My 35th birthday is this week, and I am so excited for the year ahead.
Thirty-four was a doozy. It was a year of integrating a lot of lessons, being present to a lot of uncomfortable growth, and ultimately trusting the reroutes that I believe move us into deeper alignment with who we are becoming.
I am a big believer that life is always inviting us toward our highest selves—and also, growth can be really fucking uncomfortable sometimes. Both can be true.
So I enter 35 feeling genuinely excited about what is ahead. And because of the work I do, this birthday also feels like an interesting opportunity to bring you a little further inside my world—not only as a functional fertility + hormone dietitian, but as a 35-year-old single woman who would love to have a family someday.
Because the truth is, I hear the concern about age all the time in my practice. The pressure it can put on fertility, relationships, timelines, health decisions, and the feeling that you need to have a plan for a future that hasn’t necessarily revealed itself yet or that you are racing against the clock to grow your family.
There is merit to understanding how fertility changes with age. Our egg quantity naturally declines as we get older, and having an awareness of your individual fertility picture can absolutely help you make more informed decisions about your future.
But age is one variable in a much bigger fertility picture.
And this is where I think the conversation we give women is often far too narrow.
How many eggs you have available is one piece of the puzzle.
The health and quality of those eggs—and the biological environment in which follicles are being recruited, developing, and eventually ovulating—is another incredibly important piece. Your metabolic health, mitochondrial health, nutrient status, inflammation, thyroid function, oxidative stress, gut health, and overall health picture can all influence the reproductive environment we’re working with.
So at 35, I’m not walking around feeling derailed by the fact that I’m single or like I suddenly need to make a fear-based fertility decision.
Not because I don’t understand reproductive aging. I work in this space every day.
It’s because the framework through which I approach fertility has never been rooted in fear.
I believe in options. I believe in data. I believe in education. I believe in understanding the body in front of us and taking empowered action from there.
That is the lens I bring to my clients, and it is the lens I have used to care for my own body and hormones for years.
Where I think our current system often does women a disservice is that we get a lot of tick tock, tick tock and surprisingly little education about this broader picture.
You enter your 30s, you aren’t partnered, and suddenly the conversation becomes: Your biological clock is ticking. Have you thought about freezing your eggs? What’s your AMH? What’s your plan?
But egg quantity isn’t the whole fertility story, AMH isn’t a fertility crystal ball, and egg freezing isn’t the only way to be proactive about your future fertility.
In my practice, I take a 360-degree approach where we fuse data + education + empowered action to understand someone’s individual fertility picture and make decisions from there.
And today I want to bring you inside what that actually looks like for me.
What am I doing at 35, as someone who is single and wants a family in the future, to proactively support my fertility and reproductive health?
A lot, actually.
And freezing my eggs isn’t currently one of them.
So let’s talk about that for a moment.
First of all, I have nothing against egg freezing—or IVF. These are incredible tools, they have helped many of my clients build their families, and I haven’t ruled out freezing my own eggs at some point.
What I am noticing is how gradually our culture has shifted toward egg freezing becoming almost synonymous with being proactive about your fertility in your 30s—especially if you aren’t partnered.
And I think there are a few really important pieces getting lost in that conversation.
For one, freezing your eggs preserves eggs at the age you retrieve them. It doesn’t necessarily address the health of the environment those eggs are developing within before retrieval.
An egg doesn’t simply exist in your ovary waiting for the day you decide to use it. Follicles move through a months-long process of development and maturation before ovulation or retrieval, and the biological environment during that window matters.
This is why in my practice we care about things like metabolic health, mitochondrial function, nutrient status, inflammation, oxidative stress, thyroid health, gut health, and environmental exposures.
This is the same reason I spend so much time with my fertility clients preparing the body before they begin trying to conceive, an egg retrieval, or an embryo transfer.
Because ultimately, we’re not just trying to collect eggs.
We’re trying to support the healthiest possible environment for follicular development, fertilization, embryo development, implantation, and pregnancy.
There is also very little nuanced conversation around what an egg retrieval actually asks of the female body. Ovarian stimulation and retrieval involve significant hormonal intervention, and how someone responds can vary based on their individual health history, ovarian reserve, hormone picture, genetics, and response to stimulation.
That doesn’t make retrieval inherently “bad” for the body—but it does mean I believe it deserves the same individualized, informed approach as any other significant reproductive intervention.
And then there is another piece of the fertility conversation that I feel very strongly about:
We need to stop talking about fertility as though it is exclusively a female problem.
Male factor contributes to a significant percentage of infertility cases, and we have also seen concerning declines in sperm concentration and total sperm counts globally over the last several decades. I can personally attest to how frequently male-factor fertility barriers show up in my practice.
This matters in the egg-freezing conversation, too.
You can freeze a certain number of eggs at 32, 35, or 38 and feel reassured that you’ve created an insurance policy for your future. But those eggs eventually need to survive thaw, fertilize, develop into embryos, and—hopefully—result in a healthy pregnancy. The health of the sperm they eventually meet matters tremendously in that equation.
I have watched couples reach the embryo stage expecting a very different outcome based on the number of eggs they had available, only to discover that egg quantity was never the whole story.
Again, none of this is an argument against freezing your eggs.
It is an argument for making the conversation bigger.
For me, proactive fertility care means understanding what we know, what we don’t know, what our options are, and what pieces of our health we can meaningfully support today.
Because when I look underneath many of the fertility challenges I see clinically, I’m regularly working with things like:
- Nutrient depletion and insufficiency
- Metabolic dysfunction + blood sugar dysregulation
- Subclinical or diagnosed autoimmunity
- Thyroid dysfunction
- Gut imbalances + chronic infections
- Histamine dysregulation
- Chronic inflammation—whether metabolically, environmentally, immunologically, or gut-driven
- Oxidative stress + mitochondrial dysfunction
- Environmental and endocrine-disrupting exposures
Notice that I didn’t just say PCOS, endometriosis, adenomyosis, unexplained infertility, diminished ovarian reserve, poor egg quality, or poor sperm quality.
Those diagnoses and findings matter. But they don’t always answer the question I care most about as a functional practitioner:
Why is the body expressing itself this way, what is contributing to the picture, and where do we have an opportunity to support it?
That is the lens I have used with my own health for years.
I’ve spent a large portion of my life learning my body—not because I’m trying to perfectly control it, but because I’ve experienced firsthand what can happen when you understand the information it’s giving you and respond accordingly.
So when it comes to my personal fertility, my goal is to practice what I preach.
I’m not waiting until I’m actively trying to conceive to care about my reproductive health. I’m not looking at 35 as an alarm bell that suddenly means I need to overhaul my life. These are foundations I have been building for years, and I’m continuing to refine them as my body, health, and life evolve.
So, outside of potentially freezing my eggs in the future, here are the things I am prioritizing now:
1. I prioritize adequate nourishment + eat with cellular health in mind
You know I will talk about this until I am blue in the face, but eating enough is one of the most foundational things I do to support my hormones and reproductive health.
Adequate energy availability matters for healthy hypothalamic signaling, thyroid function, estrogen production, ovulation, and subsequent progesterone production. And this is where I think the conversation around “eating healthy” can sometimes miss the mark: you can eat an incredibly clean diet and still not eat enough.
For me, that means prioritizing adequate calories, protein, carbohydrates, and healthy fats while also eating a nutrient-dense, antioxidant-rich diet. I think about nutrients involved in follicular development, mitochondrial function, thyroid health, methylation, and antioxidant defense—things like choline, folate and other B vitamins, iron, zinc, selenium, magnesium, omega-3 fats, and vitamins A, C, D + E.
I use supplementation strategically based on what my labs and health picture are showing me rather than taking a giant “fertility stack” simply because I’m 35.
There is no magical egg-quality diet, and food can’t stop reproductive aging. The goal is to make sure the eggs I have are developing within the healthiest, most well-nourished environment I can reasonably support.
And one of my simplest goals is this: support consistent ovulation and healthy progesterone production for as long as my body naturally can.
2. I stay on top of my health with data
This one is incredibly personal to me because I’ve spent almost 20 years learning what my unique body requires to feel and function well.
I’ve navigated hypothyroidism, Lyme disease, chronic active EBV, recurrent SIBO, nutrient depletion, and a missing period for nearly 10 years. I was told at one point that I wouldn’t regain my cycle without hormone replacement—and since naturally getting my cycle back 8 years ago, I have had regular ovulatory cycles and have never missed a period .
That experience fundamentally shaped both the practitioner I became and the relationship I have with my own health.
So when I say I stay on top of my health, I’m not only talking about a standard annual physical. I regularly use advanced bloodwork and targeted functional testing to understand what is happening in my body and adjust my health routine accordingly minimally on an annual basis.
Depending on what I am monitoring, that can include iron + ferritin, inflammation, thyroid health and function, glucose + insulin regulation, methylation, micronutrient status, gut health, screening for autoimmunity, and environmental burden such as heavy metals, mycotoxins, and endocrine-disrupting exposures – again all based on my/or your unique picture.
Sometimes the data tells me everything looks great. Sometimes it tells me to adjust my nutrition or supplements, go back in and support my gut, replenish a nutrient, or get curious about why a marker is beginning to shift before it becomes a larger problem.
I know this can sound like a lot of work. For me, it actually creates the opposite feeling.
Information makes me feel less afraid—not more.
I’d rather understand what my body is telling me and have educated direction around what I can support than wait until something feels significantly off and wish I had been paying attention sooner.
3. I monitor my hormones—but I care about the full picture
Alongside my broader health data, I keep an eye on my reproductive hormones. I typically run annual DUTCH hormone + adrenal testing (what we are offering in our mini lab package right now!) alongside blood markers like FSH, LH, estradiol, progesterone, SHBG, AMH, and prolactin, adjusting timing and frequency based on what I’m actually trying to understand.
And this brings me back to AMH, because I think we’ve given this one marker a lot of power in the fertility conversation.
AMH can give us useful information about ovarian reserve and anticipated response to ovarian stimulation. But I rarely give a standalone AMH value much merit in my practice without looking at the rest of someone’s picture.
I want context. Are you ovulating? What are FSH, LH, and estradiol doing? What does progesterone look like? How are your follicular and luteal phases? What is your thyroid doing? Your metabolic health? Are there signs of inflammation or nutrient depletion? And importantly, what is changing over time? I have had clients told they have less than a 2% chance of conceiving , in just a few months, get naturally pregnant.
No single fertility marker gets to tell the entire story of my body.
For me and my fertility, testing is about watching the picture evolve so I can respond to meaningful changes with curiosity and educated direction rather than fear.
4. I stay deeply connected to my cycle
I track my cycle—not because I need another metric to obsess over, but because I genuinely believe the menstrual cycle is one of the most valuable windows we have into overall health and reproductive function.
I personally use Oura + Natural Cycles and pay attention to cycle length, ovulation timing, temperature shifts, cervical mucus, luteal-phase length, symptoms, and—most importantly—changes from my normal.
A healthy cycle isn’t just about getting a period every month. I care about whether I am actually ovulating, whether that ovulation is happening consistently, what my luteal phase looks like (Is it greater than 12 days? What is my peak temperature? Does it sustain >97.8?), and whether subtle shifts are emerging over time.
This is especially meaningful to me because I went almost 10 years without a period. Regaining a healthy cycle after being told I likely wouldn’t without HRT completely changed the way I relate to menstruation and ovulation.
I don’t take either for granted.
As I move through my 30s, I want to know what my body is doing. My cycle gives me real-time information that I can layer alongside my labs, symptoms, and broader health picture—and allows me to recognize subtle changes rather than waiting until something feels significantly off.
5. Self-connection + feminine embodiment are part of my fertility care
A big part of my particular flavor of hormone + fertility work is self-connection and feminine embodiment—and it’s a piece I think is almost entirely left out of the conversation around female health.
We talk about labs, nutrition, supplements, exercise, cycles, symptoms, and hormones. When fertility enters the picture, we add ovulation tracking, egg quality, timing, AMH, sperm health, and protocols.
But we rarely ask: How connected is this woman to herself?
Does she know how to listen to and nurture herself? Receive? Trust her intuition? Feel grounded, sovereign, and present in her female body? Does she feel connected to her feminine wisdom and power—to what it means for her to deeply know herself as a woman?
I don’t believe this exists separately from our physiology. Our nervous-system state, stress response, immune regulation, cortisol and sex-hormone signaling, digestion, gut health, and how well we’re able to nourish and care for ourselves are deeply interconnected—all systems I care about when supporting a woman’s health and, ultimately, her fertility.
But I also believe there is something beyond what we can quantify on a lab report.
I see women preparing to become mothers who have never really learned how to mother themselves. And I deeply believe there is something important—and yes, maybe even a little magical—about that work as part of the fertility journey.
Fertility, to me, has never been only clinical. Of course there is biology. But I also believe there is an energetic, emotional, and spiritual component to our relationship with our female bodies, reproduction, receiving, creation, and ultimately motherhood.
And this isn’t something I reserve for women who are actively TTC. I’m not trying to conceive right now, and this is still an imperative part of how I care for my hormone health and myself as a woman. Most women are never taught to consider their relationship with their female body as part of their health at all.
My own health journey has made this work incredibly meaningful to me. After spending nearly a decade without a menstrual cycle and then experiencing my body find its way back to ovulation and menstruation, something changed in the way I related to my body.
Tapping, meditation, emotional processing, nervous-system work, embodiment, exploring old wounds and limiting beliefs, and learning how to truly nurture and listen to myself have become non-negotiables. They’ve helped me feel more grounded in my body, connected to my own wisdom, and rooted in who I am as a woman.
And as I proactively support my fertility at 35, I have absolutely no intention of letting this piece fall to the wayside.
I want to enter that chapter deeply connected to myself—knowing my own voice, trusting my intuition, feeling at home in my female body, and already knowing how to mother and nurture the woman who will be doing the mothering.
This is why self-connection + feminine embodiment are woven into my 1:1 work and the She’s Nourished Collective as well. To me, this is part of the magic of female health and fertility: not only understanding the physiology of our bodies, but learning how to truly inhabit them, trust them, and access the wisdom within them.
6. I protect my capacity, boundaries + recovery
“Manage your stress” gets thrown around so casually in the wellness world that I think we’ve almost made it meaningless. I’m not trying to eliminate stress from my life, and I certainly don’t believe moving through a stressful season means you’ve somehow damaged your fertility.
What I am interested in is capacity.
How much is my life asking of me right now? How much am I replenishing? Am I sleeping enough? Eating enough? Moving in a way that supports me? Where am I overextending? Where do my boundaries need to change?
The answers aren’t static. There are seasons where I can carry more and seasons where I deliberately carry less. Sometimes supporting my health means acknowledging that the routine that worked six months ago doesn’t fit the life or body I have today.
Sleep is a big part of this for me. Our sleep and circadian rhythms intersect with cortisol, insulin sensitivity, glucose regulation, inflammation, immune function, and hormonal signaling, so it gets a meaningful place in the hierarchy of my health rather than becoming the first thing sacrificed when life gets full.
I want my body to have resources left over for repair, hormone production, ovulation, immune function, and all of the other processes I’m asking it to perform.
Fertility doesn’t exist in a silo. Supporting my capacity and recovery is one way I support the systems reproductive health relies on.
7. I practice lower-toxin living long before pregnancy
I find it interesting how often we wait until we’re actively TTC—or see two lines on a pregnancy test—to suddenly clean up our environment. We swap our skincare, cleaning products, cookware, food storage, water, and everything else overnight.
But to me, the value is in starting long before we’re asking the body to create and carry a baby.
When we’re talking about fertility, we’re also talking about cellular health. Our eggs are cells, and the health of those cells—and the environment they’re developing within—matters. Environmental exposures can contribute to endocrine disruption and oxidative stress, and oxidative stress is one of the processes involved in cellular aging and can influence ovarian and oocyte health.
So when I think about reducing unnecessary exposures, I’m not only thinking about what might be safe during a future pregnancy. I’m thinking about reducing the cumulative burden on my body and supporting the cellular environment my eggs are living and developing within today.
I tend to think about environmental exposures through the lens of a bucket. The goal isn’t to eliminate every exposure—that’s neither realistic nor how I want to live my life. It’s about being aware of what’s going into my bucket, intentionally limiting exposures where I can, and leaving room for the things that matter to me. There are some hair and beauty products I love and choose to keep using, while I’m much more selective about the other body care products and things like my food and water, cookware and food storage, cleaning products, and other everyday exposures.
It’s not about perfection; it’s about lowering the overall load while still living your life.
For me, this is another example of why proactive fertility care starts long before TTC. The habits that support our cellular and hormone health today are also part of supporting the reproductive environment we’re bringing with us when we’re ready.
So, where does this leave me at 35?
I don’t know exactly what my path to motherhood will look like. But I don’t need all of those answers today to feel empowered about my fertility.
I know my body. I have data. I understand my options. I know what I am supporting and why. And if the information in front of me changes, I can make a different decision from there.
That is what fertility sovereignty looks like to me.
It isn’t believing we have complete control over our fertility or our timeline—we don’t. It’s recognizing the meaningful difference between control and agency.
There are pieces of my future I cannot dictate. But there is so much I can do to care for the body that will carry me into it.
And I think that’s particularly important in a culture that has taught women to experience fertility through a lens of scarcity: How many eggs do you have left? How much time do you have left? Have you made a plan yet?
I personally don’t want fear to be the reason I take care of myself. I want to nourish myself because I value the health I have worked incredibly hard to build. I want to understand my hormones because information gives me options. I want to support my ovulation and reproductive health because they matter to me today, not only because I hope to use them for pregnancy someday. And I want to make decisions about my future fertility from an educated, grounded place when—and if—those decisions need to be made.
That is the same perspective I want my clients to have.
Understand your body. Understand your options. Support what is within your power to support. And make your next decision from there.
xx,
Olivia
