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Home › Articles › Improving Your Chances of Conceiving › Preconception Weight-loss Planning

Preconception Weight-loss Planning

Easy Ways to Boost Health and Increase Fertility

By Kim Seidel

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  • Enjoy stress-reducing activities, such as listening to calming music, reading and knitting.
  • Rather than watching television, walk outside in nature as often as you can – being surrounded by green leaves and blue sky has great benefits for enhancing your health and fertility.
  • Massage, yoga and acupuncture also have been shown to reduce stress and boost fertility.
Fill up on Folic Acid

You may not know you are pregnant for many weeks. To be on the safe side, start taking prenatal vitamins today.

While folic acid can be found in leafy green vegetables, dried beans, peas and fortified breakfast cereals, it's difficult to eat the required amount. Therefore, doctors recommend women take a daily prenatal vitamin. According to the March of Dimes, consuming the recommended dose of folic acid each day may help prevent brain and spinal cord birth defects when taken during the earliest stage of pregnancy. The recommended amount is 400 mcg.

Amanda Bunting Comen and her husband were trying to conceive for a year. Comen of Charleston, S.C., began to follow Dr. Kulze's advice, making more healthy diet choices and implementing daily exercise.

"More specifically, I ate more fruits and vegetables, eliminated a lot of the bad carbs, cut back on alcohol and drank more than eight glasses of water a day," Comen says. "Ultimately, I lost 30 pounds and got pregnant shortly after that. We are now the proud parents of a healthy baby boy."

You Are What You Eat

"Do your fats right," strictly avoiding trans fats, Dr. Kulze says. These are processed foods containing hydrogenated oils, shortening and stick margarine. Minimize saturated fats – fatty cuts of meats, butter and whole dairy products. Instead, maximize your consumption of Omega-3 fats. This includes oily fish, such as salmon, mackerel, sardines, lake trout and herring. Other Omega-3 rich foods include walnuts, soy foods, canola oil, flax seed and dark leafy greens.

Another tip from Dr. Kulze is to limit your consumption of red meat – beef, pork and lamb – to two servings a week or less. Check out these other easy-to-follow guidelines from Dr. Kulze:

  • Eat as many veggies as possible. Aim for five or more servings a day.
  • Limit fruit to two servings a day. The best fruits are all berries, cherries, apples, whole citrus, pears, plums, apricots (dried or fresh) and peaches.
  • Consume your grain products strictly from whole grain sources. The best are pearled barley, rye and oats.
  • Eat more beans. Strive to have one serving a day. The best are soybeans, lentils, kidney beans, pinto beans, navy beans, chick peas, black beans and butter beans.


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