Boost your energy, fight the fat, and get your pre-baby body back!
If I could wave my magic Fairy Godmother wand and grant you three wishes for your pregnancy, what would they be?
- To stay fit and firm during your pregnancy and banish wobbly fat and cellulite forever?
- To nurture a healthy and happy baby?
- To have an easy labor?
- To have an even better figure after pregnancy than before you started?
OK, well that’s four, but hey, who’s counting?! Well, no sooner said than done, your wish is my command! Here’s what you need to know to make the most of your pregnancy fitness program and guarantee your pregnancy health and happiness:
1. Nutrition, nutrition, nutrition.
Good pregnancy nutrition really is the foundation of a successful pregnancy health and fitness program. There is still the common belief that if you exercise properly you can eat pretty much what you like, but this is so wrong! Exercise only counts for 20 percent, your pregnancy diet is 80 eighty. You really are what you eat and now, your baby is too!
To keep the pregnancy pounds and cellulite at bay you should be eating from clean, wholesome, nutrient dense foods 90 percent of the time. This means avoiding processed foods like the plague and giving a wide berth to sugar, wheat, and processed dairy. Base your pregnancy diet around fresh fruit and vegetables, fresh organic animal proteins (like corn fed chicken, grass fed beef and organic eggs) and whole non-wheat grains (like oats, rye, millet, quinoa and buckwheat).
2. We are 70 percent water.
Water is essential for a healthy thriving baby and pregnant women are terrible at drinking enough of it, (probably something to do with having to pee every two seconds!). The volume of your amniotic fluid is completely dependent on how much water you drink. If you don’t drink enough (even if you are only 500 mililiters short) your amniotic fluid will decrease. Amniotic fluid protects your baby from shock, nourishes him through the nutrients held in it, and develops your baby’s lungs—he must inhale and exhale the fluid for the tissues to form properly.
Use this formula to work out what you should be drinking: Body Mass (lbs) / 50 = X litres water per day
3. Pregnancy Specific Exercise: Resistance Training
Resistance training during pregnancy is a must! Your pregnant body is going to change dramatically over the next nine months or so and to make sure you don’t suffer with nasty aches and pains like pregnancy back pain you need be strong enough to deal with the extra load your baby will put on you.
Strength training also prepares your body for the intense physicality of labor. The stronger and fitter you are the easier your labor will be!
Lastly, resistance training builds lean muscle and lean muscle is your metabolism. If you want to stay in shape and avoid piling on pregnancy pounds and losing your body to a mass of wobbly fat and saggy cellulite then strength training is the ONLY way to do it! fifteen minutes of short burst resistance training three times per week is plenty to keep you fit and firm and ready to get beck into your skinny jeans just days after your baby is born!
4. Pregnancy Specific Exercise: Interval Training
The most effective way to do your cardio during pregnancy is to interval train. Long, boring cardio sessions that take thirty minutes or more are a waste of time and will leave you feeling overtired without any results!
Interval training is short, sweet and to the point and will rev up your metabolism long after your fifteen minutes is up. So to keep your metabolism working for the next twenty-four hours focus on sixty seconds of moderately-high intensity work followed by sixty seconds of very light activity and repeat for six complete rounds.
