This article originally appeared at Reboot Your Kid’s sister site, Rebooted Body.
There’s a disconnect in our society right now. The idea that pregnant women can eat whatever they want simply because they’re in a 9 month period where they can’t control their body composition is preposterous. Not only does this attitude not respect the baby, it doesn’t respect mom either.
I always cringe when I see pregnant women on my Facebook feed bragging about sending their husband out to Taco Bell at 11pm at night to feed those “crazy pregnancy cravings.”
Many women (and men) are realizing that this probably isn’t the best strategy. And they’re absolutely right, considering that even what you eat (and how you eat) leading up to pregnancy has an influence on the baby through epigenetics. And what you eat during and after is extremely important.
Having a cavalier attitude toward food and lifestyle before, during, and after pregnancy can alter the stress response in baby, change her gut flora, predispose her to obesity or Diabetes, change her brain, and cause countless other negative consequences.
Women will quit smoking and drinking during pregnancy because they’re afraid of causing birth defects in the short-term, but when it comes to slaughtering baby’s gut flora with Taco Hell, it’s game on. That doesn’t include basically injecting both mom and baby with sugar ad nauseum, causing total hormonal derangement.
If this is you, you’re not under attack. I’m being a little harsh with the message because I want to drive home the severity of the subject. At the same time, I want to change the landscape of how pregnancy is viewed in this country, so let’s start being constructive.
The human body and it’s ability to adapt is more amazing than we realize. The problem, of course, is that being naive to this causes us to adapt in bad ways.
I’ve had numerous pregnant women come to me and ask, “can I Reboot while I’m pregnant?” My response is usually, “please, please do.” Men who Reboot will say, “my wife wants to join me, but she’s going to wait until after she gives birth to our son.” So, I plead my case to get her on board immediately.
The majority of people come to me for help changing their body composition and their health markers. They want to lose excess fat, be healthier, and perform better. That doesn’t mean Reboot is a weight loss program — it absolutely isn’t.
Reboot is where you start working with your body instead of against it when it comes to food, fitness, and lifestyle. The side-effect of that is fat loss (if your body has fat to lose, because that’s how a body reacts to healthy circumstances). If you don’t have fat to lose, Reboot is still essential if you care about your body, your health, your performance, your mobility, and your mental and emotional health. Or, in this case, the health of your baby.
Remember, the core nutritional foundation of Reboot is eating real food and avoiding foods that break your body (and your baby’s body). How is that ever the wrong answer?
The absolute wrong answer for pregnancy is what many doctors and clueless government suits recommend: the food pyramid. Eating low fat, low calories, whole grains (and grains in general), vegetable/seed oils, and a bunch of chemicals is an unmitigated disaster for both mom and baby.
Worse, they want to feed baby more grain-based sugar products — via formula — right after birth (“as a supplement,” they say). Oh, and don’t forget to start feeding them sugar rice cereal as soon as possible! It’s so unfortuante. The current advice for how to feed mom and baby is not just wrong, it’s delusional and destructive.
We don’t have an obesity and preventable disease epidemic in this country simply because people are eating processed food and being sedentary. We’re seeing it in large part because we’re set up for that outcome from pregnancy (and pre-pregnancy in many cases). I detailed this in It’s Not Your Fault, one of the first articles I ever wrote for this blog.
But, I’ll tell you this (prepare for cold hard truth): If you continue the cycle with yourself and your children, it will be your fault. You have the opportunity to completely change the health outcome of your family. You, right now, have the power to not only ensure that you and your children thrive, but to start a cycle that helps future generations thrive — you can change your entire family tree!
My core mission isn’t just to help people Reboot themselves. It’s to then help them Reboot their family, their kids, and their children’s children. That’s how we truly change the landscape of health in this country.
All that’s required is simple adjustments to how we define food, how we deal with stress, and how we view activity and exercise. It starts with understanding the importance for mom and baby and ends with taking forward action.
The questions is, are you ready to do it?
Recommended Listening: Reboot Your Pregnancy With Dr. Kelly Brogan
What questions do you have? What’s holding you back? What are you concerned about? What are you struggling with? Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion on this very important topic.