Training is a big part of my life and now that we are planning pregnancy I have started to study what kind and how much of exercise would be good (or bad) for the baby and I. I admit I quickly became frustrated as it’s not easy to find medically/scientifically proven limits or guidelines for what is safe and health promoting. For example, limits on heart rate (e.g. maximum 150bpm) aren’t very helpful considering how many factors (including pregnancy itself!) impact your heart rate.
The most logical but annoyingly vague advise it to “listen to your body”. Since my aim is to modify my current workout routine for the pregnant me, I thought it’d make sense to start listening to my body now to know what I “normally” feel and how I react to my current training.
But how do you exactly listen to your body when it doesn’t say anything??
My answer to this was Fitbit. I like numbers and graphs (geek!) so I was quite excited to start tracking my activity and sleep, as well as heart rates during exercise and rest. Over time I hope to gain a better understanding of my fitness level and what is normal for me.
Below is a summary screenshot from my first month (January 2017). It seems that I’m definitely pretty active despite my 12h/day desk job! But equally you can see that I sleep a lot. The one night that I slept only about 4 hours was before a business trip (very early flight). So no late nights and clubbing for this girl!
The below image is a snap of my typical 45-minute HIIT workout (1Rebel Reshape). I reach my peak heart rate (around 180bpm) rarely – to get it this high I need a long endurance type of exercise, such as a 10min hill run/sprint on a treadmill. During the session tracked below we were doing 5-minute rounds between treadmill and floor which isn’t enough for me to hit my maximum heart rate.
This third picture (below) is from my spinning class. Almost two thirds of the 45-min class in fat burn rate, no peaks. I have tested this before and no matter how hard I try, my maximum on a bike will be nowhere near my maximum when running (140bpm vs. 180bpm). An occasional spinning class is good variety though as it puts less stress on the body.
Lastly, I’ve tracked my yoga classes. This class is a 60-minute fast paced Vinyasa Flow class (or dynamic strong yoga as some call it). It is not easy by any means and my muscles often ache the next day but it is more for strength and flexibility rather than fat burn or cardio, as you can see in the picture below.
To put things into perspective (this very individual), my heart rate drops to forties in my sleep and my average resting heart rate now is around 55-56bpm.
Pretty interesting data!
Naturally I need to get pregnant first, before I’ll have the luxury of focusing on the actual pregnancy, So additionally, I’ve started looking into how strenuous exercise can impact fertility. I’ve made an effort to eat well and keep my weight and body fat high enough to avoid hormonal imbalances or distractions to my period. But it seems that fertility can also be affected by the stress of the exercise to the body, although the effects on fertility are individual.
If we don’t succeed to conceive this month, I will try to reduce the amount of training I do, to see if that would make a difference. So perhaps more yoga, cycling and walking instead of HIIT. It’s not going to be an easy thing for me to do as my sweaty gym sessions have proven key to my overall stress management and wellbeing. But of course, I would hate to think I’m lowering our chances even if I was doing something I love!
xoxoxo,
Sini