Can you imagine your baby eating as much as you do? A Dietitian has recommended a 2000 calorie a day diet for baby girl Agatha Holloway. She was born 11 weeks prematurely and has been prescribed the high-calorie diet to help her to catch up to a normal weight.

Agatha almost died shortly after she was born. The 3 pound 11 oz newborn suffered a brain hemorrhage, lung disease, and severe reflux. She stayed in the hospital for almost four months before being allowed home with her parents who live in Surrey in the United Kingdom.

Now she’s 16 months old and weighs only 17 pounds.  The average toddler her age weighs around 25 pounds, so her doctors have told her parents she needs to eat twice as much as other babies her age. She’s eating cartons of cream, roast duck, veggies with olive oil, chocolate and special high calorie milk.

Sounds yummy. Apparently, the diet is all healthy, but calorific food, and she shouldn’t suffer any ill effects from it. And as she catches up to her recommended weight, her parents will gradually reduce the amount she eats to a more normal diet.

It’s the biggest holiday of the year. And it comes with lots of fun and presents, cheers – and calories. I don’t want to dampen your Christmas spirits but there’s no denying it – we tend to feast and fatten ourselves during the holiday season. But cheer up. We need not deprive ourselves of the goodies that Christmas brings. Health experts give us some tips on a healthy holiday diets for us and for our family – with out taking the fun out of the party.

At home

Get yourself a couple of those low-calorie, cholesterol-free recipe books. The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends The Best Healthy Soul Food Recipes cookbook. In addition,

• Load on the vegetables
• For meat, the lean type is preferable; for poultry, go for the light breast mean and take it easy on the thighs and the skin.
• Pan drippings are fat traps, use fat-free liquids instead such as wine, low-sodium tomato juice or lemon juice for basting.
• Slim down the gravy. If you have to use the drippings (it just tastes better, let’s face it), then chill the dripping first and then remove the fat.
• Go for the cranberry sauce. Check out its health benefits here.

At a party

• Go for a variety of food – in small portions.
• At the buffet, go for the sushi and the veggie cuts. However, take it easy on the dips and the salads.
• Take it easy on the wraps and the dim sum. You never know what’s inside.
• If you are sure it’s reduce-fat cheese, then go for it. Otherwise leave the cheese alone.
• Water is still the healthiest drink you can get. If you have to drink alcohol (it has calories, too!), then go for red wine – in moderation. But keep in mind, drinking alcohol while pregnant or even while breastfeeding is a bad idea!

At the supermarket

• Check for products with the AHA heart-check mark. A product carrying this mark “has been screened and verified to meet the AHA’a certification criteria to be low in saturated fat and cholesterol for healthy people over age 2.“
• Check out nutritional facts on the packaging. This US FDA resource: How to Understand and Use the Nutrition Facts Label can help you out.

In the interest of honesty, I’ll let you in on something that most of my friends probably already know but have been kind enough to not mention to me…at least not to my face: I gained too much weight with both my pregnancies, and even though my son is now a preschooler I still haven’t shed all the weight I gained from my first and second pregnancy. I guess when your “baby” starts speaking in complete sentences it becomes absurd to blame the pregnancy for the larger sized pants.

I could have been a little more careful with my eating and exercise during my pregnancies, and I know for sure that I went a little too crazy with my appetite while breastfeeding. I remember a friend telling me that Weight Watchers offers a special program for nursing moms, and while I never checked it out myself I couldn’t help but think that it took some of the fun out of being a nursing mom.

Now I’m reading about a “pregnancy diet” that is designed to help women keep their weight down throughout pregnancy. Talk about taking the fun out of something! It’s one thing to watch what you eat while pregnant and to make sure you get enough exercise, but an actual diet? My jaw would drop if a pregnant friend were to turn down a piece of pie, stating that she was on a diet. A diet? While pregnant? Well, I never.

I did a little research and found out that the diet is supposed to be based on medical research and be safe. Nonetheless, it has some nutritionists and doctors up in arms. I think the fear is that women will get the idea in their head that they aren’t supposed to gain any weight during pregnancy, and that’s just not healthy. I remember cringing at the numbers on the scale when I was pregnant, but never so much that I ever considered going on a diet.

It seems to me that if I had gained too much weight my doctor would have told me to cut back on my caloric intake and to increase my physical activities, but if he had referred me to a diet place I think I might have looked for a different doctor.

Our daughter is underweight. She’s not horrendously underweight, but our pediatrician had some concerns; hence, we have some concerns as well.

If you have ever tried to get an extremely active one year old child to actually sit down long enough to finish a meal, let alone gain any weight, you understand how hard it is to get a toddler to gain some weight. We’ve tried several different methods, but these are what have worked for us thus far:

Counting calories. We’ve really started paying attention to the number of calories that go into her body by checking the calorie counts on her foods. No longer do we let her eat her favorite baby foods as often as before — after doing some research in the baby food aisle of the local grocery store, we discovered that those peas and pears don’t rank very high on the calorie content. So we came up with a list of fruits, vegetables and meats that do have high calorie contents, and give those to her the most. The other foods, such as the peas and pears, are second priority, after she has at least consumed a few of the others.

We are still careful, though, to make sure she eats a variety of fruits and veggies each day, as well as a serving or two of meat.

We also log her calorie intake, and make sure that it reaches a certain number each day. Talk to your pediatrician about your child’s calorie needs and for the number of calories he or she should be consuming each day.

More dairy to her diet. One serving of YoBaby yogurt per day (110 calories), plus a few ounces of whole milk, has allowed us to boost her calorie count. It also increases her protein and calcium consumption, another plus in our books.

Additional or different liquids. Our pediatrician suggested that we start replacing her formula bottles with Pediasure, one serving at a time. We started with one four-ounce bottle, and we’re now up to four four-ounce bottles per day.

We also looked at the juices we were feeding her. Now, instead of a 60-calorie bottle of juice, we’re giving her more bottles of the yogurt blend juices or the higher calorie juices, such as fruit and vegetable juice blends.

All in all, we seem to be doing a pretty good job on the weight front. She’s slowly gaining, and we’re hoping that by her next pediatrician appointment she will be back to where she should be in the percentiles.