It isn’t news that maintaining appropriate body weight is one of the best things you can do for your personal health. Not only does excessive fat require every part of your body have to work extra hard, but obesity can also impair your bodily functions, including your reproductive system.

Obesity and your body

When you are obese (or even just a little overweight) your joints must support this extra weight. This puts added stress on them causing them to wear prematurely. Your heart has to work overtime pumping extra hard to distribute the blood throughout your body to get the oxygen to your organs. The same for your lungs, they have to work harder to bring in the oxygen that every cell in your body needs to function and live.

Obesity and your reproductive system

Something that might be news to you however is that obesity can cause you to have difficulty becoming pregnant, whether naturally or through IVF. A study was performed at the Valencia Infertility Institute in Valencia, Spain and it was determined that as a patient’s BMI (Body Mass Index, a method that determines how much body fat you have) their success rate for IVF went down.

For comparison, the success rate of live birth from IVF for women of normal body weight was about 38% while the success rate for obese women was only about 27%. The success rate of the implantation of the embryo in the uterus in women of normal weight was about 40% while the success rate for obese women was only about 30%.

These numbers show very clearly the effect of obesity on pregnancy and birth through IVF. With that in mind if you plan to become pregnant you should try to lose weight first. With the considerable cost of IVF procedures why risk a failed procedure because of excess weight? It isn’t just the money either, think of the emotional distress a failed procedure, or worse, a failed pregnancy, could cause.