By Naturopath, Danielle Critchell 

In my fertility consultations, I often find myself coaching women on how they are eating, not just what they are eating. Sometimes I describe this as “eating for your feminine energy” which basically means eating in a way that signals safety to the body and brain, providing consistent nourishment and ultimately, hormonal stability. Hello regular ovulation!

What I am seeing time and again are women who are extremely health conscious, disciplined and well informed, yet their current approach to health and eating is not aligned with their fertility goals. Many of the eating habits that work well for performance, energy, body composition or general wellness can actually place consistent stress on the body - not ideal when trying to conceive.

To explain this, I often contrast two broad patterns of eating. One I describe as more masculine, the other I describe as feminine. These are not rigid categories, and they are not really about gender at all. Instead, they describe two different nutritional patterns that support different physiological states in the body: one supports female reproduction and the stress response (cortisol regulation), and one prioritises energy and survival. Unfortunately so much of our understanding about nutrition is tainted with gender bias, meaning “eating healthy” is not a one size fits all approach. A well known example of this is how fasting doesn’t land the same when compared amongst men and women. It is therefore important that we do not simply paint our fertility goals with the same “eating healthy” brush. 

Below I have outlined these two eating styles, with the hope that you can better identify which will best support your fertility goals. 

Eating for the feminine:

A fertility supportive, “feminine” style of eating generally includes:

• Foods that are warm, slow cooked, soaked and easy to digest, such as broths, soups and stews
• Eating regularly, around every 3 to 4 hours, without skipping meals or fasting
• Meals and snacks that contain fats and carbohydrates alongside protein and vegetables
• Sitting down to eat, taking time, and allowing the body to be in a relaxed state during meals
• Starting the day with food, within an hour or two of waking. 

This way of eating is warming, consistent and nourishing. From a physiological perspective, it helps maintain stable blood sugar, provides adequate energy availability, and supports the hormonal environment needed for ovulation and implantation. Everything about it says “I am safe”, this is the right environment for conception to occur. From an evolutionary standpoint, we are signalling to the body safety, security, shelter, fire, food availability. 

A “Masculine” Pattern of Eating

By contrast, this is a more stress-oriented pattern, it speaks to productivity, muscle building, weight loss and energy production and and often looks like:

• Foods that are cold or raw, such as salads and smoothies, they often require a lot of digestive energy
• Irregular eating, long gaps between meals, skipped meals or fasting, especially delaying the first meal of the day or low calorie days. 
• Meals built mainly around protein and vegetables, with minimal fats and carbohydrates
• Eating quickly, on the go, or while multitasking
• Caloric deficits, meaning the energy in does not match the energy out. 
• Eating larger portions, less often

This approach is not inherently “bad”. It can absolutely be appropriate for women with certain goals and phases of life. However, when it becomes the default pattern, particularly in women trying to conceive, it can contribute to a state of chronic low level stress in the body. Under-fuelling, frequent fasting, low fat diets and high energy requirements can all signal to the body that resources are limited, even if overall food quality is excellent. To the body it is signalling that food is not in abundance, it is taking a lot of energy to digest and…. it is not safe to conceive.

Fertility needs more than “healthy" eating:

This is often when things click for women. They may be eating organic food, avoiding processed products and exercising regularly, yet still experiencing irregular cycles, luteal phase issues or difficulty conceiving. After looking at these two obviously different eating styles, they realise that their healthy eating is not supporting their fertility or hormone balance.

Through a fertility lens, I am looking at whether the body is consistently receiving enough energy, enough dietary fat and carbohydrates, and enough nutritional security. Fat and carbohydrates are also essential to the body’s stress response and to the production of hormones. Through a traditional medicine lens, such as in Traditional Chinese Medicine or Ayurvedic approaches, this feminine eating approach is reflected as fertility again requires nourishing foods that bring warmth and nutrition to the womb, increase circulation to the relevant organs, encourage balance and replenish energy. 

It’s mostly about stress signalling

Ovulation is sensitive to the body’s perception of safety. When stress signals are high, whether from psychological stress, intense exercise, insufficient sleep or inadequate nutrition, reproductive hormones can be down-regulated. All of these “stressors” influence the HPA axis, the communication pathway between the brain and the adrenal glands that helps regulate the stress response. When this system is constantly activated, it becomes more difficult to maintain the hormonal conditions required for conception and early pregnancy. The hormone most commonly affected is progesterone, essential for a balanced luteal phase and for implantation to occur effectively. This is why when progesterone is our focus, the first thing I look at is stress. Stress can be reduced in so many ways, however the stress that our eating habits places on our bodies is all too often overlooked. 

A fertility journey can be inherently stressful, so signalling to the body that it is physiologically safe through eating for the feminine energy can be a great way to adjust eating habits. If you’d like to learn more about how I can support your natural fertility health, beyond nutrition, I would LOVE to help you.