Real Food for Fertility: One Year of Reader Success Stories (Episode 561)

Full Transcript: Episode 561

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: It’s here — the one-year anniversary of Real Food for Fertility — and in today’s episode I am really excited to welcome back my co-author Lily Nichols. We are diving into our takeaways for the year, and most importantly, the key aspects of our approach to supporting fertility and menstrual cycle health — the key aspects that make the biggest difference. And so in today’s episode, we not only break down what the key, most important things to focus on are, but we also share some of the amazing testimonials that we’ve received along the way.

For those of you who may not be as familiar with Lily, Lily Nichols is a registered dietitian nutritionist, certified diabetes educator, researcher, and author with a passion for evidence-based nutrition. Her work is known for being research-focused, thorough, and sensible. She is the founder of the Institute for Prenatal Nutrition, co-founder of the Women’s Health Nutrition Academy and author of three books: Real Food for Fertility, which we co-authored, Real Food for Pregnancy, and Real Food for Gestational Diabetes. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and jump into today’s episode.

And I’m super excited to be here today with Lily as we celebrate the one-year anniversary of Real Food for Fertility. Yay! Yay!

So welcome back to the show, Lily. You’re still the most — I think you’re the most guested guest. I don’t even know what number of appearances this is. Like eight, nine?

Lily Nichols: I think, yeah, I think eight. Yeah. Makes sense.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, the podcast is 10 years old. That’s almost annually. It’s like a tradition here now. There we go. Yeah, I was really excited to get together with you and talk a little bit about the book. I mean, it’s incredible to think that it’s been an entire year since we first released it into the world. That would make four years since we started writing it. Wild.

So how does it — this might be a strange question — but what are your initial thoughts after the first year? I know that we’re going to share a little bit about some of the responses that we’ve had to the book, but yeah, let’s start there.

Lily Nichols: I mean, I feel like maybe we have come through the post-traumatic book syndrome or whatever we were calling it. The last hurdle of getting a book into the world is the most difficult — the editing and proofreading and formatting and all the nonsense and checking everything to make sure all the T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted. I think I’ve passed that now and I’m through that part. I do feel a little bit of fatigue from the year from having — we did quite a big push to market the release of the book with podcast appearances. Not that every podcast appearance I did was solely about Real Food for Fertility, but a lot of them were. So yeah, in 2024 I recorded 89 podcast interviews, so I’m quite tired from talking. There’s always more to say, of course. But aside from the fatigue and relief that it’s out, it’s been just really rewarding to hear feedback about the book — overwhelmingly positive for the most part. There will always be critics, and this is something for anybody who is also a creator out there: don’t be afraid to put things out into the world because you don’t want any critics. Critics are a sign that you’re actually reaching a wide audience. So I actually welcome it, which might surprise people. But yeah, the success stories have really surprised me. I know we’ll get into some of those later. But we acknowledge in our work that fertility really is kind of a long game. Fertility is a reflection of your overall health. And so almost anything that’s not optimized in your health can impact your fertility, which makes it really challenging to zero in on exactly what to do — or even to provide reassurance that if we just do this one thing, then everything will be fine. And so we’re very careful with our words, how we approach things. I was expecting there was going to be maybe a six-month lag time before we started to get success stories back in, knowing that it just takes a while for your hormones and your ovarian function, your partner’s sperm quality, all that stuff to optimize. But I was surprised that we started getting in success stories rather quickly.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, no, it has been really incredible. And it’s not to say that it’s unexpected to start seeing changes. You know, when you’re working with someone one-to-one and you’re implementing these dietary changes and tracking the cycle and paying attention to hormone levels and all those things, it’s not uncommon to start seeing those shifts cycle two, cycle three. So certainly you expect to see some improvements, but I absolutely agree that the testimonials and responses that we’ve had from the book — even within the first few weeks and the first month or two — have just been incredible.

I echo a lot of the same sentiments as you. I was joking for pretty much all of 2024 that I was in the post-book trauma syndrome — it’s like the new term we’ve coined. It was certainly a significant lift. And as you mentioned, there’s just so many aspects to writing a book that if you haven’t had the pleasure of going through that experience, you wouldn’t necessarily think about. I mean, you don’t just sit there and write it and it just comes out perfect the first time. You write, you edit, you rewrite, you edit, you rewrite, you edit, you format all the things. So there was certainly a lot of work behind the scenes. And in 2025, I’m looking forward to maybe just having a little bit more of the enjoyment part. I did a lot of interviews — at least 60 and up. I’ve spoken a lot about Real Food for Fertility this year, and like you said, there’s always more to say.

I would say that one of the reasons we’ve seen such an incredible response is because we’re both obsessed with providing the best possible information to women — the hard-to-find, heavily researched, evidence-based information to really support women to achieve better cycles and achieve better fertility.

One thing I wanted to get into before we jump into those success stories is: why did we choose to write this book, and how does it differ from our existing books? How does it differ from The Fifth Vital Sign? How does it differ from Real Food for Pregnancy or Real Food for Gestational Diabetes?

Lily Nichols: I thought it would be fairly self-explanatory why the book exists and also which book people should choose based on what stage of life they’re in. For me, people have been asking for fertility-specific information for a really long time. Same as when I wrote Real Food for Pregnancy — I was like, just read the gestational diabetes book, most of it really applies. And finally it was like, okay, it needs to be another book. And then as you write the other book, it expands into so much more. Same with fertility. I used to say, oh, just apply the principles in Real Food for Pregnancy — and then, hey, you’re also going to need to get the timing right and understand your menstrual cycle and your fertile signs and get off hormonal birth control and all this stuff. So read The Fifth Vital Sign as well. And so I think people kind of anticipate that everything in Real Food for Fertility is just the same as the other resources, and it’s not.

So the way that I describe it to people is there’s going to be overlap on some of the basic nutrition principles, like definitions of macronutrients. Macronutrients are macronutrients whether you’re talking about pregnancy or fertility. Some of the basic background information, even though everything has been rewritten, there is going to be some overlap — I’m still going to be encouraging you to emphasize protein, get quality carbs, get quality sources of fat. A lot of the differences from the nutritional perspective come from the specifics on the amount, the intention of those nutrients, the differences in intake that you might have based on what your fertility concerns are, because there are nuances. If you’re working on hypothalamic amenorrhea or polycystic ovarian syndrome, you might need different ratios of things. There’s also the supporting research — when I’m talking about protein in Real Food for Pregnancy, I’m talking about pregnancy outcomes, risk of complications based on maternal intake during pregnancy. In Real Food for Fertility, everything’s fertility-specific. We’re talking about ovarian function, ovulatory function and regularity, egg quality, how different ratios affect PCOS.

So the meat of it is quite a bit different. Almost everything else in the book is totally new — there’s a whole chapter on vegetarian diets, which is the most in-depth information I’ve ever covered in any resource on that topic. Chapters on egg quality, sperm quality, PCOS, hypothalamic amenorrhea. The information on supplements is different for fertility — you have a much larger toolbox supplement-wise when you’re preconception than while you’re pregnant. All the research on toxins specific to fertility. The information on lab tests specific to preconception. They’re entirely different books. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t have spent three years writing them, wouldn’t have needed 200 pages of scientific references, I wouldn’t have had to read thousands of research papers. You can download the first chapter of Real Food for Fertility free at realfoodforfertility.com and see just by scanning the table of contents how the information is so much more comprehensive and specific to preconception.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I think in a lot of our reviews from readers of the book — many of our readers are actually fans of both of ours who’ve read our books. And they’ll say, wow, I read Real Food for Fertility expecting to see a lot of similar dietary information, and then I got to the pill chapter and all of this stuff about the menstrual cycle. And there really is not a resource like this that equips women not only in the nutritional realm, but with the very practical, specific timing, the information about the menstrual cycle, all of this very important information when you’re trying to conceive — all in one place.

I think it’s interesting that people would think they’re the same book because of how much depth we went into in egg quality and sperm quality. And in the PCOS chapter, there are not only the nutritional recommendations that are the basis of this approach for fertility, but specific nutritional recommendations for supporting egg and sperm quality, specific nutritional recommendations for women who are struggling with PCOS, irregular cycles, and women with HA who don’t have cycles. And how to bring them back.

And I feel that the way that we addressed HA in the book is unique — it’s unlike many of the other resources because again, it’s not just get your period back at all costs, it’s how do we optimize this? A lot of women are really hungry for that. And not to mention, in the meal plans, there are specific adjustments for PCOS and for hypothalamic amenorrhea. The meal plans are all different than any of Lily’s other books and all the recipes are different too. And even compared with The Fifth Vital Sign, I had the opportunity in Real Food for Fertility to focus an entire chapter on sperm quality and an entire chapter on egg quality and go into so much depth and share so much new research.

Lily Nichols: So let’s dive into some of the success stories. So the first one we wanted to share was from somebody who’s been trying to conceive for quite a while. This is a message that somebody sent me on Instagram — that’s the way that most people reach out with their success story, either that or an Amazon review or email. She said: I wanted to share that my husband and I just found out that we are pregnant with our very first baby. We have been trying for a baby for 9.5 years — let me say that again — we have been trying for nine and a half years and it’s finally happened for us. All thanks to you and your amazing work. We want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for this little miracle. This 100% would not have been possible without your books, Real Food for Pregnancy and Real Food for Fertility. I was a vegetarian for 24 years and my husband was on and off for 10 years. It’s also worth saying that I’m 36 years old now and it still happened for us. We can’t thank you enough.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Wild. I’ve gotten a lot of stories like this, especially from former vegetarians. And both you and I felt like it needs a full-blown chapter based on both our clinical experience, and I’d say many of the colleagues that we also work with — that oftentimes it’s the clients who are on a vegetarian or vegan diet that have the greatest challenges conceiving. You can make improvements by optimizing certain things, but at a certain point you start to hit a wall where you don’t see further improvement. This has been, I think, probably the biggest theme in some of the reviews and success stories I’ve heard — from people increasing their meat consumption or returning to including animal foods in their diet in some form.

Lily Nichols: It really does have huge impacts beyond what people can imagine, especially because the overarching narrative is that meat is bad for fertility — which I feel like we pretty thoroughly debunk in the book. But that’s still what people are told: go plant-based, go vegetarian, go plant-based Mediterranean.

So why was this so important? We have certain micronutrient deficiencies that could be more likely on a vegetarian or especially vegan diet, and those have individual effects on fertility. There can also be differences in macronutrient intake — from large population-wide observational studies we know that women who consume a higher proportion of their diet from carbohydrates and a lower proportion from protein and fat have the highest rates of ovulatory infertility. That macronutrient ratio is much more common on a vegetarian diet simply because protein is not as concentrated in plant foods. When you’re not eating meat or animal products, unless you’re cooking with a whole lot of fat, you’re often getting a lower fat intake. And even when you look at your protein-rich plant foods — beans have protein, they also have carbs. So it could be individual amino acids, macronutrient ratios, and also just that a lot of vegetarian women end up undereating.

I could talk about some really interesting research that just came out on creatine. A study looked at the association between dietary intake of creatine and female reproductive health based on the NHANES data — over 4,500 US adult females. 71% of the women were not consuming the recommended intake of creatine per day. And creatine is only found in animal foods — in highest amounts in red meat and fish, with smaller amounts in poultry, and none in plant foods whatsoever. Women who were consuming the recommended intake — greater than 13 mg per kg of body weight per day — had a 25% lower risk of irregular periods. Low creatine intake was associated with a 68% higher risk of pelvic infections, a 42% higher risk of needing a hysterectomy, a 52% higher risk of having ovaries removed, and a 26% higher odds of requiring hormone replacement therapy. Creatine is an amino acid that has key roles in high-energy tissues — and our reproductive tissues require a lot of energy. I calculated it out and for a sample woman of 150 lbs, that minimum creatine intake equates to about 8 to 10 ounces of meat or fish per day — which aligns precisely with what we’re talking about in terms of protein per meal and the foods outlined in the meal plans in the book.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: And as you were talking about the vegetarian chapter — it’s typically kind of the big few nutrients that everybody’s familiar with that get focused on. But you go into specific amino acids that are not discussed and show in depth how they relate to fertility, showing that this is beyond just the nutrients you’re familiar with. And what I also think sets Real Food for Fertility apart is when we dive into the menstrual cycle. It takes us out of “you should do this because of the research” into “what’s happening in your menstrual cycle right now?” Because the research matches what we actually see. If you are struggling with period issues — irregular cycles, hormonal imbalances, signs of low progesterone, PMS symptoms — when we implement the dietary recommendations in Real Food for Fertility, we tend to see those signs improve. And when you’re charting specific fertile signs you can actually see — body temperature improvements, cervical mucus which is a direct reflection of hormonal health, the length of the different phases of the menstrual cycle.

Lily Nichols: And for anyone who keeps arguing that animal foods are a problem for fertility — how many different lines of evidence do you need? The cycle doesn’t lie. Try something for a month, two months, three months and observe the difference in your cycle. That gives you proof for you personally.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Absolutely. And well, I mean, we could hang out here all day — so let’s move on to our next success story.

Lily Nichols: This one shares a perspective on assisted reproductive technology and gets at the question of whether our recommendations apply to IVF as well — and the overarching answer is yes. In fact, quite a bit of the research on nutrition for fertility and egg quality comes from ART research in women undergoing IVF. This message was: I bought Real Food for Fertility in February. I followed it as well as I could on all the nutritional advice in the book. I went for my third round of IVF in August. My results speak for themselves. In 2022, first egg collection: 9 eggs, 7 mature, 5 fertilized, 1 embryo, negative pregnancy. 2022, second egg collection: 13 eggs, 9 mature, 7 fertilized, 3 embryos, third embryo — positive transfer. What changed between my first and second round was your book Real Food for Pregnancy. I started implementing those foods into my diet. 2024, third egg collection — this is after having read Real Food for Fertility — 15 eggs, 9 mature, 8 fertilized, 4 embryos. First embryo arrested. Second embryo has me now 12 weeks pregnant. I’m literally amazed by these results. Not only did I age, but my egg collection results improved and my number of embryos increased.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: That story gave me chills. I’ve heard it before, and I literally had chills as you were reading it. Given the extensive research that we’ve done in this area, it’s not necessarily surprising that women would have those results after implementing the strategies. But it is very exciting to see it in real life, laid out in this way.

Lily Nichols: And she had already implemented some general nutrition stuff from the pregnancy book between her first and second round, but then she was able to implement really specific things from Real Food for Fertility — we went through all the weeds on those individual micronutrients and how they impact egg quality. And as she alludes to, as we age there is a natural decline in egg quality over time, but we can interrupt that a little by optimizing metabolism and mitochondrial function through nutritional and supplement interventions.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: I’m always chiming in with the sperm aspect as well, because half of this equation — embryo quality — is still related to the quality of his sperm. Any changes you’re making to your diet are also impacting your partner. And I’ve seen some incredible results in sperm quality in terms of morphology, motility, and count when people make targeted changes and commit to them for a good period of time. In the book we were extremely realistic with regards to time frames — usually plan to do this for at least six to twelve months, and hopefully conception will happen in the middle.

Alright, so I know you had an incredible success story with a woman with PCOS.

Lily Nichols: Yes. After struggling with PCOS and painful irregular cycles for years, I had nearly lost hope. My cycles were so long and unpredictable that I felt hopeless that I would ever have a baby. I spent over $10,000 on fertility specialists trying to find a solution. Then I found this book. Within just two months of following its guidance — which by the way was opposite of what my fertility specialist advised, and also the food you recommend is so much more delicious — I ovulated on day 18 with a healthy 13-day luteal phase. In the very next cycle I conceived. Now I’m 14 weeks along and couldn’t be more grateful. This book truly changed my life. Thank you Lily and Lisa.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: What I will say about PCOS is that it’s obviously complex — there are four different phenotypes that we go into in the book, and not all PCOS is insulin resistant. There are women who change their diet, optimize their macronutrient intake, really prioritize that protein especially at breakfast — and things shift cycle two, cycle three. But I just want to say that in some cases it may not happen in that first month or that first cycle. And it’s a huge myth that you can’t get pregnant if you have PCOS. I’ve seen clients whose cycles still take a bit longer to shorten, but their luteal phases are improving, they’re seeing improvements in hormonal balance, likely reducing inflammation significantly — who still conceive.

Lily Nichols: And also to make kind of a broader point about these stories: don’t lose hope if you have read the book and implemented all the things and it’s still not happening for you. There’s a reason we give this sort of long time frame, especially for women who have been on the pill for a really long time. It takes a while for your ovarian function to get back to where it should be. Don’t lose hope — we’re highlighting the stories that have been sent to us, but we know there are dozens and dozens more who are implementing all the things and it’s not happening yet, and that doesn’t mean there’s no hope.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: And what she said about this being the opposite of what I was told — there’s so much misinformation and just lack of awareness around PCOS. And of course a huge part of that is just not understanding the menstrual cycle, not understanding how to identify the fertile window in a PCOS cycle. The information we’ve shared will give you that additional leg up.

Lily Nichols: The fact that she said our recommendations were the opposite of what her specialist advised and that the food was more delicious — my guess is that she had probably been advised to lose weight, and recommended a plant-based or Mediterranean style diet, maybe a low-fat diet. Something that makes foods taste really good is having a sufficient amount of fat in them. And a lot of times when women are instructed to try to lose weight, they end up skipping breakfast or eating a small breakfast. Some of the research we highlight in the PCOS chapter is on nutrient timing and meal timing — women who have a larger breakfast, moderate lunch, and smaller dinner have far better results with their PCOS parameters: hormones, androgens, ovulatory function, and weight loss — when they do the bigger breakfast versus the opposite. And that’s often what ends up happening when women are trying to lose weight: small breakfast, large dinner — which has the absolute opposite of the intended effects.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: She said this was the opposite of what her practitioner recommended — likely what if the practitioner was recommending restricting to lose weight, and then she read this book and it’s like, no — eat, you need to eat in order to balance your hormones. And really taking it back to the menstrual cycle: it’s not about what is trendy, it’s literally about what is actually making you feel good in your body and what is allowing you to cycle naturally within those normal parameters. As I always say when I’m interviewed about Real Food for Fertility — a healthy menstrual cycle sets the stage for healthy fertility. And that’s one of the big reasons I wanted to write this book — not only to support clients who are actively trying to conceive, but also for clients who just wanted to have healthy hormones. When we optimize our fertility, we’re optimizing our hormone balance. We feel better, we’re more vibrant. You look better, your skin looks better, you have more energy. You can’t have one without the other.

So let’s jump into our last but not least, extremely compelling story.

Lily Nichols: Yes — this might be the only primary amenorrhea story that we’ve had. The difference between primary amenorrhea and hypothalamic amenorrhea is that with hypothalamic amenorrhea, you’ve had a cycle before at some point and you no longer currently have one. Primary amenorrhea means you never got a period in adolescence. This person reached out and said: Primary amenorrhea success story over here. I was a competitive runner for years in high school and college. I took time off running, hoping that alone would be enough. But it wasn’t until I read your book and put the principles into practice — not restricting natural fats, replacing refined products with nutrient-dense foods, being mindful of ingredients rather than counting calories, eating real food — that I was finally able to cycle. And all within the first month of reading it and making these changes.

I had an exchange with this woman because I was like, this is crazy. Primary amenorrhea is not always a result of being athletic and under caloric restriction — there could be other biological or genetic issues that have to be ruled out. But it can be a manifestation of HA that’s happening at a time when your hormone production should be starting. She was studying nutrition in college, so she had been following what she’d been taught — low-fat, high-carb, limit animal food consumption, limit salt — and also trying to eat more for the HA, eating more processed foods just to try to get her calories up. Her body not only needed more calories, but I think in this case she probably really desperately needed more fat and protein — more animal fat specifically. If you don’t have enough cholesterol coming in from your diet, as we discuss in Real Food for Fertility, your estrogen and hormone production are insufficient. I think she was probably getting enough calories, but focusing on the quality and getting enough of what she had been restricting — because of what she had learned in her college nutrition classes — is what made the difference.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: You and I went through the HA chapter — it was just such a highly collaborative effort. We were really looking to balance what the research has to say with clinical experience, while also keeping in mind these women who are going through this challenge and honoring the biggest challenge, which is often around weight and the fear of gaining weight. And what I think is really unique and important about the HA chapter is that it addresses this issue in a very different way than other resources. A lot of HA information is addressing the psychological aspect — just eat all the ice cream, eat all the chips — and not to say there’s anything wrong with eating those foods, but when we’re looking at making a permanent lasting change that’s going to yield a healthy menstrual cycle, balanced hormones, and healthy fertility, we need something more sustainable than simply just eat all the junk. We need something that’s actually sustainable, that’s tasty, that’s doable, that’s also evidence-backed.

And a lot of the research in that chapter highlights the importance of fat. When you do that — when you restrict fat — you are just taking the gas out of your hormone production tank and leaving your body unable to function. This is why the period is gone.

Lily Nichols: 100%. And I get a lot of HA stories in my inbox — and they really echo the data that I outline in the HA chapter on typical dietary intake and macronutrient ratios seen in women with HA. What I keep hearing from women who’ve had HA and sought treatment is that the dietary recommendations were very carb-heavy and still kind of limited in fat, especially saturated fat, limited in animal foods. It almost feels like our dietary guidelines perpetuate the eating disorders and HA — because if you eat by those parameters, your blood sugar is all over the map, you’re like starving all day long, this low energy availability state gets set in place, you start having dysregulated insulin, blood sugar, and cortisol levels.

Sometimes women are able to get their cycle back just by increasing their calories, but their cycle might not be quite optimized when you start looking at all the different parameters. That’s where fine-tuning comes in — while still leaving room for some occasional treats. It’s not about perfection. It’s about making sure we’re getting the basic sustenance, and specifically not forgetting the crucial role of fat and protein.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: And just to kind of bring it together — it’s certainly a huge missing piece from this conversation. And I’m just so thrilled that we were able to really approach that in our HA chapter. The book’s nutritional information stands on its own, but really highlighting these specific challenges with HA has obviously been hugely helpful for so many of the women already who’ve read the book and shared their success stories.

I’d also add — because this question comes up all the time — I also hear from women who’ve had babies and are worried about the return of their cycle postpartum. There’s a wide range of when your cycle returns after having a baby — a lot of that has to do with whether you’re nursing, how voraciously your baby is nursing, how quickly they take to solids and other things. However, I do start to get a little concerned as we hit like 18 months postpartum or beyond if the cycle hasn’t started yet. A lot of times I find that these women are just under-fueling. The question of what to do in that case — again, the HA chapter would really apply. When you’re lactating, that’s an additional calorie burn of about 500 calories per day. Sometimes you have this toddler who seems to be nursing more than a newborn. If you’re in that boat, apply the principles in the HA chapter and get really serious about whether you’re actually fueling adequately. And also, a lot of women at that time get antsy about wanting to lose the last few pounds from pregnancy. Like Lily said, make sure you’re eating enough — the weight loss will come.

Lily Nichols: And I’ll add — another thing people don’t think about is that with HA, even if you’re getting a sufficient overall amount of calories for the whole day, low energy availability at any time of day is still going to interrupt hormone production a little. When you’re treating HA with a lot of ultra-processed foods, you’re stimulating a rather significant blood sugar spike and crash. And every time you crash, that signals to your body that you have low energy availability — it’s an emergency — and you’re going to be shutting off hormones and driving up cortisol to bring your glucose back up. With HA, you often have the high-cortisol situation already — we don’t want your blood sugar tanking. So while I’m not anti-carb, I do want to make sure you’re getting a sufficient amount of fat and protein so you’re not experiencing significant blood sugar dips all day long.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: We have covered so much information, and of course we wrote like a 500-page book so we can really talk for a really long time on this. But as we start wrapping up, I think it would be useful to just kind of wrap up in a neat little bow some of the key points — eating not just more protein but animal protein specifically, that has been a key trend and theme in a lot of these success stories. And of course we’ve talked a lot about fat today and the key role that it plays in maintaining hormone balance. Lily, maybe share some final thoughts.

Lily Nichols: To add on to what you said, I would say not only thinking about that macronutrient balance but the timing as well. One of the bigger pieces of feedback that I get from people — probably because I’m a little bit of a broken record on just about any podcast I go on — about emphasizing the importance of breakfast and a protein-sufficient breakfast. That does seem to be the meal that most women skip, or if they’re not skipping it, it’s an imbalanced meal. Making sure you’re getting a protein-sufficient breakfast makes a world of difference. And oftentimes when you take that step, a lot of these other issues that have been bothering you are lessened or become less of an issue over time. So that’s always a place I encourage people to start.

I will say, we cover a lot of ground and a lot of data in Real Food for Fertility, and even as somebody who loves data, it can even be a little overwhelming for me too. If you happen to be feeling that overwhelm — there’s a reason there’s Chapter 17 that has the bullet-pointed lists of what to do. If you’re ever feeling like, I don’t know what to do next, stop, drop, open Chapter 17, and just pick a bullet point and start there. We can actually summarize it in like a couple of pages for you if you don’t want all the supporting data and you just want to know what to do. It can be a pretty short and sweet bullet point list for where to start.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: I love that so much. And it’s in many ways so complex, and in many ways so simple. I mean, I hope that all of you who’ve been listening enjoyed this conversation. Lily, it was a pleasure having you on the show as always. You can grab Real Food for Fertility in all formats. We had a fantastic time recording the audiobook. We got together in person — I think we did something like 55 hours in the recording studio and the final audiobook is something like 19 and a half hours. So when people say you know, you go to like a college lecture and you have an hour or two hours or whatever — this is so meaty because there’s also no extraneous fluff. We’re literally reading you the book, which is so packed with data — over 2,300 citations. It’s the most concise and data-packed resource on fertility. For anyone who hasn’t had a chance to read the book yet, the first chapter is available as a free download at realfoodforfertility.com. And yes — it’s a pleasure, Lisa. I wouldn’t write a book with anyone else.

Lily Nichols: I say that too. Just put it out there — not happening.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: All right, well Lily, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thanks again for being here.

Lily Nichols: Thank you.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it with a friend. You’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at fertilityfriday.com/561.