{"id":270470,"date":"2021-05-27T19:34:23","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T23:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nourishedjourney.co\/?p=270470"},"modified":"2024-03-25T12:15:35","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T16:15:35","slug":"peaceful-pregnancy-how-to-identify-and-reject-diet-culture-while-prenatal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nourishedjourney.co\/peaceful-pregnancy-how-to-identify-and-reject-diet-culture-while-prenatal\/","title":{"rendered":"Peaceful Pregnancy- How to Identify and Reject Diet Culture While Prenatal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Diet culture is so pervasive throughout our society, it\u2019s no surprise that it is highly influential in pregnancy and postpartum conversations and healthcare<\/em>. In fact, the amount of targeted advertising and messaging that gets directed at women before, during and after pregnancy related to bodies, weight stigma, diets and workout programs is really heartbreaking. I love the work I get to do with prenatal and postpartum women, but outside of working with clients one-on-one, I wanted to provide some tips and suggestions to anyone who might need them. So today on the blog, I\u2019m diving into diet culture in pregnancy, what red flags to look out for, what you can do to work on rejecting diet culture during pregnancy and why it\u2019s as good a time as ever to focus on healing your relationship with food and your body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does diet culture show up in pregnancy?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Anything from weight gain guidelines in your provider\u2019s office to comments from strangers about your body represent the hurtful messaging of diet culture. It\u2019s common for prenatal providers to give you an \u201cideal weight gain range\u201d for your pregnancy and to comment on weight throughout your pregnancy. It\u2019s likely you\u2019ll get comments from people (both strangers and loved ones) related to your body. Even well-intentioned comments can reinforce the fatphobic idea that a smaller body is a better body and that you are healthier or better at a smaller size. You may get warnings from people like \u201cbe careful about all that weight gain!\u201d or people may think they\u2019re being funny and conversational by encouraging you to \u201ceat for two while you can!\u201d as if only pregnancy is a valid justification for honoring your hunger and cravings and eating adequately to nourish your body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diet culture may also show up during pregnancy in the form of a lot<\/em> of extra food advice, warnings or rules. Yes, there are some food safety recommendations that you should be aware of so that you can keep yourself and baby safe, but as far as food rules that are meant to help you \u201cmanage\u201d your weight or gain the \u201cright\u201d amount of weight, these are unnecessary and destructive to building or maintaining a healthy relationship with your body and with food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you manage to escape the weight-related comments or advice from others, it\u2019s possible you will still feel a self-inflicted pressure to maintain a certain range of weight gain during pregnancy. The weight equals health myth becomes even more personal and intimate during pregnancy; now it\u2019s not just your health but also the health of your baby that feels like your responsibility, and culture tries to convince us that our weight is somehow indicative of or causative of either poor or great health. Here is your gentle and loving reminder from a nutrition professional that weight does not equate to health. For any given person, there are a variety of amounts of weight gain that will all result in healthy, uncomplicated pregnancies and healthy babies. Graphs may show a steady, perfectly straight line for your \u201cideal weight gain\u201d during pregnancy, but this is unrealistic for most people. Remember how unique every human body is. Think about how different each face is on every person you know or see on the street. Now apply that same diversity to bodies and weight gain during pregnancy. It\u2019s simply crazy to think that everyone\u2019s weight gain is going to follow an identical trend and amount per week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Some other reminders:<\/p>\n\n\n\n