The Ultimate Trying-to-Get-Pregnant Diet: What to Shop for and How to Eat

There are many advantages to eating well. And if you are trying to get pregnant, this diet delivers four benefits that are particularly important:

• A well-balanced diet helps bring your body chemistry into balance and increases your likelihood of getting pregnant.
• You'll be able to deliver all the right nutrients to that soon-to-be tiny individual developing inside of you.
• By the time your child begins eating adult food, your healthy habits will have taken root in your lifestyle; you'll be an excellent role model for your child!
• You'll decrease your risk of chronic diseases that the typical Western diet inflicts, thus increasing the quality of life for you and your family.

Even though the basics of a healthy diet are simple, it takes time and effort to figure out how to prioritize a healthy diet into your lifestyle. Changing your dietary habits is a process, so you may as well get started now. (And read about encouraging a healthy fertility diet for him, if you can.)

Experts estimate that your body will create approximately 5 million cells each day based on what you've eaten in the past 24 hours. Not only do you create new cells, you influence your hormones, enzymes, and every cell in your body based on what you eat.

Think about all the food you have eaten in the last 150 days. Yes, all the food. That means those hot dogs at the ballpark and those super-sized French fries. It all counts. It takes 150 days for the majority of your body's cells to be replaced. In fact, every atom in your body is replaced within a calendar year based on what you have consumed. So as you've thought about your eating patterns over the last five months, know that each and every morsel you put into your mouth contributed (or didn't contribute!) to your body's current make-up. If you're trying to get pregnant, the expression "you are what you eat" applies to your soon-to-be-baby as well.

Now that you know this, you can see that the quality of the food you eat becomes a high priority if you want to make healthy cells that will balance out your hormones and increase your chance of getting pregnant and building a healthy baby. Think about it another way: If you eat an average of three meals per day, you have more than 1,000 opportunities per year to select foods that make you feel more balanced or more off-balanced. There's really no other right choice but to eat incredibly well!