Each week I interview someone who has personal or professional experience with infertility. This week, I’m pleased to be chatting with Hillary Wright. Hillary is a registered and licensed dietitian with over two decades of experience counseling clients on diet and lifestyle change. She is the Director of Nutrition Counseling for the Domar Center for Mind/Body Health at Boston IVF, where she specializes in nutrition and women’s health issues, and is the author of The PCOS Diet Plan: A Natural Approach to Health for Women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and The Pre-diabetes Diet Plan: How to Reverse Pre-diabetes and Prevent Diabetes through Healthy Eating and Exercise. You can connect with her on her website, Facebook, or Twitter.
Q. What are some common nutrition mistakes you see infertility patients make?
I think the most common mistake is to focus on specific foods that some believe may affect their fertility instead looking at the big picture. For example, while they’re certainly an important part of a healthy diet, I often get questions about whether specific fruits or vegetables may harm or enhance fertility, like whether wild yams can improve fertility or soy possibly harm hormonal balance needed to ovulate and conceive. At the same time, some of these women or their partners may be significantly overweight, inactive or drinking too much alcohol. Individual foods don’t overwhelmingly influence health on their own, but when eaten as part of a healthy diet and lifestyle can synergistically contribute to an environment that nurtures healthy reproductive cells and promotes hormonal balance. The most positive thing a woman — or man — can do for their fertility is adopt a lifestyle that’s defensive against inflammation, oxidation and toxic influences. Eating at least five fruits and vegetables daily (preferably more); ample amounts of healthy fats and lean proteins, including omega-3’s from fatty fish and plant proteins from legumes, soy, nuts and seeds; and limiting caffeine, alcohol and high mercury fish, sends a positive message to your body that this is a good place to be pregnant. Losing weight if necessary, or gaining if you’re underweight, are also really important issues to address if your struggling with infertility.
Q. What do you recommend to people who want to eat better but are picky eaters?
While we’re all entitled to our food preferences, many people decide at an early age that they just don’t eat certain foods. Tastes do change over time, but if you never retry foods you think you don’t like, you’ll never discover that. In my experience, many people adopt an “I don’t eat that” attitude as a result of something that was over-cooked or forced on them at a young age, vegetables often being a major offender. I think the best way around this is to try something prepared completely differently than you had it before — maybe roasting cauliflower, or sauteing broccoli in olive oil and garlic, instead of a blander form of preparation like boiling or steaming. I also encourage people to try things in restaurants or friend’s houses to experiment with flavors, which may then lead to adding more of these foods at home. It is important for people to realize that if their diet is limited and they’re not willing to take any risks, it’s unlikely their diet will improve enough to really influence their health.
Q. What’s the most important thing an infertility patient can do nutritionally to increase their chance of success?
For both women and men, if you’re overweight, get serious about losing some weight prior to trying to conceive. Research shows that in obese women, losing as little as 5-10% of your weight may be enough to improve outcomes for assisted reproduction. Stay active. It’s wise to cut back on aggressive exercise like Cross-Fit or long distance running, but keeping your body moving at a moderate pace, by simply walking or practicing yoga (not heated) may promote healthy hormone balance and help you deal with the highly stressful process of infertility treatment. Wanting to have a baby can be a strong motivator for those who know they want to eat healthier but haven’t been able to prioritize it. Harness that enthusiasm and take steps towards adding more plant foods to your diet, and weed out vices you know aren’t doing your health in general any good. If you start small, aiming to accomplish one healthy habit at a time, you may be able to adopt those habits you’ve been longing for that will also model healthy eating habits for your future children.
Q. Which books or websites would you recommend to your infertility patients?
My personal favorites are, of course, my book, The PCOS Diet Plan, for women dealing with polycystic ovary syndrome. Rebecca Fett’s It Starts with the Egg is a great primer on the science of nurturing of health egg development. I also really like Amy Ogle’s Before Your Pregnancy for it’s common sense advice on setting the stage for a healthy pregnancy.
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