Does Exercise Affect Your Fertility

I recently read an article in a magazine that discussed how high intensity workouts affect a women’s fertility. This really shocked me, as someone who’s fairly active, this can be quite concerning. I get why a women’s fitness magazine would put this in their publication but I’ve been super worried since I read the article. There are a multitude of bad ass mommy to be’s on social media: power lifting, running races and kicking ass, so to read an article like this was super demotivating. I get that they were trying to be helpful and warn women about the consequences of high intensity workouts, but I also felt like this was the magazine’s use of shock value and fear-spreading in the ever growing fitness industry in an attempt to gain increased fame and notoriety (leading to a greater following / higher revenue). Also for those like me to revert to basic-bitch workouts with two lb. weights, in order to save my fertility.  I almost felt like it was a personal attack on women. I mean come on… Women who do hard manual labor and worked in fields and hunted in previous generations were still able to have children. so now because I lift weights and do cross fit I’m less likely to have a child? Why should I choose to switch to brisk walks and yoga instead of hitting the weights. That’s so lame. Articles like this are the ones why women are so scared to workout when they are pregnant and then do all these crazy things to lose the weight after pregnancy. The article made it seem like if I exercised too much or too hard I was lessening my chances of getting pregnant. Also I’ve noticed all this backlash for the “Mom with a six pack”. Can a girl ever catch a break?

 

A woman’s weight plays a major role in her fertility but what exactly does the role of exercise play? We know from previous articles that exercise can actually boost fertility, which is why I don’t get how it’s a sudden problem. It has been common knowledge for some time that a significantly low Body fat percentage will decrease your chances of becoming pregnant, since you can stop menstruating. What it seems to be like with most things is  finding the right balance of weight and healthy habits. I think its pretty obvious that being way too skinny isn’t really conducive to having a baby, thus

“Your ideal weight for hitting 5K PRs or fitting into your skinny jeans may not be the weight most conducive to conceiving. “You don’t have to be a size 6 to have a baby,” says lead study researcher and ob-gyn Abbey Berenson, MD. “This isn’t about what looks good on a runway” 

Why is Exercise a problem?

Doctors think that the energy you’re using from all of your workouts depletes your bodies energy source to make you fertile.

 Tips:

• Consult your doctor
• Make sure you’re not overtraining
• Make sure you are eating enough so your body doesn’t have to compensate
• Do not overtrain and take REST days!
• Don’t’t let fitness magazines freak you out and do your research if anything ever seems fishy

*I actually didnt find that many credible resources that made any of the information true. One site even said that it was ONE Norwegian study that started this whole thing.