Healthy diet plan for pregnancy?

May 13, 2010 10:40 AM

What are your favourite books/plans for eating during (late) pregnancy?

To clarify: I am not talking about weight loss or weight control or anything like that. I am not in the least bit bothered about weight gain during pregnancy. I am now in my third trimester, and feel so tired and fed up most of the time that I have no idea what I feel like eating and no imagination when it comes to food.

I repeat: This has nothing to do with weight (baby is growing nicely, everything is fine) and everything to do with health and energy - MINE, not the baby's! Baby is just fine, I'm the one who feels rubbish.

So, did you have any favourite books or particular 'plans' that you referred to when pregnant? I am really at the stage where I am so lacking in imagination that if you said, "Eat this, now eat this, now eat this", that would be ideal. I am, obviously, aware of the need for a balanced diet and know which foods to avoid, but I am pretty much exhausted and worn out right now, so could do with some extra help.

Google hasn't been much use because I keep turning up ways to control weight or manage gestational diabetes during pregnancy, neither of which are concerns of mine.

posted by different to Health & Fitness (5 answers total)

I remember those days. The Vegetarian Mother's Cookbook contains recipe lists for preconception, each of the trimesters, postpartum and lactation. So you can just go to the page for the third trimester and select something from that list and then find the recipe elsewhere in the book. The recipes are very bland, so you may need to redo the spicing yourself.
posted by toodles at 11:02 AM on May 13, 2010

Getting enough protein and enough iron seems key to battling the 3rd trimester exhaustion. The Brewer Diet is often recommended for both of those things.
posted by fancyoats at 11:44 AM on May 13, 2010

I am not a mother myself, but have heard good things about Nina Planck's Real Food for Mother and Baby, which is published by the company where I work as an editor.
posted by ocherdraco at 12:07 PM on May 13, 2010

make sure you don't have any sort of gestational diabetes. hopefully not an issue but in case its a base you haven't covered ...
posted by saraindc at 2:38 PM on May 13, 2010

I had a couple of recipes and circulated them until I got to a point where I no longer cooked because it meant standing for more than 10 minutes. The standby list was:

Poached eggs on toast.
Pasta of various sorts.
Roasts - meat + whatever vegies I had tossed in oil.
Curries - packet sauce + meat + whatever vegies I had around.
Roast vegetable soups.
posted by geek anachronism at 7:56 PM on May 13, 2010