Piling on the pounds while pregnant is not recommended. According to the journal Circulation, published by the American Heart Association, eating for two is an old wives’ tale that needs to be debunked.
According to researchers, women who put on too much weight during pregnancy expose their children to serious health problems later on, including heart problems. At the age of nine, children born from these pregnancies are bigger and have lower levels of good cholesterol in their blood.
Women need to pay attention to their weight gain during pregnancy, especially if they are already overweight or obese.
Abigail Fraser, PhD, is a researcher at Bristol University in Britain and co-author of the study. According to her, the most important point is not how many pounds a woman gains when pregnant but how much she weighed before she got pregnant. Obese women have more complications throughout their pregnancy and during childbirth too.
After analyzing the records of 5,000 women, it is recommended that a woman of normal weight gain no more than 35 pounds (15.88 kilograms), an overweight woman should limit her weight gain to 25 pounds (11.34 kilograms ), while an obese woman should not gain more than 20 pounds (9.07 kilos).