Food cravings are common during pregnancy and can cause excessive weight gain if left unchecked. If you are pregnant and you regularly feel irrepressible cravings for food, all the tips are below to prevent you from raising the scale needle unnecessarily, without any frustration.

What is a hunger pang?

The craving corresponds to an uncontrollable need and an irrepressible desire to eat. It results in the imperative need to fill the felt hunger.

Due to the hormonal upheaval, cravings are frequent during pregnancy: they appear more often from the 2nd and during the 3rd trimester. But these cravings can be felt as early as the first trimester.

Why does pregnancy promote cravings?

Hormones, especially estrogen, play a key role in the onset of cravings in pregnant women. Secreted by the placenta during pregnancy, “estrogens make future mothers anxious and nervous, thus promoting what can be called compulsive relapses”, specifies Doctor Christian Jamin, gynecologist and endocrinologist in Paris. The pregnant woman can then throw herself on foods that she generally forbids herself, suddenly letting herself be guided by previously underlying impulses. This phenomenon is also known under the name of “releases of disafference”.

Insulin could also be important in the onset of cravings. This hormone, also secreted by the pancreas, is increased more quickly during pregnancy just after meals to allow sugar to enter cells. Once the glucose is absorbed, hypoglycemia – which causes hunger pangs and cravings – occurs.

If these cravings have physiological origins, it is quite possible to control them by making sure to follow some simple hygiene and diet advice.

The golden rule to avoid being hungry between meals is of course to make sure you eat enough at each meal. These meals should be 3 in number, whatever your pace and eating habits. One or more snacks can possibly be added to these meals if necessary.

To avoid any cravings, and what is more to meet the needs of your body and those of your baby, it is necessary that each meal is balanced and sufficient in terms of quality.

Breakfast

Always start your day with breakfast, even if you eat it late in the morning. This well-constituted meal will allow you to have all the energy that your body (and that of your child) needs after the long fast that has been imposed on it throughout the night.

Ideally, it will be composed as follows:

• A drink: herbal tea, tea or coffee (possibly decaffeinated or decaffeinated depending on your sensitivity)
• A cereal product: bread, oatmeal, muesli, porridge
• A source of fat: 10 g of butter, a tablespoon of whole almond puree or 10 almonds / hazelnuts for example
• A fruit: preferably whole and in season, or a freshly squeezed fruit juice
• A dairy: yogurt, fromage blanc, faisselle or petits-suisse

And if you suffer from nausea, know that these ailments generally pass easily once you are no longer fasting. So there is only one remedy: eat! And this is all the more valid in the morning, the time of day when nausea is most felt. When you get up, take a glass of water, optionally choose sparkling water or water to which you have added a squeeze of lemon. The acidity indeed allows some women to better fight nausea. Afterwards, if you cannot swallow a real meal, make do with a glass of fruit juice, a few almonds and a yogurt. You will eat a grain product later in the morning.

Lunch and dinner

Lunch and dinner are meals that must also be perfectly balanced to avoid cravings between meals.

At noon and in the evening, be sure to eat a source of protein (meat, fish, eggs, ham or chicken breast) which are a very satietogenic nutrient (they will avoid snacking) and give pride of place to vegetables, which, in addition to their richness in vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, are rich in very satiating fibers.

So, here is how to compose each of these two meals:

• One meat, one fish or two eggs
• Vegetables: raw or cooked, fresh, canned or frozen, according to your preference and according to the season
• Starchy foods: bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, quinoa, lentils, split peas, dried beans, bulgur, semolina, etc.
• A fruit: preferably fresh and in season. Behaviors are also a possible alternative
• A dairy: yogurt, fromage blanc, faisselle or petits-suisse
• Optionally: a portion of cheese (lunch OR evening)

To avoid hypoglycaemia which inevitably leads to snacking, it is important to limit foods which increase blood sugar too strongly and which subsequently induce reactive hypoglycemia. These are foods with a high Glycemic Index such as white sugar, traditional bread but also potatoes for example.

In fact, the higher the Glycemic Index (GI) of a food, the more it increases blood sugar and the greater the reaction hypoglycemia, by secretion of insulin, will be important. The reverse is of course valid.

The objective, to avoid cravings, is therefore to favor foods with a low or medium GI, or at least to avoid those with a high GI. Here is the list of low GI foods:

• Grain products for the morning: oatmeal, oat bran, wholemeal bread, bran bread, German black bread, Wasas Fibers®, All Bran® cereal
• Starchy foods: basmati rice, quinoa, bulgur, sweet potato, whole wheat semolina, wholemeal pasta, spaghetti cooked al ‘dente, lentils, split peas, chickpeas, white beans, red beans, flageolet beans
• Fruits: the vast majority of fruits.
• Vegetables: almost all vegetables.
• Sweetening products: stevia, agave syrup, fructose, coconut sugar, xylitol (birch sugar)

On the other hand, avoid white bread and wholemeal bread, white pasta, pre-cooked or non-basmati rice and fast-cooking pasta (microwaveable bags), potatoes, overripe bananas and the combination of cooked carrots. , cooked turnip and parsnip. Brown sugar, cane sugar and rapadura should be replaced by low GI sweetening products, such as those previously mentioned.

If, despite three balanced meals with mostly low Glycemic Index foods, you feel hungry between meals and you feel the need to snack, start by increasing the amount of vegetables at each meal. Rich in fiber, they have a strong capacity to satiate. And if that’s not enough, feel free to set up a snack, or even two snacks if necessary.

At a time when you feel a little hungry on a recurring basis, treat yourself to a real snack and think about preparing yourself a drink, hot or cold, which will allow you to fill your stomach well and feel full.

Here are some examples of perfectly balanced snacks:

• Drink: herbal tea, tea or coffee (possibly decaffeinated or decaffeinated depending on your sensitivity)
• 1 whole fresh fruit in season
• 10 almonds
• Drink: herbal tea, tea or coffee (possibly decaffeinated or decaffeinated depending on your sensitivity)
• 1 slice of integral bread, German bread or bran bread
• 2 squares of 10% cocoa dark chocolate
• Drink: herbal tea, tea or coffee (possibly decaffeinated or decaffeinated depending on your sensitivity)
• Dairy: yogurt, fromage blanc, faisselle or petits-suisse
• Compote

Beyond meeting your increased water needs during pregnancy, drinking on a regular basis often helps to mask the urge to snack.

Indeed, when the stomach is full, it delivers to the brain a neuronal message indicating the start of the digestion process and, once the information has been recorded, after twenty minutes, it sends back to the body a message of satiety which corresponds to a state of non-hunger. These processes are valid, including when the stomach is filled with empty calories and fluids as is the case when drinking water for example.

To hydrate yourself and fool your brain in case of cravings, opt for still, sparkling, bottled water or even tap water. The key is to stay hydrated throughout the day with small sips and larger sips when you feel the urge to snack.

If you are having trouble drinking, here are some effective tips:

• Prepare yourself a hot drink at fixed times, in the morning and in the afternoon: serve yourself a large cup of tea or coffee (preferably arabica) – however do not exceed 3 cups a day, of infusion or a large glass of water with the addition of fresh citrus juice (lemon, grapefruit or orange for example).
• Always carry a small bottle of water with you in your purse.
• Place a bottle of water in strategic places to be more tempted to drink: on your desk, on the living room table or coffee table, on your bedside table, etc.