My Struggle with an Inguinal Hernia and Training While Pregnant: Inguinal Hernia Pregnancy

[box title=”Fit Pregnancy Struggles – Timeline”]High Intensity Interval and Strength Training
Got to Pre-Preg weight (since 1st Pregnancy)
Found out I was pregnant again
Continued Cross-Fit HIIT type workouts – Intensity 9/10
Pain – Hernia
Got heart rate monitor
Shortened workouts, decreased intensity & weight – Intensity 7/10
Pain continues
Changed to battle rope workouts still using intervals and 1 day/wk hill running intervals – Intensity 7/10
Still feeling pain sometimes after workouts
Got hernia belt – sucks.
Pain increased just from daily activity.
Stopped working out.
Got maternity belt. Awesome. Helps so much.
Began running again, interval runs
Pain returns.
Started tracking everything I eat with My Fitness Pal, aiming for 2100 cals/day
Started walking on treadmill at incline – Intensity 5/10
Cut walking to only every other day – 30 minutes.
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As you can see, I’ve had a hard time with staying fit since dealing with an inguinal hernia and pregnancy. Last pregnancy I worked really hard to stay fit throughout.  I spent entirely too much time looking at pregnant models, celebrities, and fitness chicks for motivation.  I continued running well into my 8th month and even ran a half marathon late in my 2nd trimester.  Unfortunately, towards the end I began to have some pain on my left side in the *cough* groin *cough* area near my upper thigh. Turned out to be an inguinal hernia.  Didn’t bother me too much and went away just a few weeks after I had Sofia.

 Fit Pregnancy #2: Inguinal Hernia and Pregnancy

Well fast forward, Baby #2 came along 10 short months later. With a consecutive pregnancy, your body just jumps right back into pregnant shape.  Quickly.  As soon as my belly popped out around 14 weeks, the pain began.  I started the pregnancy doing high intensity interval training HIIT,  cross fit type workouts such as the ones on my site: MT15:30 Workout.   After the pain began, I continued these workouts for about another month.  Here’s a clip from one of the workouts using a tire:

Then at about 18 weeks, due to my inguinal hernia I modified to battle rope workouts mixed with some safer exercises like wall sits, straight leg deadlifts, and jogging.  My battle rope is a used fire hose that I got from a local fire station. These type of exercise isolate certain muscle groups and allow me to train with an inguinal hernia while pregnant. Then about 3 weeks ago, the pain got to the point that just a small amount of walking would leave me hurting all night.  So, I got the Gabriella belt.
Gabrialla Maternity Support Belt-(Strong Support), Large.  This thing is amazing.  If you are a pregnant woman.  Get one! Maybe if I had worn this my first pregnancy, I wouldn’t have ended up with a hernia. It really holds the weight off of those lower muscles. This is what it looks like:

 Battle Rope Training While Pregnant

Below is my “battle rope” that I used for training pregnant with an inguinal hernia.  I highly recommend battle rope workouts to pregnant women out there.  It is very low impact, but it elevates the heart rate as much as running hill intervals.

I’ll try to create a video of one of my pregnant battle rope workouts one of these days, but there are plenty of videos that are helpful on YouTube.  I use a timer app called GymBoss and do 1 minute on/1 minute off intervals.  As you can see on the left, my average heart rate was 149, and I burn about 500 calories an hour which is pretty good!

Tracking My Diet

As I’ve said, I’ve begun doing this through an app called my fitness pal.  It’s an amazing app that has nutritional info for just about everything.  You can also log into the website here. (You can add me if you want.  I’m RunHoly of course.)  If you’re more of a pen and paper gal you could also use something like this food diary: DIETMINDER Personal Food & Fitness Journal (A Food and Exercise Diary)

Tracking every bit of food that I eat has been…enlightening to say the least.  I had thought that I was a pretty healthy eater, but I’ve been shocked at the amount of “junk” I consume.  Cookies, animal crackers, chips, chocolate, cheez-its, pastries (hmm if I just eliminated foods starting with “c”, I would be doing a lot better. Funny.) Daily, I consume 300-400 calories of this kind of junk.  So, I’ve begun replacing junk calories with live, whole  foods like apples, cheese, cucumbers, etc. Or, if I can’t force myself to do that, I eat a half of a whole food like an apple with half the amount of crackers for example.

I feel like if I focus on improving my nutrition over the next few months I can get through this pregnancy without going nuts.  It will give me the sense of accomplishment that I can’t get through working out.  And by the time I can return to my interval workouts that I love, I’ll be armed with a better diet to match.  This will make postpartum weight loss a lot easier.

Staying Fit in The Last Trimester

So many things have made me feel like just throwing in the towel and saying I’ll get back to being healthy in 3 months!  But first of all, this body is not my own-it was bought with a price and houses the Spirit of God. Secondly, I know that bouncing back can be very challenging especially at 32 which I will be in a couple of months.

My plan is to continue treadmill walks with some strength moves using light weights at least 2 times a week. I would also like to continue incorporating battle rope workouts at least once a week.  I feel like if I can maintain these workouts that I won’t lose ALL the muscle I’ve worked so hard to build.  A bigger part of the plan is to use these next 3 months to shift my eating away from all the processed things toward more of a whole, “clean” diet.

It’s hard being a woman.  Children are always a gift from God, but the Bible doesn’t say nothin’ about pregnancy.  LOL. Until the end, we just have to fight to do our best within our situation. Hopefully, I can get this hernia repaired before the next pregnancy so that this won’t be such a huge hurdle in the future!