Now do breastfeeding.
(With my kids, I was eating peanut butter by the jar-full just to get enough calories).
"In humans, the energetic cost of pregnancy is about 50,000 dietary calories — far higher than previously believed, a new study found."
www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/s...
Also, the idea that anyone was "shocked" by this finding is only evidence of how little we care about pregnant people and about women's health more generally.
For those saying "that's not that many calories per day." It's not every day of pregnancy. Most people are 6-8 weeks (or more) before they know they're pregnant. And they're often too nauseous to eat until ~20 weeks (some even lose weight). So, it's mostly concentrated in the second 20 weeks.
it’s a wild amount of calories for someone to eat. It’s also wild that a human body can build a whole living conscious being with the amount of energy in two gallons of gasoline
Lord, I remember all the pregnancy books telling me I only needed like an extra half cup of yogurt a day. When I was nursing I had bowls of trail mix in every room and still dropped weight like a stone.
Holy shit, yes
And the nutritional advice for postpartum women is useless, because it all assumes you’re trying to lose weight
I had to look for advice on how to add calories in a healthy way on sites aimed at people recovering from chemotherapy, ffs
Weight gain while breastfeeding is super common, because despite calories out going up, hormones often slow your metabolism. My CNM described post-partum while breastfeeding as a lot like menopause.
Breastfeeding always = weight loss is a myth.
Eh, I take your general point but I can say flat out that my current relationship to calories in perimenopause is *nothing* like my experience of breastfeeding
I’m pretty convinced that I’ve gone straight from having a baby a few weeks shy of 43 directly into peri but maybe I’m just being optimistic about how close I squeezed this one out.
I used to wake up in the middle of the night, eat a bowl (as in, a pint) of ice cream and then go back to bed. It was the only way I could get through the night. I looked like Barbie while I was breast-feeding.
I gained 5 lbs my last pregnancy, the baby was nearly 8 lbs and by a week after my surgery I was 20 lbs down from my pre pregnancy weight. GD was awful.
That comes from the fact that your gums get more loose and it's thus easier to contract bacterial infections in your mouth. Pregnant people: go to the dentist, at least once or pregnancy. Losing teeth is preventable.
So IIUC previous analysis didn't include elements like generating and sustaining the placenta? That seems like a serious oversight. Quite apart from obvious increased energy use as various body processes get cranked to 11.
How could energy all end up in baby? Human energy use isn't 100% efficient.
