Hilde's Blog Get Active Online (ALL) Categories Fit Bits (100) Hilde's Ramblings (59) Success Stories (21) You are currently viewing a blog within the Fit Bits section of the Get Active Online Blog. About Me I'm a 32 year old health & fitness fanatic! I run "Get Active Online" with my wonderful hubby Cam and when I'm not training others I'm off flying all over the countryside as a Flight Attendant. I strongly believe in practicing what I preach so this blog is all about my personal health & fitness journey, plus lots of good training & nutrition info. If you have a question you want answered or just want to say hi, please leave me a comment. Looking forward to hearing from you! Hilds

Fit Bits

BLOG > FIT BITS > TOPIC #157

At the moment I’m busy building up my knowledge of everything related to keeping fit and healthy before, during and after pregnancy. Anyone who knows me well has always known I’ve been passionate about helping Mum’s stay fit and healthy. I’m not quite sure why I’ve had this obsession with helping Mum’s so much but it’s always something I wanted to end up specializing in although without a kid myself I thought it was a bit hard.

So anyway rather than wait for the day that I’m finally a Mum (hopefully not too far away though!). I thought I’d start to build up my knowledge of exercise and nutrition during and after pregnancy.

So far I’ve discovered there is a lot of very unspecific guidelines and not much out there for people who train a lot before pregnancy and want to continue to train throughout pregnancy.

The general consensus seems to be don’t start exercising if you weren’t exercising before, don’t get your heart rate over 140bpm and don’t do any exercises on your back after about the 4th month. Really not much great information for someone like me who trains every day and would like to continue to do so throughout pregnancy. So I’ve done a bit more research and come across a few good books:

Exercising through your pregnancy – James F. Clapp 111. M.D

Running & Pregnancy By Chris Lundgren

So far I’ve started on both books and they seem great. They give so much more information about what is appropriate and what’s not. For someone like me who runs all the time simply saying keeping your heart rate under 140bpm isn’t really going to cut it (I wouldn’t be able to run throughout my whole pregnancy!). So anyway a bit more reading to do, I can’t wait to sit out in the sunshine tomorrow and get stuck into my book.

I also want to learn more about nutrition specific for people exercising during and after their pregnancy so I’ve enrolled in a course though Fitnation – Nutrition for Pregnancy and Lactation. It’s just a short course and great because it also gives me points to maintaining my PT qualifications.

Nutrition and pregnancy seems to be a HUGE topic for discussion and everyone has their very personal opinions about what is right and wrong. I totally agree that pregnancy is NOT the time for dieting but I do think it should be a time to really start thinking about the food you are eating and what it is actually giving to your body (and your little baby growing inside). I quite often hear Mum’s say you should just relax with the food and have whatever you like although I really have to disagree with this one. Just because you are craving a big slice of chocolate cake doesn’t mean your baby needs chocolate!!! For sure, relax a bit with your nutrition but really letting everything go will simply mean it will be so much harder after the baby is born to get your body back into shape. It shouldn’t be a time to stress over weight gain as the priority is a healthy baby but at the same time it should be a time to eat as much good, whole, nutritious food as possible.

Anyway I better stop going on as I’m sure many Mum’s out there already have their own opinion and quite likely disagree!

If anyone else has any great books they can recommend I would love to hear what they are as I LOVE reading anything health and fitness related.

Well time to go and enjoy what’s left of my Saturday (I’ve spent far too much time working today!).
Hope everyone is having a fabulous weekend.

Cheers, Hilds

EMAIL : hilde@getactiveonline.com