Alisa Vitti

However, studies show that vacations just happen to be the best time to make lasting changes in your life. The reason: when you’re in an unfamiliar environment, your brain is primed for forming the neural pathways that are associated with imprinting new behaviors. As you go about your everyday life at home, your brain functions on autopilot nearly all the time. (This explains why you’re able to multitask a dozen different activities at once—you barely have to think!) And since autopilot is your default setting, your brain may find it difficult to learn new tricks. However, when you’re on vacation, your brain is constantly being flooded with new experiences and new surroundings, and it adapts to them by forming new neural pathways.

You can take advantage of this process by deliberately throwing new behaviors into the mix.

• Choose alcohol with a lower glycemic load—sake, champagne, red wine and then white wine are your best choices. Avoid hard alcohol, mixed drinks, and beer.

We put so much energy into trying not to get pregnant for so long that we believe conception will happen quickly and effortlessly when we decide that the time is right.

Eating the WomanCode way, detoxifying your home, choosing organic and free-range foods, and increasing outlets for creativity, pleasure, and rest should be your exclusive focus.

• incorporating sprouted and fermented foods during the follicular phase to deliver as many bioavailable nutrients as possible to the ovary

• consuming the majority of your fruits and vegetables raw during ovulation to up egg-boosting glutathione levels

• eating liver-supportive sweet root vegetables, like sweet potatoes, and leafy greens from the brassica family, like kale, during the luteal phase to make sure you are eliminating estrogen efficiently and keeping an optimal ration of estrogen and progesterone for pregnancy maintenance

• replenish your minerals during your menstrual phase by consuming sea vegetables, avocados, and/or some free-range animal protein to deeply nourish your endocrine system for the next cycle

Another recent study found that curcumin, the active ingredient in the spice turmeric, is a powerful anti-inflammatory.

In one Harvard study, researchers found that women having IVF who consumed the most saturated fats (primarily found in animal sources such as red meat) had fewer mature oocytes (cells that form eggs), which reduced their likelihood of successful infertility treatment.