After all, the best and healthiest pregnancies and babies result from the best and healthiest pregnancy diets. Building the healthiest babies is a great motivator, but it is not the only reason to eat well during pregnancy and long afterward as well. It is every mother’s worst nightmare to end up on the news beneath the headline of “new mom goes berserk, depression suspected”.
There is much every expectant mom can do to keep depression from making an unwanted intrusion into pregnancy. Or from settling into the rocking chair beside you during those blissful postpartum days and nights.
Excellent Nutrition Helps Baby and Routs Depression
The effort you put into eating well not only helps baby and your body run the 9-month gauntlet of pregnancy fit from start to finish, it helps to balance out hormones and keep everything on an even keel.
Exercise Keeps Pregnancy on Track and Increases Feel Good Hormones
Exercise is not just for health nuts and marathon enthusiasts. It is for moms to be who want to feel and look good. Exercise helps you and your baby in many ways. First off it gets the blood pumping. This helps your heart, but it also increases the rate of air and nutrient delivery to baby while ridding the body and baby of toxins.
Exercise helps you to process stress in a productive way. Ridding the body of stress lowers the chances of depression taking hold because a mind and body at a healthy ease are much stronger. In addition to all these, exercise has a medicinal effect to naturally treat depression’s causes of a hormone imbalance in the brain. While depression lowers the feel good chemicals of serotonin, exercise increases it and stimulates the release of serotonin.
Baby Blues Support Group
Having someone to talk to can help. Feeling isolated, guilty and all alone will only intensify depressed tendencies. Find a group of women you trust and socialize with them regularly. Discuss your challenges. You will find helpful tips, and comfort over a shared conversation and a casual play date.
Be Positive
Depression whispers lies of inadequacy, guilt and listless uselessness into your ear. Don’t listen. You are still the amazing woman you have always been and now you are going to be an amazing mom. You can do this, and do it very well. Be confident and adopt a self talk mantra which builds you up.
Make a List and Stay Active
Depression makes even the most productive and capable women feel paralyzed and incapable. Fight against these feelings by getting organized. Make a list and check off items as you accomplish each one. Staying productively active prevents depression from sucking you in deeper. You will feel better at the end of the day when your list is all crossed off and your house is clean, dinner is made and your work is complete
Portion Sizes – Variety – And Control – In Your Pregnancy Diet Plan
Remember that you only need an additional 300 calories per day while pregnant. This means you really need to know your portions and their value to make the most of every morsel.
Knowing an accurate portion will enable you to get all the foods you need to maintain a healthy pregnancy weight, but still let you be at peace with the numbers you see staring back at you when you weigh in at every prenatal checkup.
Eating Variety
If you have ever had the pleasure of caring for a toddler with a picky palette, you may understand the desire to eat only crunchy peanut butter on white bread with white grape jelly for each and every meal.
But did you cater to this demand?
Chances are that sometimes you did, but you also tried your darnedest to slip a little variety onto the plate and into the persnickety belly. Why did you put those carrots on the menu knowing you were about to endure a grade A, class 5 meal time melt down? It’s because eating too much of one thing, even if the obsessed-over food item is a healthy one, is not good enough.
Your body needs a wide variety of nutrients and unfortunately these vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants, fats and protein sources that are not all to be had in any one food. To get the whole enchilada, nutritionally speaking, you’ll need to eat more than just a few favorites. Mixing up the menu does not have to mean eating foods you don’t like and would never dream of forcing down anyone’s mouth (including your own).
You do not have to eat liver, just because it is a wonderfully healthy meat source or endure the mushy inhumanity that is spaghetti squash if you don’t want to. What you do need to do is put some thought and planning into your meals. It really isn’t as much work as it might seem to be at first blush. Just sit down with your calendar and pencil in a few menus that differ in protein sources (beef then chicken and fish protein once a week). Then make your side dish selections based on the rainbow discussed above. If your menu is lacking yellow, add it in. If you have gone far too long without deep greens, bulk up on them.
Really, you can do this easily by adding a fresh salad to each meal, and your 5 a day veggie conundrum practically solves itself. And you get the added bonus of feeling like you are eating out at one of those fancy places that brings a salad before your main meal. To help you make the most of your menu planning, a bit of added knowledge never hurt anyone. Even if you are already an expert in what nutrients your body needs in which amounts daily from the best food sources, pregnancy and baby change the game. Your needs are different now, and your pregnancy diet needs to reflect that.
