Nutrition in Pregnancy and Beyond

Creating an Elimination Plan 

If you desire to improve your health and upgrade your system before having a baby, you may want to eliminate some or all of these foods from your diet before conception. It takes about two to three weeks to fully eliminate a food. After this period, the best way to feel the effects is to bring one food back into your diet at a time. This way you can experience what each food does to your system individually, especially the effects on your stomach, skin and mood. If you can’t handle a full elimination diet, try to take one of these foods out every week or two. Once you begin to see the health benefits of removing the inflammatory foods, you will likely want to continue making these changes.

It is especially powerful to detox and replenish the body in order to prepare for conception and keep your family healthy. This should go unsaid, but you must also eliminate alcohol and illegal drugs. You should not do a deep intentional detox within six weeks of getting pregnant. Never complete a heavy detox during pregnancy or while breastfeeding unless your doctor or practitioner says the supplements or foods you are eating are safe for your baby. Optimally create a detox plan and establish a healthy eating lifestyle six months to a year before conception. Make sure your eating plan meets all your nutrient requirements—especially proteins.  When you are pregnant, please consult your doctor on how to maintain your clean lifestyle while still receiving the amount of nutrients needed to sustain your growing fetus. 

If making these changes feels like too much, I encourage you to focus on just cutting out sugar and vegetable oils, especially while you are pregnant. The period is only nine months and it is totally worth it to protect your baby’s health. If you cannot completely cut them out, at least reduce them. Absorb what you can about reducing the toxic overload in your body, but don’t get too overwhelmed. Everything does not have to be given up at once. Small changes go a long way. Choose the alterations to your diet that work and go for it. Even buying organic or reading the labels and acting on the information can make vast improvements to your health. Reducing your toxic overload will help you to create a better brain and gut connection and ultimately more health and happiness.

What You Should Be Eating

Fats and Protein: Make sure to eat good fats: Omega-3-rich foods (such as wild caught salmon), avocados, nuts (no peanuts because of allergies), and coconut oil. Nuts and seeds are a good source of healthy fats and proteins. (Try soaking them for easier digestion.)

Vegetables and Fruits: We co-evolved with plants, not with animals. Eat nutrient-dense, organic, and chemical-free fruits and vegetables. Include a lot of kale, collards, and mustard greens. It is ideal to have your diet be sixty to seventy percent fruits and vegetables. Villoldo explained, “A plant-based diet (nutrient-dense, calorie-poor) will switch on more than five hundred genes that create health and switch off more than two hundred genes that create cancers.” 

There is a high fear of fruit because people are afraid of sugar content and as a result they are ignoring the nutrient benefits. Anthony William predicted that in the coming years, scientists will create fertility drugs from fruit. He said, “Eat Fruit to Produce Fruit.” This is very important. When you fill your body with high vibrational foods, the life-giving properties and energetics of the products become a part of you.

Adding plant protein instead of animal protein improves fertility. In fact, replacing twenty-five grams of animal protein with twenty-five grams of plant protein was related to a fifty percent lower risk of ovulatory infertility in one study^[1]. Rather than eating a high-protein or a low-carb diet before pregnancy, focus on a natural glucose diet through organic fruit. Berries, especially wild blueberries, are excellent for balancing hormones. Other great fruits for fertility include oranges, bananas, avocados, grapes, melons, mangoes cucumbers, limes, and cherries.

Celery Juice: Celery is a powerful anti-inflammatory because it starves the bad bacteria in your gut. Disease comes from an acidic body, and green foods help to alkalize your system. Celery also helps to cleanse your body of toxic heavy metals. Drink eight to sixteen ounces or more of fresh juice on an empty stomach upon rising daily^[2].

Fish: Eat small fatty fish, preferably wild caught fish, twice a week. Watch out for mercury toxicity. Small fish get mercury from eating algae and plankton. Bigger fish get it from eating smaller fish which causes a higher accumulation. Avoid eating fish such as bass, king mackerel, shark, swordfish and albacore tuna especially when you are pregnant because they are high in mercury, which can be toxic for the fetus.  

Eggs: Look for organic, free-range, pasture-raised eggs because they are higher in Omega-3 and vitamins A and E. 

Breads: Make sure that you choose the whole-grain types.

Meat: Only free-range or grass-fed. If you choose to eat meat, you must know where it came from. Always trace your food back to its origin and understand the route of the source. Tracing the source of your food will allow you to better understand the types of nutrients you are eating and whether or not it is full of antibiotics or factory raised. 

Supplements

The prenatal pill should be taken before you become pregnant, not just when you find out that you are having a baby. It benefits the first ten weeks of pregnancy and nutrients are needed for the baby’s body to begin to be made. The prenatal pill is NOT enough to fulfill all the nutrients required to create a child and protect your own needs. Studies have shown that despite taking a prenatal vitamin, women were still low in Vitamin D. Low Vitamin D levels in early life is linked to schizophrenia, diabetes and skeletal disease. Nor is choline typically added to prenatal vitamins, and deficiency of this nutrient is associated with lifelong learning deficits. 

Vitamin A: Helps to regulate excessive estrogen levels.

Vitamin B12: Essential for liver detoxification and for protecting DNA. Most of us are B12 deficient. Be sure to take sublingual methylcobalamin, an enhanced form of B12 that dissolves quickly under the tongue.

Vitamin C: Essential for detoxification processes.

Vitamin D3: Can prevent or reduce depression, dementia, diabetes, and autoimmune disorders.

Folic Acid: Protects the baby’s neural tube development. One study showed that women who got at least seven hundred micrograms a day of folic acid from their diet were forty to fifty percent less likely to have ovulatory infertility then women taking less than three hundred micrograms^[3]. 

Iodine: A trace element that improves cognition, metabolism, protects the thyroid, and balances hormones. It is necessary for optimal health of the breasts, ovaries, and uterus.

DHA and EPA: Omega-3 fatty acids are important for brain health and preventing Alzheimer’s. Take this in plant-based form.

Curcumin: The active ingredient in the spice turmeric activates the genes that turn on powerful antioxidants in the brain. It has mega anti-inflammatory effects. 

Probiotics: Creates healthy flora in the gut and facilitates digestion. If you choose to eat dairy, eat whole-fat active yogurt which contains probiotics. An even better idea is eating probiotic foods, such as sauerkraut and pickles.

Iron: In one study, women who regularly took iron supplements were forty percent less likely to have trouble getting pregnant. The benefit came from these women taking forty to eighty milligrams of iron daily. The source of the iron mattered – women who got most of their iron from meat in the study were not protected against ovulatory infertility. Iron from fruits, vegetables, beans and supplements were beneficial to becoming pregnant^[4].

Alpha-lipoic acid: Helps eliminate toxins and heavy metals in brain tissue.

Magnesium Citrate: Helps with your bowel movement and to eliminate waste; it is also a muscle relaxant. 

Vitamin E: Helps to boost fertility and is a natural antioxidant. Take up to five to eight hundred IU for a few months before conception, as it helps the fertilized egg stay attached to the uterus.

Vitex (chasteberry) and ashwagandha are herbs and aptogens that can be used to boost fertility.

The combination of CoQ10, Vitamin D and DHEA is often prescribed for women with a low egg reserve (or a low AMH lab value) in fertility clinics. 

Consult your doctor when taking any herbs, supplements, or vitamins during pregnancy.  

Are you feeling overwhelmed or asking how it’s possible to make these changes without going crazy? If you aren’t ready for full throttle, my advice is to make one change every week or two and feel the difference that it makes. It’s likely that if you drastically reduce everything at once you will feel overwhelmed and quit. Or cheat like I used to do. It took me a lot of time—in fact years—to really start to make huge improvements in my diet. I still have a treat here or there, but I am more cognizant of what I put into my body because I know the effects. When I am working with clients, I always tell them to make one change they can stick with, especially when it comes to doing something that they have never done before, such as eating clean. 

Here are a few reminders of what you can do to improve the health of your gut:

• Eat fiber, fruits, vegetables and whole grains
• Avoid foods processed with chemicals
• Ignore the middle aisles of the grocery store as much as possible
• Take probiotics or eat foods like sauerkraut 
• Eat less sugar or share a dessert instead of eating the whole thing
• Avoid vegetable oil and refined carbohydrates
• Know the original source of your food—especially if you eat meat
• Always purchase grass-fed beef, or animal products without added hormones 
• Eat organic as much as possible
• Avoid GMOs

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