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Healthy Eating During Preconception
Good Nutrition While You're Trying to Conceive
By Alison Gamble
Here are some of the outcomes for underweight women (less than 90 percent of your ideal body weight) who are trying to conceive or who are pregnant:
- Problems with fertility
- Increased risk of premature delivery
- Intrauterine growth retardation (also known as IUGR; baby is lacking nutrients to grow adequately)
- Lower Apgar scores
Underweight women should allow themselves three to six months to gain weight.
The best foods to concentrate on are fruits rich in vitamin C, dark leafy green vegetables and calcium-rich foods. You should also go for pastas, grains and cereals. Protein should consist of poultry, fish and legumes such as dried beans and peas. Lean red meat is fine to eat, but no more than three servings per week.
Elizabeth Somer recommends the following for a pre-pregnancy diet plan:
- 2 servings from the Calcium-Rich group
- 5 servings from the Vegetable group
- 3 servings from the Fruit group
- 6 servings from the Grains group
- 2 servings from the Extra Lean Meat group
You should also incorporate an exercise plan into your life, if you haven't done so already. You should exercise at a minimum of three days per week – I think four to five times per week if you are trying to lose weight. I do not recommend working out seven days a week. You want to give your body a couple days to rest. Your body benefits more from rest versus nonstop exercising. You should do more than 20 minutes of cardiovascular exercise, along with weight training. I recommend having a personal trainer show you the correct way to use weight machines. Your form is very important. Otherwise, you may hurt yourself.
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