Pre pregnancy diet
A well-balanced pre-pregnancy diet will help provide the nutrients you need for good health and vitality, and set you on the right track to conceive a baby.
It is important for women who are trying to have a baby to maintain healthy and well-balanced pre-pregnancy nutrition. However, with the increased nutrient requirements of pregnancy, diet alone is not enough.
Thus, before pregnancy, a woman should combine a pre-pregnancy diet with a pre-pregnancy nutrition supplement. This combination helps provide the body with the essential nutrients it needs in preparation for a healthy pregnancy.
The healthy pre pregnancy diet plan
Women need to attain good nutritional status before, during, and after pregnancy to optimize maternal health and reduce the risk of pregnancy complications, birth defects, and chronic disease in their children in later adulthood.
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015-2020, eight edition, recommends that healthy eating pattern must include a wide variety of food and drinks within an appropriate calorie level.
A healthy eating pattern includes:
❯ A variety of vegetables—dark green, red and orange, legumes (beans and peas), starchy, and others
❯ Fruits, especially whole fruits
❯ Grains, at least half of which are whole grains
❯ Fat-free or low-fat dairy, including milk, yogurt, cheese, and/or fortified soy beverages
❯ A variety of protein foods, including seafood, lean meats and poultry, eggs, legumes (beans and peas), and nuts, seeds, and soy products
❯ Oils
In contrast, some foods like saturated fats, salt and sugar are not good if eaten excessively. They may provide “empty calories” from added sugar and solid fats which are of deficient in nutritive value.
Some foods with empty calories include:
❯ Candy
❯ Desserts
❯ Fried foods
❯ Ice cream
❯ Sweetened cereals
❯ Hot dogs
❯ Soft drinks/soda
❯ Fruit drinks/tea.
To help reduce the amount of these in your diet, it is advised to switch to unsaturated fats like oils and spreads instead of butter, and cut down the amount of processed or fast food you eat. Your water intake is also very important to your health.
Additional tips for your pre pregnancy nutrition plan
In preparing your pre-pregnancy diet, the following are also recommended:
1. Avoid foods that may contain listeria and toxoplasma.
These include soft cheeses, paté or smoked seafood and raw eggs. Make sure that any eggs, meat and fish you eat is cooked through.
2. Take care in choosing seafood. Seafood may contain mercury.
You should not eat fish high in mercury like shark, swordfish, tilefish, and king mackerel. Canned “white” tuna (albacore) is higher in mercury content than the “light” variety; limit canned white tuna to less than 6 ounces (170 gram) per week.
Mercury can harm the developing nervous system in an unborn child or young baby. However, you may choose those lower in mercury like salmon, flounder, tilapia, trout, pollock, and catfish.
3. Cut back on caffeine.
Try to keep your caffeine consumption to a less than of 200 mg a day, which is about 1 espresso. Don’t forget that caffeine can be found in other food and beverage items as well, such as chocolate, tea, some soft drinks, and energy drinks.
4. Avoid alcohol.
Drinking alcohol during pregnancy, may result in serious negative effects to your baby’s development.
Getting sufficient nutrients through food alone can be hard
Even with the best of intentions, it can still be difficult to meet the increased nutritional needs of pregnancy through diet alone. A pregnant woman will need about 600 micrograms of folic acid, and 27 milligrams of iron, daily.
That is why even before pregnancy, multivitamin and mineral supplements should be taken to ensure that the increased nutritional needs throughout pre-conception, as well during pregnancy and breastfeeding, are met without fail.
“ Pregnancy increases your need for certain vitamins and minerals that are essential to support the development of a healthy baby. ”
3 reasons to take pre pregnancy nutrition supplements
Nutritional needs increase when pregnant. There are 3 main reasons why it is important to take a pre pregnancy multivitamin and mineral supplement while planning to conceive:
- Pregnancy is one of the most nutritionally demanding periods you can go through. In fact, while pregnant, the recommended dietary intake for iron increases between 187-407% and folic can increase between 118% to 176%.18 Relying solely on diets may not be realistic to most.
- The first few weeks of pregnancy are critical time in baby’s development. This is when the neural tube that forms baby’s brain and spinal cord develops. Often by the time you find out that you’re pregnant, a little person is already coming to life.
- It can take time for your body to build up the essential nutrients it needs to prepare for the increased requirements of pregnancy.
Key vitamins and minerals that are essential to baby’s healthy development
Folic acid
During the first few weeks of pregnancy, before most women find out that they are pregnant, the neural tube has already developed, or closed. The neural tube forms the baby’s brain and spinal cord, which are essential to the central nervous system.
A woman’s nutritional folate status can play an important role in the formation of the neural tube. Folic acid, the supplemental form of folate, is clinically proven19 to reduce the risk of neural tube defects by 92%. Therefore, it is important to take a pregnancy multivitamin and mineral supplement with folic acid while you’re planning to conceive, which contains 800 mcg of folic acid.
Iron
Your iron requirements also increase significantly with pregnancy as you make more blood for yourself and your baby. Iron is important to help prevent dietary iron deficiency and has benefits for baby’s development, too.
You may need to modify your lifestyle
Aside from adopting a healthy pre-pregnancy diet and getting sufficient nutrients from supplementation, you should also take a look at some early pregnancy tips surrounding your lifestyle. You may also need to make lifestyle changes to achieve a happy, healthy pregnancy.