Eating four portions of fruit a day

Before I start, please bear in mind that I don't need to lose much weight and that some fruits, most notably bananas, have a very high sugar content. As such you might want to consult your dietician about the best way to get your fruit without compromising your healthy weight. As I have mentioned before, I am not a dietician! Just a girl trying her hardest to get pregnant!

Anyway - eating fruit can feel tough, fresh fruit moulders so quickly and perhaps, like me, you might even dislike it! Here are a few things that I try.

1) Keep dried fruit in your handbag

I bought a few teeny tiny zip lock containers and decanted a larger bag of raisins into them. I eat perhaps a quarter of a cup a day. Too many are very fattening, but these do count toward your four portions of fruit for the day!

2) Keep frozen fruit in the freezer

I add a handful of frozen berries to my yoghurt in the morning. Or a couple of handfuls into my blender for my daily super fertile smoothie (recipe forthcoming). Preserved or frozen fruits aren't the healthiest way to eat fruit - nothing can replace eating an apple - but they do count nonetheless.

3) Know your portions

Canada's Good Food Guide is really helpful when it comes to knowing your portion sizes. In actual fact, it is good in pretty much every way imaginable! If you are trying to get enough fruit in your diet then you are going to need to know portion sizes.

4) Know which fruit is best

Some fruits are super fertile. It is funny to think of fruit as being super fertile but it is true, it definitely is! I am not lying here, I promise. Some fruits are just super fertile. And those are the fruits that you want to eat. You want to eat blueberries, they are a super food. You want to eat red berries, they are so bloomin' healthy. Most of all you want to eat pineapple - core and all - which is a source of bromelain, but you only want to eat it after you have ovulated as it will help any potential little bean stick. You don't want to eat it before you ovulate though because it will make your cervical mucus too acidic and sperm will not be able to survive within it.

photo credit: Pineapples from the Ham via photopin (license)

What are good fats?

Good fats include monosaturated fats, for example olives or avocadoes and they include polyunsaturated fats, for example fatty fish or walnuts. Saturated fats like dairy products or red meat may not be the worst type of fats, but they are not to be confused with the important good fats that you need two daily portions of in order to be super fertile.

We don't really need to encroach upon trans fats like deep fried anything or biscuits or baked goods, they are just a no no but then we have known that for years!

I find it very simple to ensure that I get these types of good fats into my diet. I eat a serving of salmon twice every week. It is a fish that does not have a high mercury content and is the only fish, therefore, that I fully trust. I eat a handful of almonds every day. I eat half an avocado on multigrain toast every day.

Eating more good fats is one area of your diet where, with the exception of the salmon, you do not need to do any heavy duty cooking. I keep a small tub of almonds in my handbag to snack on whenever I need to and then I eat salmon and avocado. Pretty simple, right?

Stay tuned for this recipe!

How to eat more leafy greens

So I (we) need to eat three portions of leafy greens a day. Let's face it, leafy greens ain't exactly chocolate or pizza. They ain't even bread and butter. They are rabbit fodder. It is hard to consume the correct amount of salad every day, not to mention the fact that leafy greens tend to wilt pretty quickly in the fridge!

I wasn't the healthiest person before starting this journey. But I have managed to make lifestyle adjustments to become so and getting creative with leafy greens was one of those ways. Here's how I did it!

1) Smoothies

I am not a fan of green smoothies. I have tried them and I just couldn't stomach them. However, what I can stomach is a fruit smoothie with a handful of frozen baby kale thrown in. Baby kale isn't as tough to stomach as kale and you can't taste it. Plus, keep it frozen and you can use it whenever you need it! I make my super fertile smoothie every day!

2) Salad toppings

I keep my frozen salads - kale and spinach - for other purposes too. I use them to put on top of pizzas, into pasta sauce mixes, into soups. This is such an easy way to get those leafy greens into your foods without you even realising that they were there!

3) Straight up salad

Every Monday I eat a whole salad. Usually a packet one with all the little extras inside because I am lazy and it is easy. Sometimes I will go all out and make up a salad that is a bit fancier but this is the easiest way. I only eat salad on a Monday because this is the day after shopping, when the salad is still super fresh.

4) Make green potato chips

Toss the kale in oil and some lemon juice and put on a baking sheet. Bake at 300 degrees until crispy and delicious.

5) Hide it in your baking

Blueberry muffins laced with spinach anyone? Pretty great, right?! Because you don't ever realise the ruffage hidden inside. Not that muffins are particularly healthy though so this one shouldn't be a habbit!

License: (license)

I will be posting a few recipes in due course - stay tuned folks!

So...you need to quit smoking

I did it! I quit smoking! I am still proud of the fact, even if it did happen two years ago because I didn't just quit smoking but I stay quit and I can tell you with some authority:

I will never smoke ever again.

I am not an expert on health or on quitting smoking. I am just an average joe. Even an average joe can tell you that if you want to create your very own bun in the oven and you smoke then you need to quit. And you shouldn't quit when you suddenly find out your pregnant or when you doctor tells you to, you should quit RIGHT NOW - go on, do it!

Smoking will affect not only your pregnancy but also your fertility - I could tell you the ins and outs about why that is and talk about arteries or blood pressure or stress or whatever but I know I don't need to. We all know that smoking ain't great for any aspect of your health and that your fertility is a big part of your health!

Here's how I quit...

A year or two before I quit, I bought a book that was by Allen Carr and was called 'Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking'. I have mixed opinions about the book. I really enjoyed reading it and all. The way it was presented was wonderful and the information provided was marvellous. It isn't a book filled with tips about how to quit smoking but it is a book that helps you to understand why we smoke and the effect smoking has on our body - both for good and for bad.

It basically says that quitting smoking is not about will power but is about getting into the correct mind set to quit and it helps you to get into that mind set.

Here's where I am a bit grey - I read the book and I attempted to quit and I didn't quit. Why? Because I kept on being told that quitting would be easy and that I just needed to understand smoking in order to quit. I assumed that I wouldn't have to do much to be able to quit and that it wasn't about willpower but that it was about knowledge and understanding.

I was wrong.

But whilst I didn't quit, having read the book, the words that I had read remained with me for the next year. And so, whilst I didn't read the book and immediately quit, I did read the book.

The next thing that I did was watch the following video about the timeline following quitting smoking. I tried to see how long I could go without having a cigarette but I invariably picked up a cigarette at some point during the third day.

Whilst this video alone didn't work, I continued to watch it when I did quit as it is so positive and at each milestone I was told how I had helped my body! This video was my very own cheerleader!

And then, two years after first having bought the book and countless time spent watching the above video, I quit!

It was an ordinary day. I didn't wait to finish my packet. I hadn't planned to quit. I just did it. I told myself that enough was enough - there were no benefits to smoking, it was bloody ridiculous that a grown woman was dependent on this silly stick of death and that I just needed to woman up and quit.

I told myself that I would never smoke ever again. Not that I would see how it went but that I would never again smoke. Every time I wanted to smoke I told myself to stop being so weak and that I was never going to smoke again.

From that point I followed the above timeline to the letter. I lost the cravings as the video said that I would and I felt healthier in the ways that the video said that I would.

I used an app called 'Smoke Free' to help me to track my progress. It was filled with encouragement, statistics and rewards. This app helped me to feel good about how I was doing. Eventually I no longer needed the app and then I realised that I was simply no longer a smoker!

Nothing but fresh air here!

And let me tell you - you too need never smoke again!

Always be prepared (dib dib dob dob)

Having successfully manoeuvred Nick into agreeing (somewhat tentatively, it has to be admitted) to have a baby, I knew that I needed to make some big lifestyle changes. New Years Eve 2014 I drank 2 litres of coca cola, vowing that I would not drinking coca cola until I were to have a baby.

I still haven't gone back on that yet.

I also got rid of: smoking, coffee, alcohol, more than two cups of tea a day, most junk food and canned/frozen meals. It was surprisingly easy. I literally quit one thing per week until not consuming these items became a habit. I knew that before I got pregnant I wanted to be able to create the best environment for a little one inside myself and that spurred me on toward making healthy choices!

In addition to removing bad things from my diet I added good things to my diet. I tried to make them coincide with the bad things I was removing from my diet. E.g. if I drank 8 glasses of water a day then I would no longer want that coca cola! I began to ensure that EVERY DAY I got 3 forms of leafy greens, 2 good fats, 4 portions of fruit, 3 protein sources, 8 glasses of water, 3 portions of veg, 1 multigrain item and 3 super fertile foods.

In addition, I added 30 minutes of exercise to my routine, though this was the hardest change of all to make.

A lunch from last year - white bread, sweets and crisps and candies and a mug of coffee. There are ways of replacing these so that you don't miss them!

What you eat has a MASSIVE impact on how fertile you are. I can't wait to start sharing some simple meal plans that will help you to get what you need in your diet so that you too can be super fertile!

Disclaimer: Of course, I am no nutritionist or fertility expert and I can't tell you that by doing what I have done you will DEFINITELY have success. We are all individuals and we all have individual needs. All I can do is to tell you the research that I have made and the changes that have thus far helped me!

Ugh, not another blog about babies!

'Journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step' - Lao Tzu
 
I am pretty sure we all know a version of this guy. He is the guy who is b-b-b-b-bad to the bone. The thought of this guy actually wanting to settle down with just one woman, let alone wishing to procreate with said woman is pretty wild.

Yet, that is pretty much what happened! This guy (whose name is Nick, if you happen to be interested at all), decided (forward slash was coerced) into agreeing to create a sprog with yours truly.

Here's how it happened:

Me: Oh - by the way, I have decided that I won't be taking my birth control pills in 2015 so birth control is your deal now.

Him: What are you talking about?

Me: Yeah, so if you decide you want to wear birth control [note how I am using the word birth control instead of condom, which seems like a terrible word, even for someone writing all about making a sprog], then that's your call but you know you probably won't, so...

Him: Yeah, I guess you're right.

And that is, honestly, how it happened.

If only baby making were so easy!

And that is how we came to start this blog all about making a sprog. Turns out the ingredients are more involved than I had always been led to believe when I was a teenager!