by hitz333 » Tue Jul 09, 2013 8:20 pm My new midwives (third pregnancy, first time with these ladies) are awesome in general. Instead of telling me to gain weight by eating ice cream and pouring Ensure over my cereal, they just ask for a 5 day food log for each visit and are big on the more whole foods, less processed diet, vegan-supportive.
I'm 34 weeks and even in my not-so-perfect diet, they said I do great on variety and veggies (I could do better I know), but are concerned about fat. I said I do whole foods fats but not oils (and to be fair, I guess I don't always detail that teaspoon or so of flaxseed in my oatmeal or each little addition of seeds/nuts to my baked goods, but walnuts and nut butters are still well-represented on my logs). They wanted to know why, and I gave a little blurb about oils being processed, not having a lot of nutrients, just fat. They say, "Oh, we DON'T mean PROCESSED oils, we mean cold-pressed, extra virgin olive oils, raw butter if you can get it, unrefined coconut oil, etc." About the only thing we could agree on was avocado. But their argument is that I will not get enough calories and fats unless I eat oils. They said everything on my log looks good and that is their only concern. This was after me bringing up that my weight gain so far was less than with my other, very unhealthy pregnancies, and I was just happy to be mostly healthy this time even if I did end up matching that weight gain by the end. So I guess I sort of brought the lecture upon myself...
Anyway, so rather than argue, I sort of smiled and nodded and let them do their spiel. Then on the way home I decided I would track my calories and fat for a few days to see how I was doing. I'm not going hungry. I'm eating lots of food. And I'm not limiting whole foods fats other than rationing certain things (walnuts) for financial reasons, but I'm definitely not eating gobs of peanut butter or anything either. But I have NO IDEA how many grams of fat I should be getting. I can easily calculate calorie needs, but not fat. I found one mainstream article that said no more than 35% of calories from fat, but that's all I got. Is there any McDougall or similar resource that specifies? Is there any resource that will help me track my total fat intake, including "regular" foods that have small amounts of fat like raspberries and the like? I figure if I show that I am indeed getting enough calories/fat then we won't need to argue about it. Because I have no intent to start eating oils at home again, and I'd rather have the discussion off the table.
