Week 9 – Carbs, cheese, anything salty please!

Those of you who know me well know that I am somewhat of a health nut in some people’s eyes. I love eating healthy, love the taste of healthy foods and how they make me feel. I’m a runner, I love weight training and exercise in general; if it’s active, count me in!

These last few weeks of my pregnancy have had me living in someone else’s shoes – someone who doesn’t like vegetables and has a highly processed, high sodium, carbohydrate diet. The whiter the food, the better! I have been pretty nauseous starting around lunchtime, and it gets progressively worse into the evening and nighttime. I can tell that I’m hungry, but can’t decide what I want. All I know is that salty, savoury foods are where it’s at for me right now. I want salt and vinegar chips, olives and grilled cheese! Ken came home one night last week and I was eating salt and vinegar chips right before dinner. It was such an odd sight for him to see that he called his grandma and they had a good laugh about me, the health nut, ruining my dinner with potato chips.

Even though my diet is crap for the time being, my activity level has been consistent and being active actually helps me to feel better! It gives me something to focus on which distracts me from the nausea, and increases my appetite so that I am able to get some good food into my system.

I haven’t been running, which I miss, especially now that the weather is warming up slightly and the sun is shining more brightly. Since my knee injury back in the fall, I have come a long way in my recovery but still not quite enough to go for a long run. During my pregnancy with Caimen, I ran very regularly all the way up until I was 6 months pregnant, and only stopped because my round ligaments were starting to feel the strain of my bouncing belly with each step.

I am still enjoying my circuit training that I do at home and with my personal training clients. I also teach a prenatal bootcamp with Baby & Me Fitness on Monday nights which is great because I get a good workout in myself. I really enjoy having something big, a challenge or event, to look forward to as well. In the past year and a half, I have run two half marathons, a 10km race, and I did Tough Mudder in August 2012 which was my favourite event so far. I was planning on doing it again this summer, but I can’t now that I’m pregnant! Something tells me that army crawling in mud and rocks under barbed wire, ice bath dunks, hauling logs up ski hills and electric shock obstacles plus more (all spread out over 17km of running) isn’t the best thing for my baby 😉

I do, however, have something to look forward to that will be an appropriate challenge while pregnant. I am doing the CN Tower climb on April 27^th and am really excited about it! I have done it twice before so I know how intense it will be and will be able to go at the pace my current body can do. I am doing it with bebo mia as we are creating a really fun team of parents and parents-to-be! Check out this link to learn more and join me if you can!

To wrap up, I am really looking forward to feeling more back to normal – hopefully the nausea and food aversions disappear when I hit the second trimester! Until then, keep your fingers crossed for me and stay tuned!