There are also drugs, like metformin or liraglutide, that can help you lose weight under the supervision of your doctor. With the first one, you can get pregnant, but with the second one, you have to wait until you are pregnant before you can use it.
If you are still very overweight and can’t lose it by dieting and working out, stomach reduction surgery, or “bariatric surgery,” has been very helpful. The problem is that you can’t look for the pregnancy until a year after it happens. It can also make it hard for your body to absorb some things, so you should ask your doctor what extra vitamins you should take. In fact, some centers have high-risk units to deal with these kinds of pregnancies.
Do you have the right weight to achieve pregnancy?
Simply lowering between 5 and 10% of body weight, it has been shown that many women can recover their menstruation and gestate spontaneously. Read these nutrition and health tips for women and men with weight problems who want to be parents.
It’s worth losing weight to get a natural pregnancy
In Spain, 13% of women and 16% of men are obese in people under 45 years of age, at childbearing age. The problem of overweight is even greater: in our country in the age group between 30 and 39 years old it can affect 34% of women and 44% of men. In the United States, weight problems affect 50% of the general population.
Overweight and obesity, as well as underweight, can hinder your reproductive possibilities. If you achieve a normal weight, it will not only improve your overall health but also your fertility.
We know that reducing between 5 and 10% of the weight can make women recover their menstruation and canget pregnantin a natural way. Excessive weight is calculated by the body mass index, the so-called BMI: in order to measure it, the weight is divided by the size squared.
Obesity affects your fertility
Excess weight in women not only associates an increased risk of developing cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, respiratory disorders, cancers (ovary, digestive, uterine, breast), but also has a detrimental effect on your reproduction:
- Exposure before pregnancy to too fatty diets can alter the quality of the eggs.
- It therefore restricts fats and avoids harmful ones: margarines, butters, palm fat – that is, industrial pastries – and prepared meals.
- Replace them with olive oil, and products rich inomega 3and 6 (fatty fish, algae, nuts…).
Obese women, three times less fertile
Obesity has been shown to decrease fertility, in fact, it is three times lower in assisted reproduction techniques and increases the abortion rate. It has also been associated with a higher rate of malformations. And in offspring, it can lead to growth disorders and an increased risk of developing in the future: hypertension, diabetes and obesity.
The quality of semen is worse with overweight.
In men, obesity can also alter theseminal qualityand generate disorders in hormonal production. For all these reasons, it is important to reduce to a suitable weight before seeking pregnancy. And how can I do it? To achieve this, you must be on a diet and physical exercise.
Eat a low-calorie diet
It is not advisable when we are looking for pregnancy to perform strange and restrictive diets in certain foods, such as hyperprotein diets, since they generate ketosis (accumulation of ketogenic bodies), not recommended for a long time.
Low-calorie diets are recommended, in which you eat everything, but in smaller quantities:
- It is best to eat a lot of vegetables and grilled meat or fish.
- Remove batter and frying from your usual meals.
- If you take carbohydrates, it is better that they are whole, because they are absorbed more slowly and generate a more gradual increase in glucose, which prevents insulin spikes, which in the long run favors you not to gain weight.
- Have a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, if they are raw or steamed better, because they retain more fiber and its properties.
- Restrict thealcoholand soft drinks: the best drink when you go on a diet is water because it has no calories and helps you eliminate toxins.
- Remove the snack and soak in the sauces.
Exercise to achieve pregnancy
What exercise can you do to lose weight? Any sport is valid as long as you manage to lose weight. And if you are already looking for pregnancy while reducing kilos, nothing abrupt or impact on women. No type of activity has proven to be better than each other. The important thing is to be consistent and that sport helps you burn calories. If you don’t have time, walking at a live pace from half to an hour every day would be enough. Find any excuse to move.
Sports that do not compress the genital area
It’s not a good idea for men to work out in a way that raises the temperature and increases the pressure in the genital area. We are talking, for example, about riding a bike, riding a horse or wearing very tight clothes. It does not mean that these sports cannot be performed, but that we will do it in moderation.
Prescription drugs to lose weight
There are also drugs, such as metformin or liraglutide that, controlled by your doctor, can help you lose weight. With the first you can get pregnant and with the second you must wait to gestate while you use it.
If you still have significant obesity and do not get it by dieting and exercising, bariatric surgery, stomach reduction, has been very effective. The problem is that you can’t look for the pregnancy until a year after it. It can also make it hard for your body to absorb some things, so you should ask your doctor what extra vitamins you should take. In fact, in some centers this type of pregnancies are controlled in high-risk units.
Extreme thinness reduces fertility
Excessive thinness is also another problem for men and women. Patients with a weight less than BMI 18 may develop a malfunction of the glands that control hormones. Unfortunately, it’s happening more and more in our society, and it’s not just because of anorexia or bulimia. It’s also because we want to look like people in society who care too much about how they look.
Extreme thinness causes a condition called hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, in which the hypothalamus, a gland in the brain, doesn’t work. Since sex hormones need a certain amount of fat to be made, this means that no sex hormones are made.
Therefore, the woman is out of order and does not make the hormones necessary to get pregnant. If we treat these women with assisted reproduction techniques, according to the latest published studies, they do not seem to have worse results than normal weight patients, although they are more at risk ofovarian hyperstimulation.
Men with low weight, less testosterone
In men, low weight can cause a decrease in the production of a hormone, testosterone. As well as a decrease in seminal quality. If we want to gain weight, it would be best to eat a high-calorie diet, but not junk food. For example, we could eat nuts in the middle of the morning and in the middle of the afternoon.
Why need to lose weight to get pregnant? Read these nutrition and health tips for women and men with weight problems who want to be parents.
