Pregnant Women Who Do More Of This Have A Lower Risk Of Complications
Key takeaways
- Author: Zhané Slambee June 07, 2026mindbodygreen editor By Zhané Slambee Image by Maa Hoo Studio / Stocksy June 07, 2026If you're pregnant and already making an effort to exercise, that matters.
- The study, published in JAMA, looked at how everyday movement habits (specifically how much time pregnant women spent sitting, doing light activity, and walking) related to pregnancy health outcomes.
- Women who sat for roughly 10 or more hours a day had more than double the risk of pregnancy complications compared to women who sat around 7 hours daily.
Why this matters: practical guidance grounded in recent research or expert insight.
Author: Zhané Slambee June 07, 2026mindbodygreen editor By Zhané Slambee Image by Maa Hoo Studio / Stocksy June 07, 2026If you're pregnant and already making an effort to exercise, that matters. But a new study1 suggests that what you do between those workouts may be just as worth paying attention to. Researchers found that pregnant women who sat less and moved more throughout the day, even with light, everyday activity, had significantly lower risks of pregnancy complications, including high blood pressure-related conditions. And those benefits held up even after accounting for structured exercise.
The study, published in JAMA, looked at how everyday movement habits (specifically how much time pregnant women spent sitting, doing light activity, and walking) related to pregnancy health outcomes. Rather than relying on self-reported data, researchers used wearable devices to track how participants moved throughout the day. Current guidelines recommend 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week during pregnancy, but this study was designed to examine whether the movement happening outside of those formal workouts also plays a role.
Women who sat for roughly 10 or more hours a day had more than double the risk of pregnancy complications compared to women who sat around 7 hours daily. On the flip side, women who did the most light-intensity activity had about half the risk of complications compared to those who moved the least.