Pregnancy

“They are what you eat!” Did you know that your food choices and eating habits throughout pregnancy shapes your baby’s future food preferences and eating behaviors, and even influences the programming of their metabolism? Unfortunately, making the best food choices is not particularly easy during pregnancy. Nutrition Nanny® presents an innovative and revolutionary approach that takes “eating for two” to a whole new level to literally grow a healthier human!

Pregnancy is the foundational stage of your baby’s healthy habit learning!
Throughout your pregnancy, your baby will be relying on your diet to support its own nutritional needs for growth and development. But eating for two is not just about eating enough. According to researchers, your food choices throughout your pregnancy also shapes your baby’s future food preferences! Sensory properties from your diet are transferred to the amniotic environment – essentially “flavoring” the amniotic fluid! Through repeated exposure, your baby builds familiarity with these tastes and flavors so as to increase the acceptance of these foods after birth. This is referred to as “flavor bridging” and is likely how mothers have been preparing their offspring to accept foods of all cultures and environments since … forever! And just as important as the types of foods you introduce, the amount of food is just as important. Don’t forget that your baby will also be metabolizing your diet, too, and programming his or her budding metabolism in the process.

Pregnancy provides an incredible opportunity to get a head-start on influencing your baby’s future palate and food choices! However, pregnancy also presents some of the greatest nutritional challenges as well; challenges which can easily sabotage her pregnancy diet if not properly planned for. And one of the greatest saboteurs is appetite!

Beginning at or around the second trimester, the normal physiology of mom’s appetite is temporarily dysregulated: for many (if not most), hunger and cravings are significantly heightened, making it incredibly challenging to resist those pregnancy cravings! From an evolutionary perspective, this temporary phenomenon is believed to have offered “energy insurance” by increasing the mother’s fat storage to ensure that she has adequate energy to support her baby’s growth, delivery and future lactation. While this appetite “hack” may have been advantageous in our ancestors’ food environment of scarcity, it is now presenting significant challenges in our current food environment of plenty and driving excessive weight gain in nearly half (48%) of pregnant women today – putting both Mom and her baby at risk for complications. The lack of understanding this important appetite phenomenon, and how to navigate it healthfully, is critical to ensuring healthier pregnancies, births, and offspring!

The Nutrition Nanny® Approach

Introducing a revolutionary approach to growing a healthier human

Nutrition Nanny® not only understands the interplay between biology, environment, and behavior – we also know how to navigate it! 

Drawing from an interdisciplinary body of research that includes fetal origins and evolutionary biology, Nutrition Nanny® offers the first ever approach to managing prenatal nutrition and weight gain by harnessing our evolutionary biology and putting it back to good use! 

The Nutrition Nanny® approach is not about telling expectant mothers what to eat – you know what to eat! Instead, Nutrition Nanny® bridges the disconnect between best intentions and behavior – a disconnect between powerful hormones, the food environment, and mindful action.

From morning sickness and fatigue to raging appetites and cravings, these “symptoms” of pregnancy are maladaptive in today’s modern world and environment. Nutrition Nanny® helps moms navigate these common “pitfalls” in pregnancy and helps repurpose them to your – and your baby’s – advantage!