Weight and Watch!

So how much weight gain is considered normal?

- Sonali Shivlani

Meet the EXPERT

M&B’ panellist Sonali Shivlani is an Internationally Certified Pregnancy Consultant and a child nutrition counsellor. She is the executive director of CAPPA India, and also trains aspiring birth professionals to achieve certification in pregnancy, birth and lactation counselling.

When I first started my practice and a pregnancy consultant, I was taking my sessions at a wellness centre which served as a co-working space for other fitness activities as well. It was a standard joke amongst all the trainers at the centre that in all classes people come to lose weight, but in Sonali’s class, people come to gain weight!

This is how people look at pregnancy—women are asked to eat double because they are carrying an additional person, but they forget that the second person they are carrying is just about 5% of their weight so how can they be expected to eat double? Often I have heard the elders in the family reprimand a pregnant mom for watching her calories because they feel that the baby will get deprived. Yes we do need about 300-400 extra calories per day starting from the second trimester but pregnancy does not give you the license to indulge and not watch calories at all.