Ah, time flies when you are busy. Now, I am working from home, while waiting for the baby to be delivered. Since, my office workload is getting lesser now. I finally manage to find some time to update my blog again. To clear all the dust that surrounds this site. I was trained to do so many things at one time or maybe I trained myself to be busier last time, and lesser workload makes me feel depressed and unproductive.

The first 2 days working from home, I felt horrible. I had no one to talk to, no motivation to do thing and my life quite unproductive. One of the reason, I believed is because I gained weight and my body feel heavier and all I want to do is lying down. I know this would harm my mental and physical health. So on the day 3, I started my day with doing house chores and soon after that, continue my office work. Now, I get all my schedule sorted, I felt awesome working from home!  In fact, even productive than working in the office. The cons is that, I only talk virtually with people. But, yeah, it's all good! At this point, I can't even move actively around so, driving to office which is quite far + jammed, will do harm to my body, especially when I suffered with coccyx problem #pregnancyhormone.

Okay, back to the root, today I am in my 35 weeks & 5 days of pregnancy journey. So far, I gained 13kg from my pre-pregnancy weight. I felt unhappy of the numbers, haha. but, yeah, you are pregnant, so you have to accept the fact. So far, it is still within the range, so all good yeah?


Being a dietitian, I thought I can easily undergo this pregnancy appetite, but God NO!. Especially when you have your pregnant buddies in the office. In my case, one of my buddy loves chocolate and loves to eat. I was not into chocolates, and I did not fancy that, and I was not a big eater. BUT.. You really should not play with your pregnancy hormone.  One thing for sure from my pregnancy.. I can't look at someone's food. I wanted that too. Especially, when people posted food photos on InstaStory.

I started my pre-pregnancy weight at 58kg. It was really a nice journey, I gained weight according to my pregnancy graph. Until I reached the months 7th , as a result, I gained 4kg in 6 weeks. It spoiled my pretty record of pregnancy weight gain.


So, I have started few ways to control my appetite, some failed and some works well! So, I will the most effective one.

1) EAT REGULARLY

A certain drop in blood sugar could trigger your pregnancy cravings. So, make sure make yourself full with nutritious and satisfying meals. Try to avoid eating chocs before having your main meals. Divide it with 6 small and frequent meals, with a gap of 2-3 hours.

Example:

You can start your day with whole-meal bread 2 slices + cleaned salad + cheese slices + chicken for breakfast, or maybe, having nasi lemak for breakfast? Not a problem at all! 

2 hours post that, get yourself fill 1 serving of fruits - apple / orange/ melon. 

and again 2 hours after that, have your lunch! 



2) DRINK A LOT OF WATER

Make sure your water intake is adequate. You can calculate your estimated water intake per day based on some equation. However, we can just go for a general recommendation, as in, instead of 8 cups per day, pregnant women are advisable to take around 10 cups ++ and breastfeeding around 13 cups++, which is around 3-3.5L / day.

The reason why drinking a lot of water is important, because , it helps to prevent yourself from being an emotional eater. Hence, it also save your extra calories there!

So, during this pregnancy, I did not really use cups or glasses to measure my water intake, because I realized, I tend to lose count and  had inadequate water intake. I usually use water bottle (1.5L) and refill up to thrice in a day. It makes me stay hydrated and at the same time, helps to control my calories intake!.


3) EAT SNACKS!!!

Who says pregnant mother can't enjoy the indulgence of chocolates, ice-cream, biscuits and all? yes, you can. Make sure find the nutritious one not only high calories density foods. If you want to eat chocolate,  choose that has nutty nuts inside. Even though chocolate has non heme iron nutrients, but it still helps to maintain & improve your Hb status. However, please don't use chocolate as the main source to get iron, okay. 

But, please be noted that chocolates also contains caffeine. Dark chocolate has 25mg of caffeine, hence, it is still safe to be consumed, since pregnant mother are only allowed not more than 200mg of caffeine.

Ice-cream. I am not into ice-cream, but my husband is. But, there were times, when I did craved for ice-cream. worry not, ice-cream is safe for pregnancy. You will probably hear a myth saying that drinking or eating Icy thingy will makes your baby got asthma or makes your baby bigger and hard for you to deliver the baby. But, so far, from all the journals that I read, there is no evidence supporting these statements. But, eating ice-cream can help to top up your calcium requirement. So, worry not.

The reason why snacking is very important, is because, it helps us to curb our craving for more unhealthy snacking, which leads to uncontrolled weight gain.

During pregnancy, I controlled myself from eating too much of junks, and I craved for more.


Hope it helps! Enjoy your pregnancy journey! :)