Pregnancy - Here Comes the Family

Exercise is good for the Mom who needs to lose weight after giving birth. But running after your toddler isn’t enough. The encouraging news is that losing pregnancy weight is a practical goal for busy Moms. The following 5 ways can minimize your workout time and increase your ability to burn fat and hence lose weight quickly and effectively to make you look fabulous.

1. Strength Training

The training of choice for Moms serious about losing pregnancy weight to get a lean, fit body is strength training. Resistance training is a form of strength training that is the most effective at burning fat because it builds lean muscle. Muscles are like fat burning factories in your body. Therefore the more lean muscle you have the more efficiently your body will burn the calories. Resistance training only requires your body weight and some free weights and you are ready to go. Try to use the weights that require an effort to lift so that you can expend more energy to move them thus increasing your metabolism and burning more fat.

2. Perform Compound Exercises

If you want to lose pregnancy weight fast, then you have to forget isolation exercises for now and concentrate on doing compound exercises. Compound exercises work several muscle groups at the same time. Therefore, you will be stimulating many muscle fibers at once and that will in turn, result in more energy required and calories burned. A compound exercise like squats or lunges can burn more calories that just doing stomach crunches. Squats will work the muscles of your lower back, legs and buttock compared to crunches only working your stomach muscles.

3. Workout your Body in Pairs

Muscles exist in pairs and as such they work as a team. So, in order to maximize the number of calories you can burn in a workout session, you need to do a full body workout. This involves alternating your workout session between your upper and lower body. As mentioned before, the more muscle groups you work, the more fat burned and hence the more quickly you will lose the pregnancy weight and fit into your bikini.

4. Short Rest time and Low Reps

Performing each exercise at maximum intensity with brief recovery intervals is the quick and efficient way to tone your muscles and trim your tummy. Studies have shown that lean muscle formation is stimulated by performing each exercise between 8 to 12 reps and to have a rest of 30 to 60 seconds between each set of exercise. Therefore, you will have the advantage of a workout that burns more calories and does so in less time.

5. Reduce your Cardio

Cardio is good for strengthening your heart and lungs but not your skeletal muscles. When it comes to losing the baby fat, you want to do the exercises that can strengthen your muscles to become lean. Strength training is the exercise that builds lean muscle.

Cardio burns fat for the short term and does not give you lean muscles. The proper way to get toned muscles is by incorporating some resistance training into your weekly workout schedule. You can alternate your cardio training days with your resistance training days to get a more balanced workout schedule.

Knowledge is power. Now you can put into effect these tips into your workout routine to lose your tummy. But you are more than just pounds of post-pregnancy weight and life-long weight management goes hand in hand with a healthy lifestyle. Losing pregnancy weight is only one of many aspects to living well. The realistic way to look at any weight loss endeavor is to ensure that you are able to maintain a balance between of how you work, play and love you and yours.

Tags: gravidness

Prenatal vitamins are a must for expecting mothers. A GP will often prescribe a prenatal vitamin to a expectant patient, but some assert that the vitamins and minerals are useful for women who are planning to conceive. Using the supplements before getting pregnant helps stop certain birth defects. Some mothers decide to continue taking prenatal vitamins throughout their pregnancies and while they are breastfeeding.

One should also remember that the prenatal vitamins and minerals are supplements. They do not supplant a balanced intake. It is not good practice to rely on vitamins for all of your nutritional needs. It is more important to eat a nutritious, well-balanced diet than it is to take pills, no matter how helpful they are. The vitamins also work better when they are taken with a beneficial diet. Some of the nutrients in the foods help to absorb the vitamins and minerals.

Calcium is an extremely important element in a expecting woman’s diet. Prenatal vitamins and minerals do not have the recommended daily allowance of calcium for an in the club mother. Prenatal vitamins have about 250 milligrams of calcium but an expectant mother requires between 1,200 and 1,500 milligrams of calcium each day to assure that the newborn will develop properly. This-is-a-significant-difference.

Not every prenatal vitamin is the same; in fact some may not benefit the expectant mother as much as they claim. Research show that a expecting woman’s body does not necessarily absorb all of the nutrients provided by the vitamins, especially folate. Folate is extremely important in the infant’s prenatal development. The vitamin helps stop birth defects like spina-bifida. Only three out of nine vitamins and minerals on average actually provide the amount of folate labeled on the bottle. This is not to suggest that the supplements do not have the vitamin, it just is not absorbed by the woman’s body.

Some argue that it is better to take a prenatal vitamin prescribed by a doctor. However, this is not necessarily the case. While prescribed vitamins are ideal, many of the very same vitamins and minerals are available in stores and without a prescription. The most important thing to consider is the ingredients in the vitamins. Another important factor to consider is whether the vitamins and minerals are easily absorbed or not.

There is an easy test you can use to determine if the vitamins and minerals will be absorbed into your system. Put one of the prenatal vitamins into a cup of water. Wait ten minutes. If the vitamin is dissolved, or is very soft, it will be absorbed into your system. If the vitamin remains hard, it will probably pass through your system without depositing many of the nutrients it carries.

It is a good idea to talk to your general practitioner when deciding which prenatal vitamin is best for you. I found that the vitamin my medical practitioner prescribed made me very nauseous. I told my family doctor about the trouble I was having and she recommended a supplement that I could buy over the counter. This vitamin was not a strong as the one she originally prescribed, but I was getting more nutrients because I was able to tolerate them much better.

Locating the right prenatal vitamin may take a little research, but the benefits are great. However, it is crucial to keep eating a beneficial, well-balanced intake. There is no supplement that can substitute good nutrition.

Tags: childbirth

If you have had your tubes tied and want another baby now for whatever change in circumstances precipitated the desire, you are left looking at a tubal reversal or at in vitro fertilization. But before you make up your mind which one to go for, there are usually a few questions you want to ask. Some of those questions are answered below.

1 - Usually a big one is why has my doctor never heard of tubal reversal? Why does he push in vitro fertilization? The answer to the second question is partially the answer to the first. He pushes IVF because he does not know about tubal reversals especially if he was educated and trained in the last 15 years or so. You just don’t find this surgery being done in hospitals so doctors can’t be trained in it. If they aren’t trained, then many think that means it’s not possible. Tubal reversals used to be the new and upcoming technique. Then IVF became the new and upcoming fertility technique and reversals fell out of favor. Why? Just look at the price tag difference and you’ll know the answer to that.

2 - How does a tubal reversal compare to IVF? On average, a cycle of IVF treatment will cost between $10,000 and $12,000 with a success rate of 10 - 30%. That success rate depends upon the number of eggs implanted. A tubal reversal will cost $8,000 - $9,000 on average though you can find it for less. In fact the premiere tubal reversal doctor in the U.S. and quite possibly in the world, only charges $6900, but that’s because he does it in a clinic and not a hospital and it’s all he does. Once the tubal reversal is done the success rate, which depends upon many factors, averages 69%…at least at the leading surgeon’s center. You will need to ask the surgeon you are looking at for his particular success rate.

3 - How does my age affect things? Well, the older you are the less likely you will get pregnant. After 40, it starts really going downhill but that doesn’t mean it’s a total wipe out. Using that leading doctor’s published statistics, even a woman over 40 has a 41% chance with a tubal reversal. That still beats an IVF cycle. But if you’re under 30, the chances are 82%.

4 - Will how long it’s been since the tubal ligation matter? It matters in where that length of time puts you on the age scale. Take a look at the last question and you should see what I mean. Does the time put you over 40? Yes, then your chances are less than if it keeps you under 30.

5 - How long is the surgery? This will depend upon the experience of the doctor you select. If you have one that has done maybe two surgeries in the last three years, it will probably be done in a hospital at greater expense and take longer. However, if you select a doctor like Dr. Berger, then your operation will be done as an outpatient procedure and you’ll only be in the operating room about an hour. But then he has done over 7000 surgeries and that’s all he does.

6 - Does my doctor do only tubal reversal? This is a question you should ask if you aren’t. Why? Because if he does IVF as well, you only need to look above at 1 and 2 to understand what he wants to do regardless of your situation. And if he does other types of surgeries as well, how experienced and practiced is he? When you have the choice of the Chapel Hill Tubal Reversal Center where tubal reversals are all that is done, just think of all the experience they have.

Let’s stop here and we’ll address more questions in another article. Just know that these are some of the questions that most women ask before getting a tubal reversal. They are questions you will want answers for from the tubal reversal doctor you have do your surgery.

Tags: child birth