You might be tempted to Google pregnancy weight gain recommendations if you’re pregnant and feeling insecure. That’s what I did, and it only left me more insecure, belittled, and shamed.
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It started with insecurity and ended with…more insecurity.
Weight gain is something I’ve avoided my whole life (for the record, that’s unhealthy, and I’m aware). So when I became pregnant, despite knowing intellectually that weight gain is necessary and healthy, it came with feelings of guilt, failure and low self-esteem.
I did what any self-respecting modern woman does: I looked to the internet to make me feel better.
(Yeah, I know.)
Upon turning to my trusty What to Expect site for some recommendations for pregnancy weight gain, I was met with, “Your baby is still tiny, which means you don’t need to gain more than a total of 2 to 4 pounds. If you’re suffering from morning sickness, you might not gain an ounce or even lose a little.”
Bitch, WUT.
I had gained about ten pounds by the end of the first trimester, mostly because of morning sickness. The more I kept hunger at bay, the better I felt. Did that mean a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at midnight? Yeah, sometimes. Did it mean sticking to a hobbit meal schedule? You betcha. I was ravenous.
Fat-shaming is par for the course, it seems.
I dug deeper. It seems that every site has recommendations close to gaining only one to four pounds in the first trimester and a total of 25 to 35 pounds over the whole pregnancy for those with a BMI in the “normal” range. And okay, I get it. Those are the official medical guidelines, backed up by studies and blah blah blah.
But instead of backing this up with reassuring comments like “Everyone is different! Use this as a guideline and talk to your doctor!” We get subheaders like:
- How to avoid excessive weight gain during pregnancy
- Risks that come with gaining more weight than your doctor recommends
- Stressing Can Make You Gain More
Now, these don’t seem that bad. And there are lots of sites and blogs that focus on fat-shaming and weight gain like it’s a full-time job. But I didn’t look up “How to keep HOT while pregnant,” I asked, “pregnancy weight gain first trimester” to see what the general recommendations were. And all of this came from very established sites (What to Expect, Healthline, Parents).
The assumptions about weight gain and women are the crux of the problem.
The problem is that most of these articles come with the assumption that women are afraid to gain weight, watch their weight as a daily practice, have an unhealthy relationship with food, and must be given restraints and rules in order to stay healthy. And by “healthy,” I mean, “not fat” (their words). As if intuitively eating when we’re hungry won’t work.
So, yeah. I take umbrage with the assumption that women who have free reign over their own bodies will suddenly lose control.
Perhaps I’m being hyperbolic here, but giving pregnant women rules, scare tactics and scoldings just reeks of centuries-old patriarchal bullshit and I am SO OVER IT. We see this again and again and again, in women’s sexuality, child-rearing, fertility, abortion, body image, career choices, etc. etc. It never ends.
We, as women, pregnant or not, do NOT need:
- Rules over how to govern our own bodies.
- Excess shame over how our kids might be subject to our terrible parenting practices (before it’s even happened, mind you).
- Unrealistic expectations of how we should look, behave, or be.
Where they’re right and why they’re still wrong.
Some of these assumptions the sites were making are true of me. I do normally watch my weight somewhat, and I was (am?) afraid of gaining weight. I have a healthy relationship with food, but many women (men, too) don’t, and it’s easy to imagine why that is.
And rules about eating are something many of us adhere to. I’m vegetarian (well, lately), sometimes even vegan. Some people cut out carbs for health purposes or weight purposes. Some people can’t eat gluten or dairy because of food allergies.
I’m not against rules or diets, but I am when the rules are there to keep calories down, and not for a more productive purpose, like building as nutrient-rich a diet as possible.
And as nice as rules like that would be, my personal rule has been “Don’t be hungry.” That means filling up on calorie-dense foods like cheese (yes, cheese) and peanut butter. Smoothies have been a lifesaver when I craved fruit and a full stomach.
Rules can help, and they can hurt. Rules to add food items in during pregnancy are far more productive than those that keep foods out.
Shaming doesn’t work.
I was watching a video by Stephanie Buttermore the other day entitled “The Problem With Fat Shaming (My Experience + The Science).” (If you don’t know Stephanie, she’s a science-based fitness YouTuber with a Ph.D. and over 1 million subscribers, fantastic workouts and a really interesting personal journey of health and weight gain. Check her out.) Highlighting a few studies, she explained how fat-shaming doesn’t only not work–-it makes certain people eat more.
I’ve encountered this personally with vices like smoking and drinking: Scare tactics do not work. What they do is make you stressed about the thing you want to do, and the stress makes you do it anyway to relieve the stress, but then you feel guilty and shameful and (you guessed it!) stressed even more, which makes you more susceptible to repeating the pattern again.
The self-empowered approach.
I’d love to see these sites give a lot more weight to self-empowerment. Give the guidelines, but also with a caveat that every body is different, and you should discuss any concerns with your doctor.
Try not to worry about pregnancy weight gain, or what some dumb (yeah, I said it) site has for recommendations. Talk to your doctor, of course, but don’t live by cookie-cutter rules if they just don’t apply to you. And don’t restrict yourself from food if you’re hungry. Eat whole foods, but if you crave some junk, satisfy that craving because it likely won’t go away. You’ll be okay. Baby will be okay.
Your body is your own. It’s not a statistic. You might gain 25 pounds or you might gain 50. Every body is different, but the important thing is that you’re building an entire human inside of you right now. Brain, spinal cord, little hands and feet and eyelashes. YOU are doing this. YOU! How amazing is that?