 Hello, I am Dr. Rashmi Dasoza, a qualified nutrition therapist, health and wellness coach, and an ENT surgeon. To start with, I am here today to give you useful tips on prenatal nutrition. Well, let me start with a real life scenario. Imagine you have with you a state wherein there are guests coming home. What would you do then? You would want to plan it out elaborately, wouldn't you? You have someone coming home to stay for a day or two, or probably you just have someone coming to have a meal. There is so much of preparation that would go behind it. Probably you would stock up the house, you clean it up, you would cook up an elaborate meal, you would be totally equipped with it. We don't need a planner for it. You are all awesome planners. You could probably do it with absolute perfection if you were to do it backwards as well. What doesn't strike you probably then is, if you can plan so much for a guest who is coming home, when you plan your pregnancy, there is a new guest coming into your body, a new growth, then why don't you do the same? Why don't you start by cleaning up your own body out of all those toxins and disease and disorders? What then should you be doing? You may want to ask me, yes, let me start right now with those useful tips. First of all, you need to eat right. Now I have some clients coming to me and saying, I do not want to start on a diet right now because I am pregnant. It does not work that way, why? Because in our times diet is synchronous with starvation. Most people think that dieting is nothing but eliminating a food group or sticking on to only one food group. We hear so much about the fruit diet, the military diet, general motors diet, all these are food fads that we say, fad diets. I do not recommend you to do that. Well to me a diet is basically eating right. So actually I would suggest you to have a lifestyle change, adopt a new lifestyle. What should you be doing then? Start off right now with cleaning up process, clean with your oral cavity first. What should you do then? Eat right, yes. So what I would suggest is eat wholesome, fresh fruits and vegetables. Do not go on to have that oil laden junk food which is so high in sugar and dense with calories. Do not go for spicy, oily, sugar rich and salty food. All that it would do would affect your blood pressure readings as well as affect your mood swings as well. The first thing when you are pregnant, I would suggest how would you eat right, what would you do the morning? Start off with eating fresh fruit or probably a handful of dried fruits and nuts. The next thing I would suggest is hydrate well. Hydrate so well that the absorption of nutrients and vitamins is never a problem. The assimilation of these becomes much easier. Eat well again would not only mean eat fresh fruits and vegetables, I would as a rule suggest avoid packaged food, avoid processed food, undercooked as well as uncooked meat in the form of salami, sausages or probably bacon, all these that come in packets. Stick to home cooked meals which are your best bet. The second aspect that I would want to bring in here, not only this, iron rich food would be a major thing that should go into your diet, iron and folic acid. What are the things that are there in these? Well green leafy vegetables would be your best thing to have. The next thing would be ragi, fennel seeds, dates, jaggery, carrots, beet roots, vitamin C rich food as in citrus fruits will be your other option. As a rule there should be no alcohol, no smoking. Try and curb your intake of caffeine, tea and coffee to a minimum. The second aspect that I would want to start off with is your exercise. Workout does not mean slogging long hours in the gym, obviously you should not be doing that when you realize that you are pregnant. Workout to me would be any basic form of exercise as recommended by the WHO, the World Health Organization. 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week of moderate intensity workout. Working out again is not a switch off and switch on button, it's a lifestyle. So what should you be doing? Start with something that your body should be used to. Not working out in the gym, not working out at home but something as basic as walking, 20 to 30 minutes a day. The third aspect I would want to bring out here is obviously you are going to be losing out on all that sleep once the child is born. So then make up for it now. Sleep for at least 7 and a half to 8 hours every day because your fitness levels depend on three things, eating right, exercising well and breathing and also sleeping well. When these four aspects are done right, your pregnancy is going to be a breeze, trust me. Now that you are geared up with all this knowledge, just dive right in, good luck.