For the past year I have been doing Weight Watchers, and I ended up losing about 30 lbs just by changing my diet around (I’m not big into exercising, though I do play non-competitive beach volleyball twice a week). Here’s my before and after shot (both photos are from New Year’s Eve, exactly one year apart.

I was about 7 lbs short of my goal weight when I found out I was pregnant. Now, you obviously don’t want to lose weight during pregnancy, and unfortunately there is no program (at least none that I could find) for healthy eating while pregnant, so you are kind of on your own. I want to make sure I’m eating right, but I feel kind of lost.

When I started WW I changed everything I was eating, and a lot of it happened to be diet, non-fat or sugar-free food. I learned to make all my recipes with those ingredients and it worked – I lost the weight. But now I want to focus on health instead of weight loss, and I feel like everything I learned on WW has to be thrown out the window.

I wanted to find a book or two that could point me in the right direction, so I went to Barnes and Noble and picked up Skinny Bitch: Bun in the Oven. It seemed to be written in an easy-to-read, funny style, which is what I was looking for. I went home and immediately started reading. And what I read totally freaked me out.

Yes, the book was written in a funny way (they call soda “liquid Lucifer”), but if they hadn’t included the humor to lighten it up it would literally have been the most doom-and-gloom book I’ve ever read! It may contain some good information, but it was a little extreme for me. Plus, it seemed to only focus on the things you can’t have while pregnant, instead of what you can enjoy.

Has anyone else read this book? Did you enjoy it or did you find it extreme?

I decided to return that book, and now I’m back to square one. The hubby is all excited because we’ve been eating things I haven’t allowed in the house for a year: frozen pizza, Qdoba burritos, Chinese food, etc. And I know that those are not the things I should be eating, but I just can’t find a good resource to tell me what I should/can eat! It is very frustrating.

So today I went on Amazon and did a lot of searches and read a lot of reviews. I think I found some really good resources and cookbooks that will tell me the yummy and delicious things I should be focusing on enjoying, rather than the negative, “AVOID THIS AT ALL COSTS” tone. Here’s what I picked out:

• The 100 Healthiest Foods to Eat During Pregnancy: The Surprising Unbiased Truth about Foods You Should be Eating During Pregnancy but Probably Aren’t
• Healthy Eating During Pregnancy: 100 Recipes for a Nutritious Delicious Nine Months
• Feed the Belly: The Pregnant Mom’s Healthy Eating Guide
• The Well-Rounded Pregnancy Cookbook: Give Your Baby a Healthy Start with 100 Recipes That Adapt to Fit How You Feel

I’m pretty pumped for them to come in the mail! I’ll review them when they come in and let you know what I think. 

Have you read/would you recommend any of these books specifically? Are there any other pregnancy and nutrition resources out there that you really liked?