Pregnancy WAP diet

[WendyC]

I mean - seriously.

Seriously??

http://www.westonaprice.org/children...ormothers.html

Beef every day? Every day? I really belive in the WAP philosophy, I have drastically altered how I cook, what I eat, how my family eats - but it seems like this diet is totally unrealisitic. Fish every day too? Come on.

Out of this I have kinda picked and choose my top priorites - would you agree? What would you try to eat daily?

-CLO, daily in smoothie with coconut oil & raw yogurt

-Eggs, eggs, eggs

-Beef 2-3 times per week

-Daily cup of bone broth

-Snack on fresh fruit, raw veggies & nuts

-Tall glass of raw milk daily

- Shellfish/fish once a week or so (I hate fish)

What did you guys do durring pregnancy?

[newcastlemama]

I think it is pretty meats heavy. Your plan looks fine. I think the point is to eat whole traditional foods with plenty of good fats. That is what I plan for during my next pregnancy. Plus, when I am pregnant sometimes only certain foods sound good so you do the best you can.
Congrats on the pregnancy!


Jennifer

[Panserbjorne]

I did it with minimal meat. In the end though I loaded on meats. I did what I could, but I wonder if I had eaten more if my last month would have been different. My body definitely craved meat at the end in a way that makes me wonder if I was really deficient.

[alamama]

I more or less followed the Bradley method diet, which I think is very compatible with WAP:

http://www.bradleybirth.com/PD.aspx

I found the guidelines on produce helpful (daily citrus and greens, orange veggies multiple times per week, etc). The emphasis is on protein intake, and I personally could not get enough protein just from eggs and milk -- I got where I just had to have a break from so many eggs. But there are plenty of other options for protein besides beef every day. I did lots of smoothies with kefir or raw milk, almonds, cocounut oil, etc.

My iron levels dropped below what even my laid-back midwife was comfortable with, so I really had to supplement to bring them back up. I didn't eat liver (blech!) but did take a liver supplement among other things.

Congratulations on your pregnancy!

[WendyC]

I have an odd twist to the usual anemia/pregnancy problem. I havehemochromatosis, which means my body retains too much iron. Usually it bleeds out once a month, but since I will not have a period for about 2 years, I kinda need to watch it. So I don't want to overload too much on liver and whatnot.

I like the bradley diet - that seems really sensible, especially when you add NT techniques on top of it.

Thanks for your well wishes! We are really excited!

[Panserbjorne]

Here's the thing FWIW and IMO: I really respect WAP. He was a genius. Sally Fallon, not so much. WAP observed and recorded then drew conclusions from his research which (again, IMO) are NOT the same things that Fallon says. IF an indiginous tribe ate beef, bone broths and organ meats and collected eggs as well, it doesn't mean that they ALSO dosed on CLO, shellfish, yogurt, raw milk, coconut oil etc.

These are all super foods, don't get me wrong. I have been reading WAP from about 5 years and Fallon for almost as long. I just don't know about loading all of these foods. We have no studies or data to show what eating all of them at once would do. That never happened in these tribes. A tribe that ate fish/CLO or just cod livers and shellfish was likely not also having alot of bone broth and beef, KWIM? Just something to think about. I don't think you need to cram all of those macronutrients into your days. Just eat superior foods, make sure they come from great sources and are nutrient dense. That's what seems to make the most sense.

I didn't get enough protein, I don't think. But, that being said, I could have doubled it and still not been eating what Sally Fallon thinks is the ideal!

This is something I am processing through right now. So it's just an observation.

[newcastlemama]

Firefaery- That is interesting about Price vs Fallon. I have thought about the CLO thing before. Like it may not be suited for people who's traditional diets did not include fish. We had a thread here recently about findng your traditional diet. (For example my ancestors are northern European and seeing if their foods work for me).

I would like to have a discussion on what you wrote firefaery. (I find you hold a very intelligent conversation in regards to the nutrition posts I have read What kind of diet do you eat? Are you still mostly raw? I went through a transistion from "Eat to Live" to NT. I am still attracted to an idea of combining what I learned as a mostly raw vegetarian and WAP. I am thinking eating alll the enzymes plus having the benefits of fats and some animal products (raw milk, eggs, meat) would make for a pretty good diet.
I guess my main problem with E2L is that you don't eat many calories and as little fat as possible--I felt too weak eating that way.

Let's talk!
Jennifer

[alamama]

I would like to have a discussion on what you wrote firefaery.

Me too! I'd love to discuss the difference in WAP and SF and also the intersection of raw/vegan or other produce dominated approaches with a traditional diet. Wanna start a new thread?

[WendyC]

You know, my dh and i have gotten into fights about this too! He will go off on how "our" (meaning mainly British Isle) ansectors never had coconut oil, and I don't really have a good response to that. He's right! And should Pregnant Asian moms have a quart of milk per day when traditionally their cultures consumed small or no quanities of milk? Off to see the new thread.....

[kallyn]

I've long suspected this too, but I never put it into so many words! I always had this vision in my head that each culture ate foods that complented each other perfectly to provide proper nutrition. To leave something out, or to add a foreign dietary component in, would upset the balance IMO.

Has another thread been started? I didn't see one in this or the nutrition and good eating forum.

[zoebird]

it's too much for me. my husband and i did a caloric calculation for the daily diet on the WAP suggestions. It came to over 3000 cals a day. Right now (not pregnant, in good shape, etc), i consume between 1800 and 2000 cals a day.

now, i know that during pregnancy you need to go up about 1/10 of the total. so, that would be 2,200 cals for me. during lactation, BFing 'burns' on average of 500 cals a day, so one would at least need to meet that (go up 300 more cals for me to 2,500 cals/day--but that also depends upon activity levels at the time too).

so, the WAP ideas didn't work so well for me. I developed my own diet that is sugar and gluten free. i start with a foundation of fresh veggies, then i have 3-4 pieces of fruit a day, and then 4 servings of dairy (milk products), 2 eggs/day, 2-3 servings of grains/beans, a serving of cod liver oil, and a few other specialized supplements that i've worked out (like spirulina and related, and herbal teas/etc from Wise Woman Herbal for the Child Bearing Year by Susun Weed).

but the caloric structure, right now, is decreased so i don't eat quite as much dairy and eggs as here, but the nutrient spectrum is the same as it would be for a pregnancy diet (and actually, right now i'm doing a flax oil boost for omega 3 for three months and then switching to a balanced vegetarian oil called Udo's blend and then moving to cod liver oil).

so, i utilized a lot of information from a variety of sources and came up with a diet that i could actually eat. taking CLO is a tough on for me, but i'm willing to do it.

[newcastlemama]

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...d.php?t=519077 New thread in General Nutrition and Good Eating Forum. (I like the sound of your diet zoebird tell us more about that!)

[kmamma]

Where's the recent thread on finding a traditional diet in regards to ancestry? I suppose I wouldn't be able to find it using the search term "traditional"!

This is something I'm really interested in. I've been trying to find books about it, but nothing yet.

[Shirelle]

Okay, I have an observation regarding letting your eating being guided by your ancestry. First of all, my ancestry is a mixture of European and Native American. This is just my rudimentary observation, but wouldn't our ancestors perhaps have evolved into their eating as well? Wouldn't you want to eat based on where you live, rather than how your ancestors ate? In my mind, the foods that are the most abundant where you live, would probably be the most nutrient dense, as they are able to thrive based on the amount of precipitation, sun, etc. If I lived in Kansas, would it make more sense for me to eat a diet high in salmon or beef as my protein source?

Again, totally rudimentary (possibly off-base) observations/questions.

[Panserbjorne]

It takes a REALLY long time to adapt and evolve. Many people believe that we have still not adapted to handle grains and we all know how long agriculture has been around. It's not a matter of what happens from generation to generation...

Even from the standpoint of genes you would be drawing conclusions. My family is Irish. Genetically I should be able to eat oats and fish etc. I am actually unable to eat oats. (of course that's a whole other forum!) My point is there is MORE here than people like to look at. It isn't just about ancestry, metabolic type, blood type etc. All of these pieces can help you (some more than others) but there isn't an exact formula.

I think it is unwise in any case to say that people have eaten food X in regions X,Y and Z for thousands of years and therefore it's a great food that everyone should be eating every day. I don't know. Still processing.

[Panserbjorne]

Oh, and Shirelle, there are plenty of people that subscribe to that belief and only eat what can be found locally. Of course it's much better in terms of freshness, but not necessarily going to be your best bet in the long run-unless of course you have a wide variety of things available to you. I could do that and just adjust my macronutrient ratio as needed, but I would get bored.