Intuitive Eating and the First Trimester

How Intuitive Eating helped me feel my best during the First Trimester and why you shouldn’t feel pressure to eat “perfectly” during pregnancy.

For those of you who don’t know yet we are expecting a baby girl at the end of February! These past 3+ months have been a bit different than my first pregnancy.  I have found that practicing intuitive eating and listening to my body cues to be helpful in managing first trimester symptoms.

If you are new to Intuitive Eating or have never heard of it before here is a little more about it.  Intuitive Eating is a very personal process that honors health by paying attention to our internal body cues to meet our physical and emotional needs rather than focusing on eternal rules or messages (aka diets). I wasn’t aware of Intuitive Eating until I started working in private practice 2 years ago and was seeing many clients with long histories of dieting or disordered eating habits and wanted to learn how to best help them. I was immediately struck by the comparison Intuitive Eating made to infants and young toddlers and how they were born intuitive eaters. At the time my son was about 6 months and showing exact signs of this. He would eat what and how much he was hungry for and move on. Food decisions weren’t based on any rules, he was listening to his body. Over the past 2 years I have done everything I can to learn more about Intuitive Eating through reading books, listening to podcasts and learning from other dietitians in the field. I have practiced it myself while working with others and have found it to be a positive experience both physically and emotionally. Early pregnancy has been a great example of how listening to my body has helped me get through some not so fun times!

Here is a little more on my first trimester Intuitive Eating experience..

Very early on I found that this pregnancy was very unlike my first. Starting around 5 weeks I had horrible morning sickness and fatigue, which lasted much of my first trimester. With my son, I had some nausea but nothing like this time. From week five to around 11 I would wake up and have to eat ASAP, crackers at the bedside helped but I really just needed breakfast. And if you have a toddler, you know how difficult it can be to get them up and ready and then feed them at the same time. It’s not easy!!

Another symptom I had was sensitivity to smells and tastes. For example, I could smell the food I cooked from the night before as I was coming down the stairs in the morning (and it didn’t smell good to me!), sweet foods were super sweet and left a horrible after taste, bitter foods (aka veggies!) taste really bitter and not edible, and salty foods tasted salty, although I wasn’t really bothered by those. Needless to say this typical sweet tooth girl turned into a savory salty girl instead!

Part of eating intuitively is listening to your body. When it gives you cues to eat, eat. When it craves something, eat it.  For me I needed to eat something about every 2 hours to keep the nausea down.  In the evening I felt my best so I would eat a bigger meal  around 6 and then have a snack before bed around 9-10. I was also not into eating veggies at all, unless it was cooked and covered in cheese. I knew that this was temporary and I allowed myself to skip the veggies, instead of choking them down. I also knew that I was getting similar nutrients in the fruits, starches and whole grains I did eat and from my prenatal vitamin. A month or two of little veggies was not going to harm the baby or me.  Around 9 weeks my sensitivity to taste lessened and vegetables didn’t taste so bitter.  Then around 11 weeks I craved a salad (maybe a salad drenched in Cesear dressing but a salad!) and I ended up eating three salads in two days. My body was telling me that it was ready and it needed some more veggies! Since then I have been able to tolerate more vegetables, although some plain raw veggies still don’t taste all that great.

This is all to say I knew things would change. My body knows what is best for me, and dismissing it and choking down a food that tasted horrible to me would just make me feel worse.  Instead I listened to my body, ate food when I needed it and choose food that tasted good, and although I didn’t feel like myself I felt better than I could have.

One thing I have learned as someone who has been pregnant and works with moms and moms-to-be is that there a lot of pressure to eat “perfectly” when we are pregnant. That “perfect” way of eating looks so different for every pregnant person and can vary a lot during your pregnancy. Instead of feeling forced to eat a specific way with rigid rules and structure start listening to your body cues and signals. These cues will help guide you to allow you to feel your best, and over the course of 9+ months eat a variety of foods that your body needs to sustain a healthy pregnancy.