How Hard Can You Exercise When You’re Pregnant, How To Get Your Body Back After You’ve Had A Baby, The Best Workouts For Morning Sickness & More!

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And you may remember if you've listened to the podcast for a little while, how a few weeks ago we had a kind of controversial discussion on the show about whether you could exercise hard it if you're pregnant and whether or not that'd be good for you or good for your growing baby. We've also had controversial guests on like Cassandra Forsythe, who came onto the show last year and talked about how she was powerlifting and doing CrossFit while she was pregnant. And we've had doctors on who have actually recommended, in many cases, the complete opposite. So today we're gonna keep on digging into this whole issue about not only how to exercise when you're pregnant, but how to look good after you've had your baby and, you know, get your body back, so to speak. So before I introduce today's guests, let me mention that this audio may sound a little bit different. And that's because I am recording from the mighty Starbucks. About a half hour before we started this interview, the Internet decided to go bye bye at my house. So I had an oh crap moment, I hopped in my car, I drove over here to Starbucks, and we're going to get this interview done for you. But that's why you might hear things like music in the background or people talking or cars driving by. We're not in my little sound producted office anymore. So that being said, now that you know what's going on with that, let me introduce today's guests for you. So today I've got two people on the call. That's right, it's gonna be a three way conversation. I have Amy Ramaj or Ramage, I'm not entirely sure. Amy, how do you pronounce your last name?

Ramage.

Ramage. And Amy is the mother of two little girls and she's been training people for a long time to be fit and healthy on the outside and on the inside. And she's a busy mom herself. And she also specializes in prenatal exercise. And, and along with Amy, I've also got Deveren on the call. And Deveren is a personal trainer in New York City. He's been voted twice as one of the best personal trainers in New York City by City Search magazine. He's been in Entrepreneur magazine. He's a former attorney who is now a specialized personal trainer who has worked with Amy to create this brand new website called prenatal365.com I'll put a link to that in the show notes. I'll put photos of Amy and Deveren in the show notes and everything for you@BenGreenfieldFitness.com But Amy and Deveren, thank you so much for coming on the call today.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

So can you guys hear the music piping out through the Starbucks radio?

Not too bad.

It's like a little background music, right? Mood music. So, you guys, I don't think it's any secret to people listening in, whether, whether husbands or wives or men or women, that exercise is something that is probably good for you during pregnancy. But before we even get into, like, how much exercise to do, what kind of exercise to do, how hard to exercise, what you should and shouldn't be doing, why is it that exercise is good for you if you're pregnant?

Well, there is a billion reasons why it's good for you. And it would actually be a really fast show if I said the cons, because there really are none. The benefits of exercise during pregnancy is the number one motivator for every woman out there is just gaining less weight during pregnancy is typically the reason why women come to me. And then obviously having easier labor delivery. I mean, there's a huge list of benefits for women to work out during pregnancy. And everybody I've talked to, all the doctors that I've spoken with, the ones that I've actually spoken with, said they encourage. I mean, they were sending people to me. They're encouraging women to work out during pregnancy because they're seeing women that are, whether they're fit or not. The opposite of that is the ones that aren't staying active and working out during the pregnancy are actually having harder labor and delivery than the ones that are, which is making their job wait easier if they go in healthy and fit. So there's a huge list.

So in terms of healthier delivery or easier delivery or, you know, basically a more comfortable delivery, is it just because you have stronger pelvic floor muscles or stronger abdominal muscles, or is there an actual physiological thing that happens when you're exercising during pregnancy that would make labor actually easier?

Yeah, absolutely. So I actually didn't get to experience labor with either of my babies. They were Four C sections. So I stayed active and fit, and sometimes we don't end up with that choice. In the end, I stayed, tried to stay fit as a fiddle the whole time and arrived there with my midwife and had the opportunity to have a natural labor and then didn't actually get that choice. So a lot of women need the strong core because they do have C sections, and that's happening more and more frequently now. But the benefit is all the way down to cardiovascular system. If you have a strong cardiovascular system, pushing and breathing, all of those techniques that you learn in a lot of prenatal classes are all wrapped around being healthy and fit and having that strong cardiovascular system helps you just even with the breathing part. Then obviously with a strong core, that's going to help you push. And then pelvic floor muscles are majorly necessary to get the baby out, but then also to recover.

Now, when it comes to delivery, you talked about how you were going to do like a, like a natural delivery and you ended up needing to do a C section. Something similar happened to my wife and I. We were doing like a water birthday and we were doing a lot of kind of like natural, kind of more ancestral squatting positions for delivery.

Right.

Her hips ended up being so narrow. She's a very petite girl. She, she was having twins. We actually ended up after about eight hours of, of work at home with the midwife trying to deliver, having to drive to the hospital for a C section. But do you think that even in the case of someone wanting to do like a natural birth, wanting to do like a squatting position type of birth, that exercise is still going to help in that kind of situation?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. If you were going to even attempt that kind of birth and you had a doula or a midwife around with you, I mean, I actually don't even know one that wouldn't tell you to be doing your squats and your core exercises during pregnancy. I mean, the typical person, you and I, who are trainers, who have been doing this for years, if we hold a squat while we're having contractions, I mean, that's going to be insane for anybody just to hold a squat period. And then to have somebody that wasn't physically fit tried to do that also, I mean, I can't imagine that they'd be able to even stand in a squat for 30 seconds, let alone have a complete birth.

Interesting. So what about for, you know, we talked about for the mom, but what about for the baby? Like, I've seen some talk about, for example, like blood sugar regulation, as well as, you know, better oxygen and glucose delivery to the pancreas, things of that nature. What happens with the baby when you do exercise versus when you don't exercise?

Well, what's really awesome is they do all the research shows that actually it lowers fitness, and staying active during your pregnancy can lower your gestational diabetes rate of developing it by 27%. So that's pretty encouraging alone to not have to even deal with that, because I know a lot of women that come in, we all have to have the blood sugar test about around a week, 25, to see if that's affecting us and affecting the baby then in turn. So just staying active is huge motivator to not developing that. But then for the baby's sake, if you do run into that, it just is daily monitoring that as well as that can also cause a lot of early delivery. And then going into that staying fit. The number one reason of premature birth is actually preeclampsia, which is when you develop high blood pressure. And so avoiding any premature birth that we can is we're gonna stay as active as possible to avoid that, just for the baby's sake.

So let's delve into standard recommendations for exercise for pregnancy. So, Devran, do you work with a lot of women who are prenatal.

Or. Devran, good.

Sorry, I think you meant Amy, but go ahead.

Yeah. Deveren, do you work with a lot of pregnant women?

I tend to work with women who have had children, so. And that's where my kind of interest in this came from, is the fact that, you know, I had a lot.

Of women who were.

Who didn't work out during their pregnancy. And so they would tell me, you know, I gained 50, 60 pounds. You know, these are petite women. And, you know, and I was like, wow, you know, obviously, I'm not a woman. I never will be pregnant. But it seemed a lot to gain, you know, for a woman, you know, to gain 60 pounds, you know, and so then they, of course, would always have questions on whether or not how could I bounce back? How can I get my flat tummy back? All these questions. And these are questions that, in fact, I have. And that's one of the reasons why I reached out to Amy, and I believe Amy actually now does have a significant amount of prenatal clients at the moment.

Now, Amy, what are the current standard recommendations for exercise for pregnancy that most women are thinking of when they walk in the door to train with you or that you've kind of run into in the past as far as like just like the dyed in the wool standard recommendations for what women should be doing during pregnancy and then kind of a follow up question, like two part question here. Do you think that stuff is outdated or irrelevant or unnecessary or what's your take on the way that women are told to exercise right now by their physicians or magazines or books or whatnot?

Sure, yeah. I actually have women that come in and it always, always goes back to where you're starting at. And I love breaking the myth that women a lot of times think that if they didn't work out before they got pregnant that they cannot start up. And actually that is so false. So I love breaking that. Having women that have no fitness background come in and we do start off slower, but we're really always listening to how their body feels. I'm always watching out for sign if they're dizzy, if they feel lightheaded, if they're spotting. All those things are things that I'm watching my clients and even online coaching telling people to watch out for no matter what trimester they're in. But it's recommended that you get 30 minutes of exercise a day while you're pregnant. And if you start out like if I have a client that's a half marathon runner and she has been doing that, she feels fantastic and she's got the okay from her doctor, I'm going to be completely okay with that. And typically that means that she's jogging 45 minutes to an hour every day or doing 45 minutes of weights. And I am completely okay with those standards because she's been doing it that long. And so it's really, really just so individual on that. And I know most doctors are pushing for 30 minutes a day and I think that that's completely realistic. But unfortunately I feel like even with their doctor's recommendation of women hearing that they need to do 30 minutes, knowing how much it helps their labor, knowing that it'll help get their baby body post baby body back quicker, I think that a lot of women are afraid of that. They're more so afraid of anything, of risking losing a baby over something as exercise or not doing it right. So I think awareness and giving people a tool to use so that they can see someone else doing it and know that it's safe enough for them to do.

Should women be taking their heart rates, do you think, if they're exercising while they're pregnant?

Yep, I will have if you're very active. For the women that are currently, you know, very, extremely active. If you are a crossfitter or half marathon runner or, you know, have done bodybuilding in the past, whatever. I actually recommend that my clients go get a Garmin and wear or whatever watch they want, but wear a chest monitor so that we can watch their heart rate while they work out and not get it above 140 beats per minute. So that they're really regulating that, watching it and being safe more than anything.

Why is it 140 beats per minute?

It's actually so that you just not scientifically based my studies and watching you, obviously, it's just so that you don't get lightheaded and dizzy. Your oxygen, we need to keep the baby obviously healthy, number one. And so our bodies are always trying to feed the baby, give the baby oxygen, number one over anything. And so if we are trying to take too much from that, that's where I've seen the dizziness and all of that come in.

What about the recommendation? Oh, go ahead.

Yeah, I just wanted to break into that number is a good number. And when Amy says it's not scientifically based, it is in a way. But at the same time, for a long time that was a definite number. Everyone was supposed to stay under 140. But I feel like now what we did and what we even talked about in the series is that 140 number is kind of like a base number. And what Amy was talking about before is like if you are a Crossfitter or a marathoner or, you know, a person who's been in the gym for their whole lives, an athlete, you know, that number can be a little bit higher because you obviously have more fitness. You know, you of course understand the whole. Because you're, you know, dumb triathlons and things. And when you, when you build a base, you're basically teaching your body to be able to burn fat more efficiently and hold a lower heart rate. So that means you can take a little bit more work. If you're a person who, like Amy says is a beginner, then, yeah, that 140 is a good baseline to kind of watch yourself. But again, like she said, depending upon the clientele she has, you can maybe go a little bit higher and still have no effect on the baby whatsoever. And just one quick thing, too, I just want to. The standards that she was talking about, the 30 minutes a day for exercise for pregnant women, is actually the same thing that the Centers for Disease Control and the American College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians recommend for all people. So in their studies this is the big time studies. The fact that women who are pregnant can work out just the same amount of time duration and frequency as a person who is not pregnant. That's their finding. So it's not even just someone who is coming to you and telling you this by word of mouth or by experience, which is probably the best way to tell is women want to hear from experience, from people like Amy, like, look, you can work out. But even with that, it's also verified by studies from the CDC and the acog. So there you go.

Gotcha. Okay, so what about like running and impact based movements during pregnancy? Like, you'll see there's like a recent article on a woman who did CrossFit all the way up, I think up well into her third trimester. You see some women jogging and jumping and doing like group aerobic classes and stuff like that. Do you think that this stuff is good at increasing bone density and you know, helping women to burn fat? Do you think that it's the fears are unfounded when it comes to impact based exercise or what's your take on that type of thing during the prenatal period?

Yeah, I love this question. I have. There's a couple of local obs that actually are runners and I have found a lot of comfort in them and even sending women that I run with to them just to reassure them. But a lot of it, and I mean most of it is fear based for women. And so that comes down to, you know, how do you feel? And so for me personally, I was always a runner and I love being active. My stepdad is actually a triathlete like yourself. And so I grew up watching him do all that stuff and I copied him. You know, I was, I was active my whole life and up until I was pregnant, I would say around the second trimester, all of a sudden it just felt weird. So to me, I know that you can be a crossfitter your whole pregnancy and you can be, you can run, you can swim, you can do all these things listening to your body. But when you feel personally like it just doesn't feel quite right, that's when I always say, take it back a little bit, give yourself grace. There is another person growing inside of you. So it's really just listening to your body and not pushing yourself so far or making yourself feel guilty that you're not able to keep up your current regimen of what you've always done just so that you stay safe and comfortable.

What about stuff like CrossFit?

Yeah, CrossFit is totally fine. I actually train some people that style. And I don't call myself a CrossFitter or that my gym is not a CrossFit station. But I've had quite a few actually injuries come in lately from CrossFit. So I think that is kind of more of a risky sport because it's just throwing around weight. Your first trimester, I'd say you can get away with that. And if you're super strong and you have an amazing core balance, then you could probably go into second and third. But I would be just really leery. I would never suggest a woman start CrossFit going into her pregnancy just because of the throwing of the weights and just the balance. Your body is changing immensely. And so unless you have incredible core strength and your glutes are strong, having the baby growing in, in your midsection, that's going to throw off all of your balance. And so it's just being aware of that every day.

Now, how about when it comes to abdominal exercises and keeping the core strong and maybe eliminating the possibility of you, like, tearing an abdominal wall during delivery, what do you think are the best core exercises? And I definitely am going to want to pick Deveren's brain. I know, I know Amy's getting, getting most of the talking done, but I'm going to be asking Deveren about the postnatal stages here in a little bit. But as far as, like, during the actual pregnancy, Amy, do you have specific ab exercises and core exercises that you've found really help women? Because we all hear, you know, you're not supposed to be lying on your back, you know, doing crunches and sit ups, especially like towards the third trimester. But do you have, like, staple exercises that you recommend for, for the core and for the abs?

Yeah, I actually definitely have. During the first trimester, pretty much the women that I can train, they go into the same amount of crunches and Russian twists and all of the core stuff that we do. Typically, they stick with again until they feel like it's uncomfortable or they're not comfortable with it or until second trimester. And that's typically when we go into more plank. We just do longer plank holds, a lot of, like bird dog type yoga, Pilates moves so that you're really able to bring your core in. And I love telling women to hug their baby because that really gives them a mental picture of holding their abs in super tight, contracting, and then they're visualizing their abs kind of hugging around and having. Keeping your abs, though, strong and tight is huge for Preventing tearing. And that's all stuff that you can help work on postnatal. But Deveren, go ahead.

Right, yeah. Deveren, after you've had the baby, what do you think are the best exercises to kind of get that flat stomach back? I guess what? Well, taking into consideration that your abdominal, your midsection, your pelvic floor might be a little torn up or might need a little tlc.

Yeah. What's interesting is people always talk about during pregnancy, they talk about Kegel exercises, and we all know that's kind of like the kind of tongue in cheek. Oh, practice your Kegels while you're pregnant to help you. Help you with your pelvic floor and make it strong. I think what a lot of women don't realize is the amount of care they need to take before they are not pregnant again. So the whole thing of, like you said, can I get my stomach back? Can I get the flat stomach back after I was pregnant? And what I always say is, it's very important during your pregnancy so you don't gain the extra weight, because that, of course, leads to more work after your pregnancy and then working on your pelvic floor strength while you're pregnant. Because that's what also will help you when you get finished being pregnant. Obviously, when you've given birth, if you don't work on those things, the road is a lot longer. Because if you do have something like diastasis recti, which is the tearing of the rectus abdominal wall, if you have that after you get pregnant, after you've given birth, a lot of times, if it's not very big, then the doctors don't have to sew it back together. But even in those cases, you still have limitations on what you can do six months, 12 months after your pregnancy, because you can't do any flexion exercises, you can't do any crunches, you can't do any traditional abdominal work until that is healed. If it's not healed, you risk a lot more injury. My answer to your question is, first, while you're pregnant, really be careful of how much weight you gain. And definitely do the exercises like your Kegels. But not only Kegels. The Kegel exercise pulls your pubis bone in. So it kind of gives your. When you do a Kegel, you're basically doing a posterior tilt with your hips. And what people don't realize is that's fine, it's a good exercise to do. But if you don't balance that out, you're not really getting the full benefit of the exercise of the Kegel. And the way you balance that out is doing something that will then help you with a more lordotic tilt or.

More.

Anterior, sorry, anterior tilt to your hips. So things like squatting should also be included with your Kegel exercises as a all encompassing plan to keep your pelvic floor strong.

That's something that. I'm glad you brought that up because I think that Kegels. And I'm actually going to be bringing on another podcast guest at some point in the near future, Katie Bowman from Alignment Matters, who wrote a really good book about this. But Kegels are a horse that are kind of kicked to death. And we almost like neglect taking into consideration things like strengthening of the posterior chain and the glutes, or really, really tight psoas and hip flexor muscles from not only carrying a baby around, but maybe sitting for long periods of time. Like, if you're just doing Kegels, you're leaving a lot, lot on the table when it comes to being able to get. Not only being able to prevent like diastasis recti, but being able to get your flat stomach back.

Right, Exactly. I mean, that's exactly the right. I mean, I meet a lot of women and that's the first thing is I try to have them. I try to have them activate the glutes. Let me see. Can you squat? Can you do a bird dog? Can you lay on your stomach and raise your legs off the ground? Do you have any glute activation? And I think one of the things too is getting the butt out there while you're doing a squat is something that a lot of women. It's harder to get women to do that than men do that. I think it's kind of like something in our society where getting the butt out there and doing a proper squat that really benefits your posterior chain like you're talking about, to then help you with your pelvic floor and getting your stomach flat. Those are things that women definitely need to keep in mind when they're doing that.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, by the way, I should throw this in there. One of the best ways I've found to kind of teach people how to get the butt out, and I don't know if you guys have done this before, is you simply do a wall facing squat where you have someone literally put their toes up against a wall that's right in front of them and squat down. And it's impossible to do a squat without getting your booty back. When you do something like that, it's a little trick to teach people how to get their butt back. So I know that you guys talk about a lot of stuff over at prenatal365.com, but one of the things that I noticed that you write about, Amy, is morning sickness. Now, do you have exercises or quick fixes or workouts for women who tend to experience morning sickness during their pregnancy?

Yeah, morning sickness is a touchy subject anyways, because typically if you wake up and you have morning sickness, you feel like your whole day is kind of shot, which, I mean, that's just part of the game. And it makes it harder for you to feel energized. And it isn't something exciting to wake up and look forward to, which makes it even less motivating, I guess, to get active after you feel like that. So I always just have everybody wake up and obviously want to start their day with a huge glass of water just to get everything flowing. And then obviously, I recommend that more. So for morning sickness is more for me. I talk to them about their nutrition and how to balance food around how they feel so that they're active. So. But I would have them do either like a prenatal yoga session or something really light that allows them that they don't. Our guests aren't having to get up and down and up and down or throw around weights, but something that just kind of gets their blood flow moving.

Do you do that? So you get up, you drink water, and then you do yoga, like, in the morning?

Yeah, that's what I recommend. But also, it depends on how sick they are. Like, if they really feel like they're gonna lose it at any second, that kind of determines how I tell them to structure their activity. But for the most part, I have been pretty blessed in my training that the women that come in here, if they are having. They're really nauseous or anything, they're typically. We are just doing basic workouts, keeping on the same, and they just take longer breaks. They drink a lot of water, they stand in front of a fan. So they're just trying to pretty much avoid the dizziness, or most of them have the drive and the want to stay very fit that I get to see. So they kind of push through it. And so that's a tough subject for me because I experienced it in my first trimesters. And most women, if that's when they're going to get it is right then in the beginning also. And so that's kind of a new thing where everybody's at the very beginning of their pregnancy. And so they want to push hard in their workouts, but they, you know, are also listening to their body.

Yeah, yeah. What about like, like supplementation or food strategies? Did you find that certain things worked in terms of morning sickness when it came to things that went above and beyond yoga? Like did you use acupressure or anything like that?

Well, the. I haven't done. I haven't studied the acupressure. But even, even women that are pregnant, if they have a huge issue with it, I have an amazing acupuncturist locally that he can really help a lot with that. That's something that, if that's a big struggle for women, they can look into that kind of medicine also. But most of the nausea is a lot of times dehydration also. So getting in a ton of water. And I always recommend that even for regular clients, they 0.6 times your body weight is the recommended for water intake. And so when you're pregnant and you're needing more fluid, you have way more fluid going through your body the entire pregnancy. So I recommend that everybody gets a gallon. And I don't know if that's based off of science or not, but I just know that when I have my prenatal clients chugging water, they just feel way better and less nauseous. And then they're still nauseous after getting, you know, eating fruit and having like, if they need like a natural grain based cracker, something that's typically. They want comfort food a little bit. So making just really healthy choices and then going into nutrition and supplements for them, you all. It's kind of tricky. A lot of women want to say, oh, well, this is my time to be pregnant, so I'm just gonna give myself this. So to motivate them, I really say, what do you want to feed your baby? Because it's no longer about you, it's no longer about them. It's actually about what we're giving to our baby. So that a lot of times motivates them to eliminate processed junk, garbage, all the things that our bodies can't use. So I will make them a lot of just different healthier recipes that are really pure and natural sources of carbohydrates and that kind of stuff. So they feel good and have some energy, but are not just giving themselves garbage because they don't feel good.

Yeah, I know for my wife, she had three things that worked well for her. She did the acupressure. Like, there's the Chinese meridian point they'll use it in acupuncture, too. But it's the point right on the inside of your wrist. It's called P6. And pressure against that really helped her to relieve nausea. And then she did. She did ginger root. Like she would buy ginger root at the store and cut it into slices and boil it and then just chew on that. And then also essential peppermint oil. Like, she would just put a few drops of that in a glass of water. And that really helped her as well. I know those are, those are a few of the tricks that she used from like a kind of like a supplement and alternative medicine kind of standpoint.

Yeah. And they do sell bracelets that help with the trigger points also on the wrist.

Yeah, I've seen those before. Like acupressure style bracelets. Yeah, yeah. Now, in terms of. And this is a question for Deveren, as far as, like getting your body back after you've had a baby, we talked about little bit about ab exercises, you know, Kegels and pelvic floor and squatting during pregnancy. But do you have specific workouts, specific regimens that you've found to be particularly effective and doable for women when they're trying to get their body back after they've had their baby?

Yes. One of the things I really focus on is first, did the woman have diastasis recti? If they did, was it sewn back? Was it to the severity level where it had to be sewn back, or was it the severity level where the doctor said, okay, it can be rehabbed or it can be corrected? And then from there. From there is when I developed the program. A lot of times, if a woman has had diastasis recti or still has it, or maybe she doesn't even know that she has it, I kind of run her through a little test that anybody can do. The test anybody can do at home, laying on the floor and kind of like, you know, working their fingers in between their rectus abdominis and seeing how many fingers they are, whether they're one finger, two fingers, five fingers, the whole gamut. And then from there it's like, okay, you can't do any normal hardcore core exercises. I met a woman who had actually had a baby and was like, last baby she had was like two years ago, but she still had significant diastoles recti, so she couldn't do really any traditional abdominal work. For the first year I trained her. We did planks, and then I had her do Kegels just for a pelvic floor. But again, these were. And then there's some interesting exercises where you can take even while you're pregnant, you can take a towel and wrap it around.

The trunk of the woman.

And she can lay on her back and she can do abdominal contractions while laying on her back or while sitting in a chair. But you know what she's doing is she's gathering that towel around her core and kind of pulling her rectus abdominal wall together in the front and then doing contractions while it's there.

So those are like, that's like the basic easy part. If you can, once you get past that or if you had your diastoles recti fixed by a doctor, then of course, then you can start doing all the crazy core exercises that you would like to do. Of course, we all know that getting your body back or getting your stomach flat is less about abdominal exercises and more about diet. Again, I always go back to, are you taking in processed foods? How much are you eating? Sometimes? A lot of women, because they have postpartum depression or whatever, they have a lot of cravings still, even after pregnancy because they have a lot of feelings of depression. And that leads to cravings of sugar, because our body wants sugar or something simple to eat if it's feeling under stress. So lowering a stress level and then having a plan of what you're going to eat are the best ways to get your stomach flat as opposed to having a boatload of abdominal exercises. Now, we have a boatload of abdominal exercises for you to do with our program, or any trainer could do them. Between the three of us, we probably have a bookload of abdominal exercises, but none of those really do anything. If you don't try to monitor your stress level, monitor your cravings even after you're pregnant so you can eat properly and not eat food that's going to cause swelling in your body to make that stomach feel like it's a little bit bloated. If you can rein that all in, then you can definitely get your flat stomach back. But there's definitely more to it than just being able to say, okay, I'm going to go out and do 100 sit ups, or I can't do any sit ups because I have had diastasis recti. You can correct your diastasis recti, but at the same time, you can still have a proper diet, proper eating habits to then get that stomach back.

Right, Gotcha. So a question for Amy and a question for Devra, and I want to ask you both this question. What do you think is the biggest dietary mistake that pregnant women make, whether during or soon thereafter in the prenatal or the postnatal period.

Sure. For myself and a lot of my clients, I'm very thankful that if you don't have a plan, if you. I suggest even having prenatal plan if you don't have a plan, I feel like just as well as any other athlete in general, that's when you kind of go. You can easily go off the deep end based on how you feel. And so I think that the biggest mistake that women make is I, you know, I have something growing in me. I need to eat twice as much or this isn't really affecting me right now because I'll be able to lose it all later after I have the baby. I'm not worried about it now. So I think overeating is insanely easy to do while you're pregnant and then not also just thinking, forgetting considering the baby growing inside of you. And rather than thinking of all the valuable things that we have here to eat that can actually benefit the baby, just thinking about basically emotional eating or stress eating while based on your feelings, I guess for the day is most of the biggest mistakes I see for prenatal.

Gotcha. And what about you, Devran?

Yeah, just going back to the point I just made earlier. You know, eating out of emotion is very, very easy to do. And of course, you know, I don't want to sound improper here, but of course, when women are pregnant, they have a lot of, a lot more hormones going on through the system and they become more stressed. Not only is their body stressed because obviously they're growing a second person inside them, but then they become stressed from the outward stresses that are, you know, kind of affect us every day and those affect you even more. So I feel like not just pregnant women, but people in general, you know, understanding how stress works and how it affects the. What we crave to eat is the first step in like being able to stop eating sugar or something that's processed and instead going for something that's a little more wholesome because again, our bodies.

Don'T really can't tell the difference between different types of stressors. It just knows it's stressed. And so if a body. And once that happens, the body wants to. It starts to burn. It kind of goes into a fight or flight. Fight or flight zone, for lack of a better word. And so that's when your body starts to burn the simpler calories. And those are sugar and simple sugars and carbs and things of that nature, once our bodies get in that state, then it's burning them off. So what does it want? It wants to get them back. The first thing you grab, you go and you grab a Snickers bar or whatever because your body is like, oh my gosh, I just need something to get in me so I can handle this stress. But if people realize that stress is causing them to crave those simpler molecules for your body to burn off quicker because that's what stress is, having you do, that's a good thing. Then once you learn that, you're like, okay, let me take a step back. Like Amy said earlier, let me take a step back, figure out what's causing the stress. Let me try to head it off at the past. And then, okay, am I really hungry or is this just. And then if you are really hungry, then grab something that you've kind of taken a step back and thought about eating. Make it something a little bit like whole wheat crackers or something else instead of something that's sugary and going to stay with you for a lot longer than you really wanted to.

Yeah, I agree. Although whole wheat crackers are going to spike your blood sugar almost more than a regular cracker.

That's me. Yeah. Just talking off turn. Yeah, that would definitely not, wouldn't be what I would say. But again, what a lot of women will do is they'll, they'll just kind of eat and overeat and it's become. Try to find the best option. If you're at a grocery store and you feel like you're going crazy and you're in line instead of grabbing for a bag of chips, then it may be better to eat a wasa cracker than it would be a bag of chips. But obviously wasa crackers may not be the best thing.

Or some nuts. The one thing I've found is a lot of women get so concerned with their post baby weight, they, they do some, some nervous system damage to themselves or to their baby. You know, when you look at like neural tube defects and neurotransmitter production, stuff like that, choline is huge. You know, we're talking about like standing at the grocery store, like walnuts, for example, a great source of choline eggs, a really good source of choline organ meats. Most or many women aren't going to eat liver. But still really good source of choline. But I've found that, you know, I do some consults with, with women who are prenatal and a choline deficiency, which is like the most Important fatty based nutrient that you could give to yourself or to your baby during pregnancy. I found that to be a huge issue. And again, I mean you can get it in like fish and egg yolks and walnuts and stuff like that. But like, like dietary fat, cholesterol, vitamin D deficits, all that stuff tend to be huge, especially among pregnant women who are essentially caring for one nervous system and then growing another simultaneously. It's nuts. Literally. Yeah.

And again, I think it goes back to like you said, some women will become vitamin deficient or because they, a lot of women, first they're afraid they're going to gain too much weight, but then they end up gaining more weight than they thought they would because for being afraid. And I think it's because then they start to, they don't eat for so long, they don't have a plan and then once they get hungry, they just eat whatever is in front of them, you know, and it goes for a lot of people, you know, if you don't have a plan and a lot of people who, you know, you meet, I mean, I'm sure you meet tons of clients. I'm sure Amy does too. You meet clients who are like, I don't know what happened, I barely ate today, but then I got home and I ate the legs off my table. And it's like that's because you weren't getting the things you should have been getting in the first place. And then once you got to that point, you weren't eating the things that have choline or good vitamin D. You were eating just whatever came in front of you.

Right? Right. Yeah. Now you guys have put together kind of a prenatal program over at prenatal 3, 365. You've got like a year long program to help kind of guide women through their pregnancy and show them the exercises that they could do at the home or at the gym and kind of point out everything that they're supposed to do for each trimester, which is really cool. And I'm going to put a link to prenatal365 in the show notes or folks can go over to prenatal365.com but to finish up for folks, if you could choose, let's say a woman is pregnant, she's listening in if she could choose the one mode of exercise. Because a big part of this is just stress and keeping things simple. But the one mode of exercise that you think is one of the best ones for pregnant women. Do you have one specific thing that you Found to be really, really good. It could be elliptical, it could be running, you know, lifting barbells, kettlebell training, whatever. Do you have one that's kind of like your favorite for each of you?

Sure. I love walking and I'm a runner. I mean, I love every exercise out there. But I think that for women to get out and if they can keep with their weights, if they keep can keep with their strength training, that will help them immensely. But when it all comes down to it, if they do, if you don't feel well, if your energy is low, if you feet hurt, if you can get out for a walk, or even if it's horrible out and you can get on a treadmill, if you can just walk 30 minutes a day on the days that are just the roughest, you will feel so good that most of the time that also encourages you to want to eat better also, which I love, which in turn helps with antidepressant and so many other things. Just doing one basic thing of walking along with your nutrition can help you more than, I mean, anything. Gotcha.

How about you, Devran?

Well, I think walking is probably the best thing for women to kind of try to do while they're pregnant. Like she said, just add something different. I think isometric contractions are good for pregnant women for a number of reasons, most of which is, you know, because of the increased estrogen levels and increased relaxant. You know, those are the things that are going to cause, you know, your joints to become a little bit more limber because, of course, you're getting ready to give birth. So, you know, while there hasn't, you know, while there's. While the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists like to bring that up, because I want everybody to know that, you know, we plan these workouts according to what they recommend, even though they say that, you know, chances of injury are very low even during doing normal exercises. I also think that being able to do isometric holds even decreases that even more because obviously you're not constantly going up and down and things in your later terms of pregnancy, like when you're in third trimester, if you are a little bit afraid that you may fall or do something of that nature, being able to isometrically contract, increase your times of holding, for instance, let's just bring the squat into the equation. I'm going to set up a squat. Let's hold the squat for 15 seconds. After 15 seconds, you stand up, you go back down, you hold the squat for 30 seconds, you come Back up, and then you may want to go back down again and hold it for 60 seconds. Doing isometric contractions, you can do them in many different ways with your arms, with your legs, but being able to. You can use a chair to stabilize yourself, but being able to use that as a strength and conditioning exercise. Like we spoke about before going through natural births, a lot of people are doing the more natural squat position. What better way than to. And that's basically isometric contraction is sitting there pushing while you're holding a squat position. So why not practice that in your living room? You don't need any weight. You can just increase the time and duration, and that's going to increase your strength. So I'm really a big believer for women doing isometric contractions.

I like it. We've actually done a podcast episode before with a guy named Jay Schroeder on this type of exercise called extreme isometrics. Another guy named Doug McGuff, who wrote a book called Body by Science. And he's big time into, like, the super slows, like 10 seconds up, 10 seconds down, which are pretty similar to that kind of isometric, except, you know, a little bit more movement, but very, very slow.

So.

And I got to throw in there. For me, I know for my wife, it was swimming. Like, that was her number one exercise. You know, kind of kind of therapeutic to the baby to be sloshing back and forth as mom churns through the water. But also, you know, in women, as they produce that, you know, greater amount of relaxing and the ligaments become a little bit more lax and impact might become more uncomfortable. She found this swimming was like, the top thing for her. And she was, gosh, I think she was in the water like five days a week at one point during her pregnancy. And that. That really helped her out so. Well, this has been really cool, you guys, and. And I want to. I'll put a link to everything that we talked about in the show notes. For those of you listening in, there have been other episodes where we've talked about pregnancy. We talked about that controversial article on a CrossFit pregnant mom. I've got an article on. On 14 core exercises for Pregnancy. We did a podcast on exercise and pregnancy with Cassandra Forsyth. I've talked about the Better Baby book by Dave Asprey and Chris Kresser's Healthy Baby Code. And I'll put a link to all that stuff along with prenatal365.com in the show notes. And then the last thing that I wanted to mention before I let our guests go for today is that that this podcast is actually brought to you by Audible. And I want to make a specific recommendation to you if you are going to have a baby to an audiobook on Audible. So you can actually get this book for free@AudiblePodcast.com Ben this is one that my wife and I went through when we were pregnant and it's called the Business of Baby. It's a little bit controversial, but it's called the business of what doctors don't tell you, what corporations try to sell you and how to put your pregnancy, childbirth and baby before their bottom line. So if you're interested in kind of the issues in in America, specifically with the business of having a baby, good one for you to check out. You can get it for free over@AudiblePodcast.com Ben so, Amy Deveren, thank you guys so much for coming on today's call.

Absolutely. Love. Thank you so much.

All right. So folks, until next time, this is Ben Greenfield and the folks from prenatal365.com signing out for Ben Greenfield Fitness.

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