Overweight and Trying to Get Pregnant?

I have talked a lot lately about hormone imbalances and how they contribute to weight gain, but I haven’t mentioned much about the same being true in reverse. Yet, you can throw your hormones off balance by losing or gaining too much weight.

I’m not a medical professional, but look at these two facts:

Severely underweight individuals will often stop menstruating altogether.

Overweight individuals have higher rates of thyroid disorder, diabetes, infertility, and polycystic ovary syndrome or PCOS.

There is some “chicken and the egg” debates about whether weight issues are a cause of these disorders or merely a symptom of them. However, it is clear that hormones and weight are tightly interwoven, especially when it comes to our reproductive systems.

If you’ve been trying to get pregnant for a while now and are overweight, you may consider whether the excess weight is preventing you from conceiving. Personally, I had trouble conceiving while I was borderline obese, and I know it was because my cycles were not normal. Even though I was menstruating, things just weren’t working the way they should “in there.”

My doctor never said I should lose weight to increase my chances, though I suspect had I seen an infertility specialist, I would have heard the suggestion. See, when you lose weight, you are helping your body normalize itself…reach its natural state of balance. I mentioned this before: your body is going to fight back by altering its physiology if there is an imbalance, in this instance your weight.

Don’t believe me? Okay, here are a couple more facts:

Women who have weight loss surgery dramatically increase their chances of getting pregnant. So much so, that women are often warned of unplanned pregnancies after such a surgery.

Women who have weight loss surgery also improve their chances of success with in-vitro fertilization.

Now these findings, as recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, obviously focus on weight loss surgery as the method of fat loss. I suspect this is because researchers are continually studying both the positive and negative effects of such drastic surgeries. I also believe that weight loss is weight loss — if you take yourself from obesity to a healthy weight then I bet you’d have the same successes as the women in the studies.

I am definitely not promoting weight loss surgery as a cure to infertility, but if you are overweight and have not yet seen the positive pregnancy test, think about putting your body back into balance first — and the baby just might follow.

You might also be interested in Peggy Rowland’s contest over at Lively Women — for a conception kit worth $300! You have to hurry and enter though, because her contest ends November 24th. She also interviewed a Board Certified physician regarding infertility and the conception kit, so be sure to take a look at that.

On a more personal note – I wish you swift success in trying to conceive!

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