hi and welcome back to amazing milestones if you're just tuning in for the first time my name is Tara and I'm your host and today we are going to talk about how to stay in shape both during pregnancy and afterwards now of course we all want to be in the best shape possible during our pregnancy for the health of our baby and our own well-being but let me tell you as the mum of a very active toddler being in shape now sure helps me to keep up with my daughter so today we're gonna go meet Jennifer and she's gonna give us some tips on how to stay in shape let's go welcome to my studio thank you this is really nice thank you thanks well hi Jennifer hi welcome to the show I was really looking forward to talking to you because I've always been super passionate about health and fitness so first off I want to know if a woman works out during her pregnancy is it gonna be easier for her to get back in shape after she has the baby absolutely well muscle have memories so if you kept up with your strength and muscle tone during your entire pregnancy then your body will have an easier time balancing back also of cardio and muscular exercises combined with a healthy diet it'll help you maintain a healthy weight gain throughout your pregnancy therefore you have less weight to lose after giving birth absolutely makes sense and can we continue to run do yoga weight trained during the pregnancy and other exercises that we should avoid or modify well it's really not the time to start an intense exercise that might provoke overheating especially within those three first months of pregnancy but if you're already a runner and you want to continue to run you can still run but just not to the point of exhaustion okay ask for yoga combined with a cardio exercise it's a great way to stay in shape but avoid any type of hot yoga that might cause overheating and other problems for your baby and as for lifting weight it is recommended throughout entire pregnancy just that the goal is not to bulk up dramatically but simply to maintain what you already have so lift lighter weights and do more repetitions and what about during our last trimester I know it can be a little bit difficult to figure out what to do when you're advanced in your pregnancy what do you recommend the most important exercises are kegels up to 70% of women experience some form of urinary incontinence before or after childbirth so how you do it is imagine you're stopping the flow of urine by contracting your pelvic floor muscles when you exhale you hold that position up to ten seconds and then you relax you try to do three sets ten repetitions every single day okay another exercise is the pelvis tilt now this exercise will help people with a back pressure and also will help you strengthens transversus abdominus which is the deep abdominal muscle that plays a leading role in childbirth so how you do it is you start by leaving your back against a wall and as you exhale you draw your navel in and you push your hips forward you do three sets of ten repetitions three times a week and my last recommendation would be the role of an elastic so this exercise will help you maintain a great posture and also help you carry the extra weight at nine months so it's pretty simple you lie down and as you pull the elastic towards your chest you squeeze your shoulder blades together and again you just do three sets of ten repetitions three times a week excellent and lastly once the baby is here when can we start exercising again and what should we start with well the general rule is really to wait for your first post delivery checkup at your doctor's at six weeks but every woman heals differently and at the one rhythm so we recommend to start slow and gradually increase your effort there's so much going on in those first weeks you don't need to add so much pressure to the situation by saying baby exactly so you can start by just going to these your walk with the stroller around the block and as you feel better you increase a time period also we were coming to do kegels right away because it's very low impact and also your abdominals are really affected by childbirth so as you feel better you can do some light abdominal crunches for example but the importance is really to listen to your body let it heal and not to rush back into getting your body back you'll have enough time yes all in good time yeah well thank you so much and really inspiring I feel like going to war now about great advice on how to stay in shape next time we're gonna tackle one of the biggest challenges for all moms out there picky eaters we're gonna talk about why kids sometimes refuse to eat and what we can do as moms to make sure they get enough of what they need so see you then