For the first time since 1990, an Institute of Medicine (IOM)’s group of doctors and other nutrition experts have released guidelines for how much weight a woman should gain during pregnancy. The WebMD article “Pregnancy Weight Gain: New Guidelines” describes the various metrics released by the IOM regarding the right range of values for weight gain by women of different initial weights:
During pregnancy, many women gain “substantially more than we would like,” IOM committee chairwoman Kathleen Rasmussen, ScD, PhD, tells WebMD. “It is important for women to gain within [the new guidelines] and if possible, it’s important for women to begin pregnancy at a good weight,” says Rasmussen, who is also a Cornell University nutrition professor. [WebMD]
The restrictions are strict enough, that the recommendations even include the advise to delay pregnancy until a healthy weight has been achieved. Overweight women have a greater tendency to suffer problems during pregnancy and complications during the actual birthing process (usually because of heavier babies):
“The risk for the baby is being born too large, which can result in birth injury for the baby or may result in a cesarean section for the mother,” Rasmussen says. “The risks for the mother of gaining beyond the guidelines are risk for cesarean section or risk for excessive weight retention postpartum.” [WebMD]
The original article contains a lot of specific numbers and guidelines and is bound to be useful either to you or someone you know. Do check it out.
According to the released weight-ranges, a woman of normal pre-pregnancy weight should gain just about 25-35 pounds for a single-baby and about 37-54 pounds for twins. Literally, the only condition that doctors don’t have is to lose weight during pregnancy which is always a no-no (even for women who were obese before pregnancy).
As for the whole “Eating for two” myth, the doctors in the group are quick to debunk it:
“I think people still feel like pregnancy is fair game,” Goist says. “You only need 300 extra calories per day to actually maintain a pregnancy.”
So if you think eating for two means doubling your calories, forget it.
“If you think about the normal diet of maybe 1,800-2,000 calories, depending on the size of the person, 300 extra calories is a sixth of that. So that’s barely like eating anything,” Goist says.[WebMD]
