Baby Fit?

Being overweight (I'm 5'11" tall and weight 200 lbs), I have been very careful in the last few months about what I eat and the amount of water I ingest so that I could flush some of those pounds away before getting pregnant. I've never been that obsessed about losing all the extra weight to begin with, my goal was to be healthier overall.

No change in weight. But I felt better overall so it's all good.

Then, I became pregnant... and lost 5 pounds in the first month, which were gained back shortly after. After 7 weeks and 1 day, I am exactly the same weight as before getting pregnant.

Now, the topic is a delicate one. I'm obviously not trying to lose weight while pregnant, but I want to make sure the weight I gain is healthy and that I stay on target. So, to me, eating healthy and drinking water is not enough in order to achieve that goal and I needed a soft exercise program I could easily do from home and that was built from pregnancy-friendly moves.

When I came across the Baby Fit website today, I thought, "o.k., another community of moms-to-be". But then I realized how ingeniously it was built. In there, I found:

• a weight tracker
• a water drank tracker
• an easy exercise program using no more than a swiss ball and a floor
• a suggested diet based on your BMI and your pregnancy progress
• a printable grocery list to go with your suggested diet
• a nutritional tracker in which you can enter all the portions you ate during the day + your prenatal supplements and it will show your daily nutritional intake in comparison to the recommended zone.
• a place where you can ask a question to Dr. Q. (sounds like a superhero name, no?)

Oh yes, and you find a forums and discussion groups on there as well, but I was too thrilled about the tracker to even bother looking into the forums.

So I bought a swiss ball and completed my first workout tonight as suggested on that site. I feel pretty good about this and I'm proud that I did it. I even thought the first 3 exercises out of 4 were a piece of cake, but by the time I did the 4th and last exercise, I was glad it was over. It took me about 20 minutes and was very gentle. The program suggests I should do this 3 times per week which is very manageable.

Bottom line, I'm hoping I will keep up with this new habit. It will certainly not make an athlete out of me but I'm confident that any exercise will be better than what I was doing, as long as it's safe for the pregnancy, and this is specifically designed for it so I'm in heaven. :)