There are still many health care professionals who feel caloric intake should be increased during pregnancy. This idea is based on the baby and the reproductive organs requiring more calories. It has merit but by far and away the biggest problem we see in the U.S. is too much weight gain.
The healthy mom who stays active and eats a normal diet without trying to "eat for two" will gain about 20 lbs.. Anything above this is not necessary. The extra weight represents the fetus, the fluid around the fetus, the placenta and the extra blood volume the mother carries. It also is representative of the extra fat stores mom needs to feed her baby if she breast feeds. It takes about 500 calories per day to feed a growing newborn. So if the baby, fluid and placenta weigh about 10lbs. total this leaves about 10lbs. of fat stores for feeding baby.
If mom is eating regularly, not over eating, after delivery she will easily get the extra 500 calories per day needed for the nursing baby. The natural storage of the extra weight is an emergency storage in case the mom is put in a starvation situation. That is so rare of a problem in the U.S. I have never seen it.
So, a 20 lb, weight gain is ideal in pregnancy. This leaves a 10 lb. buffer which will probably not be needed anyway. I should mention that gaining way more then this is the norm in the U.S.. Most mothers put on 40 lbs. and I have seen 90 lb, weight gains more then you would think. I do not worry about a 40 or 50 lb. wt. gain as it doesn't really affect the baby and moms do fine. It gets tough to lose pregnancy weight for most women so I encourage the lower weight gains but usually don't make a big deal of it. It is not that big a deal. No pun intended. ;)
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