You want to get pregnant! What an exciting, and confusing, time of life. You may be wondering, how can I prepare my body naturally to get pregnant? Well friend, you are in the right place. I am trying to get pregnant too and I am going to share everything I am doing, as a personal trainer, to prepare my body naturally to get pregnant after 35. Today we are going to talk about doing a pre-pregnancy detox.
As a personal trainer, I recommend that you start preparing your body 12 months before wanting to have a baby, especially if you are overweight or have bad habits to replace. If you want to have a healthy baby and a healthy pregnancy, you have to give your body enough time to adjust to the changes and flush toxins out of your body.
Since the body goes through many changes already during a pregnancy, it is better to change your habits much earlier so that you can maintain your new healthy habits throughout your pregnancy. If you don’t have 12 months to prepare, don’t worry. Most doctors recommend just three to six months of preparation before pregnancy. This pre-pregnancy detox is a great way to jumpstart your preparation.
First let me clarify that by detox I mean taking good care of your body, avoiding adding in more toxins, and cleaning up your diet. I’m not talking about the type of detox that requires you to restrict your diet, drink only water, or other types of intensive detoxes. This type of detox can actually be harmful to your body if you don’t do it under the supervision of a doctor.
You need to do a pre-pregnancy detox to remove internal metabolic waste (toxins) from our bodies before we get pregnant so that we can be as healthy as possible. Toxins are the root of disease. Buildup of toxins can clog the channels that are responsible for cellular communication and the removal of waste. When we have a buildup of toxins, the body is less likely to accept the fertilized egg. If your body does accept the egg and it starts to grow, the toxins can damage your growing embryo.
These toxins are generated in the digestive tract and can cause it to malfunction. That is why you want to take good care of your digestive system, especially when you want to get pregnant. The toxins in your body can cause fertility problems in both women and men.
It is very important to take care of both your mental and physical health during a pre-pregnancy detox, and throughout pregnancy. Right now I’m focusing a lot more on what I eat. There are certain foods and drinks that you can add to your diet to increase your fertility and naturally prepare the body for pregnancy.
Every morning when I wake up, I drink 16 ounces of warm water with lemon and honey. This is like a natural tea that not only cleanses your digestive system but also hydrates your cells, which is also great to prevent premature aging.
It is always important to drink around 11 cups of water every day. Water helps cleanse your body naturally and keeps you hydrated.
That is not so much to cleanse the body, but to start adding what your body needs to grow a healthy baby. Although a clean and healthy diet gives you much of what you need, it is important to start taking a prenatal vitamin at least three months before you get pregnant to begin to stockpile good nutrients, just in case you aren’t feeling the best those first few months.
According to Chinese medicine, eating hot food and warming the body is a great way to increase fertility. You can eat soups, cooked vegetables, curries, really any kind of hot food. This helps make the body, and the uterus, a warm and inviting place for the embryo.
Another way to warm the body is to use warm spices in food such as chili, cayenne, coriander, cumin, and turmeric. Although it is important to warm the body so that it is a comfortable place for the embryo, it is also about balancing hot and cold foods. You don’t have to eat just hot food.
Green foods like kale, spinach, and broccoli provide many vitamins and minerals that help naturally prepare your body for pregnancy. If you can’t do everything on this list, adding more green foods to your diet is one of the best ways to detox before pregnancy and improve your health.
When you are not consuming hot food, some doctors recommend following the Mediterranean diet to naturally prepare your body to get pregnant. The Mediterranean diet includes many foods that lower inflammation in the body like fresh fish, such as salmon, nuts, whole grains, and fresh vegetables. Studies have found that a mother’s diet during pregnancy directly impacts her baby’s health. You want to do everything you can to give your future baby a healthy and balanced diet.
Attempt to eat as much organic food as possible. This will minimize the amount of toxins from pesticides that you are ingesting. Exposure to pesticides has been linked to reduced fertility in women. If you can’t go completely organic, start by replacing the twelve “dirtiest” foods, or the dirty dozen which are: strawberries, spinach, kale, nectarines, apples, grapes, cherries, peaches, pears, peppers, celery and tomatoes.
Part of a pre-pregnancy detox is to stop consuming the foods and drinks that inflame our bodies and add in more toxins. This means that you have to stop drinking alcohol, smoking, or using drugs of any kind. It is also a good idea to lower the amount of sugar and caffeine you consume, or eliminate them completely.
These elements add toxins to your body. It is never a good idea to consume them while you are pregnant because it adds many risks to your pregnancy. It is best to stop consuming drugs and alcohol long before getting pregnant to give your body plenty of time to clean those chemicals out of your system.
It is also a good idea to lower or eliminate the amount of caffeine you consume. Studies have shown that drinking too much caffeine may make it take longer to get pregnant.
Other studies show that consuming too much sugar regularly can harm fertility for both women and men. This happens because sugar interferes with reproductive hormones and lowers the quality of the eggs and sperm.
Every morning when I wake up, I take a tongue depressor and run it seven times over, under, and along the edges of my tongue. I do this because your body does its own detox overnight and leaves what it doesn’t need on your tongue. The last thing you want to do is try to ingest it again. So, when you clean your tongue, you are helping your body’s natural cleaning process.
Another way to warm and detox your body is with castor oil. You can give yourself a castor oil massage by taking some warm castor oil and massaging it in circles on your stomach and lower back. You could do the massage on your own or with the help of your partner. The castor oil is then absorbed by your body, which helps lower inflammation, detox the body, and relax you. Just to warn you, it can stain your clothes and your sheets. Castor oil can also cause your body to eliminate a lot of waste. So, this type of detox is not appropriate for someone who is already pregnant, only for a pre-pregnancy detox.
This is like a facial for the vagina. They are basically directing herbal infused steam into your vagina. Although it can be done at home, most doctors don’t recommend it. Your vagina is a very delicate area. If the steam is too hot, you can burn yourself or damage the bacterial balance of your vagina and cause an infection. That is why It is better to go to a spa where they specialize in Yoni Steams instead of going DIY, to avoid the risks and stay safe. At the spa, there is a special seat with a hole where you sit for 20-60 minutes above the herbal-infused steam. It feels wonderful and very relaxing, a great way to give your vagina some extra love.
Something that you can do at home is an Epsom salt detox bath. Epsom salts contain a lot of magnesium. When they dissolve in warm water, the magnesium enters your body giving you all the same health benefits as taking a Magnesium supplement without the side effects. Magnesium helps balance your hormones, flush out toxins, and relax your muscles and body. You can also add herbs or essential oils to give your detox bath a relaxing scent.
Another natural way to detoxify the body is to go into the sauna. Sweat is the natural way our bodies detox. Sitting in the sauna for a while gives your body the opportunity to sweat out everything that it no longer needs. Saunas also help balance your hormones, lower stress, and lose weight.
This is so, so important, friends (which is why I mentioned it several times already). Stress is toxic to our bodies, especially if you want to get pregnant. Stress puts chemicals into our bodies to give us the energy to fight off the bad guys or run away when we are in danger. That is great, when you are actually in danger. However, if your stress never ends, you are bathing your body in these chemicals 24/7, which can become toxic for you and baby to be. Do what you need to to remove stress from your life and add in methods for coping with stress. Above all, be kind to yourself.
If you want to naturally prepare your body to get pregnant, this pre-pregnancy detox is a great place to start. I know that sometimes long lists like these can feel overwhelming. If you can’t do it all, start by increasing your vegetables and lowering your stress and then keep adding in new habits one by one each week.
Don’t forget to follow me on social media and subscribe to my YouTube channel. I will be sharing everything I do to prepare my body for this new stage of life because I want to help you achieve your baby dreams too. Let’s do this together!
Change more than just your body