I’ve always loved Friends. (RIP Matthew Perry, you will be missed). It’s very much of my era, and it still makes me laugh. The characters are genuinely awful, but in an endearing way. My favourite is Monica. She’s striving to be the ideal woman, and does this by nurturing the others. And of course, she used to be fat. This aspect of her back story resonates with me because, as my brutally-honest-first-born exclaimed, upon seeing a picture of my younger self: “Mum, you were fat!” Me, I’d have said chubby, but you get the drift. [Full disclosure: I was 2 stone heavier]. Why am I sharing this? Because I’m supposed to give nutrition advice to pregnant women. And you’d think it’d be easy for me to dispense such advice, given that I appear to have got the gist of it. And my experience of losing weight means I truly do empathise with anyone who is on that journey. So what’s the problem? Once again, I’m feeling guilty. Being the child of middle class French parents means that I learned (was forced) to eat my veggies. I learned to cook by watching my mum, who unfailingly produced delicious healthy meals. Every. Single. Day. Plus my nursing and midwifery background means that I’m pretty clued up about nutrition. I’ve been calling out dubious miracle diets for decades. Cabbage soup? Disgusting and unsustainable. Juicing? Palatable but unsustainable. Atkins? Don’t even get me started. Paleo? In this day and age? Should we get rid of electricity too? And then there’s the fact that I have the resources to cook, you know, a reasonably well appointed kitchen [Full disclosure, I actually don’t like cooking, it’s boring and repetitive and generates a mess, and my kitchen reflects this: it is merely functional, my kids think it ought to be much much more modern…] Oh, and another guilt- inducing biggie: I have time to cook. All this to say that I am hardly in a position to proselytise about weight management since I had all the advantages and it was still hard. It still is. The two main things I’ve learned along the way are that: there is no miracle diet; and exercise is mandatory. Which sucks because I dislike exercise even more than cooking. But I do both because it works for me. And because I can (#lucky-to-have-the-time). I am also hyper aware that what works for me is by no means guaranteed to work for anyone else. We’re all so different. I cannot bear to go to bed hungry, so for me, the not eating after 5pm “rule” is beyond heinous! I have 10 minutes allocated for breakfast (which I swear by although others wouldn’t) but who’s got time for breakfast eggs? Did I mention I dislike cooking? Cooking first thing is just another way to add to (already abundant) morning misery! But I do have one mantra: Eat carbs. Seriously, even diabetic people have to eat carbs; they get insulin so that they can absorb said life-sustaining carbs. I mean, sure, reduce the sugar, increase the lentils, but this brings me to my next nugget of nutritional gold: do eat cake/crisps/chocolate. In moderation, obviously. But life without chocolate? Unsustainable. As I see it, it’s not just about good maternal diet in pregnancy (although obviously that can’t hurt) but parents have a huge role to play in modelling good eating habits for their kids. My aim, as a midwife (if I had all the time in the world, and I really don’t) and as a mother (and here I do have time, as my long suffering kids can attest) is to promote a healthy and sustainable diet, whatever that might look like for the individual family. Festive meals will feature regularly; it makes sense to factor these into the plan and model moderation because you cannot realistically model abstinence. It’s not going to happen overnight, but if I can plant the seeds of basic nutrition while I have that pregnant woman’s undivided attention, then maybe, just maybe, when she comes to wean that child, she’ll be in a position to offer some delicious veggies. Which may or may not be tolerated by said child, but, you know, I never said it was easy!