A well-devised pregnancy exercise programme will mean a healthier & more comfortable pregnancy, & can even make for an easier & quicker delivery & a healthier baby. Exercise during pregnancy will help prepare you for the rigours of labour, by strengthening the muscles you will need to give birth. Labour is one of the most intense activities that women undergo, so your improved fitness, strength & stamina will give you an advantage!

Exercising during pregnancy can’t guarantee you a pain- or complication-free pregnancy & labour (if only…!) BUT increased fitness will prevent or alleviate many of the problems & discomforts associated with pregnancy; & you can give yourself the best possible chance of coping with, or even enjoying, your birth experience!

The Benefits Of Pregnancy Exercise:

• Improved balance & strength – better posture & less backache.
• Improved circulation & decreased risk of varicose veins & swelling.
• Less discomfort from constipation, haemorrhoids, & other common pregnancy complaints such as leg cramps.
• Prevents excessive weight gain during pregnancy.
• Allows for a quicker return to pre-pregnancy weight.
• Decreased incidence of loss of bladder control during & after pregnancy.
• Less risk of developing gestational diabetes.
• Less risk of developing pre-eclampsia (high blood pressure).
• Less likelihood of intervention during labour, such as ventouse or forceps.
• Reduction in bone density loss whilst breast-feeding.
• Aerobic fitness & stamina for the demands of labour.
• Speeds recovery & gives you the strength & energy needed to be a new mother!

If we were to believe the celebrity magazines, we’d think that losing baby weight was something you do in, oh, what, a couple of weeks? Well, I suppose if you had at least 2 personal trainers, perfectly calorie-counted meals delivered to your door, nannies, time for 2-3 hour daily workouts… blah blah, then so could you. But hey.

So, back to our world. Your pregnancy weight took 9 months to go on, so first things first, give yourself a break. Whatever kind of birth experience you had (& as far as I’m aware, ‘easy’ isn’t even a category) then that birthing thing is a traumatic process at the best of times, & your body needs to recover.

But there are some things you can do literally as soon as you think of them after giving birth. Don’t panic, I’m talking about breathing (which you’ve got to do anyway, right? So you might as well do it in a way that will find your tummy muscles).

Full, deep breathing will relax & restore you, as well as start to make you aware of your abdominal & pelvic floor muscles.  Lying on your back with chin gently dropped, your knees bent & feet flat on the floor, establish a comfortable rhythm of breathing.  As you fully exhale, gently draw your belly button back towards your spine, feel your belly hollow and your lower back press into the floor as your pelvis tilts slightly. At the same time consciously draw your pelvic floor muscles in and up. As you breathe in, let everything relax as your lungs fill with air & your belly expands. Repeat a few times.

If you had a vaginal birth, your may not be able to feel much happening in your pelvic floor. And if you had a c-section, the ‘belly button to spine’ cue probably won’t register. But just do what you can & done daily, over a few weeks this process will help to repair nerve pathways & engage the right muscles.

I want to know how to lose my pregnancy weight, & she’s telling me how to BREATHE?

Yep. Because if you don’t find the right muscles, you’ll struggle to start exercising at all because you’ll have no core strength, you’ll get back ache & may injure yourself. Bootcamp for new mums?  Please don’t. Not until you’ve repaired everything ‘in there’ first!

Don’t do anything more than a daily walk & the above pelvic floor / abdominal breathing & pelvic tilt until 6 weeks (natural birth) or 10 weeks (c-scetion) postnatal. Then gradually up the ante with both cardio & resistance exercise that realigns your posture, & strengthens & tones as you lose the fat.

That means gradually progressing your workouts so you’re exercising intensively 3-5 times a week for at least 15 (yes, just 15) minutes at a time. In order to make a real difference to your body shape & lose your excess pregnancy weight you’ll need to work quite intensively, but the good news is that interval training (workout video for you here!) is very effective so you don’t need very long!

Start low impact (no jumping) & listen to your body. Stop if you feel out of breath or dizzy & don’t go mad. Wear a well fitting sportsbra (I used 2 bras at the same time when I was breastfeeding!) & supportive trainers. REST when you need to & don’t work out every day. If you manage a brisk daily walk & your breathing / abdominal exercises every day in those early months, in my view you’ve done well!

Food-wise – don’t “diet”, especially when you’re breastfeeding. Eat real, fresh, unprocessed food that will nourish & restore your body, as well as feed your baby. You need about 500 extra calories whilst breastfeeding, but remember that your little one will not benefit from latte & muffin calories any more than your waistline will! Plenty more on how to eat to lose your mummy tummy & stay healthy here.

How long will it take? Sorry, its that ‘how long is a piece of string’ question again… You can lose your baby weight in 12 weeks if you’re dedicated enough.  And you’d be perfectly normal if it took 6, 9 months or more. You are juggling a baby, wildly fluctuating hormones, extreme tiredness, an emotional rollercoaster, possibly other children as well… & well, “life!”

So hold on to a little self love & TLC  too.

But the important thing to remember in the ‘great lose the pregnancy weight’ debate… is that it CAN be done, it is perfectly possible, but you should remember that a woman’s body which has had babies (however long ago she had them) is NOT just like everyone else once she is no longer classed as ‘postnatal’. Your posture, core abdominal muscles, pelvic floor & areas of strength, weakness & special attention are DIFFERENT, & should be treated as such. And it totally, honestly, definitely CAN look gorgeous again.

How long did it take to lose yours? Or are you still thinking about losing your baby weight after the school run is well underway?!

How much is healthy? Or necessary? How much of the weight you’re putting on is ‘Baby Fat’… & what’s the average time it takes to lose your baby weight?

But before we start worrying about how to lose it, how much pregnancy weight gain, is *average* pregnancy weight gain?

Bit of a disclaimer / stating the obvious here, but  every pregnancy is different. Some women will gain quite a bit more than average (3.5 stone / 50+ pounds / 23kg), while others gain much less (1 stone / 15 pounds / 7kg). And the whole point of an *average* is that most people lie one or other side of it. Right, am I covered? Phew.

Here’s some rather interesting facts about the average UK & US woman putting on weight in pregnancy.

According to the Department for Trade and Industry, the average U.K. woman is 5′ 3.8″ (162 centimeters) tall and weighs 147 pounds / 10 stone 7lb /66.7 kilograms. The average U.S. woman is also 5′ 3.8″ (163 cm) tall, & weighs 163 pounds / 74 kg. Your pre-pregnancy weight, age, race & height will all influence how much weight you gain during pregnancy (oh, & there is also the small matter of what you eat, but we’ll leave it as ‘all being equal’ for the moment!). Personally I didn’t realise we were all so short, but there you go…

A healthy weight gain during pregnancy for Ms Average might be around 30lb / 2 stones / 13.6kg. Bear in mind that in reality there could be significant fluctuations in either direction. So after all that math, um, the answer is: it depends.

Please do not get hung up weight gain charts… as you can see from above, average covers quite a range! But here’s the bit we often forget – most of your pregnancy weight gain is NOT FAT!

Your pregnancy weight gain is made up of the following (with approximate weights):

• Your baby (doh) (6-8 lbs)

• Placenta (1.5 lbs)

• Amniotic fluid (2 lbs)

• Uterine enlargement (2 lbs)

• Extra blood volume (3-4 lbs)

• Extra breast tissue (1-2 lb)

• Extra body fluid / water  (4 lbs)

• Fat (roughly 7 lbs)

So the necessary extra FAT stores of pregnancy account for around 7 pounds / just over 3 Kilos of that ‘average’ 30 pounds /13.6 kilos weight gain we talked about.

Actually I’m not sure whether that has made you feel better or worse…

Of course, putting on weight in pregnancy is healthy and simply means your baby is growing well.  It took 9 months to steadily go on, and so you must expect that it will take at least that long, in conjunction with eating healthily and staying active, to steadily come off. You’ve heard it before, but losing fat for the long term needs to be done sensibly and gradually.

The Truth About Baby Fat

The body builds up extra fat stores during pregnancy and uses 300-500 calories of these a day for as long as you’re exclusively breastfeeding. This is pretty much the same additional nutritional requirement as your body needed throughout pregnancy. So a healthy diet, plenty of fluids, minimal or no processed foods and moderate activity will provide the calories that both you and your baby need.

You really don’t need to build up any more fat stores, so once the extra maternal and breastfeeding fat stores are no longer needed, I’m afraid there is no such thing as ‘baby fat’, there is only ‘fat fat’.  Fat is just fat, and it sits on top of muscle. Fat and muscle are completely different types of tissue, and one cannot turn into the other.

You know, having answered those questions, I’m not entirely sure I’ve made anybody feel any better… ?! How much weight did you put on in pregnancy? And how long did it stay on?

Does your pregnancy exercise programme includes long workouts on cardio machines (treadmill, bike, cross trainer) at steady speeds? Does your pregnancy exercise regime exercise all muscle groups evenly & equally, despite the postural shifts of pregnancy & mothering? Are you spending time doing small muscle-group exercises, like bicep curls?

If so, you’re not getting the best advice & won’t get the results you’re after! Here’s a few tips to make sure that the pregnancy exercises you;ve been given is going to really work for you:

• Forget the fat burning zone! IE long sessions of steady cardio. The most effective way to lose postnatal fat & build lean muscle mass is to INTERVAL TRAIN. You need to be constantly surprising & working your body by changing intensity, speed & duration of your workout.
• Pregnancy (& then mothering – feeding, lifting & cuddling!) puts us in a permanently hunched posture, shortening & tightening the muscles of the chest & front of the shoulders, whilst stretching & weakening the upper back. Strengthening exercises should concentrate more on working the upper back (IE rowing, or pulling type movements), than the chest (pushing movements). Aim for a ratio of 3:1 upper back work: chest. The upper back needs strengthening & the front needs stretching to ‘even you out’. Push-ups are great exercises, but need to balanced with upright rows, pull ups & the dumb waiter.

One Great Pregnancy Exercise: The Dumb Waiter

To perform the Dumb Waiter exercise, keep shoulder blades relaxed & down, then move hands out to the side, keeping elbows in & squeezing shoulder blades together.

Dumb Waiter position 1

Dumb Waiter position 2

• Any crunch, sit-up or jack-knife movement will make diastasis recti (the gaping of the abdominal muscles experienced by up to two thirds of pregnant women) WORSE. Core work is absolutely vital during pregnancy & afterwards, & should concentrate on activation of the TVA & pelvic floor muscles. You need to work the rectus muscles (the split ones) in a linear, not gaping direction. A plank is great, a crunch is not!

• For maximum efficiency, core strength & stability concentrate on large muscle group exercises using body weight. Examples are squats, lunges, pull-ups or planks. Or use multi-tasking exercises such as squats with a shoulder press or upright row with a resistance band. Standing there doing a bicep curl is boring, inefficient & won’t burn any fat!
• Your CORE should be involved in all these exercises, not just the specifically abdominal exercises. Again, multi-task your exercises, it’s what we’re supposed to be good at, & it’s realistic for busy mums!
• Are you getting expert instruction on dealing with your  symphysis pubis dysfunction (SPD) or back ache caused by postural & hormonal changes or imbalances?

For general safe pregnancy exercise guidelines see here, but if you’d like anything clarified or explained further, please just leave a comment here or contact me – I want to DE-mystify pregnancy & postnatal personal training & exercise so please let me know what you’d like more on!