Healthy Pregnancy Diet: Five tips to eat healthy during pregnancy

New Delhi : Women who are planning to get pregnant soon; here is a tip to boost up the process - start going for regular walks. The solution has come after a team of researchers did a study on women who aspire to conceive.

According to the study, the blame goes to our unhealthy lifestyle, eating habits and also smoking. But all this can be balanced with a mere 4 hour exercise every week.

Scientists have recently made this discovery that 240 minutes of intense and vigorous physical activity can improve fertility levels in women who have a history of miscarriages.

It has also been learned that overweight women just need 10 minutes of strolling to boost their fertility.

Researchers found that only 10 minutes of regular strolling or walking in a leisurely way can increase their chances of becoming pregnant by almost 80% within six cycles. And they needn't take part in vigorous exercise, reported IANS.

The study, published in Human Reproduction, was conducted over 1,200 participants, all of whom were followed by the researchers through their 6 menstrual cycles while they were trying to get pregnant. The participants included women between the ages 18 and 40, who had gone through at least one miscarriage in their lifetime. The researchers were basically looking into how exercising can improve women's ability to get pregnant within a certain frame of time - also known as their fecundability.

Apart from this, the study also found that women who indulged themselves into 4 hour of exercise per week had 69% of more chances of getting pregnant than the ones who did not exercise at all.

Does intense workout works well too?

The study did not mention anything about the side effects of vigorous exercising on women who are planning to get pregnant. A physical activity of higher intensity can have different biological effect.

If you have already conceived, here are five tips to eat healthy during pregnancy:

1. Never skip breakfast

Try fortified ready-to-eat or cooked breakfast cereals with fruit. Fortified cereals have added nutrients, like calcium.

2: Chose food with fiber

Choose a variety of vegetables and fruits, like carrots, cooked greens, bananas, and melon. Eat plenty of beans and whole grains. Try brown rice or oatmeal.

3. Add healthy snacks to your diet

Low-fat or fat-free yogurt with fruit, Whole grain crackers with fat-free or low-fat cheese can work.

4. Take a prenatal vitamin with iron and folic acid every day. Iron keeps your blood healthy. Folic acid helps prevent birth defects.

5. Eat up to 12 ounces a week (2 average meals) of fish or shellfish. A 3-ounce serving is about the size of a deck of cards. Avoid fish and shellfish with high levels of mercury. Don't eat shark, swordfish, king mackerel, or tilefish.

If you eat tuna, choose canned light tuna. Albacore (white) tuna has more mercury. Common fish that are low in mercury include shrimp, salmon, and catfish.