Is it safe to have a calorie deficit whilst pregnant?

Eep, didn't mean to post again.

It also depends on your current bodyweight. Being overweight can cause complications during pregnancy or at least make you more susceptible to them.

Your doctor should be able to provide better guidance when the time comes.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO just eat healthy foods until you are full.

FWIW, when I was pregnant, I always just listened to my body. I ate when I was hungry, and didn't when I wasn't, and tried hard to get a good variety of nutrients in. That said, I have wicked morning sickness, starting the moment implantation occurs, so with my successful pregnancies, I ate very little in the first tri because it all came back up - in that situation, you eat whatever appeals and stays down. After that ended, I just did my best to eat well nutritionally speaking and not indulge in pregnancy as an excuse for crap.

I lost weight with both successful pregnancies - I had stabilized (no loss for 2 weeks) when my son was born prematurely, and I stalled out on loss around 24 weeks with my daughter and then gained about 10 lbs during the rest of the pregnancy, so that I was at a 17 lb deficit to my starting weight. My doctor were unconcerned because I was morbidly obese going into the pregnancies and I was monitored 18 ways to Sunday because I'm extremely high risk (unrelated to my weight - I have incompetent cervix and require a cerclage and near bed-rest to make it to term).

What you will want to do is talk to your doctor when you conceive and find one who supports logical weight gains based on good nutrition and not based on a stupid chart. What you will want to do is make healthful, responsible choices the same way you are (presumably) currently doing.

Really do need to start eating a bit healthier so far i have just been making sure (trying to) be under calories - i think a good plan of maintenence full of healthy foods is the way to go + i might just have to go and get some folic acid tomorrow too

Folic acid is exceptionally important - please start taking it now! You'll hit your minimum if you are taking a multi-vitamin. Be careful of taking it as a separate supplement - you want a complimentary balance of B-vitamins. And thanks for the reminder - I need to start up my b-cocktail (otherwise known as Folgaard) again in case we decide we are going to ttc this summer after all. I've been slacking, but I don't process folic acid correctly/efficiently and need a good reserve built up.

great reply 'easjer' - to be honest i dont really know what to expect - have been trying for a year so a trip to the doctors is due i think just to get some info/advice.

Are you actively trying to time sex to fertile days? Do you use opk's or chart at all? I hate to call it a hobby, but I'm pretty good with this area due to all the difficulties we faced, and am happy to give advice if you like. If you don't chart or use any opt's I would highly recommend doing so while you get your doctor's appointment, so you can begin to get a sense of what is going on (forgive me if you are already on top of this) - so many women in the US are very poorly educated about how the menstrual cycle works and how to best time sex to achieve pregnancy and so end up wasting months of trying or money on testing when the issue is just poor timing.

It's great that you are losing weight though - that can only help things with ttc and with pregnancy. I'm very hopeful this weight loss (which has helped regulate my cycle back to a normal length and ovulation timeframe) will help me with the next pregnancy.

Sorry the dog keeps on leaning on the laptop
All advice is appreciated - dont really know much about getting pregnant in terms of ovulation etc - always been trying to avoid pregnancy before. Stopped the pill last March but not actively trying but feel like we should try a bit more now

currently 5'4'' and 137lb so i think i am in the upper end of healthy range or just slightly over now

Here is where I would start: www.fertilityfriend.com

Take their free online charting course. It's going to explain how to chart and the benefits of charting (which I will sum up as learning your body's natural fertility signs to help you time sex near ovulation and to help you find out whether or not you are ovulating at all). I would start practicing charting immediately and really get into it with your next cycle (unless you've just started a new cycle). Some people feel like it's obsessive, but I charted for years before ttc (to avoid pregnancy - I'm very limited as to birth control options) and throughout the 4 years of ttc. I'm getting back to charting temps this summer if we start ttc again. Until then, I just chart cervical fluid and opk's.

Charting can tell you if you have normal cycles, can tell you whether or not you are probably ovulating (only blood tests and hormone levels can tell you for 100% certain), when ovulation has occurred and when you are most fertile. It can also tell you whether or not your luteal phase is long enough (if it's short - which is a hormonal issue - you may not have time for implantation to occur). This is all really useful information when you approach your doctor about not having conceived in a normal time-frame.

Coming off hormonal birth control can screw up your cycles for months, unfortunately, though that is not universally true. The most common reason couples don't get pregnant within a year is because they aren't timing sex correctly. If you are having frequent/well-timed sex and are ovulating, then you definitely want to get checked out by the doc. Charting can help you figure out if both of those things are true, kwim?

Something you can do independently of or in addition to charting that can also help is to use ovulation predictor tests. Back in the day, I loved Clearblue's digital opk's. Really easy to use. They are pricey though! I used to get them on eBay for much less, but last I looked, they weren't much cheaper. You can get bulk tests inexpensively on Amazon that are just as accurate (but can be a learning curve to read correctly). OPT's track the hormone LH (luteinzing hormone), which spikes dramatically just before ovulation (it is what triggers ovulation to occur, actually. Estrogen preps/grows the ovum and when estrogen hits a certain point, it triggers the increase in LH and the increase in LH triggers ovulation, which triggers the increase in progesterone and aren't synchronized hormones lovely?). Anyway, the tests are looking for a threshold amount of LH, and when you get a positive test, ovulation is imminent so you want to have sex if you can. The one thing that OPT's don't do is confirm that ovulation actually occurs - it's rare to have a spike and no ovulation, but it does happen.

There are other things too, but those are the cheap, easy way to get started tracking your fertility and can really help down the road with regard to testing and doctors.

It sounds like you are going to be entering pregnancy in a pretty healthy state, which is ideal!