Five Thoughts on Fitness While Pregnant

Sharing is caring!

Hi there! Today I’m going to share some thoughts that relate to my current situation: being pregnant!

Obviously my blog is focused on health and fitness topics, as that has been a huge part of my life over the past three years. Staying consistent in those two areas hasn’t always been easy, but my reasons for wanting to be healthy have kept me pushing forward. Nobody ever told me that pregnancy would throw a HUGE wrench into my plans and lifestyle. HUGE.

1. Eating clean isn’t always easy. Beyond that, eating isn’t always easy! Oh I think I want some grapes….so I get them out and wash them…nope, that sounds gross. Put them back in the fridge. Poptarts sound better. Meat makes me want to barf. Even now at 12 weeks, I eat very, very little protein. I can eat beans and almonds; sometimes eggs are ok. But I don’t even want to look at meat. No. Unless it is contained inside of a Big Mac, because that is perfectly acceptable.
2. It is difficult to breathe. I get winded going upstairs in my house. Seriously. I am a runner, I used to teach 2-3 group fitness classes per day, I exercised all the time…and now I get tired moving from the couch to the refrigerator. I’m embarrassed to get breathless just instructing an INSANITY warmup at the gym. But apparently the way your heart and lungs work during pregnancy cause these changes to happen. Eh, either way I feel weak and out of shape and I’m not a fan of it.
3. Exhaustion is a state of being. I think I’ve figured out why pregnant women are so tired all the time, and it really doesn’t have anything to do with hormones or growing a human in their bellies. It’s because they wake up three times at night to go pee, so they never get a good night’s sleep! Those people who say “Sleep while you can, before the baby gets here” must have forgotten that YOU CAN NEVER SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE PREGNANT. Even if I try to nap on the couch during the day, I wake up after 30 minutes because my bladder is about to explode. Every single time.
4. Exercising is difficult to do. Due to a combination of the three observations above, exercising can be almost impossible some days. Without proper fuel in your body, it doesn’t want to perform like it used to. Difficulty with breathing means you run slower and take more walking breaks. Hormones work against your ability to see strength gainzzz. The constant tiredness makes it difficult to do simple things like take a shower, much less run an easy 5k like you did pre-conception. And then the extra weight, the relaxin hormone, the achy boobs, the bladder pressure….all factors working against you when you feel like you should hit the gym or pound some pavement. But with that said…
5. You are more aware of what your body needs. Yes, it needs proper nutrition and fuel. Yes it needs healthy movement and exercise. But it also needs naps. It needs to be appreciated and loved and taken care of. Sometimes it needs that cupcake (it really does). It needs the water that makes you pee all night. If all you can stomach is fruit and an occasional salad, then eat that. A mom’s body is doing some powerful work, and feeling guilty about the things you think you should be doing or aren’t doing right isn’t going to help at all. Roll with the punches and do your best. It’s all we CAN do.

Stopping to remember this this part of my life is temporary really helps me to deal with the not-so-fun parts of pregnancy. I only have 28 more weeks to grow this amazing little human, and then he or she will be out in the real world. While I may get those waves of nausea now as I enter the kitchen after someone has been cooking meatballs (gag), that won’t last forever. I may be celebrating the fact that I ran one mile on a sunny day instead of hitting a new 10k PR, but that’s ok. I may lose some of my muscle tone and strength, and the only gainz I see right now may be in the width of my hips. That’s ok too. Because right now, “doing work” means being the perfect incubator for my Noodle.

But after September, it’s game on again. #beastmode

Sharing is caring!