Breaking Down Fertility Diet Myths: Insights from Lily Nichols, RDN
Today I’m hosting Lily Nichols on the podcast. Lily is a pioneer swimming against the mainstream who has translated the research beautifully regarding preconception and prenatal nutrition.
Lily Nichols is a Registered Dietitian/Nutritionist, Certified Diabetes Educator, researcher, and author with a passion for evidence-based prenatal nutrition. Her work is known for being research-focused, thorough, and critical of outdated dietary guidelines. She is the founder of the Institute for Prenatal Nutrition™, co-founder of the Women’s Health Nutrition Academy (where I have continued to further my own education in preconception and prenatal nutrition), and she’s the author of three books: Real Food for Fertility (co-authored with Lisa Hendrickson-Jack), Real Food for Pregnancy and Real Food for Gestational Diabetes. Lily’s bestselling books have helped tens of thousands of mamas (and babies!), are used in university-level maternal nutrition and midwifery courses (one of them being the midwifery program at Bastyr University, my alma mater), and have even influenced prenatal nutrition policy internationally.
She writes at https://lilynicholsrdn.com and has an extensive library of articles questioning current best-practices when it comes to nutrition recommendations and guidelines for women on their motherhood transition- from preconception through postpartum.
My husband, Dr. Mark Woodall and I hosted Lily on the podcast 3 years ago and In our conversation in season 1 episode 20, we discussed the true concerns for mamas and babies when a woman chooses to follow a vegetarian (or even limited animal protein) diet. Though there is so much to be discussed on this topic, we covered the key concerns of what true protein needs are in pregnancy, essential pregnancy micronutrients often deficient on a vegetarian diet, the differences between animal and plant forms of nutrients, and the challenge of balancing blood sugar on a limited protein diet.
Now building off the ideas we discussed in that episode and understanding how critical animal foods are to the health of a pregnancy and of your future baby, our conversation today is going to be the prequel to pregnancy. We’re going to get into how you can set yourself up for pregnancy success from before you even conceive.
In this episode of the Resilient Fertility Podcast, Lily Nichols discusses her collaborative project with Lisa Hendrickson Jack, 'Real Food for Fertility.' Lily elaborates on how the project originated, the extensive research process, and the crucial role of nutrition in fertility and overall body health. Key topics include the impact of animal-based proteins, the differences between preconception and pregnancy nutrition, and the often overlooked paternal role in pregnancy health. The conversation also touches on the debate around intermittent fasting, the biases in nutrition research, preventable factors for recurrent pregnancy loss, and practical recommendations for optimizing fertility through nutrient-dense animal foods.
