Pregorexia: Pregnant AND Skinny

Oh god, this slim diet mentality is getting too far.. pregnant mothers wanting to look slim?! There's nothing wrong with being slim, but I can't help think that some mothers will eat less and malnourish their child just to look thinner.

Just looking for clarification: Are those the additional required calories per day? Per week?

During pregnancy is the time when a woman should be most careful that she eats properly. Weight can be managed during pregnancy, but it's better to seek a professional’s help before attempting it. Our clinic deals with just such women, helping them to stay a healthy weight safely. But women aren’t skinny when they’re pregnant, that is a fact that must be accepted first. In that time, the health of the child is the most important thing.

Attempting to look slim and trim while being pregnant? You're barely feeding one and you need to feed two?

I think that's just plain selfish and dangerous to the infant's health.

Trying to stay skinny during pregnancy is like the ultimate "thin goal" for women: it's a subliminal message to other women that they can stay thin during a time that most women get very big. It's not really all that different psychologically from middle-aged women getting super skinny to show the world that they didn't get the "middle age" spread.

That being said, I think it's important to manage your weight well during pregnancy and gain the recommended amount of weight and stay active, but you shouldn't freak out about gaining a little extra...you can lose the extra after you have the baby. It's more important to make sure your baby is getting adequate nutrition even if it means you end up gaining a little extra yourself.

Hopefully this is not a big trend with expecting mothers, because it seems awful to deprive their bodies and their children from the nutrients they need. Being skinny while pregnant is not something that I would consider important at all.

Not to sound all feminist or anything, but when I'm pregnant I WANT to look pregnant--having a baby would be (for me) a GOOD thing.

That said, I would still try to eat healthfully and exercise--I would want to stay fit so I could keep up with the kid during the toddler years...

More proof that you should be required to apply for and be approved for a license to reproduce. Most people have NO BUSINESS passing on their genes.

Some superficial piece of trash more worried about her waist line than the health and well being of her baby should have her uterus removed by force.

I don't know if this is an old wives tale, but my mom told me that the baby will automatically take any nutrition from the mothers body and that the pre-natal vitamins are mostly for the mothers benefit. My mom had 6 healthy babies despite being really sick with every pregnancy, couldn't keep food down and perhaps as a result in her later years she ended up with bad teeth (even though she took really good care of them) osteoporosis and other health problems.
What a shame that women are doing this to themselves to keep up with celebs.

This reminds me of my second year in high school. One teacher became pregnant and was very, very slim before hand. When she started getting the normal weight gain and baby belly, all the girls kept asking her if she was having twins or the boys would ask if she was eating too much. It got to the point where she would cry in class if someone brought it up, and even sometimes she would curse herself at her desk when she had to pull her chair out a little more every couple of weeks. She was very emotionally troubled.

After the baby, she dropped all the weight very fast and maintained her skinny frame. It seems none of them knew how large the belly is supposed to become, hence asking if she was having more than one. A year later, one of the gym teachers got pregnant and she didn't show until well into the third trimester. She stayed very thin the entire time and would do the same exercises as us faster than most of the sports teams would. She was back a few weeks after the baby and was exactly the same as before.

Then there's the issue of the doctors trying to control every calorie you eat and pound you gain while you're pregnant. I know I was not alone in having a doctor who reprimanded me for gaining too much, not eating enough of this, eating too much of that. Just because I had a baby inside me didn't mean I needed to be treated like one myself.

I did gain a lot of weight while I was pregnant and have struggled with weight ever since (despite long-term exclusive breastfeeding), but I never once heard them say "it can be easy to gain too much weight while pregnant, and if you do, you may have to deal with this for years to come -- I can help you if you like." Instead, the implication was always that my weight gain was somehow endangering my baby, which I knew wasn't true, so I didn't take my doctor very seriously.

My mother and my mother-in-law were both unhealthily-skinny while pregnant (back in the 60s), mostly because they were afraid of their doctors.

>>When she started getting the normal weight gain and baby belly, all the girls kept asking her if she was having twins or the boys would ask if she was eating too much. It got to the point where she would cry in class if someone brought it up. . . A year later, one of the gym teachers got pregnant and she didn't show until well into the third trimester. She stayed very thin the entire time and would do the same exercises as us faster than most of the sports teams would.

This country is in big trouble . . .

Before you know it, we'll be back to encouraging pregnant women to smoke so that they won't gain so much. This is what my mother-in-law was advised to do in the 60s.

I was one of those lucky ones who gained very little and lost it within a month after the baby was born -- because I was breastfeeding. I had a 2-year-old and a toddler, and I weighed about 105 lbs. because I ran myself ragged. I also got every cold and illness my children got, except I got even sicker, because I was so thin. Yeah, being thin was great .. I could have used those 10 extra lbs.

I must say, that I only see things like this in hollywood, not where "real" people live. lol.

I can understand the compulsion, being pregnant myself. I could see the "need" to stay slim during pregnancy being especially prevalent among those who lost a lot of weight before becoming pregnant -- those people might not want to undo all the hard work they did. But the above commenters are right. Babies in utero will sap the nutrients from the mother, making it more likely that she will end up malnourished.