Physical Activity and Weight Gain in Pregnant Women Attending a Family Medicine Unit

Abstract

Objective: to describe physical activity and weight gain in pregnant women.
Methods: cohort study from September 2020 to August 2021; 204 pregnant women attending a family medicine unit participated through a non-probabilistic sampling; a sociodemographic, and physical activity in pregnancy questionnaire was applied, weight, height, and body mass index measurements were taken. Excel and spss v22 were used for statistical analysis; descriptive statistics were performed, qualitative variables were organized and summarized in frequency, and percentage tables. Relative risk was also calculated. Results: 44.1% of the participants (n= 90) presented weight gain within the international recommendations, while 30.3% (n= 62) had a weight gain higher than expected; sedentary lifestyle during pregnancy was 98.52% (n= 201). Both sedentary lifestyle and starting pregnancy overweight or obese were found to significantly increase the risk of weight gain: rr 1.44, 95% ci 1.31-1.58, and rr 19.2, 95% ci 6.6-55.9 respectively.
Conclusion: sedentary lifestyle was present in the majority of participants, and it was observed that it favors the development of weight gain in pregnancy.