Practically Fertile
If you wanted to get pregnant yesterday, but you're confused and overwhelmed by all the noise on the internet, then this is the right podcast for you. Hosted by Dr. Adrienne Wei, Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, Fellow of the American Board of Oriental Reproductive Medicine (ABORM), functional medicine practitioner, and functional nutritionist. Here, you'll find zero fluffy, useless information or rah-rah motivation. You'll only find practical strategies and "how-tos" for identifying the root cause and amplifying your fertility by using a proven method of combining science with tradition.
Practically Fertile
Episode 4 - Everyday vs. Therapeutic Eating...What's the Difference?
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If you've been eating "healthy" but not seeing results, this episode could help you understand the difference between everyday eating and therapeutic eating, and how they impact fertility. Here is what to expect:
- Why traditional diets fail
- Why you shouldn't fear therapeutic eating
- Introduction to the B.P.A. framework of fertility nutrition
- Why you shouldn't worry about those with an unhealthy lifestyle but get pregnant anyway.
Follow me on instagram @dradriennewei
Website: www.adriennewei.com
Welcome to the Practically Fertile Podcast . I'm Adrienne Wee , doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine , functional Medicine Practitioner and Functional Nutritionist . I specialize in using an evidence-based method , blending principles of East Asian medicine and modern functional medicine to help women optimize fertility and get pregnant . I believe in a world where every woman who wants to be a mother becomes one . If you're tired of being told that you're infertile and you want to take the right steps to get pregnant naturally and quickly , this podcast is for you . Hey , fertile friend , so good to be here with you today . Thank you for spending some time with me . I'm really excited to talk about fertility nutrition . It's one of the hottest topics , with many , many different opinions on what you should be doing and what you shouldn't be doing . There's also a lot of confusion around it and frustration . You might have changed your diet quite a bit and still not pregnant , and you're just wondering why , and all this effort seems to have been wasted . So a couple of things first . The reason you might not be seeing results is number one what you're eating , and this is what we'll talk a little bit about in today's episode . Reason number two is your digestive function , which leads to reason number three possible nutritional deficiencies if your digestive function is not optimal . We are going to talk a lot about this in upcoming episodes , but today what I want to focus on is to give you an introduction to the difference between what I call everyday eating versus therapeutic eating . You've probably heard someone give you advice like just eat healthy . But what does that mean ? There are many healthy options , depending on who you ask . There's eating the rainbow eating whole grain versus white bread , choose lean proteins , go for olive oil , and you probably have done all of that . This is what I call everyday eating . It's eating for maintenance . It's general . It's not meant to target a specific goal that you have , and you might find yourself in this situation you feel like you're eating so healthily , but nothing has worked . On the other hand , therapeutic eating is a more targeted approach to food . It's about using nutrition as a tool to address specific concerns like balancing hormones , boosting egg quality or helping with implantation . Think of it as a personalized prescription for nutrition .
Speaker 1Some diets out there you can say can be classified as therapeutic eating Mediterranean diet , paleo diet , intermittent fasting , keto , intuitive eating . Each of these diets has pros and cons and they will work for some people , but not all people . If you have tried one of these diets , you might feel discouraged because again , it hasn't worked . I think one of the problems is that it's really hard to personalize these types of diets . They are generally one-size-fits-all . For example , mediterranean diet has a lot of great principles and it promotes eating everything in moderation . But that's the thing . It doesn't specify what moderation is . The definition of moderation is different for everyone . For some people it might be four glasses of wine per night . Another person might think two glasses a week might be considered moderate . For this reason , I feel like the Mediterranean diet could really be categorized as everyday eating .
Speaker 1But I know that some people with certain conditions like heart disease , high cholesterol , they might consider the Mediterranean diet to be therapeutic . In my honest opinion , I think treating heart disease isn't the same as trying to balance hormones or get pregnant . Trying to conceive is just a more nuanced process . Hormones are delicate . They're affected by many variables like environment , diet , lifestyle , stress , and back in episode one we talked about how no hormones work alone . They're all interconnected , no-transcript . So for that reason an everyday eating approach might not work for you . If your situation falls outside of the box , like if you're suffering from insulin resistance , then eating all the whole grain bread isn't going to help , because bread , at the end of the day , will spike your insulin . If you're suffering from not having a period , then it doesn't matter how many rainbows you're eating if the root issue is that your hypothalamus thinks that you're in some type of survival mode .
Speaker 1When I started my career , I knew very little about functional nutrition . What I knew was Chinese medicine nutrition strategies , which by default falls under the therapeutic eating , because specific patterns of disharmony require specific foods . But that alone was not enough sometimes because , for example , if someone needs to lose weight in order to optimize fertility , we have to consider caloric intake macros . If someone's digestion doesn't improve a diet , we have to consider food sensitivities and allergies and do testing to see if gut bacteria is off balance . So fast forward .
Speaker 1More than a decade I now incorporate functional nutrition into my protocols . The nutrition protocol , specifically , is a step-by-step way of eating where one step builds on the previous one . I call it BPA , but it's actually a good BPA . It's good for fertility . I've designed this protocol to be sustainable , practical and helps you create long-lasting habits . It's highly customizable , also depending on your situation . Also depending on your situation . So the BPA framework it has really evolved over the years . It's integrative , blending Chinese medicine and functional medicine . It puts specific parameters around what you should be eating and how much you should be eating , and when you should be eating them , depending on the phases of your cycle . It also includes special consideration for conditions like PCOS , endometriosis , low AMH and if you're doing IVF . What I also love about this revamped framework is it can help anyone , whether you're just starting to clean up your diet or you're very advanced and you've tried many diets before . I just realized that I have not told you what BPA stands for . So BPA stands for making it basic , making it personal and making it anti-inflammatory . Okay , let me just go through this framework with you .
Speaker 1The first step is to go for the low-hanging fruit and make some easy diet adjustments . Step is to go for the low-hanging fruit and make some easy diet adjustments . It's very possible to get pregnant even just by making some small tweaks . I'm still getting emails from listeners of my previous two podcasts that I hosted thanking me for telling them to stop drinking cold water , so you don't need to do a lot sometimes to get pregnant . The second step is when we make it personalized Eating foods specific to your fertility archetype and the phases of the menstrual cycle and also supplements to consider , depending on your condition and the protocols inside . This step is exclusively ours , we call it NutriSync . And then if this phase doesn't help you get pregnant , then we have to dig deeper . We look at food sensitivity whether we need to eliminate certain foods , even if you're not technically sensitive to them .
Speaker 1We will incorporate functional testing like a stool test to figure out if there's a gut bacteria imbalance , and we might do a nutritional deficiency test . And we might do a nutritional deficiency test . This piece of the pyramid is obviously more advanced and sometimes it might require some financial investment . But that's not where we start . That's why this is the last step of the framework . Before functional medicine , there was Chinese medicine , and Chinese medicine worked for thousands of years . So why not try that first and that's my thinking at least ?
Speaker 1Other coaches like to start with functional testing , and that's okay too . I just feel like you end up spending a lot of money and you might end up with way too many data points and then the root cause doesn't become clear . Okay , as I'm talking , you might start to feel some anxiety about adopting therapeutic eating . I've done this for a long time . I will tell you what you're feeling is very normal .
Speaker 1There's this general fear about therapeutic eating , and the fear is that it's very restrictive . It can be if you're following a specific diet like paleo , keto , whole30 , or the autoimmune protocol . These diets are very hard to stick to and most people cannot stick to them for life , with the exception of a few friends that I know that are still doing paleo but the majority of us , it's very hard to do these types of diets forever . So I want you to put this fear aside . If you're wondering if the BPA framework can work for you , I didn't design this framework to be restrictive . I designed it to give you options and the freedom to decide when you want to move to the next level .
Speaker 1I also want to share with you something that I teach inside my online course . So whatever diet plan you end up going on , this method will help you and give you a guideline on what moderation looks like . So I want to teach you my method for calculating the 80-20 rule Specifically what does being compliant 80% of the time look like and what does the other 20% look like ? This method is very , very simple . Take the number of the meals you're going to eat during the week . For most people it's 21 meals . If you're doing intermittent fasting it'll be 14 . But please make sure that you're doing the intermittent fasting correctly . I see people fast but then they cram in tons of junk food , sugar , calories , fat in the next eight hours that they're eating . That's not the right approach . Anyway , figure out how many meals you're eating . Then simply multiply that by 20% , which gives you about four meals if you're on a 21 meal plan , or three meals if you're on the 14 meal plan .
Speaker 1That doesn't sound so bad . Right , during the week you can indulge three to four times . That's your weekend social life . So you don't have to feel depressed that you might have to give up hanging out with friends , that you can have a glass of wine and a piece of cake . Many of my patients , though , they tell me that once they start the BPA protocol , they feel so good that even when they can indulge , they choose not to . But at least you'll know that four times a week you can let loose a little bit , you don't have to be so restrictive , and I hope that makes you feel a little bit better . And again , you can apply this method to whatever diet plan that you plan to be on .
Speaker 1Now , before I wrap up , I want to address something that comes up very frequently , and that is this resistance to making any types of change because someone else ate like crap and got pregnant anyway , and that life doesn't seem fair . First of all , if you feel this way , it's normal and the fact that you're not pregnant right now it's not because you're doing something wrong . Secondly , you hear about these kinds of stories because they're the exception , not the norm , for the same reason that we don't ever hear about the self-made millionaires next door , but we hear about the person that hits the $2 billion lottery . And the last thing is , instead of focusing on how life seems unfair , let's think about what would happen if you were to commit to making the necessary diet changes . When you reduce inflammation before you get pregnant , you can expect a healthier pregnancy with lower risks of serious complications . You can expect a healthier baby with higher birth weight , better cognitive development , less risks to developing allergies and certain chronic diseases .
Speaker 1We know this because there's a lot of studies that have been done on what's called epigenetics . It's the study of how our genes become turned on or off , depending on the environment , depending on the person's diet , lifestyle , stress level , toxin exposure , and it doesn't just determine what happens to us once we're born . The influence of epigenetics starts in the uterus . We can influence our offspring's future health , so one way to think about this is okay . Maybe it takes you longer to get pregnant , maybe you need to make some changes to your lifestyle , but this is your chance to give your baby the best possible start in life . This will also improve your chances of getting pregnant for a second , third or fourth time or more , so the choices that you make right now can have an impact in the future , sometimes just not always obvious .
Speaker 1All right , fertile friend , I hope you found this episode helpful and perhaps had a few aha moments . If you're confused about what to do or if you're struggling with staying on track , that's what I'm here for . You can reach me several different ways . You can email me at info at adrienneweecom . You can follow me on Instagram at Dr Adrienne Wee , or you can actually send me a message directly through the podcast . There should be a button that says send us a text above the podcast episode description . Once again , thank you so much for spending your time with me today . Until next time , take care of yourself and your amazing body , and remember you're one fertile cycle away from getting pregnant . Thank you .