On today’s episode, I’m chatting with Liz Wolfe about Pregnancy Best Practices.

Fed and Fit podcast graphic, episode 159 pregnancy best practices with liz Wolfe with Cassy Joy

We’re back with our 159th episode of the Fed+Fit Podcast! Remember to check back every Monday for a new episode and be sure to subscribe on iTunes!

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Episode 159 Links

Episode 159 Transcription

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Cassy Joy: Welcome back to another episode of the Fed and Fit podcast. I am your host, Cassy Joy Garcia. And I am so excited to have you here, welcoming dear friend and trusted mentor, Liz Wolfe back onto the show. Today we’re talking about pregnancy best practices. And just in case you missed part one, today I will reread you her bio and I will reintroduce you to her. But I also recommend that you listen to that first episode. There’s going to be a lot of good nuggets there, as well.

So to tell you briefly; Liz is an author, podcaster, parent, and nutritional therapy practitioner who is passionate about real food, safe beauty, and healthy families. She’s the author of the Wallstreet Journal bestseller Eat the Yolks, The Purely Primal Skincare Guide, and she’s currently working, three years in, on a comprehensive program called Baby Making and Beyond. Which will give parents and parents to be everything they need to know how to thrive through fertility, pregnancy, and parenthood. Welcome to the show, Liz!

Liz Wolfe: Hi! How are you?

Cassy Joy: Good! {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Cassy Joy: You did such a good job of sounding fresh. {laughing} In all honestly, we recorded these back to back, so I applaud you for that. I have no smoke and mirrors here. I like to share it all. {laughing}

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Cassy Joy: Oh man. Ok I’m excited about today’s episode. Again, this is another one of those things where I’ve had questions. And I try to limit when I reach out to Liz. Because you don’t want to be that person that’s texting constantly. “What do you think about this?” {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: You can be that person, Cassy. Of anyone. You can be that person.

Cassy Joy: I’ve done it on occasion. But we’re going to talk about pregnancy best practices today. Which is very apropos, I am currently with baby in belly. So I have had to learn a lot of this.

Something about this industry and this world. I was decidedly ignorant going into it in a lot of ways. I knew enough to be dangerous.

Liz Wolfe: {laughing}

Cassy Joy: Because part of that is my job. As a nutrition consultant, and just being aware of the body in general. I knew a good amount. But not to the level of curiosity that I would want applied to my own experience, if that makes any sense?

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Cassy Joy: In terms of detailed perspectives. And something, like I said in the last episode, that Liz. I’ve always admired about her work, is she does a really wonderful job. If there’s a question that’s on the top of; gosh, why this image came to mind. But an Obelisk. You know, you’re imagining the Washington monument, and you’ve got a little question up there.

Liz Wolfe: {laughing}

Cassy Joy: She will research all four corners of that thing and really build it from the ground up and understand the complete landscape of how can this question be answered across all these different pieces. All these different sources. And then what you do is you sift through that information. You take your time with it. And you always provide really thoughtful balanced answers when folks have questions. So I’m excited to introduce you as a resource for this.

Ok, so pregnancy best practices. This is, of course, a curiosity for folks who are either with baby or about to get pregnant. Maybe they’ve already had kids and they really are just curios in general. Because some things have changed. My mom, for example. The body is the same in a lot of ways. But what we understand of the body is very different, and has evolved in a really cool way. So I think everybody is a curiosity point.

What would you say are some big myths? I like to phrase it this way, just because it’s an interesting way to look at it. But what do you think are some of the biggest myths with regard to pregnancy in general. From a holistic nutrition perspective. And really preparing our bodies to make the healthiest baby?

Liz Wolfe: Ok. So this one might make me a few friends.

Cassy Joy: {laughing}

Liz Wolfe: In our previous episode, we talked about preconception stuff. And preconception is when I kind of support people being a little crazy. Like; yeah, get the liver in! Do all the things! But then once you’re pregnant, I feel like a myth is that compliance is critical all the time. We get so obsessed in the holistic community with; you have to take this every day. And do this, and do this, and do this. Really, it ends up being more stressful and more detrimental, probably, than the alternative.

Because the fact is; people have really amazingly healthy babies all the time without ever thinking about any of the stuff that we think about. Replaying in our heads on a day to day basis. So I feel like pregnancy is a time where you can; I don’t want to say be a little looser. But you can make very intentional and targeted compromises that are not going to be detrimental to your health or your pregnancy. Obviously everyone is different.

But one of the things that I like to tell folks is if you feel like all you can stomach is pizza; then go get a pizza. Make it a darn good pizza. Make it at home if you can with flour, water, and grass-fed cheese and some pepperoni from the local farm; uncured pepperoni. That type of thing. I probably shouldn’t have said uncured pepperoni; now I made a whole other, opened up another can of worms. We’ll say with veggies. Yeah.

But I think treating is totally appropriate during pregnancy. The energy demands are ridiculously high, yet you’re tired. So a lot of the times, packing in a lot of carb, fat, and protein in one meal with something like pizza. Or something like some really good, high quality ice cream. Is not a bad idea. I really don’t want my mamas just obsessing over eating nothing but liver and salad. It just makes me sad.

Cassy Joy: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. In those first few months, in the first trimester. I’m going to just throw this out there. I don’t know if this is based on fact at all, really it’s just opinion. But from what I’ve been seeing, most people encounter the most severe symptoms in that first trimester.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Cassy Joy: Which is usually, for me, I was the most surprised by it. Right? Because I wasn’t used to being pregnant. And then all of a sudden I wasn’t used to having symptoms on top of that. And I had just come off of this preconception, like you’re saying, really preparing my body and being very intentional about what I put in it and on it. Being very careful.

And then all of a sudden I had migraines that hit me like a ton of bricks. And it not only took me out of the game for my work. But it also mentally exhausted me to the point where I couldn’t even think about how to build a healthy plate, and I just needed food.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Cassy Joy: You know, you get to that point. And what I happened to have in the house at the time was a lot of gluten-free graham crackers. {laughs} It was one of those Amazon orders where you accidentally click send me 12 cases instead of 12 total. {laughing}

Liz Wolfe: {laughing}

Cassy Joy: Boxes, kind of deal.

Liz Wolfe: Oops.

Cassy Joy: Whoopsies. So anyway. It was just kind of that; I had to come to terms with myself. It’s going to be fine. I’m just going to eat because I need to get through this. And do well where I can. But at the end of the day, understanding that stress has a bigger impact. Stressing over what I’m not eating probably has a bigger impact than what I’m not eating.

Liz Wolfe: Well, I think also in our community, we have a lot of people that are really, really tuned in. Sometimes, there’s something going on that I need to figure out. And I need to fix it. But there’s always anything in the entire world. There’s the evil doppelganger version, and the good, healthy, happy version. There’s always that spectrum. So understanding that sometimes we can target certain things nutritionally.

Sometimes underlying causes are missed in the medical community; that’s one side. The other side of that is ascribing meaning, and in particular failure, to every symptom that you have as someone who is tuned into their nutrition. So one of the things I’ve really struggled with would be like an example; I have morning sickness. What’s the nutritional deficiency. What did I not do. I have to figure this out. What is it, what is it, what is it? And it goes around and around and around in your head. And it becomes a huge stressor.

Sometimes, weird stuff happens and we don’t know why. We talk about H pylori causing morning sickness. We talk about needing B6 or certain metabolic chain reactions needing to be supported by different nutrients. Honestly; fine if you can take some B6 and it feels better. Great. If you can take some lauricidin and your stomach feels better from that; awesome. If that stuff doesn’t work and you just have some morning sickness; S-H-I-T gets weird when you’re pregnant. And it gets even weirder when the baby is born.

I’ve had to learn this, again. After my baby was born. My kid would get a rash, and I’d be like; “Oh my gosh! What is this? What am I doing wrong?” Googling all day. Spending a bajillion dollars on Amazon with a million different things that I thought would fix the problem. And finally my friend Kristine just said; Liz, kids get weird rashes. Leave it alone. Just give yourself some grace, and eat a pizza.

Cassy Joy: Mm-hmm. I love it. I love that. The migraine; I was desperate. I went through that. The liquid chlorophyll. And the magnesium. And going through all of the different scenarios in my mind. And after I tried and exhausted. Seeing the chiropractor, and getting massages, and all of those things. Assessing down to the micronutrient scale, to your point. And at the end of the day, as soon as I entered that second trimester. My mom would have told me; the symptoms subsided. At least for me.

So I’m with you there. Eat a pizza. It will all be ok. {laughing}

What are some foods to focus on during pregnancy in general? I’m sure there’s going to be a little overlap with what we talked about on the last episode with preconception best practices. But what do you think is important? And I especially want to pay mind to something I failed to mention in the last one. Or failed to prompt. Was about carbohydrates and fruit in general?

I think there is a general fear of carbs. It’s not as prevalent now as maybe it was a couple of years ago. But with folks; maybe they are new to real food and paleo. Via an introduction, through an elimination diet. And through that, it may have accidentally been a little low carb. May have been strategically low fruit. I would love it if you could also touch on that. When it comes to pregnancy nutrition best practices.

Liz Wolfe: I love fruit. I think fruit is actually pro-fertility. Pro health in pregnancy. Pro everything. So I actually like; I know there’s been a lot of focus on “eat starches.” Or sweet potatoes on a paleo diet. Avoid fruit. Fruit is like dessert. Blah, blah, blah. And I fully disagree with that.

Fruit is delicious. I don’t think it’s advisable for anyone to eat 10 mangos in a day. I think that’s just a lot of mangos and not a lot of diversity and whatever. But I think fruit has a ton of micronutrients that are really important. I think it supplies a good ratio of sugar types to the body that you don’t necessarily get from a sweet potato. So I think keeping all of those things in the rotation is a really good idea.

And I think that the root of a lot of it is a fear of fructose. And I think that fear is generally unfounded. At least in the context of having a couple of pieces of fruit a day. Of course, you need to pay attention to how your body feels. If an apple sends you on a blood sugar rollercoaster, then we actually probably need to look at why you can’t even tolerate an apple. It’s probably not the apple that’s the problem.

But I think carbs are, number, very important in pregnancy. The fetus needs glucose. And I just don’t want people to be afraid of it. I do want people to avoid processed foods, where I think sugar, trans fats, additives, stabilizers, are really a big problem. But I would never give somebody a hard time for having a few pieces of fruit every day.

Cassy Joy: Yep. How about the equivalent of two pomegranates a day? {laughing} That’s the stage I’m in.

Liz Wolfe: {laughs} Two PAD; two pomegranates a day. I like it. I think it’s totally fine.

Cassy Joy: That’s my personal game. Well that’s wonderful. And springing this question on you. But does nutrition; do our nutritional needs vary from trimester to trimester?

Liz Wolfe: They do. I wouldn’t say; a daily mixed diet just tends to vary in a way that supplies those needs, I think, fairly well. So I think it’s not something I love for people to micromanage. Especially if they’re already getting some DHA from sardines or salmon and fish oil if you take it, that type of thing.

So yes, they do vary. Probably not to the degree you need to micromanage it.

Cassy Joy: Ok. So what are some big missed opportunities that you would think, looking back on. Pregnancy in general and the approach that folks have?

Liz Wolfe: I feel like I jotted down a different response. But I feel like I’m going to just hammer this in again. Missed opportunities is giving yourself a little bit of freedom within a healthy context when you’re pregnant. Again, I think people get so obsessed with eating a certain way based on; I don’t want to say dogma. But certain criterion that people like me put out. As kind of a good baseline.

And they’re so worried about; I ate my two eggs and spinach for breakfast and I ate my salad for lunch and I ate my sweet potato and chicken for dinner. When really; a dish of ice cream would add a little bit of good, healthy fat. Some good carbs there. And some much needed pleasure to the equation. So I think getting a little too strict and a little too worried in pregnancy is probably a really big missed opportunity, quite frankly. Above, maybe most of the others that I could talk about. And the holistic community is pretty dialed into the baseline. What needs to be maintained for general health. And I think in pregnancy; have a little bit of fun. Just don’t eat any trans fats. {laughs}

Cassy Joy: {laughs} Don’t eat the trans fats.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Cassy Joy: I love that. I don’t think she coined the term, but Brianna Battles. I think I might have sent her your way at one point in time.

Liz Wolfe: Yes. You did.

Cassy Joy: I don’t think she coined the term, but she says it often. Is that pregnancy is temporary, and postpartum is forever.

Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Cassy Joy: And I love that, when it comes to the approach of nutrition, preparing our bodies, giving our bodies grace for what they’re going through. I’ve spoken to a couple of women via a reverse interview for the podcast that had come on in that first trimester phase specifically. Where they body is starting to change. And if this is your first pregnancy, it’s the first time your body has changed. And let’s say you’ve been following this real food, mixed fitness program. You’ve really felt like you’ve dialed it in. Dialed in what your body needs in order to feel and thrive your best.

And then all of a sudden, your body starts to change in those first couple of months before you have a noticeable baby bell. And it’s a total mindset. It just turns it upside down in terms of you want to troubleshoot it. Am I doing something wrong? Because my hips are growing but my belly is not.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah!

Cassy Joy: It feeds negative body image issues, and all this kind of stuff. I want to reiterate it in today’s show; that you’re definitely not alone, I think, in going through that. But something to touch on Liz’s point is just to remember that it’s ok to break the chains of this dietary perfectionism going into pregnancy, as that’s mirrored by our changing bodies. We need to evolve. As the chemistry on almost every level has changed.

Liz Wolfe: Yes. 100%. The Beatles song; is it Beatles? Let it be.

Cassy Joy: Yes.

Liz Wolfe: You’ve just got to let it be.

Cassy Joy: Mm-hmm. I love it. Let it be. And then, all of a sudden, the baby belly will pop out and you’ll remember why your body is changing. {laughing}

Liz Wolfe: Yeah! Yeah.

Cassy Joy: But yeah, I love that. That’s wonderful. 4

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Cassy Joy: And this is a question that I get a lot, as well. And I would love it if you could share some thoughts on it. But how much does weight gain really matter? That seems to be something that a lot of women fixate on. I’ve actually been really careful about not sharing that information. Because I don’t think it’s relevant as far as what my experience has been and what other women will go through.

Maybe in hindsight I can go back and share if I find a way to wrap my mind around it in a really positive way. Not that I’ve struggled with it. I also don’t want to share what my deadlift max was, you know, a couple of years ago. Because I don’t want people thinking that’s by any measure of a standard. If that makes sense.

Liz Wolfe: Comparison. Yeah.

Cassy Joy: Yeah, exactly. So how much does weight gain really matter through pregnancy? You go to the doctor; women are taking off their shoes. Hopping on the scale. And concerned.

Liz Wolfe: So there’s definitely a subset of women who gain an unhealthy amount of weight. And there’s something medical going on there. There’s some kind of underlying medical thing that does need to be addressed. Just because of certain risk factors that we know are present.

Now, what’s unfortunate is that we’ve applied this kind of standard to everyone. It’s kind of like a BMI. Where it’s like; oh, if you’re this BMI you are overweight. Well, what if I’m; I don’t know. There are a million different things that could be going on there. And then many people are perfectly healthy, and have a BMI that’s off of the scale.

The unfortunate thing is, women come in and just based on a number on the scale, and a trajectory of weight gain, they’re kind of put in this category of at risk when truly they’re not. And at the same time, there are other women who worry only about weight gain, as if it’s some kind of measure of how healthy they are. In, I guess the context of not wanting to gain weight. So, oh gosh, I gained more than this many. Without even thinking about; how healthy am I right now?

I tend to think, as long as you’re feeling pretty good. As good as you can feel as a pregnant person. Some people feel better than others. As long as you’re feeling ok. And you’re eating enough. And there’s no swelling, and everything looks great with the baby, etc., etc. I think a watch and wait strategy is perfectly appropriate. I don’t want people to get too afraid. I want people to kind of keep their eye on the prize.

Which is low stress, good sleep, eating as best you can and treating where appropriate with healthy type treats. I don’t want to say paleo friendly treats, but you know what I mean. You can compare two labels on ice cream cartons and see which one has three ingredients and which one has 55, and they’re mostly stabilizers and guar gum.

So yeah. It’s difficult to answer that question definitively. I don’t want to say I wouldn’t worry about it. I don’t want to say I would. But I do want people to feel comfortable in their own innate body wisdom if they are told by a practitioner that there’s a problem. Because often there’s not. Being as un-prescriptive as I possibly can there.

Cassy Joy: {laughs} You did a good job.

Liz Wolfe: And I think the body often kind of accumulates what it needs to accumulate. I think some people need to gain more weight than somebody else. Where you start is not an indicator of where you should be when you get pregnant. You know what I mean? A lot of women get pregnant, maybe they’re 20 pounds under weight. And their trajectory looks different than if they had been at their healthiest weight before getting pregnant. So there are a lot of different factors to consider. And hopefully folks have practitioners that are understanding, and are willing to have these conversations.

Cassy Joy: That’s great. That’s really wonderful. And keep looking. If you aren’t finding a practitioner; I just want to touch on that. That’s really helping to offer good perspective and answering the questions that you’re actually asking. I would keep your ear to the ground. Keep asking for references. Try to find somebody. They’re out there. I just kind of want to reassure folks.

Ok. So this next question is one of the last ones, and I’m really curious. Every time I had a new decision to make with regard to the pregnancy, I wanted to invite Liz on the podcast. {laughing} And be like; “Today’s episode is all about the blood glucose test.” {laughing} Because I wanted to hear Liz’s thoughts on it.

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Cassy Joy: But what I have learned; we are now 4 weeks away from baby girl’s due date. And I have been through; there’s no substitute for doing your own research. There really isn’t. And there’s no substitute for going through it, and understanding that you don’t know what you don’t know and that’s ok. You will be able to research it. You’re going to trust your instinct. And you’re going to find answers that are applicable to you and your family. There is a sea of decisions to make with pregnancy; and then even more, now that we’ve chosen the pediatrician and we’re brainstorming what kind of care we want for our little nugget, once she’s here. There are so many decisions to make once the babies are here.

Do you have any sort of advice for folks who are looking to navigate those decisions gracefully? What kind of a birth do I want to have? Do I want to use pain medication? What are the right answer? Like I said, there’s no substitute for doing your own research and making your own decisions. And, that being said, sometimes you just want to know that here is a path of some common thoughts and some folks who maybe identify with the way that we approach our life in other ways. Does that make any sense? Did I talk in circle?

Liz Wolfe: No; yeah, no it does. And one of the things that we wanted to do with Baby Making and Beyond is not; yeah, we come from the evolutionary fitness and wellness community where we have an eye toward evolutionary biology. How we evolved to eat and move and birth. But we didn’t want to serve up this platter of; give birth in the forest. You know what I mean? We want to give people the best ways to optimize every different path they could choose.

So if you want a hospital birth with an epidural, these are some optimization practices. If you want a home birth, here are some things you probably want to keep in mind. We support all different paths. And I think a problem that I faced when I was pregnant, is that I felt like I should want, as someone who follows a lot of evolutionarily minded people who are geniuses, watching what they were doing. I felt; I should want an unmedicated home birth, right? An unmedicated birth with a midwife.

Because I have found; this is really interesting to me. I have found that midwives are often the ones practicing the most evidence-based care. Because they’re focus can be on evidence-based care. Where as a lot of OBs are kind of; I don’t want to say stuck in a bureaucracy. But they are beholden to hospital administrators and hospital policy. So I’ve found that it’s almost easier to find a midwife that’s practicing evidence-based care; they’re usually backed by amazing OBs who endorse their means of conducting their practice. It’s easier to find that than it is to do it the opposite way and just vet every OB in town. But that’s just here. That’s just where I live in Kansas City. There are many, many OBs that practice evidence-based care all over the country. You just have to ask the right questions. So I went on a tangent there.

The point is, there are many ways to do this. And my challenge was thinking I should do it a certain way because I am part of a certain community. And when in my heart, and later on my body, were both telling me different things. So unfortunately, I think because of the sense that I had adopted from the community that I am in professionally, I felt wrong about the idea of a hospital birth. And I learned through the process of birthing my daughter, that the hospital is a very safe place to give birth. You can feel safe there. It’s ok to feel safest in a hospital. It’s ok to feel safest with an epidural.

However, you want to birth, it needs to be where you feel safest. Not what somebody in your community thinks you should do. Or what somebody else tells you is the most evidence-based way to do it. You look at all your options; you evaluate what’s going to make you feel most safe. And then you make adjustments as needed.

So you find an OB that will do the hospital birth because that’s where you feel the most safe. But that OB; him or herself doesn’t make you feel safe. Then you switch OBs. You know what I’m saying? You have to make little adjustments along the way to get to that feeling of safety. But at the same time, you also have to be willing to flex.

So, you have to be willing to plan or be open to whatever path this takes you on, while being ready to set aside fear. Sometimes for the sake of expediency; because sometimes your deep in labor and you find out the plans have to change. Other times just for the sake of your own damn cortisol release. You have to just be willing to say; I know there might be fear along the way. And I’m going to sit with it and move through it. Instead of try and run from it, try and deny it, and then it gets stronger. So now I’m rambling a little bit.

Cassy Joy: I love it. I think it’s a great topic. I like it because it’s very appropriate to exactly where I’m at right now. Considering hospital wishes. And I think I may have shared this with you before. But when it comes to a “birth plan”; I’ve been asked by a lot of folks if I’m going to share my birth plan on the blog. And the truth of the matter is; this is going to sound kind of ugly, and I’ll clarify. But I don’t really have one. I consider it more birth wishes.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah.

Cassy Joy: Right? These are some things that would be nice. And at the same time, I’ve said a couple of times, we don’t know what we don’t know. I’ve never been through this. My body hasn’t been through this. I fully trust and believe in my body’s ability, right? But there’s a lot we don’t know. So just kind of hitting the balls that are thrown at us.

But anyway. It’s interesting because approaching it from that perspective, in a lot of ways. Because even though there’s more question marks in my “approach”; it actually relieves a lot of stress. Because it gives me the opportunity to say; it’s ok. Whatever.

Liz Wolfe: Well that’s true openheartedness. My feeling was always, “I have to have everything spelled out. I have to do it this way. And everybody…” I came at this at the beginning from really a place of fear and I didn’t even realize it. I felt like the big birth system is against me, and I have to have everything spelled out, and everything’s got to go this way or it’s not going to be ok. And at the same time I’m thinking; if I do plan really, really stringently then everything will go the way I’ve decided it should go.

And the reality is, we’re organisms. We’re not machines. Things change. People around us change. And being truly open-hearted in the birth process, I think, is really about having an idea of the way you want it to go, but not being so attached to it that you become brittle and unable to bend.

Cassy Joy: I love that. That’s beautifully put. And when it comes to other decisions that you’ll make; they increase in complexity and in significance through the pregnancy. Right? You start off making a decision about; I can’t even remember what some of the initial decisions were {laughing}.

Liz Wolfe: Me neither.

Cassy Joy: Certain blood tests that you can have at the very beginning. At certain ages and weeks ultrasounds. Are you opting for these ultrasounds that are recommended? Those kind of relatively minor decisions, right? That might have indirect implications on your health, and whatever.

And then they increase in directness, I guess, in terms of implications on health. And I think it equips us to build that muscle over those 40 weeks to really be prepared to approach these decisions with more grace, if you go into it with that perspective of knowing that it’s a muscle you have to build.

Liz Wolfe: Yes. These are new muscles. {laughs} And we are slowly building them and utilizing them, absolutely. I love this analogy.

Cassy Joy: Yeah. And we’re definitely not there. Like I said, we’re thinking about what kind of care we want for our daughter; medical care. And we have to make all kinds of decisions with regard to that. And that’s a very direct implication.

So I love that. Giving yourself grace. Do your research. Follow with what resonates with you, because that’s going to be different. And this is a little woo-woo. {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: I love that. You know I do!

Cassy Joy: I do. I know you do. But my personal inclination is I’m inclined to believe that you are given a set of instincts that, by some kind of magic, matches a lot of unknown needs about you and about your baby. So it’s ok, in a lot of ways, to just trust your gut. Do your best research. Get all that information that you feel like you really need. Exhaust those resources. And at the end of the day, do what feels right by you.

Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm.

Cassy Joy: By head and heart. So I think that’s wonderful. Speaking of resources, what resources out there do you recommend? Aside from Baby Making and Beyond, when it’s available. Which, like I said in the last one, I’ll shout it from all the rooftops and send out smoke signals, carrier pigeons.

Liz Wolfe: {laughing}

Cassy Joy: Everybody is getting something.

Liz Wolfe: Ravens.

Cassy Joy: Ravens. Exactly. What other resources are out there that you’ve really come to trust?

Liz Wolfe: I really like Mama Natural’s stuff. She skews very holistic and kind of crunchy. But I still think her suite of resources is a really good counterpoint, if not even counterpart, to a lot of what’s already there and being packaged up and given to us in the mainstream. So I don’t think it would surprise anyone to say I’m not a huge fan of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. The whole thing isn’t garbage, but it is what it is.

But I think her perspective plus that perspective is really good; you can learn from both and fall somewhere in the middle. Or wherever is appropriate for you. Whatever makes you feel safest and most secure in your journey. But I really feel like, honestly, that Baby Making and Beyond is going to be that thing that kind of brings it all together. That’s why I’m doing it. Because I didn’t find it anywhere when I was pregnant, or thinking about having a baby. So I want everybody to know the ways to optimize their decisions, no matter what those decisions are.

Cassy Joy: Oh my gosh, that’s so exciting!

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Cassy Joy: I cannot wait. Oh man. It’s definitely needed, and I can’t wait to see it. I know how much love and care you’ve put into it. We joked a little bit that it’s three years into working on it, but that’s because Liz has not approached it as a fleeting task. {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. No stone unturned. I didn’t want to just; “Hey, this is what all of the other people in the community are saying. Let me put it all in one place.” I wanted to really understand everything for myself. And have scientists and women with me on the journey, to put it together. So I just don’t think there’s anything else like it out there.

Cassy Joy: I can’t wait. Remind folks where they can find you and all of your work. And how they can get on the list to hear first about Baby Making and Beyond.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. So I’m most active on Instagram. Real Food Liz on Instagram; you can find me there. I do try and reply to messages. I get a lot of them, so sometimes it takes a couple of days. But that’s a good place to find me. And you can sign up for updates on Baby Making and Beyond at BabyMakingandBeyond.com. We will hopefully do a beta release, and I think we’ll include folks from that mailing list in the beta release. So it’s a good place to sign up.

Cassy Joy: Ooh, that’s so exciting. Will be on that list. Diving in and I’ll have a baby.

Liz Wolfe: So when are we going to talk about parenthood? That’s what I want to talk about.

Cassy Joy: Oh my gosh. Next episode.

Liz Wolfe: Ok. Perfect.

Cassy Joy: {laughs} Part three. I’ll let you sleep between now and then though. {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: Sounds good, yeah. I’ve got to get my mind back. I’ve used all my neurons for the day.

Cassy Joy: 4:30 p.m. I think both of us are at. I think decision fatigue has officially set in where I’m at.

Liz Wolfe: Yep.

Cassy Joy: Liz. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your words of wisdom and thoughts and some of your research.

Liz Wolfe: Thank you.

Cassy Joy: I really appreciate it. I know it’s really valuable. And I trust recommending folks to you. You guys ask me a lot where can I go to find information. Liz is definitely my go-to. So reach out to her, lean on her guides, and definitely dive into Baby Making and Beyond when it’s available. As always, I will include links to everything discussed. So Liz, on Instagram. And then of course Baby Making and Beyond website where you can go and get signed up on the waiting list and hear first about the beta release.

Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Liz.

Liz Wolfe: Thank you, my dear!

Cassy Joy: It’s been a lot of fun. Everybody else. As always, you can find a full transcript of today’s show over at www.FedandFit.com. And we will be back again next week.



About the Author

Cassy Joy Garcia, NC

Cassy Joy Garcia, a New York Times best-selling author, of Cook Once Dinner Fix, Cook Once Eat All Week, and Fed and Fit as well as the creative force behind the popular food blog Fed & Fit.


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