minimize delivery risks and protect your health.
To keep within your recommended weight gain:
To keep within your recommended weight gain:
- Eliminate sugars and sweets, which provide lots of calories, but have limited nutritional value.
- Limit the amount of fat you add to your foods, such as butter, margarine, mayonnaise, salad dressings, sour cream, sauces and gravies.
- Eat three small meals and three snacks daily at two or three-hour intervals.
- For snacks and desserts, choose fresh fruit, raw vegetables and nonfat dairy products instead of sweets. For example, try eating angel food cake, frozen nonfat yogurt or vanilla wafers instead of pound cake, ice cream or cookies.
- Select lean protein foods, such as part skim cheeses, plain nonfat or low-fat yogurt, skinless poultry, fish and veal.
- Cook foods without oil. Bake, broil, stir-fry, grill or boil foods instead of frying.
- Watch the portion size of protein foods eaten for the day. For example, seven servings of protein can be obtained by eating one cooked egg, one four oz. hamburger and one chicken thigh.
- Limit fruit juices (which are high in calories) to six oz. per day. Eat whole pieces of fresh fruit instead.
- Avoid high-fat luncheon meats, such as bologna, salami, spam, sausage, corned beef and hot dogs. Eat turkey, ham, salmon or tuna instead.
- Incorporate more activity and exercise into your day.
- Be sure to drink at least 8 to 10 glasses of water per day.
- If you need help planning low-fat meals that you and your family will enjoy, talk to your health care provider about a referral to a prenatal nutritionist.