When planning our pregnancy I was very much hoping for a healthy and fit pregnancy. I really believe staying active and eating healthy during pregnancy could help to avoid some potential pregnancy problems and with the postnatal recovery. Having some physical strength on the labour day can’t hurt either!
Of course it’s not always up to the mum-to-be whether she will be able to to exercise during pregnancy and it’s not always even safe. Additionally, it’s easy to plan things ahead of your very first pregnancy when you haven’t got a clue of what’s coming!
I am now 20 weeks pregnant (above picture from last week) which is officially the half way point (20/40 weeks) – Yay!! I thought this would be an appropriate moment to look back and assess how fit has my pregnancy really been so far…
Before I go on, I should probably be more specific about the use of “fit pregnancy” here as we may have different definitions for it. What I mean by it is staying physically active during pregnancy and eating good quality nutritious food with the aim of maintaining good health and base fitness level. So the aim is not to have pregnancy abs.
I think I’ve done alright! Maybe 8/10? Of course this is not all credit to me, but I’ve simply been lucky to have had a healthy pregnancy so far which has allowed for exercise – fingers crossed it’ll stay that way!!
My general activity level has been very good and the core of my diet healthy, but I definitely have snacked on less healthy stuff… By 20 weeks pregnant I have put on about 4kg which I believe is within normal range. My appetite is definitely there but I haven’t had any strange cravings, I’m just hungry often (read: all the time).
Below a few screenshots from my Fitbit to illustrate 🙂
January vs. June activity level based on minutes at either fat burn, cardio or peak heart rate zones (pre-pregnancy vs. 4-months pregnant).
To conclude, slower pace exercise but for longer – just according to plan! This was actually a nice surprise to me because I feel like I’m not doing so much 🙂
One of my goals was to try to get to 10 000 steps everyday – well I’ve nearly made it!
Diet on the other hand has been a bit trickier… I generally have a healthy lunch and dinner, and breakfast is usually porridge or eggs. But the snacks, sigh… I get hungry often and have been a bit lazy to carry around healthy snacks. It’s so easy to just grab a chocolate or a sweet yoghurt for the afternoon sugar craving especially when all things considered, what’s the harm when all you do is gain weight anyway?! This is ridiculous of course but I admit it, the thought has crossed my mind.
But it’s all about balance, not perfection!
That being said, this chicken salad was perfect in its simplicity!
xoxoxo,
Sini