Maybe you have been told that in order to hold your dream baby your fertility clinic has recommended that you lose weight.
While you know this is good advice, this is one of the times where it’s easier said than done.
Of course you would lose weight if you could, but you are so darn stressed out with the fertility treatments that your only stress relief is food.
Losing weight is difficult.
First step is to become aware of your habits around eating.
Do you eat when you are hungry, or is it really that you feel stressed, alone, scared, bored, angry, depressed.
Many of us are emotional eaters and food is our vice.
If you have been using food to sooth yourself, or numb pain, this is a strong habit to break.
It’s not your fault! “Studies show that it is normal for strong habits to override our conscious intentions”. (Jeremy Dean).
As Jeremy Dean shares in Making Habits and Breaking Habits, we all know that we need to eat a healthy clean diet, exercise more, wear a bicycle helmet, quit smoking, put on sunscreen. Although we know that these are good for our health when habits are strong, such as going to the grocery store and automatically throwing the same food in the cart every week, changing the behavior is very difficult.
Jeremy Dean, goes on to share, that when we started a habit such as washing our face every night or brushing our teeth before bed at some point we consciously decided to these were worthwhile activities. So we kept repeating them until they were automatic.
The “research on habits and intention is that our conscious decisions aren’t as strong as we would like to think. In some ways, this is a comforting thought. It means that all those times we tried to change our behavior and failed because old habits intervened, there was a good reason: the sheer power of strong habits.
The first step to changing a strong habit is to first notice that the habit exists. Once you bring awareness to the habit, you can then slowly begin to change it.
Next time you go to grab for the ice cream, bag of chips or cookies, bring awareness to what you are doing. The first step is to take yourself off automatic pilot.
The best place to start is to add healthy foods to your daily routine.
- Before you have your breakfast have a glass of water with lemon.
- Before you have your lunch have a salad.
- Before you have your dinner have a handful of carrots/red peppers/or celery
- Before you have your dessert grab an apple/grapes or a peach.
The idea is not to cut out any foods but add in the good foods to your existing routine.
Let me know how it goes! What struggles do you have? What worked for you?
Need support? Book your FREE Supercharge Your Fertility Discovery call here! Learn simple strategies that can help you prepare your body for a baby!
Sarah Clark empowers couples to discover how lifestyle and diet can dramatically impact their chances of conceiving. She was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure at 28 and had both her kids with donor eggs. Not until years later did she discover that the root cause of her infertility was a food intolerance. Ready to gaze into your baby’s eyes….but struggling. Download 10 step Checklist here
