Real Food and Mother-Baby Health: Eating for our Physiologic Design, with Lily Nichols RDN

Like many of our beliefs around pregnancy, birth and mothering, much of what we believe about food is grounded not in evidence or physiology, but in emotion, misinformation and dogma. Today's guest is the brilliant Lily Nichols - Registered Dietitian/Nutritionist, researcher, and author of Real Food for Pregnancy and Real Food for Gestational Diabetes. Lily’s bestselling books have helped tens of thousands of mamas (and babies!), are used in university-level maternal nutrition and midwifery courses, and have even influenced prenatal nutrition policy internationally. Lily's genius is to cut through the emotion and misinformation, and look at the actual research (what we know, and what we don’t know), and then to bring that information to mamas so that we can make informed and evidence-based choices about how we eat. We talk about: How the conventional “wisdom” and standard nutritional advice given to pregnant mamas is completely inadequate (and if you follow it, you'll likely end up with nutritional deficiencies!) What a ‘real food’ approach to perinatal nutrition is, and why it’s optimal for the health of mothers and babies What a real food diet actually looks like during pregnancy (hint: it’s not that complicated, and it’s pretty delicious!) What you need to know if you’re a vegetarian or vegan mama (this is a subject that’s surrounded by a lot of emotion and morality, so we steer clear of morality here and we focus instead on what we know through nutrition research and our physiology as humans, so that you can make informed choices for yourself and your baby). Nutritional requirements in the postpartum period, especially for breastfeeding mamas, and how you can prepare during pregnancy for a nourished, supported postpartum without the depletion and exhaustion that is far too common an experience for mamas. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE: Grab your copy of my free guide, 'The Four Things you Actually Need to Know to Prepare for a Physiologic ("Natural") Birth' Download the first chapter of Lily’s book ‘Real Food for Pregnancy’ for free from her website Read Lily’s blog post about protein requirements in pregnancy here Read about postpartum recovery with real food here, and check out this blog post for 50+ recipes for nutrient-dense meals to stash in your postpartum freezer Read Lily’s blog post about a vegetarian diet in pregnancy here CONNECT WITH LILY On Instagram At her website Until next time - stay wild, mamas! Jess xx Find me on Instagram at @drjessicahodgens www.jessicahodgens.com Intro and outro music: "Bloom", from the album The Jasmani Garden by Deya Dova, with the kind permission of the artist. Cover image by Briony Goodsell. I'm living and mothering on the unceded Country of Dharawal people, and I gratefully acknowledge their ongoing work - and the work of indigenous people everywhere - in the service of thriving life on earth.