How long before attempt should we adhere to the HE diet?

I tried searching for this but I haven't found an answer yet. I see people do the diet for 12 weeks, some for 8 and some even 2-4 weeks. One of the studies cited on this forum as far as maternal diet says that the mothers who bore baby boys were on a high energy diet for a year or so before conception.

Atomic, what is your recommendation? When I ask a person to make a dietary change, I always recommend at least 12 weeks for them to be able to see physical changes, so I'm inclined towards the 12 week mark on this as well, however, the HE diet is very dense and I worry about gains and all that although I"m sticking to 2000-2200 cals per day, and I typically have a 1000 calorie deficit, sometimes a bit less.

Would 8 weeks be sufficient? I've been on a keto diet for a long time, and I've upped my carbs to come out of ketosis for the HE diet although I'm still sticking to low carb with a close eye on sodium, potassium and B vits.

Looking forward to your input!

TIA!

-Nusaybah

I was on HE diet for 3 months when I conceived my DS , now I'm doing it again , 3 months till my attempt [emoji2]


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Funny, after I posted this I got suggestions for other posts asking the same question :D However, that was in 2011/2012. I have a follow up question also, How long do we stay on HE after conception? Apparently, early pregnancy is also important.

Business Woman, 3 months is a good amount of time, do you make an attempt right at the 3 month mark? I may end up doing the same, but it is quite a bit of calories and I was attempting to lose some weight before hand, however, I need to move forward with this as we would prefer to be pg in a certain time frame.

decisions decisions...

I did it for 3 cycles , my attempt was on the 4th :)


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I was going to try to be on HE for 3 months, we had trouble conceiving though so it ended up being 10 months. We got our little man in the end so in my opinion the longer the better. I did put on weight, but totally worth it, and easily lost it after he was born.

It depends on what you were eating to start with and how skilled you are about sticking with it without gaining weight.

We have seen a better success rate for PINK with 12 weeks +. This did not seem to translate to blue swayers, with good results occuring for several consecutive years with more like 6-8. Last year, however, we had a bad run of luck and because of this, I have decided to try to get more blue swayers on diet for more like 12 from here on in. (I still prefer 6 though, please see explanation below)

IF you are already eating a blue-friendly diet overall, then you are good to go sooner than someone who is eating more of a pink-friendly diet (no breakfast, candy and diet coke for lunch, and salad/pasta dinner which is what I see again and again with my blue swayers)

My main concern with the 12 weeks on HE is the weight gain. I take this VERY seriously because not only is it not great for health and healthy pregnancy, it also has led to quite a few people giving up on diet and going on to have opposites, and I also believe that the people who rapidly put on 15-30 lbs also have more opposites. Remember, you guys, you may not get pregnant the first month or two or three and then you're on diet way more than 12 weeks anyway.

So - that was a long winded way of saying that it's my preference for everyone to diet for at least 6 weeks, 12 may be better but it comes with a lot of risks to excess weight gain and also the risk of people getting frustrated and giving up.

Best compromise is to start making some blue-friendly changes long in advance without upping cals, and reserve the cal increase till closer before sway. And don't forget to exercise!

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Originally Posted by Cinss

I was going to try to be on HE for 3 months, we had trouble conceiving though so it ended up being 10 months. We got our little man in the end so in my opinion the longer the better. I did put on weight, but totally worth it, and easily lost it after he was born.

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Thanks Cinss!!

I'll take this opportunity to point out that we have seen a strong trend with the blue swayers where they take a long time to get pregnant for no apparent reason - they're doing everything to get pregnant and boost fertility, and yet they still find it takes 6-9 months or more to get pregnant. I do not think this is from swaying, it may be partly the reason why they had girls to begin with. So this is another reason why not to do the diet too far in advance - because blue swayers, you may take longer than you think you will to get pregnant.

You don't have to stay on full HE in early pregnancy, it's ok to start to normalize, but what I see happening again and again is that some of the blue swayers hatch a plan where they're like "Ok I'll gain 50 lbs when I'm swaying, and then I'll go on a crash diet while I'm pregnant and lose it all in the first tri!" NO!!! Don't do that. Gain a small amount of weight when swaying if that, even, and then try to eat sensibly when pregnant just like you would do with any pregnancy. :)

No dieting when pregnant after a blue sway.

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Originally Posted by atomic sagebrush

Thanks Cinss!!

I'll take this opportunity to point out that we have seen a strong trend with the blue swayers where they take a long time to get pregnant for no apparent reason - they're doing everything to get pregnant and boost fertility, and yet they still find it takes 6-9 months or more to get pregnant. I do not think this is from swaying, it may be partly the reason why they had girls to begin with. So this is another reason why not to do the diet too far in advance - because blue swayers, you may take longer than you think you will to get pregnant.

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This is very interesting. What do you mean by " it may be partly the reason why they had girls to begin with."?

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Originally Posted by atomic sagebrush

You don't have to stay on full HE in early pregnancy, it's ok to start to normalize, but what I see happening again and again is that some of the blue swayers hatch a plan where they're like "Ok I'll gain 50 lbs when I'm swaying, and then I'll go on a crash diet while I'm pregnant and lose it all in the first tri!" NO!!! Don't do that. Gain a small amount of weight when swaying if that, even, and then try to eat sensibly when pregnant just like you would do with any pregnancy. :)

No dieting when pregnant after a blue sway.

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I personally just want to eat like I was before, ie: just 3 meals per day, with my first just being fat. Do the crash dieters miscarry or run into complications?

What I've come to understand, and I could be wrong, is that the males require more caloric intake and the mother should be eating enough to maintain the embryo. I also know that the hcg hormone makes it easy for the body to use fat stores as an energy source to sustain a pregnancy, hence,its why women in countries with little to eat birth normal weight babies. the fetus pretty much leaches everything form the mother's body. There's science behind that. So, I suppose going back to previous diet (if its healthy that is) should be okay, but as you said, no crash dieting. It would be too much of a drastic change and could send the body into panic mode.

Thank you for all of your time Atomic! :)

a) I believe that it's fertility as a whole that sways (meaning, the ability of sperm to meet egg). So couples that may take longer to get pregnant on average may be coming into swaying more "set" for girls. Since everything in the blue sways is designed to boost odds of conception, when a couple goes on and on without getting pregnant for seemingly no reason, this indicates to me that they may have reduced fertility. Additionally, many of my blue swayers have long histories of having trouble conceiving for unexplained reasons (not all, just many) or for male factor infertility. This all leads me to believe that couples who have a hard time getting pregnant are probably more likely to conceive girls (this is one of those things I'd love to study in the population as a whole)

2)I don't wait around for people to have miscarriages and issues with pregnancy to make recommendations. I just use what I feel is good sense and science that if you're eating a lot, and get pregnant and suddenly starve yourself, that can never be a good idea, especially when pregnant with a boy since we know they need more calories from moment of conception on (they've tested this in IVF embryos and XY fertilized eggs, even, use more glucose from a glucose solution than XX do) . Just makes sense to me. :)

a) I find this really, really interesting as a mom of three girls and one lost boy. When we conceived our son, it took seven months of trying, which was really surprising to us after the first two girls were conceived within three months each. This third one (where I was trying to sway blue less than six months after the birth and loss of my son) worked on the first try. I had just assumed that the changes I had made to attempt to be blue had improved my fertility and made it possible to conceive so quickly, but maybe there is more to it, as you say. I know that we have a number of strong pink factors working against us (especially from my husband), but perhaps reduced fertility is part of it as well.