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This piece is a contrubution by Jessica R. Walter and Steve Xu, who are both in their final year at Harvard Medical School. Jessica and Steven strongly believe in the value of women’s health and preventative medicine.
It is an honor to present their work to the Psychology Today audience.
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Kim Kardashian gains six pounds in one week!
Jessica Simpson hates her pregnant body!!
Spend any time in any grocery checkout line and it's apparent we have a national obsession -- an obsession with women's bodies and weight. Add pregnancy to the mix and this obsession escalates to another level. While the tabloids lambast Kim and Jessica for gaining too much, there are just as many critics of Kate Middleton's royal pregnancy. She is too skinny. In all the commentary, there is an important omission -- the health of the new life growing in that changing body.
The continuing publicity on Kim's and Kate's pregnant bodies suggest we have a collective "expectation" of what "expecting" should look like. The modern mother should take a chapter from Goldilocks -- moms should gain just the right amount of weight: not too little and, certainly, not too much.
In a recent popular media magazine, Kim Kardashian candidly admitted being "more focused on concealing the weight gain than...about dressing the bump". We are all guilty of forgetting that these women are pregnant and their weight gain during these critical nine months have more consequences than simply committing the latest fashion faux pas. We are rightly concerned with the weight gain, but for all the wrong reasons.
Worse than sending the wrong message, the tabloids completely miss the point.
Gaining too much weight during pregnancy is not just an image issue. Each year an estimated two million women gain too much weight during their nine month journey to motherhood. Why does too much weight gain during pregnancy matter? The reasons are newsworthy. Excessive weight gain seriously compromises the health of mother and child and the consequences can last a lifetime for both.
Childhood obesity could well begin in the baby's first home -- the womb. Emerging research shows that the mother's body composition, along with her nutrition and weight gain during pregnancy, has long term effects on the baby's health. If you are starting at a normal BMI (18.5 to 24.5), a measure of your weight controlled by your height, you should gain no more than one pound per week. That is ONLY 28-40 pounds total. If you are on the heavier side, you should gain only half that amount. In fact, some experts suggest no weight gain at all for moms with BMIs more than 30.
In more than half of all pregnancies, moms are adding too much weight. The consequences are significant. Excessive weight gain during pregnancy is NOT just a temporary awkwardness that mothers need to mask or accentuate, but a crucial driver of health outcomes for both mom and baby.
- Mothers gaining more weight during pregnancy than they optimally should had children that were four times more likely to be overweight by the age of three.
- Eight out of 10 obese children will become obese adults
- Even more disconcerting, children with mothers who gained more weigh than usual also had higher blood pressure. This carried beyond childhood and into adulthood.
- There are consequences for the mother, too. For each excess pound that she gains, the more likely she'll carry that weight for the rest of her life. Helping women have healthier pregnancies may be the invisible lever to halt obesity before it even starts.
Moms: it's time to take control and recognize that these nine months represent the start of healthier futures for yourself and the new life you are creating.
Here are a few simple things that you can do:
- Know your weight gain goal! Go to http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi) to calculate your BMI. Use your weight before you got pregnant. Check the table below to know your target. And, remember, many doctors recommend women to aim for the lower amount of weight in their ranges.
Category BMI Wt. Target Max per Week
Underwt. < 18.5 28-40 lbs. 1 lb.
Normal 18.5 to 25 28-40 lbs. 1 lb.
Overwt. 25 to 30 15-25 lbs. 0.6 lbs
Obese > 30 11-20 lbs. 0.5 lbs.
- Write down what you eat in a food diary. Studies show that this simple trick helps individual’s control how much they eat.
- Watch your plate. Most women are only supposed to eat just 300 to 500 calories more than their usual diet when pregnant—this means a small turkey sandwich or an extra piece of fruit and a granola bar.
- Get your partner involved! Eating right and staying fit is a team effort.
- Stay active. Being pregnant doesn’t mean you should stop exercising. If you don’t exercise regularly, pregnancy is a great time to start walking or swimming to stay fit.
You have the power to do this! Pregnancy is a great time to take control of your health for yourself and your new baby.
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- Steve Xu MSc is finishing his last year at Harvard Medical School. He has a background in biomedical engineering from Rice University and behavioral psychology from the London School of Economics. He plans for a career in Neurology with a core interest in helping patients make better healthcare decisions.
- Jessica Walter is completing her final year at Harvard Medical School. She studied Biology and Social Anthropology at Harvard College. Her core interests lie in women's health--she spent more than a year in Peru researching cervical cancer prevention. She's excited to start a residency in Ob-Gyn and continuing her work in women's health.
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