Ask Dr Miriam

QMy daughter is thinking of getting pregnant but she’s very overweight. I’ve tried to encourage her to lose weight before she gets pregnant because it will be very hard for her to lose the weight afterwards. What do you think?

AI totally agree with you, and what might persuade her is some recent evidence showing a mother’s healthy lifestyle can lower the risk of obesity in a baby after it is born.

I don’t want to preach, but a very large study of women with a healthy lifestyle who had a healthy weight, a good diet, took regular exercise and didn’t smoke, found they had a low risk of having a child who’d become overweight or obese. In nearly 17,000 mothers and babies, the babies of such women had a 75% lower risk of obesity compared to the babies of mums who didn’t look after themselves. The risk of obesity in mothers and babies fell by 82% for mums who followed a healthy lifestyle.

But of course a father’s lifestyle could play a critical role in the development of obesity in babies as well.