Last week one of our homework assignments for my birth class was to keep track of everything I eat, how many grams of protein I eat, and how much water I drink. It was a really informative assignment because I’ve wondered for a while if I’m getting enough protein.
First, I was happy about the things I’m doing right. Turns out that Arnold’s whole grain breads have tons of protein, so go us for spending a little more on the all-natural rather than the generic store brand wheat. I was also delighted to find that a Philly soft pretzel is also packed with protein – half a regular salted pretzel has 7 grams of protein! And of course if I’m buying one I always eat the whole thing. This made me feel a lot better about one of my favorite guilty splurges. Overall it was no problem to get the 70-80 grams of protein per day that’s recommended for pregnant women. And I typically drink 70-80 ounces of water per day: I have an 18 oz. Klean Kanteen that I just always carry in my purse all the time, and when I actually kept track of how often I completely drain and refill it, it turns out that I drink the whole bottle at least three, usually four times a day. Good stuff.
Of course we had to make some diet improvements too. We had switched from dairy milk completely to almond milk, but it turns out that cow milk naturally has more protein, so milk’s coming back to my cereal bowl and we’ll be a double-milk household again. No big deal. Almond milk’s great for cereal, but dairy’s fine too, and I like dairy milk better than almond milk in my Earl Grey anyway.
I’d already been eating one hard-boiled egg with lunch every day. The nutritional guidelines they gave us in class suggest that pregnant women should have two eggs a day. That’s an easy fix – we’re already boiling the eggs, we’ll just boil more and I’ll have one with breakfast and one with lunch. We made this change immediately at the beginning of the week and it resulted in me being able to hit the target 70-80 grams of protein pretty easily. And once we were keeping track and looked at the protein I eat in a normal breakfast with cereal and a smoothie, breakfast clearly stood out as the lowest protein meal of my day. I definitely need to up my intake there anyway, so it’s a natural fit. But this child is really going to love eggs.
Rox Does Yoga 