Preventing excess weight gain during pregnancy is imperative for the health of you and your baby. Excess weight gained during pregnancy can place the unborn baby at risk, create complications during the birth process and place the mother at risk for gestational diabetes and high blood pressure.

A sensible and a healthy eating plan from your food coach, coupled with regular, light and low impact exercise is the best. Although many diets are considered safe for pregnant women, they should be avoided. Essential vitamins, minerals and nutrients can be lost in the process.

While weight control is important, it is understood that the exercising will be low-impact and without placing any undue stress on the body. This is not a time to enter your first marathon, or try and squeeze back into your old jeans, but a time for sensible, relaxing movements and a balanced approach to exercise and rest.

How many times a week should I train?

The recommended guidelines are that women are active for 20-30 minutes, 5 times a week at moderate intensity. For strength training it is recommended that you complete a program as set by a personal trainer 1-2 times per week for 30 minutes.

How hard should I train?

Don’t over-do it. There are a few measures which help us monitor our body’s temperature, one is heart rate and the other is perceived intensity. You don't want to become breathless or exhausted - you should always be able to carry on a conversation with someone next to you. If you can sing, you may not be exercising intensely enough, but if you are too breathless to speak, then slow down.

When you're pregnant, your heart rate increases and is more sensitive to changes. For example, light walking may make you feel breathless when you used to be able to jog. We now suggest using the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) Scale, also called the Modified Borg Scale. This scale ranges from 1 to 10, and is a self-assessment. When pregnant, you should exercise between level 4 (somewhat hard) and level 6 (hard).
 

Sample RPE Scale

10 – Extremely hard
9
8
7 – Very had
6
5 – Hard
4 – Somewhat hard
3 – Moderate
2 – Weak (light)
1 – Very Weak
0 – Nothing at all

Heart rate

As your heart rate is already increased and more sensitive, the change in heart rate is not an absolute measure of intensity. However if you are using heart rate monitor, most guidelines advise a heart rate of 140 beats/ minute. This figure however can vary and active women’s with reasonable fitness can go from 150-160 beats/minute as long as no adverse symptoms are evident

Your muscles

Strength training is generally fine during pregnancy, but as your body changes so must some of the exercises. It is important to keep the intensity levels moderate which means being able to do 15 repetitions comfortably. We suggest you chat to one of the fabulous Fernwood trainers about the right exercises for you depending on your stage of pregnancy!