Women who exercise during pregnancy usually have a more comfortable pregnancy and faster postpartum recovery.  If you’re not a gym fan pre-pregnancy is a good time to find a low-impact form of exercise you enjoy doing so that your body has time to get used to it.  Starting an exercise program now is much better then starting a program when you are already pregnant and feeling the ups and downs of your first trimester.   Pre-pregnancy is a great time to really work on your stomach muscles, especially your lower abs, they do a lot of work doing pregnancy.

We need to exercise.  Our bodies thrive on movement, and quickly degenerate without it.  It is also essential for fertility, weight loss and handling stress.  Inactivity deprives muscles of the constant push and pull they need to stay healthy.  It also saps their ability to respond to insulin and to efficiently absorb blood sugar.  When that leads to too much blood sugar and insulin in the bloodstream, it endangers ovulation, conception, and pregnancy.

You don’t need to be fit to be fertile, but it helps.  If you are in reasonably good shape this increases your chances of conceiving quickly and having an easier birth.  Exercise also helps reduce stress, promotes good sleep patterns, improves your circulation and improves your feeling of both physical and mental wellbeing. And when you’re feeling good your confidence and sex drive increase.

Unless you are extremely lean and don’t need to lose weight exercise is a must for fertility.  Research shows that for every hour of vigorous activity per week there was a 7 percent reduction in infertility.  Vigorous intensity exercise causes a substantial increase in breathing or heart rate making having a conversation difficult, having a “perceived exertion” of 15 or greater and can burn more than seven calories per minute.

Perceived exertion is based on a scale that was developed by Dr. Gunnar Borg.  It is based on how hard you perceive you are working.  The scale runs from “no feeling of exertion” which rates a 6, to “very, very hard”, which rates a 19 or 20, this means you are exercising so hard you couldn’t possibly push yourself any harder.  It runs from 6 to 20 to roughly correspond to your heart rate by multiplying your perceived score by 10 should give you your approximate heart rate.

The Borg Scale for Perceived Exertion

Working your muscles is good for ovulation and conception as well as being an integral part of losing or controlling weight and keeping blood sugar and insulin in check.  A single exercise session speeds the entry of blood sugar into muscle cells and improves their sensitivity to insulin, which, as we now know, is important for fertility.

Some women need more exercise then others for their weight or moods and others are active just because they enjoy it.  Some who need to be active aren’t, while a small number of others are too active. Most women should be getting at least thirty minutes of exercise every day, unless your BMI is over 25, then you may need to exercise for longer.  If your BMI is below 20 then you may need to cut back for a little while, we will discuss BMI and the “fertility zone” later.

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based health coaching, personal chef and personal training service that  specializes in pre-pregnancy care; helping couples achieve optimum health to increase their chances of getting pregnant, a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby by offering one-on-one counseling, in-home cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services.

Vitamins are essential to life.  They regulate metabolism and assist in the biochemical processes that release energy from digested food.  Enzymes are essential chemicals that are the foundation of human bodily functions.  They are activators in the chemical reactions that are continually taking place within the body.  As coenzymes, vitamins work with enzymes allowing all the activities that occur within the body to be carried out as they should.

Vitamins are found in the macronutrients; carbohydrates, fats and proteins in our foods.  They perform specific jobs that enable the body to operate efficiently.

Our fat soluble vitamins; A, D, E and K are stored in the body’s fat and liver.  Because they are stored in our tissues they can build up and become toxic.

Water soluble vitamins; all the B vitamins, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Folate, Pantothenic Acid, Biotin, Vitamin C are not stored in the body.  The body uses what it needs and the rest is released in our urine.

Vitamins are essential to life, without them there would be no chemical reactions in our bodies, which means we wouldn’t function because all our body processes start with a chemical reaction.

Folic acid and folate are a B vitamin used in our bodies to make new cells.  Folate is the type that occurs naturally, in food, circulates in the bloodstream, and is found inside red blood cells.  Folic acid is a synthetic form of folate used in vitamin supplements, in fortifying food and is much easier for the body to assimilate than naturally occurring folate.

Women in their childbearing years should take at least 400 mcg of folic acid a day in addition to what they get from food, even if they aren’t trying to get pregnant.  That’s because up to half pregnancies aren’t planned.  Pregnant women need 600 mcg.

Foods rich in folic acid:

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based health coaching, personal chef and personal training service that specializes in pre-pregnancy care; helping couples achieve optimum health to increase their chances of getting pregnant, a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby by offering one-on-one counseling, in-home cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services.

Gone are the days when all it took was some good unprotected sex in the backseat of a Buick to create a healthy baby.  Why is that??  I’ve done a lot of research and really haven’t found a very good answer.  I do have my thoughts on the issue, but since I’m extremely opinionated on the state of our “medical” treatment, “food” supply and “big-pharma/agra” I’m going to keep those opinions to myself.  Here’s what I do know; research suggests that if you follow a good pre-conception care program you are more likely to become pregnant more quickly, have less of a chance of a miscarriage, maximize the chance of having a healthy pregnancy and birth as well has having a healthy child that has a very good chance of avoiding cancer, heart disease, depression and diabetes.  So, how do you do this? You need to eat to nourish your body properly and give it the nutrients it needs to build itself and function properly, as well as exercise to keep off extra weigh, keep sugar in check, prevent heart disease and a whole slew of diseases, conditions and aliments.  ’Nuf said.

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based personal chef and personal training service that helps busy people fit healthy meals and exercise into their hectic schedules.  She specializes in helping couples achieve optimum health to increase their chances of getting pregnant, a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby by offering in-home cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services.