Yummy Life

Yes, I have seen them. Overweight women boasting even bigger bellies due to pregnancy. I’m not sure if it should give me hope or whether I should be afraid for these women who may be experiencing complications in their pregnancies. I wonder if they had to do fertility treatments or if it happened naturally.

Since I have been contraceptive-free for the last 10 years and have yet to experience the miracle of pregnancy, I am thinking that being fat just isn’t working for me. I’ve been overweight for the last 10 years, but I have not been close to my “fertile weight”. It’s the one thing I haven’t tried yet! I’ve been striving to get healthy and improve my PCOS symptoms, losing over 30 lbs in the last year, but I am still not close to my “fertile weight”.

I am happy to know that my fertile weight is actually higher than my actual “ideal” weight. I can still be a little chunky and have a baby – woo hoo! The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) suggests that as little as a 10 percent decrease in weight can have a profound difference on a woman’s ability to conceive. According to this, I am already more fertile than I was before – great news!

The ASRM asserts that more than 70 percent of women who are infertile as a result of body weight disorders will conceive spontaneously if their weight is corrected through either weight loss or weight gain. WOW! Shouldn’t this be a wake up call?

Releasing weight is not the easiest thing to do. There are a million different diets and approaches to losing fat, so how do we know if we are doing the right thing? Getting down to a BMI of around 25 can put you in the “fertile weight” category, but it is important to follow a diet that supports fertility. What exactly is that?

I am conducting a FREE call on the topic of “Demystifying the Fertility Diet” on April 1, 2010 at 8:30 pm. I’ll present some of the latest results of research and let you decide if you are doing enough to support your own fertility. As always, a special bonus to anyone who joins me live on the call!

http://www.yummylifecoaching.com/Teleclasses.html

I hope to “see” you on the call!

Holly

I have just begun my new free teleclass on enhancing fertility naturally.  The first call was last night.  My biggest fear is always something going wrong technically, and something always does, so I think I am manifesting this bad luck.  I’ll have to do some meditation next week!  I got cut off in the beginning and got back on the line, and the replay doesn’t work  The back up recording does, however, so I can still give everyone the recording as promised – you’ll just need to forward through the first 20 minutes or so to get to the part where I’m talking.  I WILL figure this out or use a different teleconferencing service!  No one wanted to interact on the call, which would have made it more interesting, but once it got started all was good.

I shared a couple of techniques on the call.  This call is a preview to my 12-week Fertile Attraction group coaching program that starts in May.  There will be so many more things to learn in the program, this was just a snippet.  I would LOVE some feedback – so please listen to the recording if you weren’t on the call and reply to this post.  Was this a pertinent topic?  What did you think of the exercises?  What sort of things would you like to see covered in the 12-week program?  Fertile Attraction is a sort of support group with a learning element – we’ll lift each other up and learn techniques for staying positive and possibly even increasing our chances of becoming pregnant.

Here is the recording – you can listen on your computer or download to listen to it on your mp3 player:

http://events.nfinite.com/13412366675402.mp3

I’ll be giving away 2 great FertilAid products – FertilAid for Women and FertilAid for Men- yes, 2 winners of the giveaway!  All you need to do is make a comment on this post.  But wait, there’s more (cue the infomercial) – if you become a fan on my Facebook page or if you become my friend on Facebook you’ll get bonus entries.  You can also follow me on Twitter for another bonus entry opportunity.  Good luck everyone!

Next week’s call will be on Tuesday at 9 pm and will be entitled “Demystifying the Fertility Diet”.  Hope to see you on the call!

Holly

The holidays can be rough for a lot of people.  Especially for people with health challenges and those who have faced trauma or loss. A friend of mine who is having a particularly hard time this year recently told me that she has nothing to be thankful for this year.  I replied, “Nothing?  Really?”  She has a wonderful husband who would do anything for her.  She has a beautiful and healthy daughter.  A job she likes.  Yes, she suffered a tragedy earlier in the year and Thanksgiving won’t be the same this year.  She admitted that she is jealous of all of the families that have grandmas and grandpas and even great grandmas and grandpas all together at Thanksgiving.  Life is not turning out to be the perfect life that she imagined it would be.  Feelings of “life’s not fair” keep popping up.

If you are trying to conceive and are having challenges, these feelings probably feel familiar to you.  I have silently suffered the news of friends and family members getting pregnant for years.  I’d say “congratulations” and then go home and cry.  News like that felt like a knife to the heart.  Why does everyone else I know just imagine sperm swimming up the love canal and get pregnant and I go years without being able to conceive?  It isn’t fair.  I really want to be pregnant, I really want another child.  I’ve even thought bad things about random pregnant women in the grocery store.  Now, is that really fair?  That woman with the bulging belly may have had to do IVF in order to get pregnant.  Or maybe she was barfing her brains out the first 3 months of her pregnancy.  Maybe she just found out her husband is having an affair and she is facing life as a single mom.  Or maybe, she really does have a nice, happy family.  It’s still no reason to hate her.  If you would have asked me 6 months ago if I could look at a woman like that and be genuinely happy for her, I’d have laughed at you.  I still had not let go of the bitterness and jealousy that encompassed my heart.  The reason I could not let go is that I did not realize how much I really had to be grateful for in my life.

What do you do if you are tortured by feelings of jealousy and “why me?” this holiday season?  I’ll share with you a simple exercise that you can do to reduce your jealousy demon and allow gratitude into your heart.  When you plant seeds of jealousy, more jealousy will grow.  And you will continue to be miserable.  Why not practice some compassion and love instead?  By planting compassion and love, more will grow and soon you will realize that these feelings of jealousy no longer plague you.  You will come to see that pain is all relative, and that one person’s pain and suffering is not greater or less than your own.  You will be able to see your friends’ suffering, therefore you will be able to not only see but share in their happiness as well.  Not just share it, but really feel it.  And this feels much better than the bitter feelings of jealousy that pinch, nag and kick down your psyche.

How to Reduce Feelings of Jealousy

Create an altar of gratitude.  Take 5 candles and line them up on a table or other flat surface.  On a sheet of paper or in a notebook, write down 5 things for which you are truly grateful.  Light your first candle and say out loud, “I am thankful for _____ because ______. ”  Look at your paper and say the second thing on your list, then light the second candle.  Repeat the phrase.  Do this for  the third, fourth and fifth items on your list.  When all of your candles are lit, spend a few moments in silence, holding that feeling of gratitude in your heart.  When you are finished, blow out the candles but keep the paper with your list on it.  Hang it someplace where you will see it often – a mirrror, your refrigerator.  You could even make a screen saver with your list on it to remind you on a daily basis.  Remember that you can go to your altar whenever you need to get back in touch with those feelings of gratitude.

As I have really gotten in touch with the suffering of other women with PCOS and others who are trying to conceive, my love and compassion has grown immensely.  If someone announces that she is pregnant, I truly do feel happy for her.  Her triumphs give me hope and I feel connected not only to her suffering but to her happiness as well.  And this feels so much better than being jealous.  I still have those feelings of  ”I wish it was me” but I replace those thoughts with “This will be me soon”.  I am preparing to have a baby in every way.  A baby will come into my life, I just am not sure of exactly how he or she will get here.  But I am grateful for the journey I am taking and all of the memories I am making along the way!

An entry from my gratitude journal:

I am thankful for my supportive family.  I know that no matter what happens, no one is judging me for the choices that I have made.  I am grateful for my husband and my daughter, Liliana.  I am grateful that I get to spend so much time with them and get to make wonderful memories each and every day.  I am grateful for every “I love you” and the feelings of good energy that are transferred into my very being each and every day.  I am grateful for the love of my kitty and my puppies – it feels great to be loved so much unconditionally.  They have taught me that there is no place in my life for jealousy or ill will.  I am grateful to God for all of the opportunities I have had in my life.  I know that I am going down the path that I am meant to take.  I am grateful for His love and support; without Him I would be nothing.

Take a few moments to write down 5 things for which you are grateful.  Put a little bit more meaning into the holiday this year.  Happy Thanksgiving!  I am truly grateful for all of your support and feedback!

Holly

Even though I wanted a baby  more than anything in the world when we were doing fertility treatment, I did not do the one thing that I should have done in order to make the treatment successful.  I didn’t lose weight.  I was telling myself “I can’t lose weight”, “I have PCOS, it’s impossible”, “this isn’t going to work anyway”, and “we might as well adopt right now”.  All in all, I did NOT have a good attitude.  I hated every moment that I was injecting myself and going to the doctor.  I’ll admit, it wasn’t a good time to try to do this.  My husband was overseas for work, and we had to freeze his sperm.  I was lonely and resentful that I had to go through this by myself.  I really did think that it was a waste of time.  I WANTED TO ADOPT.  And what ended up happening?  We adopted.  We got exactly what I wanted.  I wish I would have sought h elp from a life coach during that time – my attitude was horrible.  I attracted exactly what I was putting out to the universe.  I accepted it as “God’s plan”.  When I look back on it, I do think it was God’s plan.  I  guess I don’t really understand why I put myself through such hell if I just wanted to adopt anyway.  I still want to have a baby, I still want to be pregnant.  I thik I did want to be pregnant, I just think I didn’t believe it could happen.  I didn’t want to entertain the possiblity that I may NEVER have a child.  

When I undertake my next journey, I will have a better attitude.  I will not sabotage my success.  I will seek support from a coach, therapist, friends, family, and my husband.  I will be as healthy as I can be.  I WILL GET PREGNANT!!!