Only now that I am pregnant do I realise how much – and how routinely - women are discouraged to eat!

another thing I've personally noticed is that at certain times in my cycle (when I'm ovulating and 2-3 days before period starts) I'm ravenously hungry when normally I'm not. Once upon a time I would have either ignored that and been snappy and cranky or 'caved', eaten and felt guilty. Since having children I'm more familiar with my cycle so recognise it for what it is and go with it.
Maybe a lot of these women who 'fall off the wagon'also get this but because we aren't encouraged to chart menstrual cycles or be familiar with our cycles, rathe thay are regarded as something to hide and be ashamed of, they don't realise and of course once they have fallen they might as well give up til tomorrow

disclaimer - I'm tired and waffling so this may be nonsense :o

And my BMI at 12 weeks or something was still fine, yet I had eaten a huge amount.

Dinster, it is really difficult to think about anything else than how to stop feeling sick when you have nausea. Thoughts about eating too much or too little just seem a secondary concern.

I found morning sickness really problematic in terms of following any kind of 'rules' about a healthy diet. How are you meant to know how much of anything you have actually digested if you're being sick all day?

I'm mystified by the advice I don't need eat more. I honestly have no issues with food, ignore the naughty bollox (although I do still recognise those pressures exist, and have seen it stacks now I'm pregnant) but I couldn't get through the night without eating. And this was after having had something before I went to bed, which i don't normally do.

I'm well aware that I don't need to be eating any more calories while pregnant and I tortured myself with that Metro front page this morning. But as I am currently constantly ravenous and eating seems to be the only thing that helps with the nausea and disgusting saliva over-production, I'm now in the delightful situation of eating more than I should and beating myself up about it. So in that regard, I don't see pregnancy as much different from non-pregnant life as a woman.

The idea that what/how much you eat is a moral issue is so pervasive now and so very, very wrong. It makes me so angry and sad, even as I get suckered in by it at the same time. Wish I could find a way to break through...

Seahorses I realise you didn't. I've just come across a lot of people who think that just labelling foods and weighing can cause an eatinf disorder and it's one of my personal bugbears.

Kim - this is about pressure on women over their whole lifetime with regards eating and how it changes type when they are pregnant. you've obviously had a difficult time but that's not the same as someone born and raised her whole life as a woman.
I'll admit to feel rather annoyed also that you told me upthread that I should just ignore my families comments as I replied assuming you'd had the same pressures and were coming from a similar place.

WoTmania, I don't mean to suggest that eating disorder= person who wants to look thinner. But I do think some people with particular types of eating disorder have issues with the physical experience of ingesting food, although of course that is caused by other underlying thought processes But the fact those processes focus on food rather than some other, less dangerous area of wellbeing I think it related to how we talk about food. I appreciate though that I'm not very articulate on this.

I did find that pregnancy, and breastfeeding much more so, changed my attitude to food because I saw it as something that created or nurtured something other than my body. After many years of being pregnant or breastfeeding, this feeling stayed with me because I saw food as something that gave me the energy to do all sorts of things rather than something just to do with maintaining the body.

Seahouses I don't know that it increase EDs, they are far more complex than that but I don't think they contribute to really healthy eating either. They seem to have taken on the idea that all fat is bad for example when really we need some fat. Many of teh vitamins and minerams in veg are fat soluble so we absorb them better with a small amount of fat. They also seem to talk about 'good' and 'bad' foods rather than all things in moderation.

Kim, this is a thread about how women's social experiences and feelings about their bodies are different before and during pregnancy.

Eating for two is a complete myth but people still use it. Probably because it's the only time they can manage not to feel guilty.

No women don't need extra food for most of the pregnancy.

The reason many women over eat in pregnancy, is because it's the one life stage where they are allowed to without people being judgemental about it.

Although now, as SGB says, they've found loads of other things to be judgemental about - soft cheese, shellfish, wine, peanuts - pick somethign random and someone somewhere will have shown that if you eat it, the chances of you miscarrying are about a million times lower than if you get in a car, but someone will tell you not to eat it anyway (they haven't yet started telling pregnant women not to get in cars).

I think that 'healthy eating' education in primary schools is contributing to eating disorders. Because what they actually mean by healthy eating is blanket advice that fat is bad, ignoring the fact that most children are not overweight and some of them are underweight.

According to something I read recently pregnant women should not eat for two, they only need an extra 200 calories a day in the final three months of pregnancy and nothing extra in the other months.

And a lot of the body issue/naughty food language that used to be the preserve of women is now becoming much more prevalent in men. "Naughty" foods, anorexia, exercise addiction etc. Not sure whether that is progress....

I can see issues with some of the language used around food. On the other hand, on average (and with a relatively low 2nd moment or variance) men do need more food than women by virtue of being bigger and heavier, and a higher percentage of muscle. That does change a little in pregnancy and a lot more during breastfeeding.

It is well known by nutritionists that one reason a lot of women put on weight when they start living with a man is that they do tend to eat equally and it is clearly too much for the woman.

Oh, is Kim a man then?

Well no wonder you have a healthy relationship with food then! And there was me congratulating you. It's no big deal if you're a man tbh, of course you're not influenced by societal messages telling you that you have no right to eat and take up space, those messages aren't directed at you. That's why you don't feel any pressure from them!

Similarly, I've never felt any pressure whatsoever, to pretend I know about cars when I know nothing whatsoever about them. I have never felt the need to casually throw the word "gasket" into any conversation I'm having. I've also never felt the need to go to the gym and bulk up my muscle mass to compensate for having a small willy/ being bald/ having a minor disability/ being short.

But if men tell me they have, I'm not going to jeer at them for being weak-minded because they're influenced by the messages that are aimed at them, or deny that those messages exist just because no-one targets me with them.

Well you've clearly had a very different experience to most young women and teenage girls kim147. I was groped and grabbed as a primary school child (this was in France, not that I imagine it would have been different in the UK) by boys who commented on my 'development' and then at an all girl school there was a lot of commentary on people's size/weight/shape and eating habits. Like I said, whichever way you were you couldn't win.

Boarding school suggests a degree of privilege.

" I do a bit of structural feminist analysis. So the 'who' is 'people who live in our patriarchal society'. It's culture. It's society. I don't buy into the neoliberal bullshit that we are all individuals in a vacuum and therefore locate issues with the individual."

Well said!

"Fortunately I'm able to ignore society "

Herein lies the ignorance and arrogance of privilege. Its easy to 'ignore society' if it hasn't punched you in the face repeatedly all your life and there were always a pair of supportive arms to run into. The smugness of privilege is absolutely nauseating.

I think getting pregnant often changes women's attitudes to their bodies. It isn't really as much an issue of overeating attitudes being the opposite of undereating attitudes. Both come in part from social attitudes to women's bodies which can a woman feel rather at odds with her own body.

Pregnancy can lead many women to stop feeling that way, and the benefits of that continue afterwards.