Researchers have discovered that too much weight gained during the gestation of a baby more than quadruples the risk of women being overweight decades later.
This alone could lead to increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and other problems associated with being overweight.
“For the last 40 years the whole issue in weight gain in pregnancy has worried about what it would do to the children,” said Professor Philip James, chairman of the International Obesity TaskForce (IOTF) who has developed guidelines for the World Health Organisation.
It of course natural to direct worries towards the baby during pregnancy, but focus should be shifting to the mother now as well.
It was said that putting on around 12 kilograms was perfectly healthy for the woman and the baby, but now the new research from the University of Queensland has shown that a “relaxed” approach to the weight of the mother can lead to a lifetime of obesity.
The researchers, who presented their findings at the International Congress on Obesity in Stockholm, tracked the weight and life of 2,026 women who gave birth between 1981 and 1983 in Brisbane, Australia – a third of them put on more weight than needed.
Women who gain more than a healthy amount of weight during pregnancy were over three stones heavier 20 years later, and four times as likely to be obese. The obese women were 40 per cent more likely to be diabetic.
It’s suggested that “eating for two” is a myth and that mothers-to-be do not need to drink full-fat milk or change their diet at all for the first six months of the pregnancy.
Even in the last three months they need just 200 extra calories a day - the equivalent of a small sandwich.
Read the full story at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/dietandfitness/7887806/Eating-for-two-could-condemn-new-mothers-to-life-of-obesity.html
Source and thanks to www.telegraph.co.uk.
