Should you give in to your cravings in pregnancy?
A couple weeks ago I went to pick up an online order from Walmart. I waited inside the parking stall for the muffin cups and the little baggies that we will be using for baked goods. To my surprise, there were a couple extras in the bag that were ordered from Abigail. There was some nostalgic chocolate wafer bars that she had purchased for $1.50.
Great deal! She is pregnant after all, so a good dutiful husband should give her whatever she wants, right?
Wrong.
Cravings come from a lack of a certain nutrient. If you are craving chocolate, chances are you are low in magnesium. I am not going to go into the laundry list of what cravings constitute what, but our primal instincts should give us an understanding if we would just pay attention to them. We will talk about how to satisfy cravings in a later episode/blog post.
back to my lovely fiancé
If you are in a sexual relationship, and you want to become healthier, it is absolutely imperative that both partners in the relationship are in unity on this matter. It takes two to tango, and a couple unequally yoked in this regard will surely crumble. The fact is, that Abigail has full intention of eating as healthy as possible during the duration of her pregnancy and beyond. And to that end, she has done a might fine job overall. However, she is of the imperfect human race. Human relationships exist for couples to offset each other's weaknesses, to lift each other up in moments of weakness. Certainly, all humans have moments of weakness, and it is a nice thing when the opposite partner in the relationship can offset that weakness. After all, we are social creatures regardless of how introverted we may be. It would be a fool's errand for me to accommodate a temporary craving only for her to have a stomachache later and be mad at me for allowing her to eat such a thing.
A quick look at the ingredients list of the wafers: hydrogenated vegetable oil, cotton seed oil, canola oil, soybean oil, sugar, enriched flour, dextrose, hydrogenated palm kernel oil, vegetable shortening, palm and soybean oil, sodium propionate, sorbic acid, preservatives. None of these belong in a human body. Certainly not a pregnant body.
“But Jimmy, no baby died because of one box of chocolate wafers!” This is the mentality of so many readers. It is absolutely wrong. “One *insert junk food here* never killed nobody! These are very common phrases that I hear when discussing the importance of nutrition with people. It is no wonder that being average in today's degenerate society literally means being obese. Being obese is the same as being unhealthy. More people die from obesity than any other cause every year. It dwarfs any of the statistics whether real or fake from COVID deaths. It is not reported in the news, yet this is the reality. It is time for men to wake up and lead their families into health. It will take leaders for this nation's health to get back into form. I wonder what God thinks when all these people that have access to nutrition education and the grocery stores we have, yet continuously choose the easy, cheap and fast route and come into church and ask him to heal their diabetes and other obesity related diseases. I wonder just how motivated he is to heal them when they take such little responsibility of their own health.
You don't have to indulge in whatever pregnancy cravings your little baby desires. The baby will survive without chocolate wafers, without chocolate covered bananas, without Neapolitan ice cream, and whipped cream topped Oreos. Your baby will be just fine. Eating a balanced diet of real whole foods, void of empty calories and processed flours, sugars and oils will do wonders in curbing the cravings. I am pleased to report that Abigail has not once begged me to get her a sausage McMuffin from McDonald's throughout her pregnancy.
My daughter will thank me later.
Thanks for reading, dear reader! Let’s get back to a healthy holistic lifestyle so we can truly live out God’s purpose for our lives to be great and take care of ourselves as well as our fellow man!