Paul Plakas Answers Your Questions

Dear Paul, I am 5 months pregnant, and still doing cardio and weights 6 days a week. How many calories should I be eating? And what are some safe core exercises I can do now? I have a few, but they are getting boring!

To be able to tell you this I would need to know your age, your weight, your high and your activity level. I can’t say how many calories you should be eating. I think there generally people are supposed to be eat an extra 300 calories a day when they are pregnant.

When you’re pregnant, you can pretty much do anything exercise wise, but the proportion is in the last trimester you should not do anything with lying on your back on your stomach. Avoid doing higher loaded weight movements where you have to actually hold your breath doing it, where it causes an isometric contraction. No hot humid exercises, hot yoga is definitely out, and no exercising of a heart rate of more than 145 beats per minute. 

Dear Paul, do you have any suggestions on how to get a good nights sleep? I am very aware of how sleep impacts performance and weight loss but struggling with Restless Leg Syndrome (yes, its real) and insomnia. I've tried relaxing before bed, breathing, reading, different things and don’t want to go on a sleeping pill. Willing to try anything natural - exercise does help but not always - maybe a specific type of exercise?

Creating an environment that is conducive to good sleep is vital. You need to make sure that the room you’re sleeping in is dark and quiet. You also need to go to bed at the same time every night, so that you teach your biological clock when it’s time to wind down. The best times to go to sleep is to go to bed at 10 PM and wake up at 6 AM, that is what our genetics are predetermined to make us go to sleep at.

Personally, I don’t manage to do that, although that is the ideal situation. I manage to go to bed at about 1130-ish and then wake up at 630-ish, so I usually only get about 7 hours sleep. This is because I am a parent, and I want to spend a lot of time with my kid but then I also usually have work to finish before I go to bed. We should all aim for 8 hours sleep though.

Dear Paul, how long does it usually take for your body to stabilize at a specific weight once you've reached your goal?

Your weight is really never stabilized, there are always fluctuations throughout the day whether that be a few ounces or even pounds.

There are lots of reasons why your weight changes, it can be due to water loss, fat being burned up during activity, muscle breakdown, putting water and food into your body - there’s always a constant change of your weight all day long. Is just like the stock market, it goes up and down all day long. Where the trend hopefully ends up being is at a lower weight, rather than a higher one.

Dear Paul, I workout at 5:30 am. What should I eat pre and post workout? I am not going to have my breakfast at 5:00am but I do want to have something small. What are the best options?

If you are exercising for an hour or less posting in the morning, I would say that all you need is a small piece of fruit or nothing as long as you had a good meal the night before. If you did have a good meal the night before, you should have more than enough energy to exercise first thing in the morning. Post exercise, you want to get a combination of a protein fat and carbohydrate into your body within 45 minutes of working out. A good example would be a poached egg, 175ml of yogurt, a piece of fruit and some whole-wheat toast spread with either sugar free jam or a little peanut butter.

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