Pregnancy Fitness Blog: 5 Weeks Pregnant. Welcome to my pregnancy fitness diary. I'm Elly from Natural Balance Health and Fitness Ltd, I'm 32 years old and am pregnant with my first child. I've decided to take you through my journey of endeavouring to stay fit, healthy and toned during and after my pregnancy. During this time I'll share the good, bad and ugly with you in my quest to stay accountable to my health and fitness as a professional of this industry and also to hopefully inspire you to continue to work towards your goals during or post pregnancy. These pregnancy fitness blogs and videos are by no means a 'how to' or 'what to expect' because everyone's pregnancy journey will no doubt be different, but what I will how you is that although I'm a health and fitness professional, I'm human too, and will no doubt find many parts of this journey pretty tough! 2 days after conceiving I had diarrhoea (which I never get), and I found my porridge disgusting (after always having been a breakfast person, and quite enjoying my porridge). I'm a firm believer in psycho-somatic illnesses and am sure I can quite often create physical ailments purely by thinking myself into them. You know, when you read somewhere about the symptoms of something or other and then you firmly believe you have that thing? Well it was kind of like that -- I was like 'I've got this and that -- I've got to be pregnant'. But it turns out this wasn't psycho-somatic stuff -- it was real. So aside from the gross porridge and the initial bout of diarrhoea, what has happened? I've been feeling nauseous, dizzy, a bit tired, and generally 'not quite with it'. This is potentially a bit of a worry considering 'most women' don't get the sickness thing until week 7 or 8. But I am a great person to worry about things before they happen, so I'm really going to try not to do that! My boobs got bigger a week after conceiving and the tenderness of them was a bit of a giveaway too, as this is something I don't normally have. I'll remind you that I'm sitting on Bondi beach. There's a tiny girl with the biggest, roundest boobs I've ever seen on a person that size. With that roundness and the way they stick out into her armpits they clearly cannot be real (my opinion; I'm allowed to have it!) and it makes me wonder how big mine will get and whether I will love them or 'hate' them. Let's not think about how huge my stomach will be just yet! Probably the biggest giveaway that I am pregnant has been how out of breath I am. All the time. From doing nothing. I first noticed this a week ago when I couldn't even get through half of my usual power vinyassa yoga class. Oh how weak I was and how nauseous I felt! This was a class I was doing every week but I think I'll need to take a rest from it at the moment. I feel out of breath walking on a slight downhill slope at half the speed I normally would. It feels like my lungs are about a quarter of their regular size and I keep gasping for a breath, sometimes even when I'm sitting still. I could best compare the experience to how I felt when I was at altitude in South America, with low levels of oxygen in the atmosphere. It seems odd that something the size of a mini jellybean could have this effect and I shudder to think of how out of breath I might become when I'm lugging a big load out in front! So what did my pre-pregnancy regime involve? With my desire to be active 6 days per week, a typical week over the last few months would include: 2 x runs (1 short and 1 long) 1-2 yoga sessions 2 bike rides (often just commuting, but at least 10km each way) The occasional muscle conditioning class -- another goal of mine is to work towards incorporating weekly resistance training into my regime, which I have struggled with for the reason that my muscles seem to take too long to recover and it takes me away from doing other forms of exercise I love. I know that the muscle soreness would ease off once I got into it consistently, so we'll still leave this on the goal list! Over the past week I have managed half a power vinyassa yoga class, and easy yoga class, a couple of easy walks (where I felt like my legs were made from lead and I was walking up a mountain), and a couple of very slow jogs, around 3km long. Note that I was running 16km just 3 weeks ago and less than 2 weeks ago (likely a few days after I conceived) I did a 70km bike ride. So it's a bit frustrating that this beautiful yet trouble making jelly bean has stopped me in my tracks so quickly! If you want to find out more about what we do at Natural Balance Health and fitness, you can find us at: www.naturalbalance.co.nz/ or follow us on facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Natural-Balance-Health-and-Fitness/215924458427657?ref=hl. Elly's linked in profile can be found at: nz.linkedin.com/in/ellymcguinness

Be the first to comment