Increase your chances of conception with fertility diet

Does what a woman eats affect her chances of getting pregnant and having a healthy baby? Most people know the benefits of getting plenty of folic acid before getting pregnant and the potential dangers of alcohol while pregnant, but the authors of The Fertility Diet: Groundbreaking Research Reveals Natural Ways to Boost Ovulation and Improve Your Chances of Getting Pregnant say there are many other ways food can improve (or wreck) your chances of conceiving.

The book, by doctors Jorge E. Chavarro and Walter C. Willett (along with Harvard Health Letter editor Patrick J. Skerrett), reveals findings from the Nurses’ Health Study, which has tracked the nutrition, physical activity and efforts to get pregnant of thousands of female nurses.

Ten steps to increase conceptions

The book deals specifically with failure to get pregnant because of a failure to ovulate, which the doctors say is one of the most common pregnancy-related problems. They suggest that if you’re having trouble getting pregnant you should see a doctor to rule out other problems before relying on the advice in the book, but the diet suggested here would work for anyone, male or female, trying to conceive or not, who wants to be healthier.

The book provides 10 general tips to improve the odds of conception:

Cut out trans fats.
Eat more unsaturated fats like olive oil.
Get more protein from vegetables and less from meat.
Pick whole grains over refined carbohydrates.
Get a serving or two of full-fat dairy daily.
Take a multivitamin that includes plenty of folic acid.
Get iron from fruits, vegetables and beans rather than meat.
Cut out soft drinks and get most of your liquid refreshment from water, with coffee or tea in moderation.
Maintain a healthy weight or lose weight if you need to.
Start exercising daily if you aren’t already, or pick up the pace if you do work out, unless you’re already skinny.

Losing weight to get a baby

It is, of course, that part about losing weight we’re most interested in. The researchers say women in the study who were least likely to have fertility problems were in the body mass index range of 20 to 24, with 21 seeming to be the ideal BMI for pregnancy.

If you’re high above this zone, the doctors suggest trying to lose 7.5 percent of your body weight, which is “often enough to improve ovulation,” even if it doesn’t get you down into the optimal BMI zone.

The book suggests determining how many calories you need in order to lose weight and keeping a food diary to determine how much you’re eating and why. It also says that cutting out just 250 calories a day is an easy way to start weight loss, and combined with 30 minutes of exercise daily would lead to a loss of about a pound a week.

Other diet tips include eating a good breakfast, eating two more servings of vegetables and one more serving of fruit daily, picking whole grains, having protein at every meal, choosing healthy fats when possible, drinking plenty of water, cutting out nighttime snacking and taking a prenatal vitamin.

How making these changes helps

Each of the changes outlined in the book is said to make a big difference individually in a person’s chances of improving ovulatory infertility. For instance those who ate the fewest whole grains in the study were 55 percent more likely to have trouble conceiving than were those who ate the most.

The more trans fat people ate, the more infertility they had, “even at daily trans fat intakes of about four grams a day. That’s less than the amount the average American gets each day,” the authors write. Women who ate the most protein (an average of 115 grams a day) had 41 percent more infertility problems than those who ate the least (about 77 grams a day).

Women getting more than 700 micrograms of folic acid a day had 40 to 50 percent fewer fertility problems than those who only got 300 micrograms, and those who drank two or more caffeinated sodas daily were 50 percent more likely to have problems.

Following more of the health tips makes it less likely that women will have fertility problems, the doctors say. Following just one of the healthy habits decreased infertility risk by 30 percent among the nurses, while following two cut risk in half.

Putting three habits into action cut risk by 63 percent, while four healthy habits trimmed risk by 75 percent and following five or more cut the risk a whopping 84 percent compared to women who followed none of these habits.

In fertility there is no guarantee that something that has worked for someone else is going to work for you, but following a healthy diet such as this would be a great idea even if didn’t improve your chances of conceiving at all.

(By Sarah E. White for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

Infertility diet summary.pdf