Obese pregnant women can avoid complications with diet and exercise

Lifestyle changes sure have a lot of benefits, even for overweight pregnant women. One can reduce complications during pregnancy if they change their diet and lifestyle before their pregnancy period starts, a new study has revealed.

By: ANI | | Published: September 9, 2018 8:22 am

obesity during pregnancy isn't a good idea. © Shutterstock

Washington D.C [USA], Sep 08 (ANI): Lifestyle changes sure have a lot of benefits, even for overweight pregnant women. One can reduce complications during pregnancy if they change their diet and lifestyle before their pregnancy period starts, a new study has revealed.

Seven teams of investigators recruited 1,150 participants for the LIFE-Mom trials (579 women had the lifestyle intervention, 571 had standard care), which ran from the second trimester to birth. Each trial offered a varied lifestyle intervention, but all aimed to improve diet quality and reduce calories, increase physical activity and incorporate behavior strategies such as self-monitoring.

Overweight and obese women are a critical group to target because they have higher rates of excess pregnancy weight gain. They also are more likely to have children who are obese.

About 62 percent of the women in the intervention groups, versus 75 percent in the control groups, exceeded the National Academy of Medicine recommendations for pregnancy weight gain. The recommendation is overweight women limit their pregnancy weight gain to 15 to 25 pounds and obese women to 11 to 20 pounds, compared to 25 to 35 pounds for non-overweight women.

The fact that so many women in the intervention groups still exceeded the recommended weight gain shows the challenges of encouraging pregnant women to adhere to recommended diet and activity levels at a time when overeating and reluctance to exercise tend to increase.

In the early 2000s, physicians started noticing that excessive pregnancy weight gain was associated with certain pregnancy complications: higher incidence of high blood pressure, gestational diabetes, and cesarean sections.

“Then we started seeing more worrisome things, excess maternal weight gain was not just associated with bigger babies, but those babies ended up with an increased risk of obesity and childhood diabetes,” said Peaceman.

“That’s why NIH recognized the need to do this study in diverse populations and with standardized clinical outcome measures. It provides more reliable evidence,” added Peaceman.

The study appeared in the Journal of Obesity. (ANI)

This is published unedited from the ANI feed.

Published : September 9, 2018 8:22 am

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