You are what you eat

And so much more.

Now that this crappy cycle has ended, I've been doing a lot of thinking about food and how it is affecting my fertility and this whole trying to conceive process.

I've read about how food can affect fertility before but didn't put too much thought into it. Recently, there were a number of signs that came to me, and I started to seriously think about what food choices were really doing to my body. This is not just about getting pregnant but really a change in the way I view food.

First off, check out this beautiful vibrant woman:

Picture here.

Want to guess how old she is? Could be as young as 35, but I'd give a good guess and say 40ish assuming she has really taken care of herself. And she has, but she isn't 40, or 45, or 50. This woman is 60, SIXTY, years-old.

Andy saw her on TV the other day, and quickly bought her book, "Healthy, Sexy, Happy." Yes, my husband has been faithfully carrying this book around the house and started insisting I read it too. I downloaded it on my iPad and began reading (and now I'm much farther into the book then he is).

It's basically all about getting back to eating food our bodies were designed to eat - lean meats, organic veggies, whole (or raw) milk, butter, cream, and avoiding anything processed, especially sugar, and soy (the devil). Did you know my son AND my husband drink a lot of soy milk? Yea, we stopping that. I'd read a lot of mixed reports on whether or not soy was harmful in the past but now we are officially done with the soy. We're moving Carter back on organic whole milk (real organic whole milk, not the generic "farmed" organic whole milk). His stomach had a hard time with it in our initial transition and that's why we turned to soy, Andy has been drinking soy milk for years as a former vegan so we always had it in our house. So far, no serious tummy issues for Carter to report. Soy milk can mess with Andy's "boys" too causing impotence, and Andy is now off the stuff too. Anyone need soy milk?

In the book, Nancy talks about how the chemicals that are in processed food are literally killing us, and instead of changing our diets we pop all kinds of medications to cure these ailments, which are also made of chemicals and just masking our symptoms and not fixing the problem. By the time we're 80, we are old, frail, in-pain and have serious health problems. Fertility is mentioned a lot in her book. Don't quote me, but I want to say we are 30% less "reproductive" than we were 100 years ago, maybe more.

My friend Amy happened to send me a link recently to another blogger who went on a fertility diet based off of Ancient Chinese Medicine and was able to conceive - very quickly. That peaked my interest.

And another blogger I follow, Andrea from In Her Shoes had long ago blogged about her struggle to conceive. You can read her story on her blog, but eventurally she was put on a diet of no grains (of ANY kind), no dairy (unless it was real, raw diary), and no processed foods. This was July of 2009, and by Sept. 09 she was pregnant with her son. Now she is pregnant with baby #2 (baby surprise!) and due in just a few weeks. Isn't that crazy? She didn't blog much about any of this at the time, but I sent her a message inquiring about what natural remedies and diet she had followed that led to her pregnancy. Within a few hours of my message she posted about her experience (and I believe it was just coincidental because she said her doctors appointment that day had inspired her to write about her experience).

Maybe God is sending me signs and showing me the path I need to take?

I also bought this book and I love it so far.

Recommended to me by someone else, and it also delves into food and how it affects our fertility. I love this book!

It's easy to turn a blind eye to what we're eating, especially when we're busy and don't have much time to think about it all - plus, everyone else eats this way, right? There's always a long line a McDonald's on Saturday mornings, so who cares if I do that too? 

I know we are not the worst family in the world. I try to cook often, incorporate fresh veggies into every meal, frequent the farmers market, but we could be better. It really scares me how many chemicals really are lurking in our foods, especially meat so I'm going as organic as I possibly can when I can. I just won't beat myself up over it all the time, but it' a good start. It's only been two days but I have had zero refined carbs (just some organic oatmeal for breakfast, still bad, and an organic sweet potato for dinner, allowed), and I've had very minimal sugar, almost none.

Even if it doesn't help my fertility, it's still a good lifestyle change.

Happy Saturday!