Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Our columnist Alia Almoayed launched her latest title: I Want A Healthy Pregancy at the Organic Foods and CafŽ in Seef Mall at the weekend. Readers flocked to pick up a signed copy of the book which is now available at all Jashanmal locations around Bahrain, with more outlets coming soon. Here is an exclusive excerpt from the book for GulfWeekly readers ...
Alia's Journal Entry, Pregnancy Week 25:
"I'm so excited about my baby. I feel lots of kicks these days and I can't wait to see my unborn child. But I can't help it sometimes; I look in the mirror and realise my waist has gone and it has been replaced with a huge bulge. People keep telling me I look cute, but I feel like a hippo."
Like it or not, pregnancy means putting on weight. For many women, that is a scary thought. I know that was certainly the first thought on my mind even before I considered getting pregnant.
'How will my figure change' and 'how will I get my figure back' are two of the most frequent questions I get as a nutritionist. Women's fear of weight gain is deep-rooted and it's made worse by society's pressures to maintain a slim figure.
All you have to do is look at all the magazines with pictures of celebrities who look amazing two days after they've given birth. It's a tough ideal to live up to!
What I don't understand is how women are expected to bear children and not gain weight. I see so many women afraid of gaining weight during pregnancy. They either start dieting just before getting pregnant (bad news for their fertility chances), or they starve themselves during pregnancy for fear of putting on the extra pounds.
And then, of course, there are those women who lose control completely and gain tremendous amounts of weight or even use pregnancy as an excuse to eat a a lot. Needless to say, none of these extremes is good.
So the question remains: what happens when you get pregnant and look in the mirror to see a fat, bloated, disproportional version of your old self?
A lot of women hold on to the number they see on the scale and carry it around in their head. You might find that the main topic of discussion between two pregnant women is the amount of weight they've gained. I, myself, had to answer that question many times.
When I say that I usually gain about 9kg or 10kg during pregnancy, I usually get the 'ooh, you're lucky' comment. But I don't think that's accurate. I do not believe that you should measure the success of your pregnancy by the amount of weight gained. Every woman should aim to be as healthy as possible during pregnancy and her weight gain will adjust to her body's needs. So, whether you have gained 8kg or 28kg is totally irrelevant; what I look for is health and many people mistakenly equate that with thinness.
From my perspective, because I was relatively 'small' during my pregnancies (including the one I was in when I wrote this book), people assumed I was being very healthy. I was either the envy or inspiration for other pregnant women. But people didn't stop there. When you're pregnant, you'll find that people will openly share their opinion and advice (which is sometimes unwanted).
I remember when I was eight months pregnant with my first child, I attended a family gathering. I was very happily walking around, proud of my bump when two of my relatives started having a discussion about me - in front of me! They were discussing my size and one of them was arguing that I was too small to have a healthy baby. He said that I'm obviously not eating enough for fear of weight gain and that I'm being very selfish for depriving my baby of valuable nourishment for the sake of vanity. He told me that my child will suffer because of how badly I'm handling my health during pregnancy. I was only 25 years old at the time, so I did what any 25-year-old pregnant woman would do - I cried.
This relative is the perfect example of how people are bound to have an opinion about your pregnancy, and for some reason they always make sure you hear it. Today, these judgments don't faze me because I know what I'm doing. But whether you've put on too much weight or too little weight, the 'weight' issue is bound to come up.
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TUNE in to Alia Almoayed's weekly live internet radio show, Dare To Be Healthy. This show airs live every Monday night. Go to www.AliaAlmoayedRadio.com
