Calories during pregnancy

[Flumo]

I'm 30 weeks tomorrow and was wondering if anyone can tell me how many calories I should be taking. I normally have a BMI of about 22 and normally quite fit and health with my job being very active with being a nurse, at the moment I'm not as active as I used to be with me not being to work in the hospital. Any advice would be great thank you.

About 500 extra calories per day in your third trimester.

On average we should consume 2000 calories normally (when not pregnant) and in your third trimester it's an extra 450(ish) calories a day.
In context probably an extra healthy meal per day.
Or if your me, extra chocolate! 😂

@lockdownpregnancy that 2000 calorie average is really outdated and unhelpful. Most women don’t need that many on a normal day unless there quite active. 1800 is a more accurate average, but of course there will be a lot of personal differences.

Also the advice for quite a few years has been that you only need 200 extra calories a day in the last trimester. Nothing like 500 extra. So 1900-2000 a likely total, especially if you’re more sedentary than usual

With a BMI of 22 I wouldn’t worry too much about calories unless you are gaining a massive amount of weight .

I think you need any extra 200-300 in your last trimester. Personally, I couldn’t eat much at that point as I felt too uncomfortable and full all the time . I worried I wasn’t eating enough as I stopped gaining weight but baby grew just fine .

I definitely ate enough in my first two trimesters though 😝 I gained 16 kilo in total and ALL of that was before 28 weeks .

If you are worried speak to your midwife.

Here's the update when the changed it to only an extra 200 calories in the last trimester:
www.nhs.uk/news/pregnancy-and-child/new-weight-advice-for-pregnancy/

To be honest, if you're worried about not gaining enough weight, it sounds like you could potentially eat more than the 200 extra calories. The advice was changed because people were going too far in the other direction and gaining too much.

I only gained 3 kg between week 8 and week 28 and was starting to worry that my bump was too small and my baby would be underweight. Then I put on 2 kg between weeks 28 and 30 without really trying, just by eating slightly larger portions and making sure not to skip meals, so I needn't have worried.