WHILE you are overjoyed with your pregnancy, you are probably also eager to ensure a healthy pregnancy. To achieve this goal, one of the vital aspects you need to pay attention to is nutrition.

Eating for two: While nurturing a new life inside you, your body undergoes significant physiological changes to adapt to your new role. To cope with the changes during pregnancy, your daily requirements for energy, protein, and certain vitamins and minerals increase dramatically.

You need extra energy and nutrients to help you gain healthy pregnancy weight, to support the growth and development of your unborn child, and to nourish the placenta and tissues in the uterus. Eating well at this stage will also help you better prepare your body for breastfeeding when baby is born.

Therefore, you need to eat a sensible and well-balanced diet to maintain your own health, as well as your unborn baby's. This is what "eating for two" is all about, and not what most people believe as eating double of everything!

In general, pregnant mums can fulfil their daily nutritional needs by consuming adequate amounts of nutrient-dense foods. When it comes to eating right and well throughout your pregnancy, the key words are: balance, moderation, and variety.

· Balance - Eat a balanced diet that combines foods from the five major foods groups in the Malaysian Food Pyramid to provide a proper balance of nutrients. For busy working mums-to-be, who may not have time to eat nutritious meals every time, key nutrients such as iron, folic acid, zinc, and calcium can also be obtained from fortified milk or supplements.

· Moderation - Eat the right amounts of foods to maintain a healthy weight gain throughout your pregnancy, and to optimise your body's metabolic processes.

· Variety - Eat different types of foods from each of the food groups every day to optimise your intake of various nutrients.

Mums-to-be should not "go on a diet" just because they are concerned about gaining too much weight during pregnancy, or just because they are worried about the possibility of not being able to lose weight after delivery.

Remember, gaining weight is a natural part of the pregnancy process. If you deprive yourself of essential nutrients, you run the risk of delivering an undernourished baby.

However, it is just as important to maintain a healthy well-balanced diet, as too much fat intake may lead to excessive maternal postpartum weight retention. Therefore, pregnant mums should wisely select foods that are rich in essential nutrients, yet low in fat. This will help in controlling calorie intake while providing crucial nutrients at the same time. Obesity during pregnancy has been found to be an independent risk factor for neural tube defects, foetal mortality, and pre-term delivery.

Adequate intake of certain vitamins and minerals are particularly crucial during pregnancy. Iron and folic acid are two of the most important.