Pregnancy is perhaps the most eventful experience you can have in your lifetime. Your body will change in shape and add weight in all three trimesters, making you feel limited to body massage to relieve muscle aches.
You can plan your fitness program to fit your new status while maintaining a healthy lifestyle. However, you’ll need guidance on what exercise activities will ensure your and your child’s safety. Keeping your nutrition in check is essential to avoid health complications.
How To Stay Fit And Healthy During Pregnancy
Staying active during pregnancy has a significant impact on life after giving birth. Without straining, you can reverse your body transformation to your preferred size, shape, and weight. All that is achievable through a pregnancy workout plan that’s easy to incorporate into your lifestyle.
Furthermore, visiting your doctor for an assessment before starting any workout would be best. It can give you insights into what exercises are permissible at every stage of the pregnancy and which activities not to attempt. You don’t want to jeopardize your pregnancy.
Therefore, obstetric care is crucial to staying fit and healthy during pregnancy. Obstetric Excellence provides the highest quality care to pregnant women, focusing on this time of your life through your perspective to provide the best possible care. You can learn more here.
Read on to learn how to stay fit and healthy during pregnancy.
Hydration And Nutrition
Water aids digestion and helps in the amniotic fluid’s healthy formation to protect the fetus. Moreover, water helps in proper nutrient circulation and toxin elimination. Hence, experts advise pregnant women to drink about 8 to 12 cups of water daily.
Begin by increasing your fluid intake and ensuring you’re constantly hydrated. It can help recover water loss during the training exercises you’ll be undertaking. Also, plan your meals to complement your hydration and add energy to your body.
It’s advisable to consult your nutritionist before having any food or drink to avoid health complications. You can ask them to create a manageable diet plan for your needs and cravings during the pregnancy.
Your body needs fuel throughout the three trimesters of your pregnancy, and an excellent healthy diet allows you to maintain that requirement while reaching your fitness goals.
Cardio Exercises
During the first trimester of your pregnancy, choose low-impact exercises like walking, swimming, water aerobics, and yoga. Running and jogging are also applicable. As your baby grows, you’ll find it more challenging to keep up with cardio exercises, but you still need them to have a stronger body to prepare yourself for labor and delivery.
Cardio exercises are good for increasing your heart rate and increasing blood flow. Such activities may lower swelling all over the body, but it should be manageable to avoid accidents such as passing out due to high blood pressure. The exercise must have intervals to catch your breath and refuel your body systems.
For instance, you can find telehealth exercise recordings made by professional trainers online. You can copy the movements as shown but modify them as needed to avoid overexerting your body.
Pregnant women should also avoid rapid direction changes, jarring motions, and any exercise that may cause abdominal trauma. So, you must avoid extensive jumping, skipping, bouncing, or hopping. Don’t do deep knee bends, double leg raises, straight-leg toe touches, and full sit-ups.
Muscle Exercises
Your fitness workout should help maintain a healthy pregnancy and prepare you for safe delivery. The muscle exercises can cover your whole body for mobility and target specific muscle groups like stomach strengthening workouts and pelvic muscles.
Moreover, it would be best to moderate the intensity to avoid muscle pulls or strains that can trigger false labor pains or, worst-case scenario, a miscarriage. Therefore, it’s important to keep hydrating throughout your exercises.
Kegel exercises are a highly recommended muscle exercise for pregnant women. It strengthens the pelvic floor or vaginal muscles by voluntarily controlling them. It’s like stopping urine flow or holding it for about 10 seconds, then slowly releasing it. It is done in 20 repetitions, five times daily. This muscle exercise can also prevent urinary incontinence or involuntary urination after childbirth.
It’s essential to learn that exercise varies from the first trimester to the third trimester. Specifically, workouts in the second and third that force you to lie flat on your back put your pregnancy at risk. You must check without your physician and advise the trainer against such exercises.
Resistance Training
Resistance training entails using workout bands and body weights for all your exercises. It’s less strenuous and can help with muscle stretches. Also, it strengthens the body parts you’re targeting in your fitness workout program. But primarily, resistance workouts work well for bones and joints to increase mobility when experiencing joint pains or backache.
For instance, you can use resistance bands for shoulder, back, and leg workouts since they mainly use muscle groups for motion. Resistance training is suitable for warming up muscles whenever you kick-start your pregnancy workout.
Rest
After all the stressful workouts you’ve undergone, it’s wise to take a break and rest your body. It’s part of the workout plan and gives you time to recover from rigorous activities. You can find a masseuse or a midwife to help massage the sore muscles and help you to relax.
Moreover, you must get plenty of sleep to avoid fatigue caused by overstressing your body when working out. Rest is necessary for any fitness plan to ensure proper energy recovery.
Conclusion
Whether you’re into fitness or not, staying fit and healthy during pregnancy can be challenging if you don’t know what to do. Your body transforms due to added weight and changes in size during nine months. Begin by consulting your physician for guidance on the best approach to your pregnancy workout. It helps design your fitness program, including a diet plan to avoid pregnancy complications. Above are simple ways to keep fit during your pregnancy.