Castle Personal Training
Castle Personal Training is a Corstorphine, Edinburgh based company who specialise in weightloss/toning and Pre and Post Natal exercise.
Pregnant? Time to drink more.
Hi guys,
First of all, if you’re reading this because you’ve just discovered that you’re pregnant, congratulations!
I know you are likely to be eating healthy and taking the right supplements, you’re even doing the right exercises, but are you missing something simple yet important?
I was talking about hydration with one of my pre-natal clients the other day and the inevitable question came up; “So how much should I drink?“, quickly followed by the shock when she found out just how much water is now required and an exclamation of “Do you know how much I pee already?!?!?!” so I thought I’d throw a little blog together about it.
I have written about hydration and weightloss before and then again when explaining why you aren’t losing any weight.
We all know the standard calculation for hydration (0.03 liters per Kg of bodyweight), or at least you do now, but this obviously changes when you are pregnant and there doesn’t appear to be much specific information out there.
A lot of websites out there list the “drink 8 cups a day” advice but that’s A; barely enough for anyone over 60Kg and B; definitely not enough for most pregnant ladies.
When you are pregnant you have to create more blood (Approx 1250ml) , create amniotic fluids (approx 1 Liter by the time you give birth) etc. In total there will be approx 2-2.5 Liters of more fluids required one way or the other. Just sticking to the normal hydration levels will therefore leave you, and your baby, dehydrated.
Dehydration comes with many serious problems, I won’t mention them here as I’m not trying to scare you into drinking more, for both mother and baby and therefore you should really start drinking more water when you are pregnant.
Now you don’t need to go completely overboard but going up to 0.04 Liters per Kg of bodyweight is about right. This means that a healthy 70Kg woman should take in approx 2.8 liters of fluids per day. Obviously you can get some from food, on a healthy diet that could be as much as 400ml, and you can count tea etc. towards your total goal so that’s definitely doable.
Keep it running for a while
Now a couple of caveats; This 0.04Liters is based on someone living in a climate not dissimilar to the UK, if you live in a country that’s significantly warmer then you will need to increase this. Secondly if you’re having twins you should increase this to roughly 0.048 to make sure you’re fully hydrated.
This means that the same 70Kg woman, now having twins, should take in 3.36Liters of water per day. This is actually quite a significant increase in fluids so be aware of this.
Take care of yourself, and your precious cargo.
Peter
Castle Personal Training 