You've always heard that, during pregnancy, you are eating for two. While that sounds great, it just doesn't happen to be true.

The truth is, you should continue to eat healthy, only adding a total of about 300 calories to your normal daily intake — and then only after the first trimester.  

Here's an updated maxim about pregnancy that is true: Underfeeding or overfeeding your baby during pregnancy will affect your child's future health.

If you eat so little during pregnancy that your baby weighs less than six pounds at birth, you may be increasing your child's risk for heart disease, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes later on.

That's because lower-birth-weight infants have fewer muscle cells to begin with, which means that any catch-up growth or rapid weight gains made during the first year of life are going to consist of more fat cells than muscle.

On the flipside, eating too much during pregnancy, especially high-fat and high-sugar foods, dumps high levels of fat and sugar into your bloodstream. That fat and sugar, of course, will in turn affect those areas in the fetus' brain that regulate its appetite and food preferences later in life. Eating a diet high in fat and sugar during pregnancy is ultimately predisposing your child to being overweight.

So what can you do during pregnancy to positively affect your child's lifetime health? Check out these tips:

• Eat a healthy diet with plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and low-fat dairy products.
• Avoid high-sugar, high-fat foods.
• If possible, breastfeed your baby. Breastfeeding has been shown to reduce a child's chances of ending up overweight or developing type 2 diabetes. Breastfeeding, too, may help your baby maintain high levels of HDL ("good") cholesterol.

Eat right during pregnancy and jumpstart your child's health for life.