Not eating for two
/Yikes. Yep, I said it. Too often we hear celebrities or individuals in the public eye comment on their "guilt-free eating" during their pregnancies. Here are a few examples:
Jessa Duggar Seewald: "Lunch date with my man," Jessa wrote on Instagram while snapping a selfie with her husband. "Yeah…because ‘the baby' was craving Arby's. I love being able to use that excuse."
Carrie Underwood: The typically vegan eater said on The Rachael Ray Show, "I ate Pop-Tarts. I haven't done that since college," adding that she's "giving myself license to have things I might not normally have. Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and I'll be like, 'Man, I'm hungry' and then I'll get up and have a midnight snack, which I've never done before."
Zoe Saldana: While pregnant with twin boys Cy Aridio and Bowie Ezio, born November 27, 2014, Saldana confessed to a bizarre food craving on E!'s Untold With Maria Menounos: eating baked goods and preserved meats together. And on "The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson", she admitted that she used pregnancy as an excuse to indulge in whatever she wanted. "You trick yourself, working in Hollywood. You trick yourself, going, 'That burger's disgusting. That burger's awful,'" Saldana said. "But now that [I'm] pregnant, [I'm] like, 'I can eat all this together, at the same time. Like, I can have the pickle with the donut, and it would probably be life-changing."
Many women, including myself, admire these women in various ways. I am sad to hear that they feel they need to use pregnancy as an excuse to indulge. As if they have deprived themselves of these treats their whole life.
And I suppose it isn't just the celebrities, I hear friends talk about not caring what they eat and use pregnancy as an excuse to eat the French fries they wouldn't eat while not pregnant. Eating habits aside, pregnancy is the time to take your health and wellbeing and place it pretty much at the top of your priority list. It is the time to eat better than you have ever eaten, taking into account your nutritional needs as you help to develop another human being.
If you are pregnant or trying to become pregnant, I hope that you let go and indulge with moderation. But remember that now would be the time to eat with purpose, compassion for yourself and your baby, and to respond to the nutritional needs of your ever changing body, mind, and spirit.
Be well,
MLC