eating for two
NICE reckons we should be telling all new mums that they really must NOT eat for two while they're pregnant, because they could be fighting obesity for the rest of their lives.
It's odd that we need to still give this advice, but experts have found that the old premise of "eating for two" is so strongly rooted in our cultural tradition, that it needs special treatment to finally kill it off.
Whenever I have reflected upon why I have had a weight problem, common sense has always told me that it must be something to do with having five children. After all, I never really had a problem before childbirth but certainly had a growing one afterwards.
I don't think it was anything to do with eating for two during pregnancy, though. With me, it was nursery food, and the delight I took in having a house full of children, all of the endless cooking and eating and turning every meal into an event. I just took to motherhood like a duck to water, and threw myself into it with gusto. Only now do I realise that most of those happy hours were spent in the kitchen, and I developed a habit of eating whilst I was cooking, then eating with the children, then eating up after them. In other words, I ate three meals for their every one. Not only that, but I was bringing up boys - who seem to be born programmed with a never ending appetite. So it became an everyday occurrence for me - at only 5'4" - to eat man-size meals as they grew upwards and outwards (muscle-wise - luckily they had their father's physique, tall and skinny) into lads, teenagers and then young men. For thirty years, I have been the only female in the family and I think I lost sight of female-sized food. Perhaps we think of it nowadays as sexism - to suggest that women don't need to eat as much as men. I remember being outraged when I went to visit the parental home of an early boyfriend. His mum and dad were from Norfolk ( I don't know if that's even relevant) but they clearly had a tradition of feeding women far less at every meal, serving them on smaller plates. I couldn't believe it when I first saw it - the men had heaps of food and Mother and I had a dessertspoonful of casserole on a side plate! ) But perhaps she had it right. Women of course need less calories per day than men.
Other cultures treat pregnant women differently and usually with far more care than us. They address the "what” women eat - not the volume. They even think of the nutritional value before conception. We just got lazier in our attitude and decided to encourage women to eat more. Maybe that was ok in the days when our basic nutrition was sound, and balanced, but now it's not! Eating for two nowadays means eating twice the crap. And it extends beyond that, to motherhood in the long term.
So I would just add more to the NICE recommendation. The 'don't eat for two" advice should be implemented right into full-time motherhood. As a mum, you're destined to feed - and you can become obsessed with food, the buying of it, the cooking of it, the consumption of it, to the exclusion of all else. But with yourself, you've got to become more self-aware - and do yourself a favour that will last. Go back to thinking of yourself as a woman with a high maintenance body, and not exclusively as a food machine! Your body is your temple, and you've got to go back to worshipping it. First published in Nursing Standard |
