1. Avoid Sugar & Junk Carbs

Sugar and junk carbohydrates will increase extra pregnancy weight and fluid gains.  Processed carbohydrates like white bread, breakfast cereals, pasta and baked products in packets will be broken down into sugar in your system also, with the same reaction from your body as raw sugar.

If you don’t burn the excess blood sugar as fuel for the muscles the hormone insulin converts excess blood sugar to fat.  It ends up stored in your adipose tissue, normally for women around your stomach, hips, boobs and arms. Junk carbs and sugar will also prevent your body from using that fat as fuel!

While I would not class it as a junk carb, Fruit is also a type of sugar in the form of fructose and over indulging can increase your fat stores. Fructose is converted into triglycerides via the liver and deposited; yes you guessed it, into your adipose tissue!

Try to limit yourself to 2 servings of fruit a day. I know this can be hard especially during the first trimester when you may be craving vitamin C foods, a craving for a couple of weeks is fine, you just don’t want to be drinking fruit juice and eating oranges all day every day for the next 9 months!

2. Eat Fat & Protein

Women often fear fat, therefore they don’t eat enough thinking that if we don’t eat fat then we won’t get fat. We end up choosing so called ‘low fat healthy options’ instead of choosing full fat whole products.
Eating healthy monounsaturated fats like olive and avocado oil, coconut oil, and quality butter provide you with the means for the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E & K to be absorbed into your system. Crucial for not only your wellbeing but your baby’s development also.

Including quality meats, full fat dairy and eggs will also give you the monounsaturated fats and the protein sources for a complete diet. Protein and fat have a high satiety value, which means they switch off the hormones that tell you that you are hungry. Together they will reduce cravings and stop you snacking on the sweet stuff and will also help to stabilize your blood glucose level.

3. Water

Drinking enough water ensures you keep hydrated, which in turn reduces tiredness and pregnancy nausea. This in itself can stop you from over eating as you may often think you are hungry when you’re really just thirsty.
Drink 2+ liters a day during your pregnancy and more if you are exercising.

4. Recovery and Sleep

Ensure you have enough rest, no athlete would train continuous for 9 months and you shouldn’t either. Our body adapts and improves whilst we are recovering and sleeping, this is even more important through pregnancy.
I would suggest you have an easy week or a complete week off every 6-8 weeks just as you would if you were an athlete training for an event!

Get to bed early in a dark room that will allow you to sleep for a minimum of 8 hours. If your quality sleep isn’t happening you need to be taking steps to fix it! Remember that your body is growing a baby, you need much more rest than normal.

5. Do Exercises You Enjoy

To make sure you maintain your exercise and to help you stay motivated, it helps if you do the exercise and activities that you love. Don’t try and take up swimming if you hate it just because you heard it was good for pregnant women!
You just need to modify your exercise programs by reducing duration and intensity and choosing specific pregnancy exercises that you will enjoy.

Do what you love so you can keep exercising up to birth.

6. Maintain Muscle

You don’t need to lose your muscle tone during pregnancy! To avoid extra pregnancy weight gain and improve prenatal fitness and strength then it is paramount that you exercise. A regular exercise program will maintain muscle tone which in turn increases your metabolism’s need to use fat as fuel.

A strength based program using weights is usually best for muscle maintenance but specific exercises using just your body weight also works well. Strength training will also reduce muscular aches and pains associated with pregnancy and will prepare your body specifically for labour and birth. It’s best to also avoid plodding along on a treadmill. This is usually resorted to as a safe bet when you are not sure what you can do. It is better than doing nothing but will ensure very average results and won’t help maintain muscle tone.

7. Exercise Wear

If your exercise wear looks and feels great then you are going to wear it, as simple as that. Treat yourself to a new workout outfit one that will accentuate your bump and how fit you look to keep you motivated to continue to exercise and stay in shape!

8. Posture

Stand up straight!

You can look slimmer just by being aware of your posture. Rounded shoulders and a forward head posture can reduce the room baby has to grow and move making your bump appear much bigger. It’s also just not an elegant look!
Make sure you include postural strengthening and stretching exercises into your weekly exercise program.
Good posture also helps to reduce lower back and hip pain, position baby into optimal fetal position, reduce diastasis recti-abdominal muscle separation and improve pelvic floor muscle strength.
Learning to carry your pregnancy more efficiently with good posture is a key to pain free 39 weeks.

9. Weighing yourself?

You are going to put on weight during your pregnancy and for women who exercise it can be anything from 8-20kg.  An increase in weight may worry some women if this is you then STOP weighing yourself, it’s not healthy ditch the scales and put your skinny jeans away.

If you are following my tips you are going to stay in fabulous shape during pregnancy so putting on extra pregnancy weight should be the last of your concerns!

If you want to record body measurements to assess your physical changes then I would suggest you measure around the widest part at the top of your arm and leg with a tape measure and record these measurements every 4-5 weeks.
Based on my experience with continuous exercise, minimal fluid and healthy weight gains these 2 areas will not increase by more than 2-4cm.

10. Listen to your body

 

Lastly, listening to your body is the key to staying in shape. Every woman is different and what works for one may not work for another. You will have weeks were you have heaps of energy and others when you have none. Do not push yourself if you are tired, it is not good for you or your baby!

Listen to your body for the best results and to enjoy a happy and healthy pregnancy.

Enjoy keeping fit and healthy during your pregnancy, join our Fakih-IVF Nutritionist to stay in shape and exercise safely during your pregnancy, for any queries related to topic; please get in touch with Fakih IVF by calling 800-FAKIH (32544) or by contacting them via email on [email protected]

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