Aside from reducing stress, eating a plant-based, whole-foods diet is a great way to boost your fertility. Basically, our bodies are designed to try and “get us pregnant" every cycle. If there are outside factors (like stress, poor nutrition, repeated illnesses, etc.) telling our bodies “this isn’t a good time to get her pregnant," then conceiving might be a bit more challenging.
"Real Food for Mother & Baby: The Fertility Diet, Eating for Two, and Baby’s First Foods" by Nina Planck is a great place to start. The rule-of-thumb is to eat REAL food… what our great-grandmothers would have recognized as food ;)
Two things to keep in mind… avoiding the “dirty dozen" and eating low-mercury fish. The dirty dozen includes foods in which we eat the skin or the skin is thin (and potentially covered in pesticides): apples, bell peppers, blueberries, celery, cherries, grapes (imported), kale, nectarines (imported), peaches, potatoes, spinach/lettuce, and strawberries. It’s best to buy these organic and/or local. Low-mercury fish choices (so our body doesn’t store heavy metal poisons) include arctic cod, anchovies, catfish, clam, crab, oyster, sardine, scallop, shrimp, tilapia, trout, and wild salmon (http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.aspx).
Yum! Eating for 1 so that eventually you’re “eating for 2" can taste really good!
