What You Eat and How You Think Are Both Shaping Your Fertility

A conversation with Kait Richardson, RD, of Nutrition Awareness

When most people think about fertility, they think mostly just about the medical side. All the appointments involved, cycle tracking and possible treatments. What gets talked about less is the emotional and psychological side underneath it all and how closely the inner experience is tied to the physical. What you eat and how you think are both shaping your fertility.

That’s exactly what registered dietitian Kait Richardson and I got into on her podcast, Nutrition Awareness. Kait works with women on fertility nutrition in Orlando, and we’ve been wanting to have this conversation for a while. We’re often working with the same women, just from very different angles. She’s starting with the body, I’m starting with the mind, and we both see an overlap. If you want to know how what you eat and how you think are both shaping your fertility, keep reading. 

Here’s what came up that I think every woman navigating a fertility journey needs to hear.

The Grief That Doesn’t Get Named

Fertility struggles are a grief experience and that this grief often doesn’t get named as such.

From the outside, a fertility journey can look like a series of medical appointments and logistical steps. From the inside, it’s something else entirely. Every negative pregnancy test, every failed cycle can feel like a loss. There’s the loss of the timeline you expected, the version of yourself you thought you’d be by now, and sometimes the relationships that get strained in the process.

Partners often grieve differently. One person might become intensely focused on fixing the problem. The other might seem emotionally distant. Neither is wrong, but the disconnect can create real strain at exactly the moment when you most need each other.

Naming what you’re going through as grief isn’t giving up. It’s giving yourself permission to actually feel it, which matters both for your mental health and for your body.

The Body Prioritizes Survival Over Reproduction

Your reproductive system is not your body’s top priority. Survival is. When your nervous system is in a chronic stress state, your body reads that as a threat signal. It redirects energy and resources toward basic survival functions. The hormones and processes that support conception get deprioritized. Your body is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

This is why the emotional weight of a long fertility journey isn’t separate from the physical experience. Chronic stress, including the psychological stress of watching every food choice like it determines your future, can affect the very hormones and systems you’re trying to support.

When your body gets consistent signals that you’re safe, nourished, and rested, it becomes more capable of supporting reproductive health. The goal then should be safety, not perfection.

Food Rules Are Rarely About Food

In my conversation with Kait, we talked about the role of control in fertility nutrition.

A lot of women come into Kait’s practice having already cut out gluten, dairy, sugar, seed oils or whatever foods they’re trying to avoid because it feels like doing something. And the drive to do something, anything, when you feel out of control is completely understandable.

Food rules are rarely about food. They’re usually about fear, control, and the desperate need to feel like you have some agency in a process that is largely out of your hands. The cruel irony is that the rigidity itself becomes a source of chronic stress 

which brings us right back to the body’s survival response.

According to Kait, there’s no single evil culprit food that’s causing your infertility. It’s the context of your overall diet that matters. And more than that, it’s whether you’re eating enough. Enough total nourishment, consistently, to signal to your body that it’s safe.

Cutting everything out while running on stress and under-eating is not a fertility diet. It’s actually a threat signal to the body.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

The stories women tell themselves about what their fertility struggles mean about them hold significance.

My body is failing me. I’m broken. I’m not enough.

These beliefs are incredibly common, and they run deep. The longer you tell yourself a story, the truer it starts to feel. And when your sense of worth gets tied to your ability to conceive, you’re putting enormous pressure on something you don’t fully control.

Part of the work I do with clients is helping them see the story, which is often an unconscious one, and then examine it. What’s actually true here? What am I assuming? What would it mean for me if this didn’t go the way I expected?

It’s a really powerful tool for reducing the psychological weight of the journey, which has real downstream effects on the nervous system and the body.

What Actually Helps

Name it as grief. Stop treating this like a logistics problem to solve. It’s a grief experience, and it deserves to be held that way.

Find at least one space where you don’t have to perform. A therapist, a support group, one trusted person who gets it. Isolation makes everything harder.

Separate what you can control from what you can’t. There’s so much in this process that is genuinely outside your control. Put your energy toward the things that are actually helpful, not just the things that feel like doing something.

Build in actual rest. Not “I’ll rest when I’m pregnant.” Now. Your body needs signals of safety now.

Pay attention to what you’re consuming including social media. If your algorithm is feeding you fertility content that makes you feel worse, that’s information. You have the power to change what you’re exposing yourself to.

This is happening to you, not because of you. Infertility is a medical diagnosis. It is not a moral failure. It is not a measure of your worth.

Working Together

If you’re navigating a fertility journey and you’re feeling the emotional weight of it, schedule a consult call with me. 

If you’re not sure where to start, grab my free guide Five Ways Stress Could be Affecting Your Fertility (And What To Do About It).

If the nutrition piece resonated with you, Kait and her team at Nutrition Awareness work with women on fertility nutrition in a really grounded, practical way. You can find them at nutritionawareness.com.