5 Ways to De-stress Your Body While TTC

Five Ways to Relax Your Body While Trying to Conceive

So we’ve heard it all before, stress plays a huge negative role in trying to conceive. The gentle reminders of ‘just relax and you’ll become pregnant’ and ‘don’t stress so much, it’s toxic to your body’ can leave us reeling and actually have the opposite effect; leaving us stressing out about stressing out!

But between us TTCers, there is a decent amount of research around stress, health and ovulation, so let's talk about it and more importantly, let's do what we can, when we can about it. 

Here are our resident expert, Allison Martineau of Sweetpea Nutrition's, top 5 ways to help our bodies de-stress:

1) Get adequate sleep.

This is crucial as so often we prioritize everything else in our life but neglect getting sleep. Many of us believe we are one of the lucky ones who can just function on less sleep. Hard truth: you may be able to function but your body can’t, at least not in the long term. Aim for at least 7 hours/night.

2) Identify your triggers to stress.

What causes you the most stress? Can you change any of this? What are your reactions to stressful situations? Can you work to change how you react to these stressors if they are unavoidable aspects of your life? Eliminating stress is not always the answer, as some aspect will always be present, instead figure out ways to deal with your stress may be a more effective strategy. (Like try the Big Chill complimentary guided relaxation.)

3) Consume dark chocolate.

Aim for 75% cocoa content or higher. 1-2 oz daily is a good amount if you enjoy it, as recent studies have shown dark chocolate may help you deal with stress, not only how you perceive it mentally, but also how your body responds to it.

4) Add movement/exercise to your day that makes you feel good.

Exercise reduces levels of the body's stress hormones, while also stimulating the production of endorphins, chemicals in the brain that are the body's natural painkillers and mood elevators.

5) Get a massage or do any self-care activity that relaxes you.

Take time for yourself and focus on what you enjoy. Self-care activities can help you shift your thoughts away from everyday worries, allowing your body and mind to relax.

xo Allison for The Bird and The Bee

Allison Martineau has over 10 years experience working in health and nutrition.  She has a passion for sharing her nutritional strategies with expectant and new families to make cooking and eating for health during the preconception, pregnancy and postpartum periods simple and convenient. Allison runs a nutrition practice called Sweetpea Nutrition in Toronto.  She has a Bachelors of Health Sciences and a Masters in Nutrition and Public Health (BHSc, MSc).