Pregnancy and weight loss. Help please!

I would suggest setting your goals to "maintain" and then add approx 300 calories (I have hear this is extra your burn while pregnant...although I have heard you don't really start burning this until 2nd trimester-ish). I started out this way with my first pregnancy and followed for a couple months...then just stopped. I wish I would have kept with it, but I've lost all my weight from both pregnancies, so I'm not too dissappointed. Good luck at sticking with it!

Depending on how overweight you are, I have read that overweight women are ok with only gaining approx 20 pounds with a pregnancy. Healthy weight ladies should gain more. But my doc said that as long as the baby and your belly are growing as they should, he doesn't care if "you" gain any weight.

Also, if you have been regularly exercising all along, you should be ok to continue (reasonably). I wouldn't START any new/vigorous workouts that your body is not used to.

Congratulations on your new addition! What a wonderful thing. I have a 20 month and a 7 month old. They truly are blessings. Don't stress out too much about calories, etc. Just make sure you eat HEALTHY and enjoy this miraculous time in your life

I'd ask for a referral to a nutritionist, who can give you some concrete calorie guidelines. For my 1st pregnancy, I was at goal, maintaining around 1500 calories, and my nutritionist told me 1800 is the minimum calorie recommendation for pregnancy. Some women can eat even more.

Also, if you haven't started a prenatal vitamin already, start one ASAP, and get extra calcium, and lots of protein (at least 60 g/day). If you're interested in drug-free delivery, Bradley birth classes have a lot of information about good nutrition for a healthy pregnancy, but they are focused on delivering without drugs, so if you aren't into that, then you wouldn't want those classes just for the nutrition advice.

Just had my second baby and exercised a few weeks up until delivery. Mainly walking but I have known many friends that have even RUN up until delivery. Crazy huh?? Exercise will make delivery easier on you- guaranteed!

I ate pretty much what I wanted though because- hey- let's face it, you're pregnant, hungry and have the best excuse in the world to pig out! I have also heard you really should only eat an extra 300 calories. I tried maintaing my calories on MFP while I was pregnant but honestly was not great at sticking with it. Good luck and Congrats!!

You will definitely want to switch to maintain, you should not have a deficit for sure. I read that adding 300 calories is the average for the entire pregnancy, so it is more accurate to add 100-200 the first trimester, 300 the 2nd, and 400-500 the 3rd trimester, but again, i just read that somewhere and don't remember where.

I did martial arts until I was about 6 months pregnant, and then I stopped. I have done martial arts for awhile, so it was considered safe to continue. The only reason I stopped was because the classes had a lot of spinning moves, ,which started to throw me off balance around 6 months when my belly was getting really big, and a lot of sparring... which is definitely not allowed. The rest of the class I had no problem keeping up with, but I felt it was a waste to pay for classes when I had to sit out of 50% of the activities. So instead I switched to Turbo Jam at home, eliptical, and walking. At about 8 months I decided to just lay around and relax

I was at a pretty normal BMI, so the doc said I should gain 25-35 pounds, but I gained almost 50. Even though I was exercising quite a bit, I was not tracking calories, and I think I overdid it. The weight came off pretty quickly for me, though, and I think it was the exercise and nursing that helped me lose it. But I never really adjusted my eating habits... and as soon as I stopped nursing, the weight came back on VERY quickly.

So if I could do it all over again, I think i would track calories at maintenance level plus 300, mainly to try to avoid developping bad habits just because i have the pregnancy excuse. 9 months is a long time to have a bad habit, and then try and break it later.

Also, I read somewhere that babies learn the taste of food in utero, since the amniotic fluid takes on the taste of the foods you eat. So you'll want to teach your baby to like healthy foods. My sis ate a ton of veggies while pregnant, and her daughter is an insanely good vegetable eater. (She will choose broccoli over cookies, no joke.) Because of morning sickness, I was turned off by all veggies except broccoli and green beans, and my daughter LOVES broccoli and green beans, and refuses all other veggies. Not sure how much merit there is to that, but it's true for my daughter and my niece... so consider eating a lot of veggies! You never know...