Pregorexia : Is it a selfish obsession or a cultural problem with modern women?
Pregnancy has always been a time when a woman can put on 30 -35 pounds and still feel good and proud of herself, after all she is bringing a new life into the world. But now it is not like this for every woman. A new study shows that 20% of all pregnant women in the Western world do not gain enough weight during pregnancy.
These women don’t eat enough during pregnancy or induce vomiting, overexercise, take laxatives and diuretics. They do these dangerous things for the sake of having a slim figure during and immediately after pregnancy.
Many of these women get inspired by the super-slim celebrities whose pregnant images we often see on TV and magazine covers. These celebrities manage to go through their whole pregnancy without putting on much weight and continue to look slim. They keep their belly bump small so they become skinny again immediately after their baby is born. This unnatural “skinny” image becomes a role model of many other “non-celebrity” women to follow.
So, how much weight should a woman gain during a normal pregnancy? The normal range to gain during pregnancy is 25-35 pounds but the amount of weight to gain is different during 1st, 2nd and the 3rd semester. In the 1st trimester it is normal to put on 5 pounds. During 2nd and 3rd trimester it is normal to put on 1-2 pounds per week. So all up it should be about 30 pounds by the end of the pregnancy.
When a woman tries to be skinny during pregnancy she is starving the foetus. Starving the foetus is a high risk action and can result in foetal mortality plus a high risk of getting conditions such as:
- Spine bifida
- cerebral palsy
- increased incidents of asthma
- increased incidents of allergy
- ear infections
- low birth weight
- prematurity
- metabolic abnormalities
- growth retardation
- birth defects
The list of serious problems that a baby can get is much longer that this.
Don’t you think that pregorexia is the most selfish thing you can ever do? Ask yourself what is this for? – It is all for the sake of attaining this glamorous unnatural look you see on celebrities like Nicole Kidman, Nicole Ritchie who never even had a normal baby bump when they were pregnant, not to even mention their general low body weight.
Also, the big challenge for anorexic women (for those who had anorexia before pregnancy) is that they are expected to gain even more weight during pregnancy then non-anorexic women do – to support the baby. How much more do you need to gain if you are anorexic? You should check this with your doctor because weight gain can be an individual thing and depends on your initial body weight and body mass index to start with.
As a general guideline, pregnant women are supposed to put on about 30 pounds during pregnancy. This means that you should consume an extra 50 calories in the first trimester of pregnancy, an extra 300 calories in the second trimester and extra 400-500 calories in the third trimester.
Now, how do you know if you are getting pregorexia?
If you think too much about being skinny during pregnancy, think about what clothes to wear so you look like you are not pregnant, about how to fool people in to thinking that you are not pregnant. If you constantly think about food and eating or non-eating – these are all signs that you may have pregorexia.
If this is the case go to your doctor immediately and fix the problem as soon as possible. Otherwise your baby could be in big danger of dying in the womb. You will regret it your whole life, and even if the baby is born do you want it to suffer all its life from birth defects: just because you wanted to be thin to look good for the sake of vanity?
Anorexia and pregnancy are totally incompatible and against nature.
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eating disorders help go to http://www.womenhealthsite.com/eating_disorders.htm
your brain’s beauty as a living and constantly-developing structure with billions of neurons and its connections. When you understand what happens in your brain while you binge-purge or starve yourself – you will have an idea of how to reverse it. Until you understand this process you are like a blind person who is trying to find his way home walking through the debris in the wilderness.
u are an anorexic and don’t eat (or eat little) your brain starves. It can not function properly and that’s why people with anorexia stop seeing a clear picture of reality that other people see. They see themselves fatter than they are, they judge others by the way they look and how skinny they are. And their starving brain is a big contributor to it. The Brain can only function at its best when it has enough energy and nutrition to process the information.
cise the spending of energy increases rapidly and body needs energy to burn. Energy comes from the food we eat but when there is not enough energy from food, the body starts consuming its own tissue as an energy source. Fat burns first. But if a person does not have fat (or has very little) like an eating disorder sufferer, the body start burning muscles and other body tissues. And that is a dangerous process. It can lead to dystrophy and caxechia – the syndrome is what a person looks like who has just come from a concentration camp we have all seen the pictures. Please Remember: moderate exercise is great; I don’t mean running 10 miles a day. But you need to make sure that you have something to burn – not just burn your muscles and brain tissue as an energy source.
constructive way. Find and follow your main purpose in life.
onsible for their anorexic-bulimic behaviours. There are pathways for binging-purging, for starving, for taking laxatives and diuretics, over exercising etc. When you start learning new constructive thing – like for example, how your brain works, its anatomy and physiology etc. – you actually will produce new neuronal pathways in your brain which will take the place of your old pathways and replace them.
means we are the only ones who can make decision and exercise our own will.
environment. This will pull your attention away from your eating disorder and help you to develop new neuronal pathways in the brain – different from what the eating disorder has created. It can also help to produce more good chemicals in the brain (neurotransmitters) which are responsible for your attention span. More attention will make your learning of new things easier.
r or what politicians say are true. Have your own opinion. Remember that media makes billion of dollars every week to program people’s mind by displaying woman’s body images that are impossible to achieve by any normal person. Most diets and other health care products which claim to improve your health don’t work or work on a placebo effect only.
rally eating disorder sufferers are withdrawn from others and prefer to spend time alone with their eating disorders. By
state of mind. I recommend you even to find jokes about weight and food , laugh at it and look at the funny side of it. For example, when you see the funny side of being anorexic or bulimic you will change your attitude to your abnormal behaviour. Laughter also improves hormonal status in the body – which normally suffers in anorexic-bulimic people. Laughter also helps to release good chemicals in the brain which can change your brain for the better.
to people and receive the love back. I am not talking here just about romantic love (although this is the love too). I am talking about love as a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection and attachment.
