Pre-natal fitness/weightgain as a pro-athlete? Pregnancy belts and weightlifting for weightloss.

On this week's episode I answer more listener emails.

An email from a pro-athlete who asks how/if she "can stay active, and prevent gaining too much weight during pregnany, to ensure she remains competitive and has an easier post-partum recovery" is what starts us off this week.

The I briefly talk about pregnancy belts to support your "baby-bump" and, finally, another brief explanation of why lifting weights to increase your metabolism is just a waste of time. 
There are MUCH better reasons to lift weights!

As always; HPNB still only has 5 billing cycles.

So this means that you not only get 3 months FREE access, no obligation!

BUT, if you decide you want to do the rest of the program, after only 5 months of paying $10/£8 a month you now get FREE LIFE TIME ACCESS! That's $50 max spend, in case you were wondering.

Though I'm not terribly active on  Instagram and Facebook you can follow us there. I am however active on Threads so find me there!

And, of course, you can always find us on our YouTube channel if you like your podcast in video form :)

Visit healthypostnatalbody.com and get 3 months completely FREE access. No sales, no commitment, no BS.

Email peter@healthypostnatalbody.com if you have any questions, comments or want to suggest a guest/topic

Playing us out this week "Shells by the sea" by Gateway

Transcript

Peter Lap: 0:01

Hey, welcome to the Healthy Postnatal Body Podcast with your postnatal expert, Peter Lap. That, as always, would be me Today. In exchange for the schedule, I'm going to do more emails. Can you stay fit and active whilst pregnant and can you prevent weight gain? That's an email I had in from a professional athlete, which is a phenomenal question. We're talking belts, which is, wear a belt whilst you're pregnant. And if they help and throw back the last week's episode, the question on that, adding muscle increases your metabolism. How does that actually work? Right? So, without further ado, here we go. Hey, I hope you're well.

Peter Lap: 0:58

This is, uh, the healthy postnatal body podcast with little old me. This is the podcast episode for the 7th of april 2024 and I've got absolutely everybody here, so I'm not going to take you for the long list. I'm making this a nice quick one because you know it's it's people have been doing work to the house and and I it's tough to find a quiet space that will stay quiet for half an hour or so. So we're doing some emails this week and I changed to the original schedule. The original schedule was supposed to be about toxic fitness habits and diet culture and all that sort of stuff. We'll get to that next week or the week after, but I had some amazing emails in this week and I really, really wanted to get them done. Peter at HealthyPostnatalBodycom, if you yourself have a question, I did an email in from somebody I know, so I had to change it a little bit. Somebody, as in, a familiar famous person. If you're into sports and all that sort of stuff into women's sports, hey, peter enjoyed listening to last week's podcast. I'm a professional athlete and again I changed that because I know who it is. I changed her occupation. I want to keep competing for as long as possible during my pregnancy, as long as it's safe, of course. However, I'm really concerned about gaining too much weight during the pregnancy and then finding it's almost impossible to get rid of. After Any advice on staying in shape and on weight gain during pregnancy in general, can I control this Phenomenal question? A couple of caveats here. For the normal person as in, who is not a professional athlete, this I strongly recommend not making this too much of a consideration. Weight gain you know you're going to gain the amount of weight you're going to gain, right? The baby needs as much as it needs and as he or she needs, and that is kind of just what you have to live with.

Peter Lap: 2:57

For a professional athlete. It's a funny one because of course, you get paid to play, so to speak, and also, whilst being nice, most professional athletes are insane. They train really hard, they give up loads of stuff, they make sacrifices that normal people tend not to make. This person is getting paid to play her sport. It's not a team sport, I will say that. So there's not like a team that you would let down. So air quote let down if you can't perform at a level anymore, and that actually just means also, you have no cover, right. It's not like a football player, like a female football player has cover. It can sit on the bench for a little while and the team can step up when she herself has lost a yard or two. When they get a bit bigger and you get a bit slower and all that sort of stuff, this is not one of those cases. So it's really, really difficult.

Peter Lap: 4:10

You can stay fit and healthy. Sure Can you compete at a top 10 level of your chosen sport. That's a different beast altogether. I personally think you can do that for four or five months, and after that it gets a little bit difficult. I also think I'm aware that most professional athletes I'm adding loads of caveats here, by the way right, I'm aware that most professional athletes, um, are used to making a tremendous amount of sacrifice for their sport, and it can be quite the change to not put your sport first. Let me put it that way. But you know, this is one of those situations where I think you know it's a safety first type of scenario where you just say, okay, at the time you feel you're not competitive anymore. That is when you slow down and you take time off.

Peter Lap: 5:16

With regards to gaining weight, there isn't really that much you can do. Obviously, as I always said, the law of thermodynamics always applies, but you need to eat, you need to eat well and you need to eat nutritious food as best you can to help grow a healthy child and to help you get through the pregnancy. This is kind of what the pickle is with women in sport, in that it's at some stage you, unlike men, have to make a decision where your sport takes a backseat, because you guys can get pregnant and men can't, and this sounds really, really stupid. But this really is one of those things that a lot of sports would do a lot better, should be able to do a lot better at managing. We're starting to see this coming in in football a little bit. I know the BBC did something about kindergarten crashes and all that sort of stuff, childcare in football in Sweden being the norm in female football. In Sweden and America they look after your kids a lot better, and in the UK that's not yet the case.

Peter Lap: 6:34

I find when it comes to postpartum recovery and pregnancy, in other sports tennis and hockey and contact sports like judo and rugby and all that sort of stuff it is massively lacking. I mean, it just isn't there and you're kind of just left the fend for yourself and if you're not quite at the level that this person is at, as in, you have a bit of money in the bank and all that sort of stuff, but then it gets brutally difficult. I've seen tennis players on the circuit. They you know that make, I don't know, maybe 30 grand a year or something like that if they don't qualify for any of the biggies and they're just busting their hump the entire year going from place to place. You know, all of a sudden you're in Kazakhstan and then you play a tournament in Germany and you're all over the place, sleeping on people's sofas to save money and all that sort of stuff. Right it's. There's a difference between being a tour player that doesn't make as much money, for instance in tennis, or just being in a sport like hockey, which doesn't pay that well at all, and being a top level, say, tennis player, or or even a Women's Premier League football player who get a half decent salary not a phenomenal amount of money, but enough to at least carve out a living and have some support. And of course, the benefit for football as opposed to lower level tennis players is you're not touring all the time, so it's significantly easier. You don't go from country to country, you have a home base and all that sort of stuff.

Peter Lap: 8:22

The issue quite often during pregnancy for athletes comes at that five, six month stage. That's when it all gets a little bit more difficult, just because you're getting a bit bigger, your center of gravity shifts a little bit and all that sort of stuff, and you really don't. I strongly, strongly recommend not limiting food intake and all that sort of stuff. Weight gain is not your enemy during pregnancy. It really isn't. Maybe I should have said that first. Weight gain is not your enemy. Weight gain isn't your enemy when you're a professional athlete either. Uh, when you're pregnant as a professional athlete, the weight will come off, don't, don't. There's no need to worry that much about it, and the weight will usually come off without intensive dieting for especially for athletes you're active enough, right? If you postpartum and if you're breastfeeding and all that sort of stuff, it's a bit slower.

Peter Lap: 9:19

It takes a little while to get back into it, but you're going to have a recovery stage anyways, and during that period you'll probably find you you're especially if it's your first, and almost every mother who's had given birth to one child will tell you this after the first, it's it's a little bit easier to get back to where you were, uh, pre-prenatal, especially weight-wise uh, than it is after your second or your third or your fourth, right? So, and because this is your first, I'm just going to say listen, you eat what you need to eat. You gain the weight you're going to gain. That, this is, this is a given, this is something that can be accepted. Um, we're not talking about losing muscle mass or anything like that. That'll all say fine, you can keep your weight training up. You can keep your cardio levels up to a large extent right. Only in the last, uh, in the last trimester do we do we talk about not getting your heart rate too high and all that sort of stuff. This again, this is assuming you're, you're fit and you know, if you're a professional athlete, then you're fit and you have no illnesses and all that sort of stuff.

Peter Lap: 10:27

Um, so you can just keep exercising the way you are exercising. You just mind your input a bit. You just can't compete at the top level anymore. That is just not realistic, especially the last few months. Your performance will drop off. It's not about showing anything like that. Your performance will just drop off, especially because your body changes and all that sort of stuff. And for instance, in a lot of sports and I'm really trying to steer clear of the obvious here for a lot of sports, rotational movement is absolutely everything, and it gets a bit more difficult when you have a baby in your belly. Right Core explosiveness and all that sort of stuff is a little bit trickier, um, so that's where your competitiveness goes a little bit, and and you can compensate for that by staying active if not competitive. So, yeah, you can't compete anymore. That doesn't mean you're going to sit on the sofa and do nothing right, so you don't need to worry about that too much. You won't drop off a cliff, you just slow down a little bit.

Peter Lap: 11:42

For anybody listening who says listen, I want to stay in shape during my pregnancy, you can, you can stay in shape. Being bigger does not equal not being in shape, especially when you're pregnant. Uh, because you know you'll go on. The 24-hour diet is what I laughingly call. Uh, giving birth right, you're going to lose a lot of weight within a 24-hour period when you give birth and all of a sudden, you'll find that life is a hell of a lot easier when, or heck of a lot easier when, or heck of a lot easier. Or, if you're American, if all of a sudden you're nine kilos lighter, if you're a couple of stone lighter postpartum, all of a sudden your movement is a lot easier. You might be physically drained and there might be one or two issues that need resolved, but you'll be a lot lighter and all of a sudden, getting up and down the stairs is a lot easier than it is at the peak, at peak pregnancy. So I I genuinely wouldn't worry about weight gain.

Peter Lap: 12:38

You keep eating nutritious, healthy food. If you are at a top level, if you're working with a nutritionist or a dietitian or a sports nutritionist right that type of thing make sure you just keep eating healthy, nutritious foods and eat a bit more than you used to. You don't need to eat for two as in. You don't need to double your calorie intake and all that sort of stuff. You just need to make sure you eat enough. And if you're working with a sports nutritionist, then they should have some familiarity with pre and postpartum training. Anyways, if they're any good. It's not rocket science, this stuff. It really isn't. I hope that helps.

Peter Lap: 13:18

I'm trying to be very I'm trying to be always very aware that not everybody who listens to this, most people who listen to this are not in the situation that this person is in. So don't take any of the things that I just said to heart. If you are not a professional athlete, don't say, oh, pete told me to care a lot about my weight and my performance and all that sort of stuff. Absolutely not. That only really applies if, as a woman and, like I said, it's messed up and I get it. But if it's your livelihood and you're asking me directly on what to do if it's your livelihood, then for the first four or five months you can just do whatever. As long as it's safe and it feels okay and all that sort of stuff. You can do whatever and after that you'll just not be as competitive as you used to be and it comes more with acceptance.

Peter Lap: 14:22

Your postpartum recovery that's kind of where it's at as a professional and there are some amazing I mean I've worked with a couple of tennis players. There's people now and a skier and what else some professional athletes and some people that get paid to perform and the postpartum recovery that's where the fun lives You'll get. If you are active and at the level that you're active as a professional athlete, if you're active at that level, your fitness will come back usually a lot faster than you think it will A lot of the times, with the right guidance, of course. Don't just do what other people did and jump on a peloton bike and see if you can smash out 50, 60 miles or something like that Just to see what my fitness is like. With the right guidance you will find that you'll go back to full fitness relatively quickly, a lot faster than it takes some football players to recover from an ACL injury. Right, some people will be out for a season with a stupid injury.

Peter Lap: 15:36

I find that postpartum at least, it doesn't take a full season to recover, to get back to a competitive level, if not full fitness. It's a bit of a how long is a piece of string sort of situation, but for most professional athletes it doesn't take a tremendous amount of time to get back to being competitive. And then whether you'll get back to the top level that people used to perform at that often isn't even a postpartum, pre-partum physical issue. It's much more about the sacrifice that is required to make. Whether you're still able to, whether you're still willing to make that Life with a young child for a professional athlete is a completely different beast. Again, I'm talking about female professional athletes here and, like I said, I'm well aware that it's unfair, but it does tend to be a completely different beast than it is prenatal.

Peter Lap: 16:43

If you are a professional athlete, a football player or anything like that, and you want to come on and talk to me about this, let me much appreciate it. I've been looking for someone to do something with on this particular subject, peterathealthyplusnatalbodycom. Definitely interesting to see which sports do have the support, which ones don't, and how you deal with it and all that sort of stuff. I've spoken to one or two people. They just don't want to discuss these things publicly because they'll be afraid it pisses their employer off, believe it or not. Right another which says enough right, if you're scared that your employer will be teed, peed off because you're complaining about a lack of support, then there's definitely a lack of support and your employer knows that they're lacking.

Peter Lap: 17:33

Right, support belts whilst you're pregnant. I met one of my clients this week and she bought one of those prenatal support belts. You know, you wrap them around one of those. You wrap them just underneath your belly, wrap them around your waist and they support your belly for a bit. And then it comes with a back support as well, which basically turns the whole thing into like a corset, without squeezing it too tight. And she said can I wear this? And yeah, it's great Prenatal, I'm a big fan of them.

Peter Lap: 18:07

If you feel uncomfortable because you're getting really quite big and you would like to support your bump a little bit because it's making you feel uncomfortable, giving you a bit of back pain and all that sort of stuff, then I am all for it. You can't do anything wrong with those things. Um, I don't mind them at all. You can still exercise in them. You can sit comfortably in them. The one that she bought had the belly support and then a back support. And the back support. She said that hurts when I sit down and I said, yeah, that's because your body shifts. So if you put it on when you're standing up and then you sit down, all of a sudden the angle changes and therefore that thing isn't really set up for sitting down. So then you need to put it on sitting down as well. But other than that, yeah, it's completely fine. It alleviates the pressure a little bit, right, it makes it feel a little bit easier if you get too big. For some people it works for back pain a little bit. Just have a little bit of relief and I'm all for that.

Peter Lap: 19:11

Postpartum they do very, very little to help with diastasis recti. Just to be clear, there is no evidence whatsoever that these things help postpartum, as in help keep your bits in and all that sort of stuff. Whatever they sell help heal your diastasis recti, help your body bounce back, help your belly get smaller none of that stuff. There's no evidence of any of that sort of stuff. And unless you feel some pain relief postpartum, then I would argue that postpartum you shouldn't wear one, just because the main job for postpartum recovery is to make sure everything is working again. And if you wear something that squeezes everything together, then you still get very little muscle activation and core activation and you don't retrain your body, so to speak. You don't rehab your body. Then it's not learning anything and you're going to run into one or two issues later on. So please don't do that. Please don't wear a postpartum, but prenatal you can do whatever you want. Those are the rules.

Peter Lap: 20:20

I am remarkably flexible when it comes to people who are pregnant and what they want to do. I am very much in the camp of what works for you works for you as long as it's healthy for you, works for you as long as it's you know it's healthy for you and it brings you a bit of relief, then I am okay with almost everything Right. Last but not least, a little throwback to last week's episode. I don't know if you were listening, but I did some bits. I spoke about increasing your metabolism and all that sort of stuff, protein obsession, especially the protein obsession within the fitness industry, and I had a wonderful email. Let me see if I can find it. And there we are. Through the magic of editing, I have finally found it.

Peter Lap: 21:12

I should really be more prepared for this. Uh, hey, peter, greetings from china. I love this, right? I love it when people from all over the world get in touch, but especially places like china. It baffles me. It's astonishing to me that you guys even listen to this thing.

Peter Lap: 21:26

Um, can you elaborate a little bit on last week's episode where you said that adding muscle increases your metabolism, but only by six calories per pound, because my personal trainer says I have to add muscle to burn more fat. Yes, yes, I can, and this I'm not saying that your personal trainer is wrong, but make that very clear because technically they are correct. But adding a pound of muscle, first of all, it's a difficult thing to do, it's not easy, it doesn't happen overnight and it only burns an extra, say, six calories per pound. So you have to put quite a lot of effort in into increasing that energy expenditure. So the I think I spoke about this last week in the context of eating more protein, and now everybody's saying you need to eat 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram body weight and all that sort of thing, and it's just, you don't need to consume that much protein. It just doesn't do that much. Unless you're a bodybuilder, you don't need to. Right Kind of goes back to the first question that we had on this podcast Don't compare yourself to a professional athlete.

Peter Lap: 22:41

They have a completely different mindset and completely different goal and a completely different ability to do things. You don't need to function, you don't need to live at that level of intensity if you're not a professional athlete yourself. And in the same way that you don't need to consume 2.2 kilograms of protein 2.3 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight if you're not a bodybuilder, you just don't need to do it. Anyways, having said that, putting a pound of muscle on to burn the extra six calories is a lot of hard work. To burn an extra six calories, putting 10 pounds of muscle on is 60 calories a day, and over the 10 kilos of muscle is an extra 300 odd a day 320-ish. 10 kilos of muscle is an extra 300 odd a day, 320-ish, and that means you burn an extra pound worth of calories.

Peter Lap: 23:37

So 3,500 calories is one pound of fat, right? That's the old saying, right? You want to lose a pound of fat? You need to under-consume calories by 3,500 or burn more calories to the tune of 3500 calories. Uh, putting on 10 kilos of muscle means that you burn the equivalent of calories that would there would be about stone. So six point something calories, uh, 12 pounds, uh, 12 new pounds, 6 point something kilograms of fat, so to speak, calories worth of fat every year. But that's 10 kilograms of muscle. So you have to go from 60 kilos to weighing 70 kilos. Assuming your fat content stays the same, your percentage obviously changes because you're putting on loads of muscle. But to put it very simply, you need to gain 10 kilos of muscle to give up from 60 kilos to 70 kilos, um, all in an effort to burn an extra stone, um of um of worth of calories every year. That makes no sense. Nobody gains 12, 14% of their body weight in a year in muscle. That's a phenomenal amount of weight gain, right Muscle gain, and on top, just to then basically lose half of that and burn half of that in fat and all that sort of stuff.

Peter Lap: 25:10

The main reason why lifting weights is good for your metabolism is because you're moving, you're not sitting down anymore. Well, you can do that walking and you can do that dancing and all that sort of stuff. There's a huge benefit to lifting weights. It means you can lift heavier things on a day-to-day basis. Lifting weights as a parent means you can carry your kids in, carry suitcases and carry travel systems and you can do more and you can carry more shopping and all that sort of whatever you're thinking. It makes life easier. It makes you stronger, it makes you feel stronger, it makes you more toned, it gives you more muscle. Your body composition changes. It gives your arms more tone and shape, which is something that most people are after. It does the same for your legs. Those are the benefits.

Peter Lap: 26:00

Increasing your base metabolic rate really isn't one of them. It is insane to have that as a goal Otherwise. It is insane to have that as a goal. Otherwise, you would go from being a 60-kilogram weighing woman to a 70-kilogram weighing woman, which is, of course, fine, and your body shape would be completely different. So you may well find you look and feel better at 70 kg than you do at 60, right, this is not a weight management thing. And you know, gaining 5, 6 kilos of muscle is something a lot of people could actually really, really benefit from, and dumping the scales is something even more people would would benefit from, but it's. It's it's to use it as a way to increase your daily metabolism. Your base metabolic rate is it's. It's just not just not worth it. I hope that explains it a little bit. I'm not saying that lifting weights and gaining muscle doesn't increase your base metabolic rate. I'm saying that it is so marginal that that should not be the main reason why you lift heavy things and why you want to put on muscle. Toning up your arms is a better reason to put on some muscle. The rest is a bonus, right, so I hope that works.

Peter Lap: 27:16

Peter at HealthyPostnatalBodycom, if you yourself have any questions, I'm going to shoot off now because I think my chicken might be burning in the oven. You have a tremendous week. Here's a new bit of music, right? Bye now, bye now. Slipping on this swing rolling out by the coast. Yeah, it feels good. Let the morning slip away. Yeah, it feels good. Got the sunshine smiling on my face. I throw myself onto the bench to get away. Get away. Take a moment on my phone and try and find escape. Yeah, it feels good If the morning's a slippery way, cause it feels good. Got the sunshine and light on my face. Sunshine's falling yeah, sunshine's falling. Baby Sunshine's falling. Yeah, sunshine is falling. Yeah, sunshine is falling, baby, thank you.