Get Pregnant Soon - What Not To Eat

We talked a little bit about diet in this article when discussing how to get pregnant soon, and what you learned is you should be more concerned about what not to eat than what you're eating.

But really, the two go hand in hand.

First of all, like everything on this site, please do not substitute the information for medical advice. Please speak to your doctor or health care provider.

Avoid Trans Fats Like It's The Plague
If you can only follow one rule in this guide, it's to avoid trans fats at all costs.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health published a study of 18,000 women over an 8 year period to determine if diet influenced their chances of conceiving.The study showed women who ate foods with high incidences of trans fats, animal proteins and carbohydrates were more likely to have an ovulatory disorder. 

Trans fats are created in a process that adds hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils in an effort to make them more solid. It also raises your bad cholesterol and lowers the good kind.

Fortunately, man fast food chains, food manufacturers, and entire states are banning trans fats. New York is one such state to recently ban it from its restaurants. And it's really not that hard to find trans-fat free snacks at your local store, even in chips and crackers.

Remove Gluten and Processed Foods From Your Diet
Gluten merely adds texture to food. For some people, a sensitivity, allergy, or celiac disease can form. You might bloat, get lethargic, or become ill when consuming gluten. Gluten can even eat holes or otherwise damage your intestines. There's no reason you need to consume it and it can wreak havoc on your body.

Gluten has been linked to infertility issues, and many women have reported cutting back or eliminating gluten from their diet (myself included) and gotten pregnant a few months later. Even if they spent years trying.

Gluten free foods can be trickier to find, but there are stores that carry gluten free pastas, chips, and even cake mixes and cookies.

As far as processed foods - they usually contain copious amounts of sugar, trans fats and gluten. But there are alternatives. Many food retailers are carrying more organic options. Check the back label and look for ingredients with whole foods. That means easy to read labels where you know what's in it. Not long strings of words full of chemicals that make no sense to you.

Stay Away From Meat And Dairy Products That Aren't Hormone Free
My acupuncturist actually told me to eat more red meat to get pregnant soon; despite my reading that red meat, fish, and chicken might be linked to a decrease in fertility. The jury is still out. She encouraged me to stick to hormone free or grass-fed varieties, which is something I was comfortable doing.

The last thing you want to do is introduce foreign hormones into your body when you're trying to get pregnant. Keep your diet clean and simple.

Avoid Processed Sugar
This is a hard one for me, and I don't always follow it perfectly. Processed sugar isn't just bad for you, it can spike your insulin and throw your blood sugar out of balance, which can interfere with healthy ovulation. For alternatives, try honey or agave nectar. (Agave nectar mixed with Hershey's cocoa powder makes for a delicious chocolate sauce! Try it over strawberries or bananas.)

I like to add a teaspoon or so of cinnamon to my tea after dinner. Cinnamon is known to help stabilize your blood sugar.

Skip The Soy
I almost hesitate to include this, because I know vegetarians rely on it, and soy milk is a good alternative for milk if you have a dairy allergy. But just be aware soy is known to decrease fertility in both men and women. However, vegetarians obviously get pregnant all the time. My vegan friends recently conceived on their first try, so you never know.

So Why Do Some People With Horrible Diets Get Pregnant Soon?
No one will ever know. They could be lucky. Their bodies may not respond to poor diet choices like yours.

Or they may have eliminated certain foods that do create issues for them. For example, if you have a food allergy, it creates a toxic reaction in your body. So your friend who eats nothing but cookies may have stabilized their body by removing the dairy.

It really doesn't matter why. What matters is food matters. Numerous studies show that unexplained infertility issues can easily be corrected in just a few months by eating properly.

There Are No Quick Fixes
My hunch is in many ways it's harder to think of eating right when the choices are so overwhelming. Plus, if you're like me, you're a stress eater. It's easier to reach for chips instead of celery when you've had an awful day. But I strongly feel many women look to fertility drugs before looking to their diet.

You may end up needing fertility drugs, but keep in mind they can only stimulate ovulation or fertilize an egg. They can't make the egg implant into your uterus. You still need to clean up your lifestyle, with or without fertility drugs.

I have some tips on how to easily change your diet without ever noticing cravings here.