A reader who is about as pregnant as I am emails:
So, I guess I wanted to email you to say, keep up the posts on eating/pregnancy etc. I am really feeling my way through this as well. Sweets don't really tempt me right now. That's good. I despise having to think about food so much. I really need to be putting something in my mouth every 2-3 hours. That's when the hunger pangs start, and I start feeling sick if I don't eat. I'm trying to do something healthy like a protein with a carb. Peanut butter and banana. Cottage cheese with tomato or apple. Shaklee bar. Can I ask how are you handling being hungry more??? I was just getting used to telling myself, Oh, supper will be in an hour! I can't seem to do that now!
Hmm, how am I handling being hungry more?
I stopped to think about it: the thing is, I am not feeling hungry more often now that I am pregnant. I already eat five times a day; maybe those snacks at 10:30 and 3:30 are effective at keeping my blood sugar steady?
What I am feeling is a slight aversion to vegetables, and that aversion has changed the composition of my diet. Though I am discovering that if I can just make myself eat the darned things, they stay down, and so I'm trying. Oh, and plain water repulses me for some reason, so I'm spiking all my water with juice or Gatorade.
You know, it's okay to gain weight when you're pregnant, and so it's okay to eat if you get hungry. It sounds like a dumb thing to say, but believe me, it is worth saying, because I have to keep saying it to myself to keep the panicky feelings at bay. How can I already have gained four pounds? Well, duh, Erin, it's okay to gain four pounds at 9 weeks pregnant.
On the other hand I think it is possible to develop bad habits in pregnancy that you then have to deal with later. Carte blanche is not okay, nor is eating for two unless it takes into account the fact that one of the two is the size of a lima bean. So I guess if I were feeling hungry every couple of hours I would probably be spacing out a bunch of little micro-snacks. If I were to need a snack every 2 hours, it probably wouldn't have to be an ounce of cheese and six crackers every single time. If I want to stay in the habit of "mealing" rather than "snacking," then maybe it's worth figuring out how much snack it takes to keep the nausea and light-headedness at bay. I'm willing to bet that for most people, assuming the snack contains some fat and protein, less than an ounce at a time is necessary. Like, not a half sleeve of cheese-topped saltines, but TWO cheese-topped saltines. Five or six almonds.
I also wanted to ask you about yogurt. How do you do that? All the yogurt I look at has so much sugar and carbs!! I was borderline gestational diabetic last time, so I'm really trying to not eat white flour, sugar and watch for the high sugars. You would think yogurt would be okay, but I'm tending more toward 1% cottage cheese.
I eat plain, full-fat yogurt. No sugar added, no artificial sweeteners, no flavorings. I like to mix chopped fresh fruit into it, but I also like it just plain. I had to wean myself onto plain by mixing it with sweet stuff for a while, but that was years ago and I've never looked back.
But maybe you're already thinking about plain full-fat yogurt, and it still seems to have too many carbohydrates and sugars. It's not as bad as it looks. Plain yogurt has fewer grams of sugar in it than are listed on the label. If you compare the nutritional labeling of a cup of milk and a cup of yogurt, you'll notice that it's the same number of carbohydrates and sugars. Obviously, though, this can't be correct because bacteria make milk into yogurt by converting lactose (milk sugar) into lactic acid. I'm not really clear on why the labeling laws allow for this, but apparently the number of grams of carbohydrate in a food is calculated by some sort of subtraction process, and so in lactofermented foods, the label reflects the lactose content of the milk the product was made from and not the final total. So, this goes for kefir and buttermilk as well as yogurt. (Not necessarily nonfat or lowfat plain yogurt, however. Manufacturers sometimes mix carb-laden thickening agents into these to make up for the lost butterfat.)
About one-percent cottage cheese: I love cottage cheese but I don't touch low-fat anything, it's full fat or none at all for me. I'd so much rather eat real food, and I think most people don't give enough credit to fat's role in satiety, in slowing down digestion and helping you feel full for longer. One thing worth trying any time you find yourself constantly hungry is to raise the percentage of calories you're getting from fat.
I do enjoy cottage cheese as well. It can make a nice dip, too - spin it up in the blender or food processor with fresh or dry herbs of your choice. Or stir in some chopped garlic and seeded, peeled cucumber for a tatziki-like dip. It's a way that I could still get veggies into myself while pregnant - by using them as vectors for dip, and if the dip is something healthful like hummus or cottage cheese or peanut butter rather than something processed from the store then all the better.
Posted by: Christy P. | 25 June 2009 at 05:20 PM
btw - 9 days postpartum and breastfeeding both the infant and my 3 year-old, who has upped her nursing considerably since her brother arrived, I don't feel like I can eat enough either!
Posted by: Christy P. | 25 June 2009 at 05:24 PM
The idea of tzatziki sauce sounds wonderful. I have just added cucumbers and dill to tomorrow's grocery list.
Posted by: bearing | 25 June 2009 at 09:32 PM