When pregnant, your weight can fluctuate widely. You could lose weight due to morning sickness, and you'll obviously gain weight as your pregnancy goes on and your baby grows. But there are many facets to weight gain, calories and what's healthy during pregnancy.  We spoke with Dr. Michael Rosenbaum to answer the question, 'Do you burn more calories while pregnant"'
Do you burn more calories when pregnant"
Yes, pregnant women do burn more calories while pregnant, says Dr. Michael Rosenbaum, a professor of pediatrics and medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. "Both your resting and total energy expenditure, or calories burned, increase, especially in the second and third trimesters," he says. He also notes that there is tremendous variability between individuals during pregnancy. "How much weight someone gains during pregnancy depends on how many calories they ingest relative to how many they burn and how much of the weight gained is water," he says.
It's not just the mom burning calories, either. Dr. Rosenbaum says that when considering energy expenditure or calories burned, it should refer to the number of calories burned by the mother and baby together, aka the maternal-fetal unit. "This is important because the fetus burns calories about four times faster, and this will become a bigger factor in determining energy expenditure as the fetus grows," he says.
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