How Exercising During Pregnancy Effects You Post-Partum

Trying to exercise while you are pregnancy can be discouraging. The fact that no matter what you do, you watch the scale go up and your belly grow. That is a good thing ladies! You want to gain weight (obviously not too much because that isn't healthy for you and especially not for the baby; remember, eating for two is a lie!). There are many benefits to exercising while pregnant. Here are just a few:

-Helps increase energy
-Helps relieve swelling
-Helps with insomnia
-Helps prepare your body for the labor ahead
-Helps make labor faster (especially the second stage if you have a good set of abs)
-Is said to helps with morning sickness

BUT, the biggest thing for me is that the harder, consistently, and better you workout WHILE you are pregnant, the easier the weight sheds off when baby is born and the faster your muscle tone comes back. Muscles have a memory and as long as you continue to work them, they will snap back to where they were before pretty quick. I said in another post about how I gained a bit (not much but enough) more weight with Jahs than I did with Levi, but with Jahs, I lost the weight so much faster AND more importantly got my BF% down and my muscle tone back fast especially in my stomach. I am only 6 months post-partum as I write this and I am in better shape now than I was before I was married and had kids. I wished I had taken more pictures post-partum for you guys to see and for myself. But, trust me, I was thrilled at how quickly my stomach came back especially because I literally got depressed over my weight gain and cried after an appointment where a nurse who was a bit crass stated that I had gained too much between appointments. I didn't understand why since I was working out so hard. Jahs was only bigger by 1 lb, but I guess that made a difference.

Either way, my whole point in this blog post is that trust me, it feels hopeless and pointless to workout while pregnant. You figure you will just workout AFTER the baby is born. Ladies, please don't do this. Start now! You have 9 months where you are impatiently waiting anyways, so why not keep busy and workout. Make it your goal to look better than before. Pregnancy does NOT have to be an excuse to gain unnecessary weight. You can be fit again after baby even if you weren't before you got pregnant. It is so possible. As long as you put your mind to it and you want it enough, you can do it. And, just because you have had more than one kid doesn't mean that you have to just give up and let your body go. If you want to get your body back, fight for it! Your body is a temple and God blessed you with it. We are to be good stewards of everything and that includes the body God blessed us with. We should strive to be healthy and to be good examples to our kids.

Now this post isn't to bash anyone who gains more weight or who doesn't or can't exercise. That is not it. This is just to encourage you. If you feel hopeless and don't want to exercise because you feel like there is not point, know that there is. It makes EVERYTHING so much easier afterwards. I also recovered super fast this time around as well and account working out to that quite a bit.

Check out this young ladies blog. It is an inspiration to me. ETA: This pregnancy I ended up barely exercising at all. I gained the most amount of weight this time around too, but the baby ended up being the same size as Jahs. So far at 2 days postpartum I've lost 15 of my 50 lbs. So not bad. We'll see how easy it comes off since I didn't exercise. I'm not worried even if it is more work, but this does go to show that exercise DOES help! My body normally puts on a lot of weight during pregnancy even when I DO exercise, so when I don't, it really packs it on!