First Trimester Pregnancy Diet Tips, Weight Gain Diet, Foods to Avoid

The minute you announce your pregnancy, well-meaning friends and family have plenty of advice on how you should be "eating for two." But this isn't entirely true. When you're pregnant, your body, quite efficiently, absorbs nutrition extremely well. So what you should really do is to eat healthy, and not twice as much. During the first trimester, there is no substantial reason to increase the intake of calories and proteins because there is no significant gain in size of foetus.

What Should I Include In My Diet In The First Trimester?

There are some key nutrients that the body requires during the first trimester.

• Folic Acid: is required for the development of nervous system, blood formation and it also has a positive effect on birth weight of infants. You can get your dose of folic acid by including wheat germ, pulses, nuts, green leafy vegetables especially spinach, oranges, fresh beans in your diet. To add green leafy vegetables in your daily diet (good source of all the above nutrients) you may include any one of these recipes/dishes in your daily diet- saag, green soup, green roti, green raita, green chicken, green dhokla/green idli. (Boil leafy greens, blend and use them to make different batters and doughs)
• Iron-rich foods: are necessary for foetal growth, expansion of mother's tissues and for the growing volume of blood which in turn supply nutrients to the foet