Celebrity Baby Bumps and Weight Loss During Pregnancy

Images of skinny pregnant celebrities and success-stories of celebrity-mums fitting into an enviable size 0 - just merely a few weeks after having given birth - are often the trigger for pregorexia!

We're all familiar with anorexia and it's devastating aftereffects. Anorexia touches men and woman from every age group, race and social ladder. Every year thousands of people die as a result of this horrible conditition; leaving their family and friends behind with feelings of guilt, incomprehension, failure and grudge. Patients suffering from anorexia put their own future and health at stake. An even more worrying trend are women that get obsessed with keeping their weight gain minimal whilst being pregnant ... or even worse … pregnant woman that try to loose weight during pregnancy.

Anorexic woman often put their life at stake... Pregorexic woman do not only put theirs, but also the life of their unborn baby(-ies) at risk! Inspired by the sight of celebrity mums with tiny baby bumps and super lean post-partum bodies - such as Madonna, Nicole Kidman and Victoria Beckham -, a lot of pregnant woman are obsessed about calorie intake and exercising during pregnancy.

While keeping a good eye on your weight gain during pregnancy is primordial to bringing a healthy baby into this world, you should not overdo it! The saying that you must “eat for two” during pregnancy is complete nonsense, but you should eat about 300 kcal more per day by the end of the 2^nd Trimester. These extra calories need to come from healthy foods such as fruits, low fat yoghurt, a hand full of nuts, a low-salt cracker or an extra glass of milk; not from junk food such as hamburgers, chocolate bars, cookies, ice-cream or chips.

Weight gain requirements have seriously dropped during the last decades, since scientists discovered that gaining too much can cause diabetes, preeclampsia, hypertension and larger babies. However, only seriously obese woman are currently being asked to not gain weight at all, and this only under the strict supervision of a dietician or nutritionist. As a matter of fact, any form of restrictive diet during pregnancy is being discouraged an can potentially be harmful for your unborn child! As a general rule woman with a normal BMI should gain somewhere from 9kg to 12kg, the weight gain of obese woman ideally should be in between 7kg to 9kg and underweight woman are being advised to gain as much as 12kg to 15kg.

When pregnant woman start focusing too much on the scale and start dieting to actually try and loose weight, its getting dangerous! Some of the consequences of calorie restriction during pregnancy are, amongst others:

• growth retardation,

• vitamin deficiencies,

• serious birth defects,

• intoxication of the fetus,

• bone disorder rickets,

• pre-term birth,

• iron deficiency – iron is needed to make red blood cells for the fetus and the placenta -,

• low weight for gestational age.

Also a strenuous exercise program – including aerobics, hard running and severe workouts – is dangerous! The risk that you injure yourself is more elevated because of your ligaments being more soft and elastic. This especially is so during the first trimester; since your body is preparing to give birth.

Having said this, the fact remains that there are many benefits of working-out during pregnancy. A sensible exercise program can improve the mother's physical and mental health and result in better deliveries, higher IQ's for the baby and better postpartum recoveries. Moreover the amount of exercise a pregnant body can take, depends on the pre-pregnancy work-out regime of the mum-to-be. The right amount of exercise you can handle should be determined with the help of your doctor. Generally a moderate cardiovascular activity, four days-a-week, is being considered as the absolute minimum! Recommended exercises are cycling, swimming and brisk walking.

A healthy pregnancy is synonym to healthy eating habits, moderate exercise and sensible weight gain. Of course ... the post-delivery bodies of some celebrities are tempting and desirable, but lets not forget that they have the best nutritionist, trainers and dieticians and sometimes just are “genetically blessed”