Caloric intake for preggers

Thanks for the medical advice and telling me it was an "excuse to pack on mass." That's totally what I was going for. I had no idea that I shouldn't have gained that much, really, until you told me that.

Have a good day!

As a Doula, I can tell you that you should still be thinking about calories - not too little, not too much.

First trimester - eat at your maintenance amount.
Second - maintenance +200
Third - maintenance +300

It's so important to eat enough and to also not "let yourself go" and eat buckets of icecream. Listen to your body and what it wants. Craving ice cream? Have some frozen yoghurt. Burger? Have a lean steak. Fries? Have some sautéed new potatoes.

Well I should have gone to bed an hour ago so here is a riddle:

If you're obese, and even overweight, your doctor already recommends fat loss during pregnancy. I'm sure someone will figure this out before morning.

And I refuse to engage with white knights who provide no science. At least make an appeal to authority or something.

Are you a MD? A fellow of the ACOG?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

I am on my second pregnancy. I was overweight/borderline obese the first time. My OB, who, by the way, is a MD and a fellow of the ACOG, advised me NOT to lose weight. She said I needed 200-300 calories above maintenance for my pre-pregnancy weight. My sister and SIL went to her for the five pregnancies between them and both were obese for all five pregnancies. I assure you, they were never advised to LOSE weight. (ETA that all five pregnancies, plus one of mine, resulted in healthy, full-term babies, including a set of twins who were born at "term," since that has a different meaning with multiples. The remaining one is my current pregnancy.)

That said, if a doctor DID advise that a pregnant woman lose weight, certainly s/he would be monitoring the baby's growth on a more regular basis than s/he would for other women with normal pregnancies. No woman should take on that agenda on her own.

A biochemistry degree is all fine and good, but you are not an OB or even a MD. As such, please refrain from attempting to override the advice we were all given by medical professionals.

How much weight did you gain during that pregnancy? Was it under 25lbs? If so then you lost fat.

This is incorrect - approximately 5lbs of that 25lbs of gained weight are additional fat gained for delivery and breast feeding - for a woman to actually lose fat during pregnancy based solely on pregnancy weight gain the figure would be more in the limited gain of 15 lbs to 20 lbs - which is acceptable for some doctors for some pregnancies for highly overweight women.
But you are wrong, in the general case a small deficit of a 140 calories (your pizza slice) is actually a NET deficit of 400-700 or so of NEEDED calories for the development of the pregnancy.

A couple of things I have seen that are incorrect in this thread:

A baby does not suck up iron - the supplemental iron need is locked up in the addition 4-5 lbs of blood supply for nutrient transport. Hemoglobin production binds iron pretty much irreversibly.

You stated "It is incorrect to state a calorie deficit is not appropriate for pregnancy" - your statement is incorrect or at best poorly worded - a calorie deficit from the TDEE of the women pre-pregnancy would be catastrophic for the pregnancy. Even the smallest recommended gain during a pregnancy of 10-20 lbs represents about 200-300 calories over maintenance if if was just fat weight gain (most major gain is usually seen ib a 6 month period - do the math). However, given the actual metabolic changes - high cellular synthesis, protein turn-over, hormonal fireworks - the actual needs are closer to double or triple that. And slightly more important than calories are micro nutrient needs - gaining a few pounds over the recommended weight is less of an issue than not gaining enough and assuring these needs.

edit2: and my supposition, that reducing calories by 140, not eating that slice of cheese pizza, will take you from 11lbs gained to 0lbs gained. If this sounds like it's going to cause problems for the fetus to you, then I give up.

You should give up because a pregnancy with zero gain - as you suggest a few posts up - results not only in risks of premature birth and low birthweight babies (which have a higher risk) and are clearly a sign of undernourished/malnourished during pregnancy.