Pregnant Pause

Here’s the hard, cold truth: to get in the type of shape that our cover models possess, it takes seriously intense and frequent training. But if you’re planning on getting pregnant any time soon, you may need to turn down your training intensity and/or frequency a notch, according to research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. In 3,000 women, those who trained every day, regardless of intensity, had a 3.5 times greater risk of impaired fertility compared to those who did not exercise. Those who trained to complete exhaustion, regardless of how frequently they trained, had a three times greater risk of impaired fertility. The researchers concluded that intense training is so energy intensive that the body doesn’t have adequate energy to maintain all the hormonal mechanisms that enable fertilization. But, if you are trying to get pregnant, being completely sedentary is not the best route either. Moderate exercise leads to an optimal hormonal profile for pregnancy.