Cassie- Alright, so your expensive prenatal vitamin or maybe your less expensive prenatal vitamin is not going to be the thing that's going to save your pregnancy. It is helpful as a cushion, but it is not necessarily what's going to save your pregnancy, what's going to make sure you have that healthy pregnancy are looking for.
Cassie- And if you believe that, that's totally okay. We are led to believe by supplement companies, by our doctors, by whoever that the supplement is the only thing that you need to change with your pregnancy. And while that supplement is really protective and helpful, it's only just that cushion. And we have been told by multiple moms that when they go to their doctor's office, the only thing that they told them to change was to take a prenatal vitamin. It has, it has higher amounts compared to taking, for example, a regular daily women's multivitamin. It has higher levels of the certain nutrients that you need during your pregnancy, more so than when you're not pregnant, which is important, but we call it a supplement for a reason. Supplements are supplemental they are not meant to be the whole package, they're not meant to be your whole meal. So we know that they're not as effective necessarily, they're helpful, but they're the cushion I just keep repeating that, but that is just the case.
Cassie- We need to look at our food first. Our vitamins and our minerals are more bioavailable in food in that natural state than in supplements. Sometimes the vitamins used is in a form that enables the company to easily add that vitamin into the supplement compared to the food form of it but it may not necessarily be the most absorbable form, the most bioavailable for your body.
Cassie- I mean there's so many different forms of vitamins you can go to the store and you can find vitamin D3 And there's vitamin D2. And you have your folic acid versus like folate, there's just so many different versions, but the one that comes from food is the most bioavailable, the one that our bodies can take in more readily. For example, if you have 50 milligrams of, you know, XYZ vitamin, but your food has 25 milligrams of XYZ vitamin, but your body only absorbs maybe 10 milligrams of that supplement, which one is actually better?
Cassie- So those are just things to think about and things that you don't hear about from supplement companies. Things they don't talk about, our doctors don't necessarily talk about either. But what we're missing is that diet aspect so Mikayla, do you want to talk a little bit more about that, tell us a little bit more from your perspective, what this looks like, and maybe some ways that we can work on getting those nutrients from our diet?
Mikayla- Yeah, so I'm so glad that you brought that up, exactly how you brought that up, because we are so trained to only take the prenatal vitamins. You only take the prenatal vitamin and thats it, thats all we talk about instead of taking the food first approach in our pregnancy, which is so important like Cassie said for the bioavailability, making sure that our bodies are able to digest these vitamins and minerals, fully so that you can have a higher chance of having a healthy pregnancy, birth and postpartum. And what Western medicine usually fails to tell women is that if we really put our diet first we really can reduce risks of pregnancy complications that is so huge and nobody knows it.
Mikayla- Like seriously, autoimmune women, this can change the game for you, but you need to take it seriously, you need to take it seriously. And also for your health in the future. Anyway, how can you put food first in your pregnancy diet? So we have quick tips that you can take away right now, we have three tips. One, make sure there are at least three colors on your plate for every meal. So this is something that we tell our clients all right this is some high touch coaching right here.
Mikayla- But three colors per plate, which often ensure that we have a vegetable. Something green or even red colored, and then we have our protein, and then we have our carbohydrate which usually equals three colors on our plate. So, that is a great great goal to make sure that we have all crucial nutrients to make sure that we're doing everything in our power to have healthy and healthy mom, baby 12 months down the road. Cassie do you want to add to that one?
Cassie- Yeah, so I think we get kind of caught up on like green leafy vegetables sometimes is the only vegetable there is, but there's so many out there that all have their own set of nutrients and they all have their own role. So it's almost like you're taking a little like vitamin itself, like "okay I got my greens in today, I got my reds in today" because we have our tomatoes and peppers you got your orange-yellow vegetables, got your purple vegetables purple blue, you can, you can get some purple and like your purple cabbage or like blueberries, all of that. Exactly. So getting in those nutrients from your fruits and vegetables will help you to create that variety which is going to help you overall, have all of these different nutrients that are in your prenatal vitamin in your foods. And we're not saying to cut out that prenatal because that's there for a reason. But, you know, again it is the supplemental factor, it is there to help, to cushion, whereas all of our other foods are what's going to really help to create that health during pregnancy. Okay, go for Mikayla.
Mikayla- Alright, so the second one is when making your meals use as many "real food" as possible. And I do that in quotations because all foods are real, they aren't artificial or fake or whatever. However, we really like to stick to shopping around the grocery store.
Cassie- Oh yeah perimeter shopping
Mikayla- Yeah, so if you thing about the grocery store, oftentimes in the middle there is a lot more processed foods, which every once in a while is okay, we're not the processed food police that's not what we are. Lets make a plate, shall we, a dinner plate. So we have a side salad right? The salad is made from vegetables in the produce section right? And then our protein is probably in the back and our grains are usually around the corner, I don't know, that's how I see grocery stores. So you see that it's these foods that don't have a ton in the ingredient list so the longer the ingredient list is more processed it is, that is simply a fact. So we really want to try to incorporate more whole foods. You know we have sweet potato and thats that you make a sweet potato. What's the ingredient in that? Sweet potato. So this is a really really great way to make sure that we're, we're getting the most nutrient-dense form of the food that we can. So when I say nutrient-dense it has the most amount of vitamins and helpful things for our body to have a healthy pregnancy. Cassie you want to add to that?
Cassie- Yeah, I like that image of the perimeter shopping, the further in you go into the aisles, there's more of those processed foods. And processed foods aren't bad, and there are certain things that you do have to find in those aisles, like if you just want to get a bag of rice, they're usually within the aisles. But if you do shop around the outside and kind of pop in where you need, that's really going to help to reduce the amount of processed foods in your cart you know because you can get to that point of saying, okay, so having veggie chips would be really awesome, but maybe we just go and get some veggies from the produce section, let's get our dairy products from the outside, most of these less processed foods are on that outside versus in not in the aisles and, again, we're not the food police we're not going to tell you you can't eat processed foods, but we are looking for those whole foods, those that's where they'll be so it's just a little tip to get you there.
Mikayla- Alright, last one is of course: Ask for help from experts. Okay, there's a reason why Mamas Maternal Health exists, there's a reason why other maternal coaching, consulting companies exist is because women need help! Alright, we all need help, Cassie and I need so much with so many different things. If you want to know all the things that Cassie and I need help with DM us, right? But everyone needs help. And this is huge transformation that you're going through, becoming a mom and like that transformation that your body's going through your body is literally morphing changing like creating another human being. So asking for help from experts, not your BFF from next door, not your neighbor, not your mom. You CAN ask all these people, take it with a grain of salt. Okay, then we really want to trust the experts here, because, personal stories are okay, but they tend to be horror stories, or like massive amounts of information that does not concern you and therefore leads to the sense of anxiety and overwhelm. So ask for help from experts. And it doesn't have ot be us okay this doesn't have to be a sales moment we just want you to be in good hands. We want you to have the healthiest pregnancy possible.
Cassie- Yeah loved how you said, like, the massive amount of information that may not be related to your pregnancy. Because if it's, anecdotal, if it's something that they've experienced, that might be something that you may experience but you might not experience anything that they've gone through. We talked about last week, your pregnancy your autoimmune pregnancy is completely different than anyone else's autoimmune pregnancy, you know, yours is going to go a different course, you are going to have different reactions to things you're going to have a different pregnancy and so having that individualized support and help from experts is going to make so much more of a difference.
Mikayla- Yes. To conclude, if you rely on a prenatal vitamin for your crucial vitamins and minerals. The fact of the matter is that you may have a higher risk for pregnancy complications. Again, if you are focusing on that vitamin I mean we see in Facebook groups all the time like what's the most common post it's like, "is this going to be okay, this is vitamin okay?" and when do we see "is this cucumber okay?". It's important to start with, I said it again I'm going to finish with it. The food must come first because thats where we're going to get the highest bioavailability aka our body's actually taken the vitamin. Whereas that vitamin is a safety net and it should not be treated as anything but a safety net. So again, if we use only a prenatal vitamin and thats the only thing we're concerned about, we may have a higher risk of pregnancy complications and of course that's what we want to avoid. But Healthy Autoimmune Pregnancy Protocol is 100% a food-based approach to a healthy pregnancy, birth, postpartum, breastfeeding experience to help you get there. So if you're looking for food first approach, definitely check out the Healthy Automatic Pregnancy Protocol, we'll have it linked in the comments below. We are looking for clients to fill our roster right now, they're going to go by super fast, but we know that it is going to be filled with women who are just super serious about putting their nutrition lifestyle first, but of course in this Live we're speaking about nutrition 100%, so Cassie do you have anything to add?.
Cassie- No, I think that's it, so if you enjoyed this let us know! If you have questions about prenatal AND and OR questions about how to have this healthy pregnancy with food first. DM us and let us know. We'd love to, help you figure out what this looks like for you on an individual basis.
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Mamas Maternal Health, LLC
Recording through Zoom
Transcription by otter.ai