Podcast EP 27
===
[00:00:00] Have you ever wondered if the foods you're eating have a bigger impact on your ability to conceive than you know? I know I did. Food is medicine and it touches every cell in your body. But eating the wrong foods can wreak havoc on your hormones, your ability to ovulate and even your lining. Today I'm breaking down the five worst fertility foods.
What to eat instead and how to eat that actually supports fertility and your ability to conceive. Let's dive in. Hi, I'm Sophie Byfield and when I decided I was ready to be a mama, I thought it would be so easy. Get off birth control. Baby dance, like no one's watching. And poof, I was pregnant. But like many of you, that wasn't my story.
After months of negative tests, endless treatments, and more supplements than you can count, I realized that getting pregnant isn't about fixing one [00:01:00] piece of your fertility puzzle. It's about bringing your whole body. Back into balance so it feels safe enough to conceive. And this is where we focus on what really matters.
Healing your whole body so that you can see those two pink lines. Welcome to the Heel to Conceive podcast. Oh, fertility, nutrition. Let me tell you, this is a hot topic when it comes to trying to conceive. When most of us just start out, we know that we need to start eating healthier, so we start adding things to our diet that we consider healthy.
But not all healthy food is created equally, and not all healthy food is actually gonna help you bring your baby home. Here's what most people don't realize. Fertility isn't just about your reproductive system and it's about your whole body working synchronistically to bring your baby home. And food touches every single system [00:02:00] and cell in our body.
Everything is influenced by what you eat. Lemme tell you a little story. I had this client who swore to me that she was eating healthy. She cleaned up her diet and she was eating as healthy as can be for fertility, and I'm gonna give her some credit here where credit's due. She was eating really badly before she met me, and she had made some major changes in her diet.
She was eating low fat yogurt, she was eating whole wheat. She was making sure she had a protein bar for breakfast. This all sounds super healthy, but what she didn't realize was the high sugar processed foods were doing damage to her body, actually increasing the inflammation, making her feel bloated, lethargic, all things that impact your ability to conceive.
Once she swapped her breakfast for real food, started cutting back on the processed food and increased her healthy fats, her cycle went from [00:03:00] irregular to back to a nice regular rhythm. She's no longer feeling bloated, no longer feeling lethargic, and actually getting a better night's sleep just by changing her diet and eating the right foods to support fertility.
So let me know. What have you been eating? Are you ready to learn about the five worst foods for fertility? All right, let's dive into food number one, processed sugars and artificial sweeteners. Girl, I love a good dessert. Hit me up with a creme brulee and I am putty in your hands, but sugar wreaks havoc.
On your ability to reproduce, it actually wreaks havoc on your whole hormonal system. It spikes your blood sugar. Messes with your insulin can impact your ability to ovulate and cysts. If you saw my inflammation, video [00:04:00] sugar is one of the culprits in increasing inflammation in your body, making it harder to implant.
So what do you do instead? If you have a bit of a sweet tooth? Well, we're gonna swap out our processed sugars for raw honey maple syrup. Even things like stevia and monk food are way better than artificial sweeteners. You don't have to cut out sugar completely. We're just looking for the healthiest options to satisfy that sweet tooth, but still allow us to make it to baby.
So let's move into number two, trans fats and fried foods. A study at Harvard. Showed that women who ate high trans fat and a high fried food diet had a greater chance double the chance of having ovulation challenges and issues. Why you asked? Because trans fats cause inflammation in the body, cause hormonal imbalances, and have the ability [00:05:00] to impact your eggs maturation cycle.
The eggs maturation cycle is when the egg goes from young and immature to mature enough to be released. Trans fats can impact your egg's ability to be released. So what do you do instead? We are gonna go with the baked or air fried versions of our favorite foods, so no more fish and chips. We can make those in the air fryer at home limiting trans fats, cutting back on fried foods, and creating the healthiest options available for us to eat.
When you're cooking, you wanna use things like olive oil, avocado oil, and coconut oil instead of processed vegetable oil. Number three is dairy with added hormones, cysts, not all dairy is created equally, and in some [00:06:00] cases dairy can increase the mucus within the body and increase inflammation.
Conventional dairy, which we often see in the grocery star cysts, has added hormones, which can really mess with our natural estrogen production. So what do you do if you love you? Some cream in your coffee, or you're all about the ice cream. You wanna be picking organic hormone free versions of dairy or giving it up completely.
It's all about listening to your body, SISs and seeing how dairy affects it. For someone like me, dairy really isn't my friend, or straight milk isn't my friend. Your girl loves her with some cheese, but when I was trying to conceive, I had to give up dairy completely because it was causing too much mucus in my body and therefore.
Inflammation because inflammation is the body's way of protecting itself. So if your body is producing too much mucus, it will then go into an inflammatory response [00:07:00] to protect it. It's all about listening to what is happening within an order to make the healthiest environment possible to conceive. And if you're looking for an alternative, let's grab some coconut milk, almond milk, even oat milk is a great option and alternative to dairy.
You do wanna stay away from soy milk. Let's keep going on our five worst foods for fertility. Number four are refined carbs and white flour. All right, so step into my office. Let's have a little talk about white flour and refined carbs. I'm gonna be honest with you. I used to eat a lot of white bread and a lot of pastries, but this was many, many moons ago.
White bread, white pastries, pasta, all of that spikes your insulin and blood sugar levels. So what does that mean? That means that it can impact your ability conceive because it impacts [00:08:00] ovulation, insulin and blood sugar levels impact ovulation. If we ain't dropping an egg, there's no way we are gonna get pregnant.
And the little bit that we can do is by giving up our white bread, our croissants, our pasta, all the things that taste Oh so good. We are gonna put them to the side during our trying to conceive journey. And this is especially important for our ladies that have PCOS or a metabolic syndrome where blood sugar levels and balance are at play.
Stay away from your refined carbs and your white flour. So what do you do instead? Because sis, your girl likes some pasta? Well, we're gonna choose whole wheat options. We're gonna choose quinoa, brown rice. We're going to even choose sourdough bread. It's not about giving it up completely, it's about making it work for your body and finding the healthiest options for you.
Pro tip, [00:09:00] always pair a carbohydrate with protein and a healthy fat to help maintain your bud sugar levels. And last but not least, on our five worst foods for fertility is processed meats and red meat. Now I'm going to say this with a caveat. This section really depends on you and your body type. If you're someone with PCOS, um, or metabolic syndrome, and a lower carb diet works better for you, then skip number five, you've got the four worst foods.
If you're someone who is more interested in a Mediterranean or a balanced, healthy eating diet, then this number five, worst foods is for you. So listening to your body will make a difference when it comes to number five. Let's dive in. Processed meats like bacon deli, sausages have [00:10:00] inflammatory compounds within them.
This can impact your egg quality and your sperm quality. If you are eating them in high amount, you do not have to cut out meat completely. Lemme say it again For the people in the back, you do not have to cut meat out completely, but sis, you wanna be picking grass fed organic, hormone free, no sugar meats where you can, and especially when it comes to your processed meats, your deli meats, and your red.
Try your best to get grass fed or organic or both red meat for your body and sis, when you go to the grocery store, look at the back of that bacon package and make sure it says sugar free. All in all, that may have been a lot, but what I want you to walk away with is that nutrition matters. Food matters to your [00:11:00] fertility journey, and what is happening within your body.
I want you to pick one of the five worst foods for fertility and start to remove that one from your diet. Once you feel clear and confident on removing it, then move to the next one. We don't have to do everything at once. There may be one linchpin food that makes the difference in your journey. For me, truly it was giving up dairy completely because that mucus was causing inflammation within my body, and for most of my clients, dairy is where I start them off.
The good news is, is that you have the power to change your fertility diet. You have the power cysts, and you just have to start with one thing. One thing. 'cause if you make small changes and slowly build on it, [00:12:00] those habits will have an impact over time to help you bring that baby home. Now inside the Heal to Conceive tribe, I do a month called Prep Your Womb, where everyone is given fertility friendly meal plans.
With no dairy to help them build the healthiest womb possible. If you're interested in grabbing one of those meal plans, I have over a hundred recipes inside the portal. Feel free to come and join us inside the tribe. The link is in the description. So let me know in the comments what is one food out of the top five that you are interested in either swapping, replacing, or removing from your diet completely.
Let's get a chain going so we can support each other on this journey. And remember, you've got this. You are gonna bring your baby home, SISs, and if you don't got this, I got you baby. Death for all.
