Keywords

fertility
resource availability
nutrient intake
under-eating
plant-based diet
animal-based nutrition
menstrual health
hormonal contraceptives
Mediterranean diet
traditional cooking
preconception
postpartum
lactation
protein intake
eating disorders
dietary guidelines
cholesterol
heart disease
fat-free movement
metabolic issues
IVF
sperm quality
environmental toxins
dietary adjustments
personal protective equipment
sperm injection
proactive dietary changes
nutritional changes
nutrient depletion
birth defects prevention
nutritional resources
Born To Know

 

Transcript:

 

Are Your Fertility Problems Caused By A Lack Of Protein? With Lily Nichols

Are you overwhelmed by the amount of conflicting optimal diets flooding social media and the Internet? Have you ever wondered the role men play in fertility? Have you been told that fat is bad for you and too much cholesterol and meat can cause serious health issues? What if I told you that you might be single handedly making yourself sick? And what if I also told you that you have the power to turn that around completely? So many women have to run the gauntlet of the often non empathic fertility industry, believing that they, as women and men too, are powerless and with limited choice. The American Society of Reproductive Medicine stated that in 2022, the number of babies born from IVF increased from 89,208 in 2021 to 91,771 in 2022. Thanks for joining me on the Born to Know podcast. I'm Eyla Cuenca. For over a decade, I've been guiding women and families on their path to reclaiming their self sovereignty through the scope of fertility, conception, birth, and postpartum. You may know me for exposing the various ways in which disempowering narratives and systems claim to be giving us choice, convenience, and freedom from suffering. Just when it seems like I'm going to pull off the culprit's villain mask, I like to reveal how you've been in the driver's seat all along. We decide when we are ready to receive, to drop the struggle to make a change and walk toward life.

Eyla Cuenca00:01:33 - 00:02:42

The Born to Know podcast brings you conversations with world renowned experts and thought leaders in every field to peel back the layers of this epic world we live in and see where choice really resides for each of us every day. We are all born to know and to live as our most authentic and liberated selves. Today on the podcast, I have Lily Nichols. She is a registered dietitian, nutritionist, certified diabetes educator, researcher, and author with a passion for evidence based nutrition. Her work is known for being research focused, thorough, and sensible. She is the founder of the Institute for Prenatal Nutrition, co founder of the Women's Health Nutrition Academy, and the author of three books which I have read and Love. Real Food for Fertility, co authored with Lisa Hendrickson Jack Real Food for Pregnancy and Real Food for gestational diabetes. Lilly's best selling books have helped tens of thousands of mamas and babies are used in university level material nutrition and midwifery courses, and have even influenced prenatal nutrition policy internationally, she [email protected].

Eyla Cuenca00:02:42 - 00:03:47

dot I actually, in my doula trainings and in all of my courses for pregnant women and couples, use Lily's books, they are excellent. They are an excellent resources, very comprehensive, and have personally supported my journey. They've supported me in making changes with my own daughter, with my own family. So her work is very powerful. She gently challenges the system, which I really love and appreciate because she's got the research to back it. And not only the scientific and clinical research, but the anecdotal research that for me is so important when it comes to understanding how a woman's body can shift, how her whole fertility, pregnancy, postpartum journey can shift just by making these changes with the way she nourishes her body. So I really love, I love her work because it supports us in a return to being more intuitive with the way that we nourish ourselves. Today in my conference conversation with Lily, we are going to talk about some myths that have been circulating around.

Eyla Cuenca00:03:47 - 00:04:26

One of them thats like, huge for me personally is the fat free myth. Thats something that many of us who were born in the seventies, eighties, early nineties, and its still going on now, but primarily in those times. We grew up with this idea because of our parents, that fat free was healthy. So were to talk a little bit about that. Today. We're going to talk about sperm quality. Right. And unfortunately, you know, for those of us who have gone through IVF have often been told that it primarily rests on the woman's shoulders, you know, to, to make the changes, to go through the gauntlet, I would say.

Eyla Cuenca00:04:26 - 00:05:29

And we often don't pay very much attention to the male responsibility in this equation. And so rather than just doing the two to three options that are offered for males in this position who have low sperm quality, we're going to talk about the things you can do at home that make a sea change in a man's contribution to this beautiful journey of fertility and conception. We're also going to debunk the mediterranean diet. We're going to talk about how we've completely misunderstood from our western perspective, how the mediterranean diet works and why we're nothing. Seeing a lot of success with something that seems to be so balanced. Hey, Lily, thank you so much for joining me on born to know. I'm so excited to have you here. Your work has really influenced my doula trainees, my students, my pregnant clients, my whole community, and so much more beyond just my little petri dish.

Eyla Cuenca00:05:29 - 00:05:31

So thank you. Thank you for taking the time.

Lily Nichols00:05:31 - 00:05:32

Yeah, thank you.

Eyla Cuenca00:05:32 - 00:06:20

I had a challenge for my students the other day. As part of their homework, I asked them to start counting their protein and to get to 100 grams a day. And what they found was that it wasn't so much finding the foods to make it happen, it was just the consistency, like the reminders. And so they had to do things like set alarms on their phone and things like that. However, what they reported back is that they, you know, instilling these principles with fat and principal and protein and what you shared in your books, they reported that they were sleeping better, more energized, relating better, which I found very curious. Right. And what that meant for everybody. And then also having sustained energy throughout the day.

Eyla Cuenca00:06:20 - 00:06:40

Right. And, like, we think that this is common knowledge, but as I'm sure you've seen over the years, it's just nothing. We've come pretty far from knowing how to nourish ourselves so that we are functional, feeling good and excited about living life. So. So, yeah, so thank you. I'm very, very stoked. How are you doing today?

Lily Nichols00:06:40 - 00:07:07

Doing great. And I can relate to the protein thing because even, even though I write all about this stuff, that is my, like, major reminder for myself. Am I getting enough protein? Because when I don't, the effects are noticeable. Right. You. Immediately, it's like, why am I so irritable? Why am I so hungry? Why am I so snacky? Why am I so whatever? And it's like, oh, I didn't get enough protein.

Eyla Cuenca00:07:08 - 00:07:09

Yes.

Lily Nichols00:07:09 - 00:07:10

Okay, let me fix this.

Eyla Cuenca00:07:11 - 00:07:30

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Could you give just like a quick glimpse for those of the people listening who are not familiar with your work, just a quick glimpse as to how and why protein throughout the day is going to sustain certain levels to make us more functional, optimal in our performance.

Lily Nichols00:07:30 - 00:07:30

Yeah.

Eyla Cuenca00:07:31 - 00:07:33

So I know it's very complex, but.

Lily Nichols00:07:33 - 00:08:20

I'll try to keep it as simple as possible. You know, we get energy from food, from three protein, fat and carbohydrates. And they all have different effects on our system. Protein in particular is a macronutrient that doesn't raise our blood sugar significantly. It gives us a nice, like, sustained energy without like, a big spike and crash, which you get from carbohydrates. So if you're eating just oatmeal for breakfast and that's it, or oatmeal with banana like carb on carb, you'll have energy for the short term, but that is a big blood sugar spike followed by a crash where you feel ridiculously hungry and snacky and low energy and irritable and not great. Usually within an hour or two of having that. That oatmeal.

Lily Nichols00:08:20 - 00:09:01

Right. So when we have protein instead for breakfast, or even protein paired with some carbs, like oatmeal or banana or bread or whatever it is, it really helps to stabilize our energy levels for the long term. We also have to think about, like, what in our bodies is using protein. Like, all of our cells are made of protein. All of our enzymes in our body are made of protein. As we're rebuilding tissue, you know, rebuilding muscle, that's been, you know, we get micro damage to our muscle as we exercise. Even though it's good for us, we need protein to help repair our muscles and keep them functioning. It supports our lean body mass, which supports our metabolism.

Lily Nichols00:09:01 - 00:09:46

We're better able to utilize fuel by having protein. Protein, along with the fat that tends to come with it in whole foods, helps to support our hormone production. It provides amino acids that helps to support our neurotransmitters, that help us feel good. It just has so many different vital functions in our body. And I think one of the key pieces that gets left out of this conversation is our protein requirements, as stated by the dietary guidelines, are an underestimate of what the body truly needs. We have all of this messaging around everybody eating too much protein. You've probably heard that before. Oh, Americans eat way more protein than they need, or Americans are eating too much meat.

Lily Nichols00:09:46 - 00:10:42

And that is only true in the context of our current RDA, which is underestimate by at least half of what our protein needs actually are. Most of us need double or even more than that of what the recommendations are. And when you look at that as a benchmark, as a lot of the protein researchers keep calling out, we need way more than we previously thought, then almost nobody is getting enough. So even your example of getting, you know, about 100 grams a day, that's not even that high. But for a lot of people, I mean, if you look at the RDA for protein, it's like 45 to 55 grams. For an average woman, that's way too low to function like a normal human being. So you, for your doula clients, have just recommended double that amount. And even that is kind of like a minimum benchmark for most individuals.

Eyla Cuenca00:10:42 - 00:11:39

And this makes me think of a good friend of mine, Hillary Boynton. And she started this amazing program where she's cooking whole foods, using raw dairy, fermented foods, meat and fat, in changing lunch programs at schools, basically. And she's out in LA, and she talks about her story where she was part of that fat free era that a lot of women went through, right? Or it's like nonfat milk, nonfat cottage cheese, nonfat everything, because fat will make you unhealthy. And so I know you've worked in policy and creating guidelines, and, you know, where did that come from? Like, why did. And, like, still, I think there's like an echo of it still happening, right. For those of us who, you know, had parents that were living in the, like, early eighties, seventies, and into the early nineties, you know, fat free and even margarine. Right? Like, don't get the butter, get the margarine. And so, like, what was the, like, motivation behind this fat?

Lily Nichols00:11:40 - 00:12:37

Yeah. So, I mean, you have to go way back in history on this. And Nina Teichultz has done a great job writing about this in her book, the Big Fat surprise, by the way, for anybody who wants to really dig into the history of what went on. But a lot of this comes down to corporate corruption and research corruption. But there was an american researcher, Ansel Keys, who traveled around, did some dietary surveys, was trying to draw a connection between saturated fat and cholesterol intake and heart disease. And his methods were quite shoddy. I actually write about them a little bit in real food for fertility when I'm debunking the mediterranean diet. But he found all his data, and then he cherry picked seven countries where there was an association showing higher saturated fat and cholesterol intake.

Lily Nichols00:12:37 - 00:13:44

Washinghouse linked to a higher risk of heart disease, even though he had data on many, many more countries. And the seven countries study was published that ended up influencing, like, the American Heart association lobbyists. The sugar industry was very happy about this and had a role in sort of moving the, like, focus of policymakers on from looking at sugar as a culprit to, you know, health issues and looking instead at fat that also was a boon to american industry because we could move away from imported tropical oils like coconut and palm, which are high in saturated fat, move away from animal fats, and make use of all these crops that we are now monocropping with industrial agriculture, which produce mostly unsaturated fat. So our corn, our cotton seed, our canola, our soy oil, you know, we had, we had studies, like, saying that corn oil was, like, the best thing ever. It's like, that's one of the absolute worst quality fats that you can consume.

Eyla Cuenca00:13:44 - 00:14:08

Like, how did that study, like, how was there success with that? Like, why did people believe that? Because, I mean, was there, were there certain standards that needed to be looked at that weren't, like, the effect of the corn oil over time and how it can, like, degenerate the system? Like, were they just done? Were they done just so, so that it did highlight the benefits of corn oil? Like, I don't, I don't get it.

Lily Nichols00:14:08 - 00:15:02

Because they had made this association with cholesterol and heart disease. Anything that we did in a dietary intervention study that would lower cholesterol, even temporarily, would, would be a boon. So you give people a lot of unsaturated fats, and you do often see their blood cholesterol levels go down. And that doesn't actually mean their heart disease risk goes down, because now you have the types of particles, your hdl and ldl particles, and whether they're large and buoyant and fluffy, or small and dense and more atherogenic, or. What is it doing to your coronary artery? Calcium. What is it doing to the oxidized lipids? That stuff wasn't even yet looked at. It was just purely, this brings down cholesterol levels, therefore good for the heart. And everybody just kind of ran with it.

Lily Nichols00:15:02 - 00:15:51

So our first dietary guidelines came out in the early 1980s. To this day, they're really not, have not significantly changed. The focus is heavily on reducing fat intake, especially saturated fat, at all costs. Cholesterol actually has been removed from the nutrients of concern list quietly, but wasn't really publicized, but they still focus very heavily on reducing saturated fat. So all the dairy's low fat or nonfat, all the meat is lean again. Since they've more recently moved away from cholesterol limits, there's less focus on eggs. But at one point, there was heavy focus on reducing your egg yolk consumption because of the cholesterol content. And because your fat intake is kept so low, you make up the difference with your other macronutrients.

Lily Nichols00:15:51 - 00:16:35

Right. Protein can only be consumed to a certain amount because it's so filling, it's so satiating, that even when you put people in a research study on, like, a 40% protein diet, they max out at like 25, 30%. Like, you cannot overeat protein. So the difference is this balance between carb and fat. So when you keep the fat intake super low, you end up with dietary guidelines that promote a really high carbohydrate intake. And that's what spurred the whole food industry to create, you know, remember those snack wells, fat free cookies of the eighties? Right? They're like, everything's fat free. Yeah. And, and super high sugar, super high carb, absolute metabolic disaster.

Lily Nichols00:16:35 - 00:16:45

But it has no fat or is low fat. You know, that was the whole era. So we're, we're still dealing with the consequences of those those guidelines.

Eyla Cuenca00:16:45 - 00:17:24

Yeah, I mean, I remember it wasn't like that in my household. My mom grew up in Nicaragua, so I grew up eating cow tongue, cow heart, liver, those kinds of things. Yeah. And, you know, goat milk. We always had goat milk in the house. But I remember going to friends houses and it was like, I just have, I have visions of, like, fat free milk, fat free ice cream, you know? And I remember for dinners at friends houses, it was like pasta with tomato sauce and a glass of fat free milk. And I remember this one time asking if I could have cheese on my pasta at a friend's house. And the mom was like, we don't have that.

Eyla Cuenca00:17:25 - 00:18:09

Like, it was like. And I was like, how can you not eat this with cheese? You know? And I just, you know, the things you remember as a kid. But now it's making sense. Like, we were all so influenced by that, right? Because there was a fear instilled about heart disease, about different types of life threatening challenges. And so once it's advertised that this is the way out, this is the way to stay safe, people will just adopt it. So there's like an existential fear, let's say, put instilled in the general population, and then these are the solutions. However, we saw people getting more sick, and people knew that something wasn't right. And I think we've arrived at a place where people are noticing, like, the standard american diet, let's say, is not working for me.

Eyla Cuenca00:18:09 - 00:18:55

So we have all of these branches of the carnivore diet, raw, vegan, paleo, mediterranean. I mean, they're so. And like, you go online now with the Internet, it's like, you just see all of these trends. And I think off, like, someone very close to me did the carnivore diet. And the first four months, like, his inflammation went down, he had more energy, he was sleeping better, and then eventually digestive issues started to kind of arise and, you know, certain things. So I think there was a temporary relief because the inflammatory foods, let's say, were not being consumed, and the foods with so much glyphosate were not being consumed. And there were a lot of, there was a disburdening on the system. So the body was like, yeah, this feels good.

Eyla Cuenca00:18:55 - 00:19:26

And then it was like, okay, but this isnt sustainable. So thats why im perceiving a lot of people going into all these different really dogmatic ways of consuming nutrition. So what? I mean, you debunked the mediterranean diets. I'd love to talk about that because it's kind of everybody's fallback of like, this is, this is the most balanced, this is the most safe, and it's the healthiest. You know, there's so many of these things just aren't sustainable. Like, how can we live sustainably as an omnivore, you know?

Lily Nichols00:19:26 - 00:20:14

Well, interestingly, the mediterranean diet that we think of in the west, that guides research studies and research study interventions, but also like, grading people's diets on healthfulness, how much it complies with mediterranean diet, that, like, western us centric view of mediterranean diet was defined by ancel Keys. Okay. His dietary surveys in Crete and southern Italy, that he did some surveys in both of those places. Some of them happened during Lent, by the way. But this also. So in Lent, a lot of people give up meat. But also, this was after, right after World World War Two. And a lot of those areas were really hard hit economically from the war.

Lily Nichols00:20:14 - 00:20:56

So one of the first things that you remove or are not able to access is meat and animal foods. So anyways, let's just say surveys were not exactly accurate for the region. Moreover, even if we want to assume they were accurate, you have over 20 countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. And so to cherry pick two areas from the Mediterranean and call it a mediterranean diet doesn't even make sense, because even within different parts of Italy, you have different dietary patterns. If you're closer to the coast, you consume more seafood and fish. If you're living up in the mountains, you're probably consuming more meat, lamb, dairy products.

Eyla Cuenca00:20:56 - 00:21:09

I could attest to that. My family's from Livorno, so a lot of seafood. And then I lived in central, south central Italy, and I was just eating. I was working on a sheep farm, eating cheese and lamb every day.

Lily Nichols00:21:11 - 00:22:25

But even the concept that a mediterranean diet is low fat or olive oil is the primary fat, even that is not accurate. There's an italian food historian that I cite in some of my work who has looked more closely at this. And the major fat intake in Italy was lard and butter, dairy fat, until they started adopting our western us guidelines and promoting more olive oil. Now, of course, if you were from a region that had olive trees, of course, you also had olive oil. It's not to say that wasn't consumed, but that actually wasn't the primary fat, which makes a lot of sense, because if you've ever, like, done, like a cow share, or if maybe some of you listening raises animals like we do have done a cow share, pig share every year for over a decade. And if you ask the farmer for the fat, they will happily give you the fat. And when you render that down, it is so much fat that it's actually impossible for a single family to go through all the animal fat, even from that one animal or that half animal, which is why we used to have an industry turning it into soap and candles and whatever. Right.

Lily Nichols00:22:26 - 00:23:11

It's like, it's, it's so much fat and it's also so easy to render down. I mean, you've got yourself a vat of lard or tallow very quickly, whereas, like, getting oil out of olives, I mean, that's an easier crop to get oil out of. But still, that takes actually a lot more work. It's more of like a delicacy. Yeah. A lot of energy in the harvest and the pressing and the, you know, so it doesn't even make sense from that perspective. But, yeah, let's just say, you know, our western definition of a mediterranean diet is not, not even accurate for all of Italy or all of Greece, but it's certainly not accurate for the whole region. What they consume in Turkey, Algeria, you know, it's Albania, it's all different than wealth that they consume in that other part of southern Italy.

Lily Nichols00:23:12 - 00:23:12

Yeah.

Eyla Cuenca00:23:12 - 00:23:37

Right. So we've had a false perception or distorted perception of the mediterranean diet, which is really what it is. But if we go to the authentic original, it looks quite different than what we've been writing about in these different culinary magazines and in books and referencing because I know that's what it is. I get the fat from the olive oil. It's a lot of fish, some grains and vegetables. We don't really hear about, you know, eating the whole lamb.

Lily Nichols00:23:37 - 00:24:33

Right. And for the region, I mean, the big benefit of it, even if you apply the american definition of a mediterranean diet and provide that for the average american, it is an improvement upon their diet quality because you've now displaced ultra processed foods. So it always is going to be of benefit. But we do have some studies where they've done a mediterranean diet, but they include red meat, and it hasn't shown detrimental effects in the study results. Right. So, I mean, yeah, we need to, like, take the good parts of it. The emphasis on, like, whole unprocessed foods is great, but we need to be careful with, like, how restrictive the western definition has become where they say, you know, low fat dairy products, low amounts of red meat, only emphasizing, like, low fat poultry and fish, like, not accurate. That's not actually accurate.

Lily Nichols00:24:33 - 00:24:53

You talk to anybody who has lived in the region or grew up there and they're like, we don't just, like, eat pasta with a side of beans for every meal. Like, what are you talking about? Like, yeah, we have lamb and we have a, you know, a whole chicken, and we have this, you know, full fat cheese, and we have, you know. Yeah, yeah.

Eyla Cuenca00:24:53 - 00:25:57

It makes me think of how it only takes one generation for a language to be lost, right? It only takes one generation for recipes to be lost, one generation to not teach your children to cook. And then they can barely boil an egg. If they're not seeing us in the kitchen preserving these recipes and these traditions with food, then what tools are we really giving them for survival? For me, it's such a survival tool to be able to know how to grow on a basic level. Herbs and vegetables, take the eggs from the chickens out in the garden, those kinds of things. And my knowledge even is so limited, I've had to really relearn, unlearn and relearn so that I could provide some of that for my daughter in an urban environment, right. And then seek out different amish resources in the state of Florida so that I can access meat that I believe, you know, meat and animal products that I believe are high quality, find local apiaries, things like that. So it's like I'm teaching her how to find the resources, whereas I was. I really wish I was teaching her to produce them herself.

Eyla Cuenca00:25:57 - 00:27:00

But at least knowing how to source is a start, right? But, you know, teaching her how to cook. And I have, you know, italian background, nicaraguan background, slovakian background. And so it's like trying to pull tradition from that so that she has kind of like a curation of potential dishes. And when I go deep into those cultures, it's so much about the organs, the innards, so many things that I don't have a lot of fluency with, you know? So as I'm trying to teach her, I'm also. I'm also learning. But I know that many of her friends, you know, they'll get together and she's eight, and they'll, you know, come with snacks, you know, and it's like they are all processed, pre packaged, kid friendly, right? Kid friendly meaning, like, I don't know what that really means, but I don't actually know. And, you know, I offer them certain things to eat, like, you know, beef, salami, different things that are, like, not super out there, but. And they are like, oh, their palates are completely, I don't know, like, not attuned to that.

Eyla Cuenca00:27:01 - 00:27:48

So I feel we even lose the taste for it. Right. Even though the body might be craving it and needing it, it's like we lose the taste for it. It only takes one generation. So it's an interesting. There's a yemeni chef in New York, his name is Akram, and his whole mission, he didn't know how to cook, but his whole mission the last few years has been re interviewing and researching yemeni people to get recipes from various regions to bring back to reintroduce the culture of cooking into homes. Because there's a health crisis with young people, children, we've really come to normalize a lot of these health issues as just like, well, it's just, it's tough having a kid. You know, it's like, that's kind of what I'm just tough having a kid.

Eyla Cuenca00:27:48 - 00:28:01

And we have to make all these accommodations. I don't think we realize how simple it could be if we reintroduced whole foods back into their world, but it requires us as adults to make personal shifts as well.

Lily Nichols00:28:01 - 00:28:33

Right. So, yeah, it comes down to what the kids are exposed to at home over the long term. And, I mean, I know I've got two kids of my own and they could be picky eaters sometimes. I mean, my older one has come out of it now. There's like those natural stages of development where they want to exert their independence, but if you simply have less of the ultra process stuff around, it just doesn't become an option, you know? So. Yeah. It's tricky, though. I feel for parents out there, we have to just keep cooking and modeling.

Eyla Cuenca00:28:33 - 00:29:05

Yeah. And I know it's a challenge because our modern lifestyles have completely changed. Right. We. We don't have the capacity or the spaciousness to cook. It's like we have to plan this two hour window amongst all the other things to be able to prepare a meal, you know? So it's like, there are a lot of pieces in my perception that have to shift to create the space for healing and nourishing through food. Yeah. I mean, would you say that you've seen.

Eyla Cuenca00:29:05 - 00:29:40

So if we go into fertility, would you say that in this luxury? I'd say to be able to plan, to conceive, which we don't always get that luxury. Sometimes it just happens. Right. But if you're in that space of wanting to nourish the body, stabilize, replenish. Do you see that in fertility? Unnutrition for fertility, it impacts the rest of the pregnancy, it impacts the woman's postpartum and ultimately impacts the baby once it's out of the womb. Like, is it one big web?

Lily Nichols00:29:40 - 00:31:17

Yes, 100%. So, yeah, preconception, diet quality is influencing both egg and sperm quality. And this goes back months prior to conception. By the way, a lot of the stages of very early development of the embryo implantation, the formation of the placenta, the formation of all the internal organs during embryogenesis, those are all really heavily reliant on your nutrient intake and your nutrient stores, which is why we've had such an emphasis for decades on things like consume enough folic acid, preconception, which is not entirely true, but there is a role for folate and a number of other nutrients in this very early development that can actually reduce the risk of certain birth defects, neural tube defects being some of them, congenital heart defects, congenital diaphragmatic hernia. Like, there's a number of things that can be impacted by these micronutrient levels. And then as you go across the whole trajectory of pregnancy, this is a very nutrient intensive time of life. Even by conventional standards, micronutrient needs are significantly higher. And if you're not meeting those, and I would say even exceeding those, because those recommendations are an underestimate of the true requirements, you end pregnancy in a nutrient depleted state, and yet you are now entering the most nutrient intensive period of your life, which is lactation.

Lily Nichols00:31:18 - 00:32:54

The nutrient needs for postpartum and lactation are higher than even the third trimester of pregnancy. And you're kind of starting from a depleted state. So the best we can do is like, if again, like you said, you have the luxury of planning a pregnancy if you do, optimizing your health and nutrient intake pre conception, and then again, pregnancy sometimes throws things for a loop with, you know, nausea, food aversions, whatever, but keeping up your nutrient intake as best you can despite those symptoms and continuing with the replenishment postpartum. Yes, this is what sets you up for the healthiest baby with, you know, the best optimize brain development and growth and all of that, but also to have you start out as a new mom, or maybe 2nd, 3rd, 4th time mom, from a less nutrient depleted state than if you had not optimized these things during your pregnancy. So it does help significantly with postpartum recovery. You look at like we talked about protein requirements at the beginning. Protein requirements are higher across all age and sex groups of the population, but especially during pregnancy, and even more so during postpartum, your protein needs are higher postpartum. So when we talk about people having really challenging postpartum recoveries, you know, mental health issues and that extreme hunger anxiety, or wound healing, pelvic floor issues.

Lily Nichols00:32:54 - 00:33:11

We really have to go super heavy on the protein to provide your body with the raw materials to actually, like, rebuild your tissues and keep you energized, give you the energy to get through the day and the many, many sleepless nights that come after having a baby.

Eyla Cuenca00:33:12 - 00:34:24

Absolutely. I mean, I'm talking a little bit about postpartum depression with my community right now, and we're getting ready for a masterclass because so much of postpartum depression is viewed as, like, a pre existing psychological state that is triggered or amplified by the birth. And just entering a postpartum space. Very rarely do I find anywhere anyone talking about how nutrition and depletion, being in a state of depletion, impacts that postpartum period and being in the birth space now for over a decade. There's so much emphasis on what to do during the pregnancy with some suggestions about preconception and then maybe some suggestions about postpartum. But it's really just like, I have to be good during the pregnancy, and then it will be fine, but rarely, you know? Now with your new book about fertility, it's like we're seeing there's a whole world of possibility. Even if you don't know when you'll be pregnant, even if you don't know, you know, even if you're not partnered, you know, it's like you're already, like, cultures of before, you know, already nourishing the body in such a way to prepare for this next stage of life. You know, that's what happened with women once they started bleeding.

Eyla Cuenca00:34:24 - 00:34:55

You know, girls started bleeding. They were then shown new ways of eating and nourishing their bodies to prepare for perhaps the inevitable pregnancy at some point. So introducing that pack in, I think, will then, you know, give women the opportunity to not be depleted, right? Like you're saying, they'll already know how to eat, they'll already know how to be intuitive with their food, their nourishment. And then pregnancy might be. Might be less challenging, and postpartum might even be less challenging. Right?

Lily Nichols00:34:55 - 00:35:48

I mean, it comes down to just general well being and maintaining your health more than anything, right? Your fertility is just a reflection of your overall health. And one of the first places we see the body kind of pull back energy and resources for when it's undernourished is our hormone production and ovulation. It knows that pregnancy is such an energy intensive process. And, I mean, our biology is, like, wired for success, right? And so it's like, if there's a chance that we're not going to have enough nourishment and nutrient reserves to pull this off. Let's back down. Let's pull ovulation off the table completely. So pregnancy is not possible until we are in a place that we're nourished, we're safe. You know, this is why our hormone production is so responsive, even to stress.

Lily Nichols00:35:48 - 00:36:27

We have to think from like an ancestral perspective. We did experience significant stress in years, hundreds and thousands of years past, and also fairly frequent food scarcity. And there were just like we see with wild animals, how there is a time of the year when these animals tend to reproduce. That was similarly observed in human populations ages ago. Whereas, like, okay, it's the rainy season, we have the time of abundance. This is when the fruit ripens. This is when the cows give birth and they're lactating and we can consume their milk. This is when this animal is large enough to harvest, whatever.

Lily Nichols00:36:27 - 00:37:31

That corresponded with the time of greatest fertility in human females as well. And then in times of scarcity, your body is just no longer ovulating for that time until it has that abundance and safety to begin to ovulate again. We're in a totally different time, human life now, where we have abundant calories everywhere. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's high quality calories and they're coming along with all the micronutrients we need. But we have an abundance of energy, not necessarily an abundance of nutrients available. And even with that, you have individuals who, whether intentionally or not, significantly under, consume food and put their bodies into a state of, we are in a famine where you have ovulatory disorders start to come into play as well. But yeah, our body is very attuned to what resources do we have available here? And it knows when to or not to pull back on hormone production and ovulation.

Eyla Cuenca00:37:32 - 00:39:02

Yeah, this makes me think, well, there's two things here, so I'll try to hold on to the second one. But this makes me think of the handful, a couple handfuls of plant based women that I've worked with over the years who have had some challenges with fertility. And they've said to me, I've felt fine my whole life. I was inflamed and I was overweight and I was this or that. And now that I'm plant based, I feel good. And meanwhile, they are having some issues like opacity in their teeth and other things, hair loss, that I'm noticing there was something else more significant that made them feel like now they're in a better state of health, however, they can't get pregnant. And so, you know, in my own terms, I have expressed, you know, I think the body is in a state of fight or flight consistently because of the way that you're eating, you know, and so many of them have made the change to consume animal protein, animal fat, nutrition from animal sources, and have seen great success in being able to get pregnant. And so what would you say for women who kind of hold on to this and don't want to maybe address, I know that you have some great solutions and resources in your real food for pregnancy book to try to accommodate that demographic, but ultimately, I see that this is very common and they go on to have some challenges with pre term labor and even challenges producing breast milk.

Lily Nichols00:39:02 - 00:39:50

Yes, it can be a major issue. It's funny, in my, like, if I look over the trajectory of my career and my writing, I used to really shy away from addressing this topic directly because it's so people almost have like a religious, dogmatic view. Yeah. About, about these things. And there's, you know, different, there's ethical, there's also full on religious reasons for people choosing to eat this way. So it's funny and how, how it's kind of shifted over the years because I didn't address it at all in my real food for gestational diabetes book. And then in real food for pregnancy, I put in a section at the end of a chapter on vegetarian diets. And now in real food for fertility, there's a whole full on chapter just calling out the potential issues with a vegetarian diet.

Lily Nichols00:39:50 - 00:41:00

Not saying that some people can't do well with it and can't conceive, but there are significant nutrient considerations that you have to have in place. And I think there's a, it's the rare exception that you find somebody who has the genetics where they can handle it and also is making all the right choices to check all the micronutrient boxes and get the macronutrients in order and all that. That's the rare exception. The majority of the stories that I see, the majority of the cases that I've seen in practice are individuals who are struggling as a result of the plant based choices. So there's like a lot of different angles to take it from. And in real food for fertility, I do go through in extreme detail. I actually don't even know of a resource that goes into as much detail all of the different considerations on vegetarian diets, because even in our guidelines that say, you know, vegetarian or vegan diet, is nutritionally adequate with careful planning for pregnancy, lactation, early childhood, infancy. Like, they all say that, but nobody actually puts it.

Lily Nichols00:41:00 - 00:41:41

Nobody actually addresses all of the inadequacies to the degree that we're actually going to, like, they'll call out like, you know, iron might be a deficiency, but they don't go into detail of like, well, let's show you a vegan meal plan that has adequate iron and you know, you're going to be absorbing all of this. No, they don't go into that. Right. They don't go into that amount of detail. They just patch things with supplementation, which has its own issues. So we have the micronutrient challenges, right? Number of micronutrients can be inadequate for a variety of reasons. I won't go through all of them. We have the macronutrient challenges just from the macronutrient composition of plant based foods.

Lily Nichols00:41:41 - 00:42:07

You create a situation where protein is typically under consumed. The average vegetarian or vegan, is only getting ten to 12% of their calories from protein. This is not enough. It aligns with the RDA, but is not enough. Right. For optimal health. The fat intake is fairly low and it's mostly coming from omega six sources, so highly inflammatory. And then the remainder of their calories are coming from carbohydrates.

Lily Nichols00:42:07 - 00:42:58

And a typical vegetarian is getting 60% of their calories from carbohydrates, which again, aligns perfectly with our dietary guidelines, however, is a complete disaster for blood sugar regulation. Then on top of that, a lot of plant based foods are fairly low calorie. We see a lot of women undereating when they eat a vegetarian diet. If you undereat, fertility is affected. And also we see people choosing a restrictive dietary pattern as a means of having some sort of control over their food intake. So we see significantly higher rates of eating disorders among vegetarians. Whether it's a cause and effect or they're like choosing it because of whatever it is, the undereating is rampant. And then we have to also think about the protein quality that you're getting on such a diet.

Lily Nichols00:42:58 - 00:43:20

People don't realize this, and I was actually not taught this in my dietetics training. I only learned this in the research I did for real food, for fertility. That RDA for protein, which is already way too low, is set with the assumption that vegetarians are getting half of their protein from animal sourced foods, meaning eggs and dairy products.

Eyla Cuenca00:43:21 - 00:43:22

Okay?

Lily Nichols00:43:22 - 00:44:30

Because you get better quality protein that's more digestible with a better balance of amino acids from animal foods. Now, I don't know about you, but the average vegetarian that I know now is different than the average vegetarian from the nineties. The average vegetarian in the nineties was consuming eggs, was consuming cheese, like kind of a lot of dairy products. Sometimes the average vegetarian, or even somebody who doesn't identify as vegetarian, but is like, low animal food consumption, they are actively avoiding dairy products and eggs. Right? And so they found that vegetarians, if they're eating more of these plant based proteins, they actually need more. Like, they should have a separate RDA set for vegetarians that's at least 20% higher to account for the low quality protein, the poor amino acid ratios and indigestibility and accessibility of your body to even make use of the amino acids that are in there. And so that's also a piece of the puzzle that, like, nobody seems to be talking about here. It's just plant based is better.

Lily Nichols00:44:30 - 00:45:55

Plant protein is better. Nobody really, like, digs into the details on this stuff and gets real about it, because what I see is a higher rate of menstrual cycle issues, particularly hypothalamic amenorrhea in the women who are under eating, in the women who are getting enough calories because the carb intake is so high, protein so low, the fat quality is so bad, you see polycystic ovarian syndrome more common among those women. So either way, you know, you either got somebody who's starving or somebody with significant blood sugar and insulin dysregulation, both of which have carryover effects on fertility. So, you know, you have to get real with yourself. Like, how are your menstrual cycle parameters presenting? Are you ovulating regularly? Do you have strong signs of fertility? Are there issues there? Have you had challenges conceiving, like, longer than you expected? You know, you're not conceiving. Couple that with women who've been on hormonal contraceptives for many years, which depletes many of these micronutrients as well. And it's like a double whammy, right? You've got, like, the nutrient depletion and all the carryover health effects from birth control coupled with this low nutrient intake, it really takes a lot to replete those nutrient stores and bring fertility back online.

Eyla Cuenca00:45:55 - 00:47:03

Absolutely. And this is also, for me, like, one big piece of this IVF industry puzzle, right? Or it's like, I know so many women who have gone through the gauntlet of IVF, and it was never presented to them that they could potentially turn things around by making different decisions with how they nourish their bodies. Right. They were basically told they went for a panel of some kind, told they have an issue. And the most direct, effective way to deal with it is just to do IVF. And not to mention the host of women who are kind of corralled into the IVF world simply because of their age, which, if you're familiar with me and my work, I don't consider age to be as dramatic of a factor as the general population does. So a lot of women end up going through this very expensive, depleting, dare I say, traumatic route of IVF simply because they were not nourishing themselves properly and unknowingly distorting their body's capacity, you know, impeding their body's capacity to produce healthy fertility conditions.

Lily Nichols00:47:03 - 00:47:44

And even if you need IVF, you can improve the chances of IVF success with nutrition. Right. If you want your endometrial lining to be sufficiently thick for them to even do a transfer, you've got to be eating enough protein, enough meat. I've been contacted by, I was contacted by a woman who had done IVF in the past, and then she was going to do it again and went on a vegan diet a month before her supposed transfer. And the second one, the first one was successful. Everything was fine. And then she had trialled out a vegan diet. And they're like, what happened? Your lining is so thin.

Lily Nichols00:47:44 - 00:48:16

Like, we can't do the transfer. And she's like, I realized right then it must have been the only thing I could change was the vegan diet. Right. So not just the egg quality, but we have to think about, like, what is your, yeah. Endometrial lining. Like, that's the first home for the embryo to implant, for the placenta to form in that tissue. You know, vasculature goes into the uterine wall and the endometrium, we have issues here when that is not sufficient enough to support an embryo to embed.

Eyla Cuenca00:48:16 - 00:48:50

Yeah. So it will support successful IVF. You know, it'll increase the chances for these reasons you just stated and many more. So please get Lillys book. However, theres also a whole population of women who mightve never needed to go down that route had they explored this in the first place. And so this also brings me to the, like, this kind of age old feeling of like, well, if Im unable to get pregnant, its, you know, its my fault, right? As the woman, I did something wrong, my bodys failing me. Its not meant to be. Theres a lot of shame woven into that.

Eyla Cuenca00:48:51 - 00:49:20

Even with unsuccessful rounds of IVF. It's like there's a whole of insurmountable pressure that's created, self created very often and maybe socially too. However, we often don't consider the male's role. Right. And I know you are big on males also getting involved and committed to different choices in their nutrition to support the process of fertility. Right. So what are some ways that men can participate actively in this?

Lily Nichols00:49:20 - 00:50:13

Yeah, we have to talk about the male part of the equation. When real food for fertility is co authored with my friend Lisa Hendrickson Jack, who's a fertility awareness educator, and she really took the lead on the sperm quality chapter. We both felt really strongly that we needed to address both partners because she's seen in her work. You can have a client who has picture perfect menstrual cycles. You can tell they're having sex during the fertile days and it's not happening month after month after month after month. And it's like, you know, there's maybe a 25% chance each cycle if you're having sex during the fertile window. But like why is it not happening? You have the partner get checked for sperm quality and lo and behold, there's the issue. So like half of infertility cases have some male factor involvement and yet we're always blaming the woman.

Lily Nichols00:50:13 - 00:50:40

Right. It's so messed up. It's so messed up. And you know, in, in upwards of 30% of those cases, it is 100%, 100% a male factor issue. Poor sperm quality. And theres a ton we can do for sperm quality. And actually sperm quality responds faster even than egg quality because the formation of sperm is a shorter period of time than development of a human egg. Right.

Lily Nichols00:50:41 - 00:51:23

From recruitment as an undeveloped follicle to ovulation. Youre looking at like seven to eight months for an egg, whereas sperm quality, it's less than three months from when they were first created. Right. So you got like within three months you can completely change sperm parameters. So some of the things, and there's a lot of overlap with egg quality here as well, which is a good thing because you don't have to like cook totally separate meals or do completely opposite lifestyle hacks or whatever to make these changes. You can pretty much be doing the same thing together. Improving the quality of fat that's consumed is a huge one. So getting the seed oils and ultra processed oils out of the diet is a very important step.

Lily Nichols00:51:23 - 00:52:22

And that by itself is going to eliminate a lot of ultra processed foods, fried restaurant foods and stuff. Like get that stuff off the table and I get that like, unless you're living in a place that has fantastic restaurants where you have options of, like, seed oil free and wheat fry and tallow, like, you might not have the option to completely avoid them if you're eating outside of the house, but at least choosing non fried options at restaurants is a good choice. And maybe, you know, choosing to forego the conventional salad dressing or whatever can help reduce that. But at the very least at home, not cooking with those really crappy oils can help a lot. Sperm are really sensitive to oxidative damage. And so when you have these omega six rich vegetable oils, seed oils coming in to, you're just driving up inflammation and oxidative damage like crazy. So that's a big one. Switch over to using your animal fats.

Lily Nichols00:52:22 - 00:53:18

Butter, ghee, lard, tallow, coconut oil, even using olive oil or avocado oils. Those are all going to be a better choice than any of the other ones that I just mentioned getting real about sugar intake and like, the quality of carbohydrates you're consuming. And again, both these things are kind of hitting on the ultra processed foods. These are just ingredients in a lot of ultra processed foods. So our added sugars are refined white flour. Get less of those coming in your diet as possible. If you are a person who has cereal for breakfast or bagel for breakfast or something, swap that out for eggs and bacon and maybe even like eggs and bacon and some sauteed veggies, even better, right? Just keep making the choice to go for the whole foods and displace as many of the processed things out of there as possible. High blood sugar is a major inflammatory factor and a major contributor to poor sperm quality.

Lily Nichols00:53:18 - 00:54:01

We see in men with prediabetes or type two diabetes, absolutely abysmal sperm quality parameters. And then just as a whole, you know, more nutrient dense foods. So there's a lot of amino acids in all these protein foods. I've talked about all of our animal foods, our meat, poultry, fish, seafood, dairy products, eggs especially, that have a direct role in helping with sperm quality, motility and morphology. So we're talking about little individual amino acids that you don't necessarily find in plant foods like carnitine and creatine and taurine. So get more protein. Usually men are totally happy to eat more protein. They're happy to eat more meat.

Lily Nichols00:54:01 - 00:55:33

So it might be a matter of just buying it more often and cooking it more often, having it available, but you want protein to really be central at your meals with fresh produce and stuff on the side. And if you're having carbs make them better quality whole food carbs whenever possible. So instead of a pasta side or a rice side, choose sweet potatoes or winter squash or have some fruit on the side that naturally is going to just drastically improve your micronutrient intake, but also reduce your chances of having those really high blood sugar spikes after a meal. I mean, like, those three things alone is probably enough, but, you know, other things like getting the toxins and chemicals out of our diet, out of our lifestyle, not only out of our diet, but out of our kitchens, our laundry room, our showers, you know, so watch the personal care products. What kind of deodorant is he using? Is he using cologne? No cologne, no fragrances whatsoever. Getting clear on, like, you know, your laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, like no fragrance. Plugins cooking in glass and stainless steel and cast iron instead of nonstick, like, all of those little changes do add up to less of a toxin load because both egg and sperm quality are really highly sensitive to the toxins we're exposed to in our environment. And unfortunately, were virtually surrounded by toxins, whether we like it or not.

Lily Nichols00:55:33 - 00:55:54

So we may as well reduce the ones that we have some control over. And a lot of men are exposed to more chemicals in their work environment than women are. So especially if theyre working in landscaping and theyre exposed to or spraying pesticides or theyre working in construction, and theres just an array of chemicals youre exposed to on a construction site.

Eyla Cuenca00:55:54 - 00:55:54

Right.

Lily Nichols00:55:54 - 00:56:14

How can you, like, mitigate that exposure as best as possible, like personal protective equipment? Maybe working in environments that have less exposure, maybe choosing not to be a pesticide applicator like these can all be. There's always going to be different ways that you could approach reducing your exposures.

Eyla Cuenca00:56:14 - 00:56:29

Wow. Yeah. I think just with those tips, it could make a world of difference because what are the common, I guess, solutions given by the more mainstream conventional system when a man has, like, low, poor sperm quality? Like, what do they typically say?

Lily Nichols00:56:29 - 00:57:19

I wish I could tell you. They were told, you know, something useful, but I feel like most often the answer is that you need to go through, there's a procedure called ICSI where they can separate out the healthier sperm from the less healthy sperm. And it's usually, they do this as part of the IVF process. So if his sperm quality is poor, they're often not giving you much that you can do. They might say, like, don't ride your bike so often or put your laptop on your lap because we know overheating the testes is like a significant contributor. But I feel like there's very little for at least what I've heard from men. And working with, you know, their urologist, they're not giving them lifestyle changes. They're saying, okay, your sperm quality is bad.

Lily Nichols00:57:19 - 00:57:28

We can do this procedure to get the best sperm out of your terrible quality sperm, and then we'll use that for IVF for your partner.

Eyla Cuenca00:57:28 - 00:58:01

Yeah, I asked because that's always what my clients say. That's pretty much the exact feedback that their husbands will get. So it's consistent with what's being prescribed around here. And so ultimately, the power of all of this, the power of what you're doing, is that it gives women and men the self sovereignty to make the changes that they want. Right. It's not a matter of what is the system telling me to do. And I can. And, you know, I'm up between a rock and a hard spot because, you know, everything that they suggested, it isn't working.

Eyla Cuenca00:58:01 - 00:59:06

So I guess I just can have kids, or I guess I just can have a healthy pregnancy, or I guess postpartum is just going to be really hard because, you know, I've this pre existing psychological condition. Right. But it's like when we look at food as this tool to completely transform our lives, we actually have a lot of power. And it's something we can always try before going down these other routes that can be quite disempowering. They can create, I would say, power struggles, often within our marriage as well within ourselves. And so why not try this? Why not take the power back into your own hands in small ways? And what's fascinating about shift, unlearning and relearning when it comes to food, is that we come into contact with certain resistances, as I'm sure you've seen, and there's an opportunity there to alchemize that. What are these resistances? Right? Am I using food as a way to control my environment? Because I ultimately feel out of control with so many things. And then there is a wealth of information there, too, you know, an opportunity for healing.

Eyla Cuenca00:59:06 - 00:59:40

So for me, this is just one of the most empowering ways to step into our self sovereignty, one of the most effective ways to do it. And we can titrate in, right? We can. You know, we're not going to jump into. Some of us can't jump into the deep end. Our nervous system can't handle it. But titrating small ways, making shifts every day while we're unlearning, we can do that. I think we can do that. Especially when it comes to wanting to build a family, right? We're willing to do these more extreme things that might be suggested by mainstream system.

Eyla Cuenca00:59:40 - 00:59:48

And also try this. You know, for me, there's very low risk to changing the way we eat.

Lily Nichols00:59:48 - 01:00:22

And your body also gives you fairly immediate feedback as to whether it's working or not. If you're paying attention to your digestion, your energy levels, your menstrual cycle parameters, your hunger and fullness cues and cravings. And like you just said, you don't have to do everything overnight. Think, like, people maybe don't realize, like, I've been doing this stuff for like, 20 years. It was more than 20 years ago when I was, like, came across information about ancestral nutrition. I was actually vegetarian at the time.

Eyla Cuenca01:00:22 - 01:00:24

How is it possible? You look like 29.

Lily Nichols01:00:26 - 01:00:43

Add like ten years to that. But thank you. Yeah, so, you know, I was, I was eating a vegetarian diet and. And I thought I was doing the best for my health. And then it was like, oh, wait, I actually, yeah, I might need more protein. I might need more fat. For me, it started with more fat. Okay.

Lily Nichols01:00:43 - 01:00:56

Saturated fat actually isn't bad for me. Okay, maybe I can have, like, an extra egg. And it took a lot of time and a lot of unlearning because we've been hammered down. Like, you eat saturated fat, you're going to have a heart attack.

Eyla Cuenca01:00:56 - 01:00:56

Right?

Lily Nichols01:00:56 - 01:02:05

It's, like, scary. So even though things like eat less sugar, like, that's obvious. There are some things that are scary. And I've found for women, especially, eating more fat, eating more protein, which means eating more animal foods, more meat, more eggs, more cheese, more fish, more steak specifically. Right? Like, red meat in particular. Like, that is really scary. And that starts with just, like, you go to the grocery store and you're gonna, like, instead of buying the plant based meat crumbles or the ground turkey, like, you're gonna buy grass fed ground beef, and you're gonna make your chili that night with the grass fed ground beef, and you're gonna sit with it, and you're going to see how you feel after the meal and see how you feel the next day. And eventually you're going to move on, maybe from the ground meat, and you're going to get a chuck roast, and you're going to make old fashioned grandma pot roast or stew or something, and see how your body feels after having a meal that actually has, I call it food of sustenance.

Lily Nichols01:02:06 - 01:02:38

This deep seated, like, you feel energy to your bones. You feel nourished you don't get that when you're following dietary guidelines or eating this salads for every meal or whatever. And you have to experience that firsthand and be okay with feeling full after a meal. People are so freaked out about feeling satiated. Oh, I just want to eat light. I'm just going to eat light. I'm just going to have fruit. Like, no, that doesn't cut it.

Lily Nichols01:02:38 - 01:02:43

Like, nothing against fruit, but, like, that's not a meal. My friends, you know, I think they.

Eyla Cuenca01:02:43 - 01:03:14

Say that because they're so used to overeating on garbage that you actually do feel full and horrible. But I don't know that they know what it's like to get full on high quality whole foods. Right. So it's just an idea. Like, I can't eat to fullness because, like, you know, digestion issues, reflux, all heartburn, all kinds. But that's because they're used to the fullness and it's a scary and burly uncomfortable. So we got to change the ingredients. Yes, exactly.

Eyla Cuenca01:03:14 - 01:03:39

Oh, my goodness. No, there's. There's so much more. But this is like, for me, this is just one of the tools to becoming self sovereign and healthy and not feeling like a victim of our circumstances anymore, you know? So thank you. How can people find you? I'm going to list everything every possible way, but is there anything that you're offering right now for people to jump into this? You have a lot of offerings on your website.

Lily Nichols01:03:39 - 01:04:11

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot going on. So my website is lilynicholsrdn.com. dot on there you'll see a tab for my books and that'll have all three. Real food for fertility, real food for pregnancy, real food for gestational diabetes. We were mostly speaking about fertility for today. So if you're interested in that one, head over to the real food for fertility website. It's realfoodforfertility.com dot. You can download the first chapter of the book for free, which actually has the introduction and the forward and all sorts of other information.

Lily Nichols01:04:11 - 01:04:50

Full table of contents, you know, so it gives you a very good overview and feel for the book without having to spend a dime. Right. So you can check that out. Let's see. Back over on my main site, lillynicholsrdn.com, i have my blog. There's hundreds of articles there. I fairly recently wrote one called five fertility diet myths, which just touches on a handful of topics that I go into more detail on in the book. So it goes into a little more on mediterranean diet, but I heard meat is bad for fertility and all sorts of things that are just very commonly talked about, and yet they're just totally missed the mark on what's actually true.

Lily Nichols01:04:51 - 01:05:19

I train practitioners via the Institute for Prenatal Nutrition that is mostly focused on prenatal, but there's a bit of fertility and postpartum built into that as well. That information is under the services tab on my website. I don't know I can keep going, but just peruse the services. There's all sorts of freebies on my site and you can find me on social media, mostly on Instagram. I'm on all the platforms, but I'm most present there and my handle is the same as my website. So it's lilynicholsrdn.

Eyla Cuenca01:05:19 - 01:05:34

Awesome. I'm going to list it all there anyway. So those of you who are listening now, you have the info. Thank you so much, Lily. It's always a pleasure to connect with you. I value you so much and what you're doing in the world and I will talk to you soon.

Lily Nichols01:05:34 - 01:05:350:00 - 01:05:36

Yes, likewise. Thank you.