Wednesday, March 27, 2013

The Brewer Pregnancy Diet Recipes

Disclaimer: This list of recipes is not endorsed by Dr. Brewer Pregnancy Diet. I am not affiliated with the diet or its creators. I am not a professional of any kind. I'm just a momma who used and benefited tremendously from the diet, and wanted to give other momma's a jumping off point for food ideas!
The Brewer Pregnancy Diet Recipes

So I've blogged about my two drastically different eating styles during my two pregnancies before.

During my first pregnancy I indulged in way too much sugar, way too many carbs, and did not attempt to have any real healthfulness what so ever.
By the end I was feeling terribly sluggish, had gained 41 pounds, and gave birth to a {beautiful!} 9 pound baby girl.
Losing the weight came with extreme effort and determination. (And I actually went on to lose 15 additional pounds to reach a healthy BMI. Which was a lot of work!)

So for my second pregnancy I wanted to follow a much healthier diet.
After a lot of research I learned that the main way to control not only the mother's weight gain during pregnancy, but also the baby's is by watching your carb intake. And of course since sugar is the most worthless carb there is, you really want to limit your sugar intake.

I went on to follow the Brewer Pregnancy Diet.
This is a diet that focuses on protein, vegetables and fruit. And allows at limited amount of whole grains.
You can see my post on it here for more details on what it entails.

I didn't follow it to the letter.
(*And that's what I'd recommend to you. That you just pay attention to your body and its needs.)
Its actually a LOT of food prescribed per day, and I literally could not eat it all. (And I'm someone who likes to eat.) I just ate when I was hungry and stopped when I was full. I used the brewer diet as a general guideline for what types of food to aim for. I was very careful to not go over my daily grain intake. And I was VERY careful with refined sugars, having almost none for 9 months.

So by doing that, as well as staying active (regularly swimming laps or walking), I was able to gain only 32 pounds during my second pregnancy. I felt great -- not sluggish at all. And I gave birth to a {beautiful} 8 pound 4 ounce baby girl.
*Both pregnancies lasted 42 weeks. My oven likes to really bake those baby-buns.

That's nine pounds less of expecting momma standing on the scale, and nearly a pound less of baby when she came out, this time.  
Nine pounds feels like a lot, I can tell ya.
And the postpartum weight came off with much less effort!



Me, First time with lots of sugar. Me, second time with lots of health.



For those of you worried about the first trimester, I want you to know that I did not follow this diet during my first trimester. Basically the only food I could stomach was plain Cheerios in milk. So that's what I ate. But I made sure to only eat what I needed.
During my first pregnancy I was so overwhelmed by the nauseous feeling (I never threw up, during either pregnancy, I just felt constantly queazy) that I basically ate nonstop trying to quell the discomfort. I also at anything I thought sounded ok (which was mostly chocolate covered granola bars.) So I was eating chocolate covered granola bars on the hour. This was a bad idea because it did not fix the nausea for me (I just kept hoping it would) and I ended up gaining something like 8 to 10 pounds during my first trimester.
I didn't want to repeat that the second time around, so I did eat only what I could stomach, but I went for the healthiest version I could find of it. (Plain cheerios have much less sugar than honey-nut cheerios.) And I tried to eat only when I was actually hungry, and only as much as I needed. And so doing that I kept my first trimester weight gain to about 4 or 5 pounds. That made a big difference in the total pounds I put on!


Anyway....
That's just backstory, so you know where I'm coming from.

Recently I've started to want to incorporate this style of eating back into my normal routine.
(I think its a good idea while breastfeeding (which I currently am) to eat these types of healthy foods. And we are talking about having more kids, so I may as well get back in the habit now, so its easier next time.)
(Actually this style of eating, which is focused on nutritious non processed foods, is great to do any time of life! You can just alter the amounts to suit your needs. If you are not pregnant yet, but plan to be at some point, getting on board this train now would be an excellent idea. It takes some time to adjust your tastes and cooking style.)


During my second pregnancy, I had a hard time figuring out how to get all these foods into my menu.
So to help me out going back into this again, I've started to track down recipes centered around the foods on the list.
I've created some Pinterest boards where I'm saving up healthy recipes that work with the Brewer Diet.


I figured other women might like to see these boards too.

I've made a couple different ones.
There is one main one, where I am mostly putting recipes that are like a main meal which have quite a few of the different food types involved.
And then I created a few other boards that are more focused on one of the food types, and those recipes are often more suited for a snack or tiny extra meal, which can help you get all your vitamin groups in.

So without further ado here are the boards:


Brewer Pregnancy Diet Recipes

Brewer Pregnancy Diet: Recipes for Vitamin-C Foods


Brewer Pregnancy Diet: Recipes for Vitamin-A Foods


Brewer Pregnancy Diet: Recipes for Fresh, Dark Green Vegetables



I hope you let these pinned recipes inspire you, so that you feel free to alter them to suit your tastes and lifestyle, or even create something new that comes to mind after seeing these. There really are a lot of healthy possibilities!!

**Feel free to follow these boards. But just so you know they are a work in progress, so as I fill them up, your Pinterest feed may get inundated. :) But maybe thats a good thing, if you are needing some inspiration. :)
Or you can always just pin this post and come back to look stuff up on occasion.

*** Let me know in the comments below if you have a Brewer Diet Pinterest Board going yourself! Or let me (us) in on any awesome recipes of your own!

All the best to you and your growing family!!

Sincerely,
Lydia




*Click here for more of my healthy Pregnancy Tips.
(C-section and VBAC included)



21 comments:

  1. Hi Lydia,

    I really admire your personal and engaging voice. I just wanted to say thank you for sharing such great advice and stories on your blog for busy mothers and parents of young children! The Brewer Diet sound interesting and it's the first time I've heard of it.

    I’ve taken a look through your website and we think you’ve done a fantastic job in covering topics that our brand's audience of expecting mothers would be interested in reading. It would be great if you could join our community to feature your blog entries.

    If you would like to learn more about this, please send an email to info at atomicreach.com with “mothers” in the subject line.

    Sincerely,
    Tina

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  2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  4. Hi Lydia-
    Just wanted to say thanks for sharing all this info! I'm pregnant with my 3rd, my first was natural and second was a c-section, and would like a vbac this time. As my kids are close together (this will be 3 under 3!) my body hasn't gotten back to the way it used to be including weight. Your blog is really helpful, thanks!

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    Replies
    1. So glad to hear you are finding my writing helpful. Having a “proven pelvis” from your first, is going to go a long way for you and providers’ willingness to try for a VBAC -- so that’s great! All the best to you and your family!!

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  5. Thank you so much for sharing your research and experience! Mine experience is very similar, I gained 30 with the first pregnancy and was too interested in sugary snacks. I'm a 4'9" lady. My son was nearly 9 pounds! picture that ;) as a result we had to have a cesarean. My goal with the second is to try and have a smaller baby to attempt a v-back. You inspiration helps tons!

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  6. Hi Lydia,

    This information has been so helpful for me! It's very early in my first pregnancy but I am already freaking out about nutrition! I rarely eat processed food as it is, but I definitely do not get enough protein or green veggies in my diet, so your recipes have been really helpful in creating my nutrition plan. Thank you!

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    Replies
    1. Oh good, I’m glad you found it helpful. If you are feeling nauseous in early pregnancy don’t feel guilty if you can’t stomach protein and green veggies yet. It’s very common. (I didn’t follow this Brewer diet until my second trimester -- for my first I just ate breakfast cereal (non sugary ones) because that’s all I could manage.) I JUST found this article about why women have a hard time specifically with meat and green veggies in the first trimester -- makes a lot of sense and takes a lot of guilt and pressure off. http://cavegirlplusone.com/blog/2013/9/16/how-to-eat-paleo-during-pregnancy-a-guide-to-every-trimester

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  7. thanks, very informative post

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  8. First of all I apologize for my poor Eng. like I said, very informative post... my sister is pregnant and i'm doing a research for her, none of us know much about diet and cooking, except the cooking papas games maybe :) so i'm info everywhere I can. thanks again

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  9. Thank you so much for sharing!! Can't wait to check out your boards!

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  10. This is so cool. I am such a huge fan of their work. I really am impressed with how much you have worked to make this website so enjoyable.


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  11. Thank you so much for this post! I am 23 weeks with my first baby and I have a pretty healthy diet... but I had sugar in my urine today at a visit with my midwife. :( I have my glucose test at my next visit, so I am going to use these ideas to help me get my diet in tip-top shape before the test!

    PS- We are not finding out if we having a girl or boy but if it's a little girl her name will be Lydia!

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  12. I must say, I thought this was a pretty interesting read when it comes to this topic. Liked the material.
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  18. Hi Lydia,
    Thank you for this post. I'm 19 weeks pregnant with twins (second pregnancy). My midwife (also a momma of twins) recommended the brewer diet to me because (apparently) diet and whole calorie intake are the name of the game for full term healthy twins. Who knew? So I have been looking into this diet but I feel so overwhelmed. It's so much food. (I relate to your story so much because with my first daughter the only thing that sounded good most of the pregnancy was snack cakes so thats honestly probably 40%-50% of what I ate) Now, although I did eat a high protein, relatively healthy diet before getting pregnant, I lost all appetite in the first trimester and I still really don't have that much of one. Nothing sounds good. Also the thought of eating constantly to keep up with this diet, when I really don't want to eat at all, seems terribly overwhelming. But thankfully looking through your boards it seems way more manageable. Also I'm really encouraged by the (eat what you need and trust your body) mentality rather than feeling like I HAVE to eat just to keep up. Just thank you.

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