You all have something so special right now that so many people walking around don't have.

You have knowledge.

You have knowledge that can give you power to really take control of your health.

[music] Hi everyone!

It's Megan Ramos here with another episode of The Fasting Method podcast.

Today, I'm answering your questions.

It's one of my favorite episodes and it's actually been a while since I've been here, so I do want to address the elephant in the room.

Many of you know I had my son almost two years ago.

He'll actually be two later this week.

This podcast is coming out just ahead of his second birthday.

He came into the world fast and furiously and very early, so we had a bit of a rough go at the start.

It took me a while to sort of figure everything out and adjust to life and make sure he was okay.

And we're very fortunate.

He's a thriving, very thriving, very active, very wild little guy.

So I got into a really good routine.

I made an announcement that I was coming back to the podcast regularly, and then life kind of went a little bit sideways.

And before I dive into today's Q&A questions and explain sort of some of the background as to the theme of the questions I'm going to be addressing in today's episode, I do want to share a little bit about what life happened.

I have four very special individuals in my life, in my family.

Some of them are not blood, but they are family nonetheless.

And all of these individuals are very highly educated people.

They are on the younger side.

There's a gentleman in his 30s, a woman in her early 40s, and then a couple of a little bit older individuals, but still young in their 60s and 70s.

Very educated, very smart, very supportive of everything that I do.

These individuals did not necessarily have the best lifestyles.

Many of them understood this.

Actually, all of them really understood this, but they were going to start after this accomplishment, after this vacation, this next year, Monday, the first of the month, and so on and so forth.

"Oh, this is a busy summer full of weddings." "Oh, this is really stressful tax season with work." It was just one thing after another.

And for years (actually, in some cases 20 years), I have been really after them to try to make lifestyle changes.

But otherwise these individuals are all healthy.

They didn't have any pressing health concerns.

There weren't spending day in and out at the doctors.

They felt like they had a lot of time.

They knew that they had to make changes and they did have some understanding that time, you know, is limited, you know, it is not infinite.

And these individuals, you know, there was always something.

There was always something coming in life and the motivation just wasn't there.

It just wasn't there to make these changes.

Just this morning, hours ago, I recorded the first episode for November's podcast with Terri talking about our theme for the month of November.

In that episode, I made reference to our kidney patients that we would see in Toronto, and how we would tell them they need to make lifestyle changes, but their life wasn't impacted by their kidney disease until we brought up the words 'dialysis' and 'transplant,' when their kidney function drops a little.

When we're given a diagnosis, we're willing to do anything.

I was 27 when I was diagnosed with type two diabetes, and I just remember in that moment thinking, if I could have gone back and erased even one Happy Meal, even one night of binge eating popcorn, one of those sodas, if I could have just stopped, if I could have said no to the pretzel at the hockey game, how much I would have given in that moment.

And, in so many ways, I thought about our patients and how I just-- I wasn't that different, but, thank goodness, I was being given a low-grade diagnosis that I could fix.

And from that moment on, I worked towards goals of having a better lifestyle.

It wasn't always perfect.

Like I've shared on so many episodes, in so many meetings and lectures that my goal at the beginning was to eat one healthy meal a week.

I knew I had to do the opposite of extreme in order to actually make sustainable habits.

Once you start fasting, you start feeling better.

It gives you good motivation to start with the eating.

And I'll say, you know, it took some time, but my food was definitely a work in progress for years.

I really had to put in that elbow grease and work on the emotional eating habits.

You know, when stressful things did pop up, when they do pop up (and today a very stressful thing popped up), I could easily lean into a bag of chips.

That desire was there.

That desire was deeply ingrained in me.

Over 27 years, I watched it with my parents.

I watched it with other loved ones.

It was a coping mechanism.

It's always going to be there.

But today, when that desire came in after receiving some bad news, I had skills that I had worked on over the years.

It wasn't perfect and sometimes I would fall into those bag of chips, but the thing was, I never let it beat me down.

And the next time I tried to take lessons from it to move forwards and to make those changes.

Now, we're going into a hectic holiday season.

We've got a big holiday coming up at the end of this month - Halloween.

It is definitely a consumer holiday nowadays, a very candy-centric consumer holiday.

As a young mom with another baby on the way now, it's pretty scary.

I want my son to celebrate with his little pals and have a good time, but the food is scary, the temptation is scary.

I know many of you are going to be struggling, and I want you to know that for many years I struggled on this holiday, and I had to take lessons learned and see how I could change things the next year and the next year and the next year.

And eventually, eventually, I figured it out.

But, everybody who is listening today, you all have something so special right now that so many people walking around don't have.

You have knowledge.

You have knowledge that can give you power to really take control of your health.

You don't have to be perfect this holiday season, but you can learn from it, and take those lessons and move forwards and keep making progress, and keep doing it over and over again until you get it right with these holidays.

But you do have knowledge.

You do have power.

Don't say you're going to start on November 1st.

Don't say you're going to start on January 1st.

Our days are limited.

So in these four loved ones I mentioned, two of them have now Alzheimer's disease, one of them has had three strokes since the start of the summer, another one has a pancreatic tumor.

And today's news...

A good friend of mine was diagnosed with quite severe cervical cancer.

She was diagnosed when she was getting ready to begin fertility treatments.

They do quite a thorough examination and she was diagnosed with cervical cancer.

You listeners, you have knowledge, you have power, you have today.

We can start making changes today.

They can be small.

They can be one healthy meal a week.

They can be one small change this holiday season.

Celebrate the small victories because the small victories lead to big victories, and they lead to snowballs.

And those snowballs radically change our lives at the end of the day.

Don't wait for tomorrow.

Don't wait for November 1st.

Pick one thing that you can focus on this month, this holiday season.

I know it's a difficult one, but pick something.

Really try to stick with it.

Don't try to pick the whole shebang, but pick one goal.

Whether it's one treat you're not going to have in your house, or one treat that you're not going to have, or the day after trick or treating, you're going to bring all of the stuff and donate it somewhere, but just getting it out of your house.

Or maybe you're not going to bring it into your house in the first place.

We're giving away funny hats this year to kids who come by.

There are lots of alternatives there, so reach out to your communities, discuss what these alternatives might be.

Many of you, over the last few years since I shared my journey of banking embryos via IVF (in vitro fertilization), have been asking your questions about the process.

We've actually accumulated dozens and dozens of these questions so our amazing producer has asked me to do an episode on it.

And I thought, okay, it's not exactly in line with the theme of the month of October here, but it is the opportunity where I will be doing a solo episode and was going to share.

And talking to my friend today who got this diagnosis, which was she was not expecting, and actually begins chemo and radiation next week.

Things are happening fast.

She was at the start of her fertility journey, and I shared with her that today I was actually planning on answering some questions, and she said, "Please do.

You know, please help other women who are in the shoes that are going to have this opportunity," because she no longer does.

So with that being said, I'm going to dive in and we're going to answer some of the most common questions that have come up about and in vitro fertilization and how to best prepare your body for it.

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[music] One of the questions I get the most usually has come in from moms, sisters, aunts, cousins, good friends, loved ones of an individual who is going through the process, who might have gone through the process three or four times unsuccessfully.

Their loved ones have written in and asked me desperately, "What test should we be looking at to see if we can get them some clarity on what's going on?

And then if we can help them realize that maybe fasting and low carb are some things that might help get them to their end goal." I've actually had the opportunity over the last year, too, to sit down with some of these daughters, friends, nieces and ask them what they have looked at, what blood results have they looked at?

And it does look like a lot of practitioners are taking a more broad approach, but not necessarily always explaining the results, what they mean, and what someone might be able to do about them.

One of the most common ones that I see coming up is prolactin levels, elevated prolactin levels.

Prolactin is a hormone the body starts to produce quite a bit of during pregnancy.

It's a hormone that helps us breastfeed and nurse our babies if that is the goal or path that you're going to want to go down.

It does a lot in the body during pregnancy, and sometimes it ends up being elevated in a way where the body already thinks that it's pregnant.

So if the body thinks that it's pregnant because it's elevated, then the body can't get pregnant.

We see prolactin be elevated for a couple of reasons.

One of them is more rare; it's a prolactinoma.

It's a pituitary type of tumor that forces the body to produce these elevated levels of prolactin.

These women tend to lactate or have the ability to do so, even in the absence of never having kids.

They are usually thought to not be able to have kids.

It's a very complicated condition; it usually results in insulin resistance and type two diabetes development.

Prolactin is a fat-trapping hormone and can cause really horrific perimenopause and menopause symptoms for a lot of women too, especially if they have developed insulin resistance from it.

And I'll tell you, in all of our years doing this, we've only seen a couple of women in the clinic or online that do have this condition, but we do see a lot of elevated prolactin levels, and this is due to polycystic ovary syndrome.

So you've heard me say it on the podcast, I'm sure, in books, presentations, but PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome), it's just diabetes of the ovaries, but it doesn't mean you're A1C's abnormal.

Heck, it doesn't even mean that your fasting glucose is abnormal, and your fasting insulin might not even be that crazy, but the telltale sign (one of them) is elevated prolactin levels.

So a lot of physicians, I find (even OB-GYNs, even fertility doctors), don't necessarily have a full understanding of PCOS.

It's a very confusing thing out there.

A lot of people do now agree (there's a bit of a consensus) that it is around insulin resistance, but what markers and what things to manage and can it even be treated is a big discussion or just a hot mess, to be quite honest, in the medical field.

Jason and Dr.

Nadia wrote the great book, The PCOS Plan, and Jason's written about a billion blog posts you can find on our website for free under the articles section.

Dr.

Nadia does a lot of groups on it in our community (she is now back in full action).

We treat PCOS just like we do treat type two diabetes and insulin resistance in general.

So even if that A1C is 5.3, you know, and it's fairly close to optimal, and those fasting blood sugars in the morning are pretty good, looking at prolactin levels can provide a lot of insight.

And what I've heard a lot over the last couple of years, talking to these women going through these treatments, is that their prolactin is high, but their fertility specialist, their OBs, they don't really know what to do about it, so they don't do anything.

And then they go through a whole round of egg retrievals, egg collections.

They're not collecting much because their body thinks they're pregnant.

It's just a hot mess.

It's just devastating.

So really having an understanding of what your prolactin levels are and, if they are elevated, then knowing that, okay, there's likely PCOS here and I can treat that through fasting and nutrition, and giving yourself a good six months to really make headways in fixing that, in reversing the PCOS, and then starting your IVF treatment plan after that, if you still even require IVF at that particular point.

Other markers to look at are your LH and FSH (so your luteinizing hormone and your follicle-stimulating hormone).

These hormones, and the ratio of them, is really important.

On cycle day three, you want your ratio of these hormones to actually be under 1.

Most people don't realize that, when it's over 1, there's likely PCOS as well.

Now, typically, a lot of practitioners will say, "With the ratios over 2, it's PCOS," but in the functional integrative health space, we do see a lot of PCOS associated with it just being over 1.

So we want to make sure that that is under 1 as well.

We also want to take a look at your cycle day 18 to 21, sort of depending on whether you ovulate a little bit earlier or a little bit later.

But, in that window, looking at your progesterone and and estradiol.

Are you producing adequate progesterone and what is your ratio of estradiol to progesterone levels at the time?

Is there a good balance?

There's a lot of estrogen and progesterone ratio calculators out there on Google, and you can simply look one up with a quick search and plug in your values.

It will let you know if you have a condition called estrogen dominance.

This is something that we often see in PCOS because women are not able to produce adequate progesterone.

Progesterone is like the fertilizer to your endometrial lining that keeps it healthy and vibrant, and it encourages successful implantation, helps keep that embryo implanted and make it really strong and viable throughout that sometimes troublesome first trimester.

I had a really great fertility doctor I worked with two bank embryos at Stanford University.

Protocol is, when you do an embryo transfer, you're actually on progesterone for your entire first trimester.

And I remember being a little bit shocked at first, not necessarily shocked because I understood why, but shocked that I would need to take something for a few months.

My progesterone levels were very good to begin with.

I didn't do IVF because I had infertility.

I did IVF to bank embryos because I had low ovarian reserve due to the PCOS I had earlier in my childhood and 20s.

I banked embryos so now, at 41, I could get pregnant.

So there wasn't fertility stuff.

And he said to me, "Well, I don't know why everyone wouldn't just take it in their first trimester.

Do you know how many babies we lose in miscarriage because women have low progesterone levels in the first trimester?

And taking some isn't going to hurt." Now, of course, that was his medical opinion and him making reference to me, so everybody needs to work with their own provider and follow their recommendation, but that was pretty insightful to me.

And I remember asking other friends who were newly pregnant at the time through more, like, just natural means, "I had a glass of wine.

We're trying to get pregnant with our spouse and got lucky first or second try." So I was fortunate to have a few friends, and, in that scenario, I was going through my embryo transfer, and I asked them, "Did your OB check your progesterone levels when you went in for your confirmation ultrasound?" "No, not at all.

They just checked the beta-hCG to confirm that, yes, I was pregnant before my ultrasound.

No one looked at progesterone levels." I had a few friends that asked and I said, "Oh, well, you know, if you have some recurrent miscarriages, then we'll start to take a look at that." Knowing your progesterone status, I think, is really important.

It seems to be quite unfortunate, but the standard protocol (at least around here in California), is not to really be considerate of it unless you are actively going through a $40,000 round of fertility treatment.

But if you're not, then that's not a test that's commonly looked at in early pregnancy days, when it probably should be, especially with this population.

So with PCOS, we do know that low progesterone is often the big issue and that this is something that we want to work on.

We do know that the sex hormones do become out of balance because of the insulin resistance, so we do work on fixing that first and then optimizing sex hormones.

And again, it's about a six-month journey for most women to get there, but they usually get there in that time frame.

Another set of labs that often comes up is TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone.

It's important to understand that TSH is a hormone produced by the pituitary gland.

It gives insights into how the thyroid gland may or may not be working, but it doesn't tell us exactly how the thyroid gland is or isn't working.

What a lot of women are struggling with, in terms of infertility, is not just PCOS, but it is also, my friends, it's also having Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which is autoimmune hypothyroidism.

Every now and then you'll get a doctor who will check free T4 levels, which is an active thyroid hormone.

And every once in a while, you'll get a more functionally-inclined practitioner who will look at free T3, which is active thyroid hormone.

That's the really important one to check.

But, if you are struggling with fertility, I would really advocate for an entire, a complete thyroid panel.

So what does that entail?

Well, of course, check the TSH, check the free T4, check the free T3, but also check your thyroid antibodies to see if you have undiagnosed Hashimoto's thyroiditis.

I can't tell you the number of women who don't get diagnosed with this, even having years worth of symptoms and years worth of infertility, until they have to self advocate for these tests.

There's two primary thyroid antibodies - thyroglobulin (Tg) antibody and TPO (THyroid peroxidase antibodies).

So we want to take a look at them.

And it's important to understand that any positive marker, like, any marker that is there has some significance.

It means something's going on.

It will vary depending on the lab, but some of the ranges will say, "Well, if the number's under 9." No, if it is 1 or if it is 2, something is going on.

We need to take a look at that.

We need to take a look at the inflammation.

We need to see what is going on.

So we need to make sure we're getting a proper PCOS diagnosis, that we're not just saying, "Oh, these levels are off and there's nothing that we can do to fix it." We need to take a look at why these numbers are off.

We should never just say, "Oh, they're off.

There's nothing we can do about it." So we're just going to keep going down this treatment path over and over and over again, without much success at all, if any.

I've had spouses come into the clinic and beg us, like they've mortgaged their homes, they have depleted college funds that they had been saving for in preparation, retirement savings, all kinds of things, because they've just gone through eight, nine, ten rounds of fertility treatment.

And they know that their partners, their wives, you know, they come in with the hope that maybe this is the best thing that they can do, it's sort of their last shot.

And the spouse is just-- they can't afford it financially.

They're heartbroken watching their partner go through failed round after failed round.

And I will say, really understanding what's going on and taking active measures to address it can really make a big difference.

Now we've talked about some markers, some things to look at.

I do-- since I was just talking about Hashimoto's thyroiditis, I do want to bring up a question that I'm commonly asked by women who are going through this that are a little bit skeptical.

It's usually at this point-- you know, they've gone through the fertility specialist, they've worked with their OB, and they start to seek some advice from a naturopath or a more holistic provider.

What ends up happening is the naturopath will make the diagnosis of Hashimoto's, and then recommend a dairy-free and gluten-free diet.

This is the standard, and I've seen a lot of naturopaths give even more great, wonderful nutrition and fasting advice.

But I've seen this kind of be the standard advice given without a whole lot of explanation.

The reason why is there are certain proteins in dairy and gluten that can actually mimic thyroid hormone and cause a big flare up, cause a lot of disease, so it is worthwhile to cut these foods out.

Now, I usually avoid blanket statements like that.

You know, using a really ancient, you know, 93-year-old starter, all of the right, three ingredients, you know, to make a proper sourdough.

That, I eat.

But when we tell people that it's okay to say, have, you know, some organic sourdough with, you know, real starter, people don't know what ingredients and things to look for.

I mean, I found a literal hole-in-the-wall bakery with 93-year-old starter and was recently given some 46-year-old starter from one of my son's teachers at a co-op program that we do.

So that's pretty wild stuff.

That is not the stuff that you're finding at the supermarkets, and a lot of the time that's not the stuff that you're finding and paying an arm and a leg for at the farmer's markets, either.

So that's just something to be mindful of, and, you know, unless you really understand the knowledge of where that food source is coming from, it is probably best just to avoid it.

And in general, when the body is doing some initial healing and you're finding insulin resistance and other hormonal imbalances, avoiding dairy and gluten overall's a good cause.

Same thing with dairy.

Even when you buy the fancy organic stuff from the fancy grocery store, you can't be guaranteed that it's got all the right things in it and not the wrong things in it, and then it's going to be helping your hormones versus hindering your hormones.

So it is best to avoid it.

I would even avoid it well into my second trimester, if you're someone with Hashimoto's thyroiditis and you do ever eat it.

One of the problems, though, with these foods, especially gluten, is that it can hang around in your system for up to about six months.

So the gluten that you ate six months ago can cause a flare up in you today.

And that's super problematic.

We don't want that happening.

So you've really got to make a commitment to cut this stuff out.

Like, really, really cut it out.

If you end up having something by accident, if it was hidden in there, you didn't see it on the gradients-- I mean, of course we try to avoid eating foods and things that have ingredients, but it happens.

We do eat some packaged foods from time to time.

You can't always avoid it.

Don't lose sleep over it, but really try to minimize it, especially if you're going through this fertility journey.

So if you're out there and you've been having struggles, what I really encourage you to do is to take six months before starting a fertility treatment plan.

During this time, you get blood work before it starts.

Of course, you know, you need to always, always, always, always talk to your healthcare provider and make sure any lifestyle, any supplement, any fasting and nutrition change that you do is appropriate for you.

But when we're working with someone who comes in and fertility is the goal, we've got their physician on board or Jason has been their physician in the past, we dive in, we treat them like they're type two diabetic.

We do therapeutic fasting.

We put them off dairy, off gluten.

We work with them on going low carb at first.

Usually, for the first three months, we do a fairly low-carb to keto diet, definitely under about 50 total grams of carbs a day.

Real whole foods.

Very paleo-centric diet.

Really high in fish.

We focus a lot on micronutrients.

And always, always, always, always get your micronutrient levels tested.

SpectraCell does a great test.

Genova Diagnostics does a great test.

Get it done for you and your partner.

So much, so many issues are caused by micronutrient deficiencies in men, not just women.

So, wherever that sperm is coming from, you want to make sure the nutritional status is good.

And it can take a few months, so start this at the beginning of your six months.

Work on optimizing those nutrients.

They're going to give you the best eggs, the best sperm, the best raw materials, and the best chance.

A lot of women who have had PCOS for a long time (like I did in my youth, from about 14, until 27, 28 when I was able to fully reverse it), we have low ovarian reserve later on in life.

And, like I said to my friend today, she is going to do an egg retrieval before really kind of ramping things up.

Quality.

It just takes one.

I did three back-to-back rounds of egg retrievals.

At the end, I ended up with four genetically-normal embryos out of all three rounds.

That's how low my reserve was.

But I had these four, really awesome, quality, quality embryos, and I got pregnant with my first embryo transfer, I got pregnant with my second embryo transfer, and we've got two more embryos for whatever we decide to do later on down the road.

But it just takes very little.

It just needs to be good quality and then our body needs to be ready for it.

The micronutrients are super critical.

We want to get started at the beginning.

You can take a good quality prenatal vitamins if you want.

There's some controversy around synthetic vitamins, but we really want to take a look at your micronutrient labs and make sure we're targeting those.

Getting your nutrition as much as possible from food.

This is how you do it.

And, ladies, gentlemen, whoever is listening, I did not like organ meat, but I loved oysters, so I'd eat oysters once or twice a week.

I would try to find ways to sneak in some beef liver, whether it was like a beef-liver patty that was a blend with regular ground beef, with a little bit of ground organ in it.

Just finding ways to get it in there creatively, getting in a good four ounces a couple of times a week really can help make a difference.

It really helps support your body's methylation status, which is another big reason why a lot of us do struggle with fertility.

That would be another test to have is to know your methylation status, getting your genes checked.

If you're a functional health client, you can simply add on methylation MTHFR gene, learn your genotype, and then know what type of supplements will be best for you.

This is something that a coach on our team, like Lisa, can help you navigate with a little bit more clarity and ease because I know it can sound overwhelming right now.

So we want to get those micronutrients right.

Another commonly recommended one, in terms of supplements, is CoQ10, typically, at larger doses for egg quantity.

They suggested at Stanford, when I was going through my retrievals, 600mg a day.

I also took 10mg of PQQ (pyrroloquinoline quinone) on top of that just to help further enhance things.

So there are some nuanced supplements towards egg quality.

There's some egg quality supplements, too, that you can also take.

WeNatal has one.

We're not affiliated with WeNatal or any of these things that I've mentioned, but WeNatal has one.

I used to take all of those things individually, and then, after banking all my embryos, they came out with one, complete supplement.

It would have saved me a lot of time, hassle, and money.

So there are some egg quality supplements that you can take, but targeting your own nutritional deficiencies is really important.

So, in the six months, you're going to focus on low carb or keto for the first three months, you're going to do therapeutic fasting for the bulk of the six months.

In the last three months, after your three months of keto/low carb, you're going to assess with your coach, your practitioner, the need to cycle in some more carbs after you ovulate every month.

Now, usually, the first three months of doing this two-year period goes wacky because we're targeting the insulin resistance that's making your other sex hormones cause imbalances and problems.

So we're trying to get those back into gear, getting them back into the right groove there.

So that it might go a little bit wacky, but, when things start to settle for a cycle or two, then we know we've made really good progress.

And now it's about optimizing the sex hormones, with the focus on progesterone after ovulation.

And then that would mean less fasting in the second half of the cycle with a little bit more structured carbs.

And really what I mean by that is root vegetables, and legumes and lentils if you can tolerate them.

They can be included more frequently in the second half of the cycle (of course, with good time-restricted eating) just to optimize progesterone levels.

And then, at the end of that six months, repeating these labs, seeing if the thyroid has been optimized, seeing what progress you've made with prolactin, your

LH:FSH ratio, your estradiol, your progesterone levels.

I think you'd be pretty surprised at a lot of the headway that you can make.

And then that's when you begin your fertility journey.

The multi-bazillion dollar question here that we get so often is, "Should I fast during my IVF?" And the answer is no.

Once you've made significant headway, which you really can during those first six months, you want to fall into good time-restricted eating.

You want to do 14 hours of fasting a day.

You want to maintain the same great diet.

You can still say pretty low carb in the follicular phase, that first phase of your cycle.

After ovulation, into the luteal phase, you do want to focus in on root vegetables, and, again, those legumes and lentils, if you can tolerate them and want to include them in your diet.

And you should do that throughout your IVF journey.

It's the best preparation to do.

A couple of coaches on our team actually reached out to me who have women who are getting ready for an embryo transfer now.

It's been some time since they've done IVF.

Maybe they had a child and they're looking to have their second one like me.

When should they stop fasting?

One younger woman that we were helping out, she got pregnant with her first via IVF.

She then, after she was done nursing her child, wanted to fast to further lose weight, lose the baby weight, lose additional weight, and get in good shape for baby number two down the road.

When should you stop doing therapeutic fasting?

I would recommend two cycles before the cycle that you're going to actually have your embryo transfer.

If you end up incidentally doing a couple of 24s here and there a week, that's fine, but I wouldn't do more than that.

I would focus on those 14-hour fasts.

I would focus on getting in a diverse amount of micronutrients, getting in adequate protein during that time, and really sort of optimizing those hormones, having some of those structured carbs in the second half of the cycle, not doing so much fasting.

If you're going to do 24s, do them in the first half, but try not to do them so much in the second half of the cycle.

We really want to minimize any impact on the body.

Going through this is stressful enough.

We always talk about how fasting doesn't add that much stress on the body, unless you're under an enormous amount of stress and your stress is already overflowing.

Then we don't want to add any more stress to that, like, at all, with anything.

This fertility time is pretty intense.

Even for someone like me, it was intense.

I had a lot of things working for me, and I knew that it, but it was still stressful.

So, during this time, take it easy.

Do those 14-hour fasts.

Those 14-hour fasts in an insulin-sensitive person get a lot of autophagy, get a lot of good stuff going, will help you keep the weight off, and you won't be worried about putting weight on.

And it will help sort of get some of your sex hormones stabilized and in a rhythm to make it easier for you to get pregnant.

Now, just keep in mind that we don't really want to fast during pregnancy.

I'll tell you, both my first trimesters...

Oh, jeez.

There wasn't much eating going on.

You just do the best you can.

During my first pregnancy, I did gain a few pounds.

I think I gained 5 pounds the first trimester with Marcus, but I think that was mostly coming off of the hormones from the egg retrievals and them still being a factor in my journey.

This time, I gained like half a pound my first trimester.

I was actually less sick this time, but it's hard, you just do your best.

Protein and eating it frequently - that is one thing that definitely does help.

So you just want to get through.

And then, you know, in your second trimester, you can still do those 12 to 14-hour fasts, and focus on good eating, good meals, good micronutrients.

And of course, once baby's here, if you are choosing to breastfeed baby, you don't want to do any fasting until you're done nursing.

And I will say that there is a big adjustment period for the body.

I'm actually still nursing my son.

At around 18 months, he started nursing a lot less naturally, but he is nursed now a few times a day versus many times a day.

Around 18 months, he made a sort of a drastic cut, and the hormones hit you hard.

There's depression that comes along with that that can be short lived with the assistance of tools like acupuncture, but it is a bit hard and tough to go through.

So once you're on the other side of that period-- and I would highly recommend acupuncture to those listening.

To everyone, I recommend acupuncture throughout this entire journey.

I've barely missed a week since starting this journey.

It is critical.

It is the one thing I do for myself every week.

So, with that being said, acupuncture can help balance those hormones when the baby stops nursing.

And then when you're feeling good again, then you can resume your fasting and weight-loss journey.

All right, everyone, thank you so much for tuning in today, hearing our podcast.

I do know it was a more lady-centric podcast to our gentlemen listeners, but we have a lot of questions.

It's important to address these questions as well.

We'll be back next month.

Our Q&A will be myself with Coach Amy, and we're going to be talking about a lot of your questions around type two diabetes reversal fasting and nutrition.

Until then, we'll see you soon.

Bye for now, and happy fasting.

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