Real Food for Fertility: Prepare your body for pregnancy with preconception nutrition and fertility awareness

When health insurance failed, and I was desperate for relief, this book saved me. Since acquiring the plague in 2022, my body has been failing me. As a young woman of childbearing age, G.I. Issues and Endo pain had me desperate for relief. After hearing Lily speak on a podcast, I decided to purchase this book in the hopes that healing my hormones would heal my body, and it has. ‘Real Food’ is a hot button word and our capitalist society will have your head spinning at every new claim and advertisement, but this was no bull, straight to the point, with receipts to back it up. Since this is Lily’s most recent book, I believe this is the culmination of her life’s work thus far, making it a dense textbook style reference that the nerd in me just loves. If you’re a chronically ill XX individual like myself, and you know hormones are playing a major role, consider this book, because it has greatly reduced my suffering while also making me more confident as a patient. Highly recommend!

This booked has completely transformed my eating habits! I no longer eat a pathetic, less than healthy deli turkey sandwich for lunch, but instead a nutrient-packed salmon salad sandwich or a fruit and dairy smoothie. I eat nuts (or something else with protein and fat) alongside most snacks. Who knew protein and fat were essential to snacks?! I’m eating vegetables, and sometimes more than once a day! I feel like a brand new, much improved superhuman.I started reading months before planning to TTC and I feel much more equipped to embark on planning our first baby now. When I first got the book, I skipped to the “Foods that Don’t Enhance Fertility” section and read up on caffeine, soy, seed oils, etc. This was a smart move as I was previously downing a quadruple shot of espresso a day and I’ve since reduced that daily reliance on caffeine to much less.It’s a rather dense read, but that’s what the subject demands. I have many paragraphs highlighted so I can easily flip through and reference parts of each chapter as I need to look things up.I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone looking to improve their fertility or to any woman looking to resolve any issues she’s having with her cycle. Nichols and Hendrickson-Jack offer a goldmine of data, history and knowledge in Real Food for Fertility, and no one else is going to teach you this stuff.

. . .who wouldn’t benefit from buying and absorbing the wealth of powerful information and wisdom on nutrition and fertility contained in REAL FOOD FOR FERTILITY. I’m not going to repeat any of the wonderful things that have been said in the many reviews on REAL FOOD FOR FERTILITY. Except to say that, in my opinion, they are all true.Lilly Nichols and Lisa Hendrickson – Jack have interfaced their extensive research, knowledge and expertise in their own areas of practice so perfectly that it brings up the old saying: the total is much greater than the sum of its parts.All I can really do is repeat the title of my review (and add a bit more). I CAN’T THINK OF ANYONE, MALE OR FEMALE, LAY OR PROFESSIONAL, WHO WOULDN’T BENEFIT GREATLY FROM BUYING AND ABSORBING THIS BOOK.I will add that I strongly believe OB/GYN‘s, general practitioners, nurses, physicians assistants, certified nurse midwives and all those who work in the conventional/standard medical system that pervades North America should carefully read this book at least twice and refer to it often. I predict that, if this was done, the very way in which our healthcare system treats its patients would change drastically for the better.From my own experience, after 25 years of being a midwife, and from being a patient myself, of course, I see our healthcare system as an industrial complex that has long ago thrown out the Hippocratic Oath.This book could, if widely read, provide the impetus that would motivate healthcare professionals to get back on track - assuming at some point that they had been on track. I do, however, strongly believe that, at least in the fields of fertility awareness, nutrition, pregnancy and birthing that the traditional healthcare system has done more harm than good.I can go into other areas of medical practice and say the same but I’m going to concentrate on lily’s and Lisa’s groundbreaking book.Childbearing and birthing, for example, have been taken over by the healthcare industrial complex and treat pregnancy and birthing as if they were medical conditions. There is no continuity of care to speak of when establishment practitioners, whether male or female, become the overseers of childbearing and childbirth. They don’t really get to know the expectant mother during pregnancy or treat her with the dignity, humane support or allow the freedom of movement needed during the birth process, therefore, the hospital environment, both in it’s sterile and what I call, heartless, ambience, creates many of the complications that the hospital is equipped to deal with. “Birth must be induced.”“It’s CPD. A cesarean is mandatory.“ These determinations arise all too often because of the stress of giving birth in a hospital or for the convenience of whatever doctor who happens to be around at the critical stages of effacement and crowning. “Well I may have to use forceps for this. Or perhaps pulling on the mouth with my fingers may work.” All the while the mother is screaming for pain relief. Conventional hospital birthing dismisses the innate knowledge the mother has and turns the whole process upside down. How this point relates to Lily Nichols’, and Lisa Hendrickson – Jack’s book will be revealed near the end of this reviewAs a midwife who very rarely has anything to do with hospital births, I am committed to continuity of care, highly professional standards of care, making arrangements for medical back up, palpating a pregnant mother’s tummy in the second trimester - sometimes third – if the baby feels out of position, getting to know the mother as a person and eventually a friend in a relationship that begins with the first prenatal check up, through ultrasound procedures to determine the sex of babies, through the labor and delivery, education in postpartum conditions and breast-feeding. Sometimes the friendships just naturally endure.The menstrual cycle IS the fifth vital sign and that truth meshes with my practice. Nutrition for pregnancy and nutrition for gestational diabetes is powerful information that pregnant women and their significant others should learn thoroughly. This also meshes at the heart of my own practice.This is really what REAL FOOD FOR FERTILITY is all about. It exposes the antagonist myths created over the past 100+ years about nutrition and pregnancy - myths that have also turned related and accepted protocols upside down - and so thoroughly discredits them. It should be a best-seller and I think it will.

I listed to this on audiobook. I sped it up to 1.3x the speed and could still listen clearly. Good information and kept me busy during the 2 week wait. I learned a lot!😌

So happy with this book. Incredibly informational. It did take me several months to read through it, but I started making dietary changes right away after starting and saw a positive pregnancy test the day I finished the book :)

Amazing book for anyone trying to conceive or just curious about how to help their fertility. Lily breaks down fertility in an easy to understand way and gives actionable steps on how you can improve you and your partner’s fertility. Bonus, if you’re an RD this book is about 50 CEUs.

If there’s ONE book to get, it’s this one. Lily Nichols is the best. Sooooo informative. And the chapter summaries help- especially with the really technical chapters. Highly highly highly highly suggest this book.

I love Lily Nichols and her book Real Food for Pregnancy helped me resolve high blood pressure during pregnancy. But I am very disappointed in the second to last paragraph in the intro, in that the authors cave into our culture’s attack on the created order. I don’t know a lot about Lisa, but I have considered Lily highly intelligent and I have really looked up to her speaking against the waves. This point put a major dent in that.