Where does cycle syncing fall short? | Ep. 39

You'll hear about why cycle syncing can sometimes fall short of the mark. Cycle syncing is amazing because it helps you to listen to your body and learn about how it changes throughout the cycle. It doesn't, however, help you to overcome hormonal imbalances. Coming back to balance oftentimes involves more nuance than cycle syncing.

Bridget shares about when cycle syncing is--and isn't--the panacea you might be looking for. She also sneak peaks the upcoming series on cycle syncing: a deep dive into how/when to apply it, how to make it actually work for you, and why balanced hormones are important for getting the most bang for your cycle-syncing buck.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to I'm Hormonal, your source of information about women's hormone health and how to support your body. Naturally. I'm your host, bridget Walton, and I'm a certified functional hormone specialist and menstrual cycle coach. I am on a mission to hold these hormone conversations with as many menstruators as possible, because you deserve easier access to accurate information about what's up with your unruly menstrual cycle and with your fertility mysteries. Don't you think it's time that we figure this out once and for all? Hello there and welcome back to another episode of I'm Hormonal. I'm Bridget Walton, your host and, as always, a women's hormone health coach. If this is your first time listening to I'm Hormonal, then welcome, and I'm so glad that you found me. If you've been here before, then welcome back. I know that you have like 1 billion different options for podcasts that you can listen to or other sounds that you can stream in your ears, so I appreciate you hanging with me and we are here to talk about, yes, hormones.

Speaker 1: 1:14

I named this podcast I'm Hormonal because I think that it's kind of goofy and silly and like antiquated at this point that our hormones are so stigmatized, when really our hormones help us to live our life and do all of the things that we need to like waking up, going to sleep, feeling happy, feeling sad also important, but anyway they help our cycles to cycle and without our hormones we wouldn't be functioning human beings. So I guess it's a little sarcastic play on how we usually hear people saying I'm hormonal. What we're going to talk about today is, well, I'm going to cover a couple of things, so no one main through line for the whole episode, but I want to share with you what are some of my current thoughts and recommendations as it relates to cycle syncing. So I've talked about cycle syncing here on the pod before. If you check out episodes 2, 16, and 24, then you'll hear some recommendations about overall, what is cycle syncing, how to start, how to align your workouts with your cycles. In recent, you know, in the last couple of months, as I've been facilitating some training for local well trainers at a couple of gyms near me and what I do is I go in and I talk to them about how women's or how menstruators cycles work, how those hormone fluctuations can impact the results that they're looking to work on with their clients, which are primarily fat loss and muscle gain. And so, anyway, through going through this process of trying to orient them to what is the menstrual cycle like, how do those changes occur and how does that relate to exercise?

Speaker 1: 3:14

I realized that I want to make some clarifications about really the bottom line up front that psychosyncing isn't exactly the tool that you need to overcome a hormone imbalance. So let me say that again If you have a hormone imbalance, then cycle syncing might not be the tool to help you regulate your cycles or overcome your PMS or whatever it is. It surely could be helpful in getting to know your cycle, getting to understand your body and how your mood changes, how your energy levels change. For sure, having that opportunity to be more introspective and taking a look at what you want to do at different parts of your cycle cycle or what you don't want to do, you kind of see what I'm getting at there. However, if you have something going on, if you have estrogen excess or if you're not ovulating, then other measures would be more helpful and more, let's say, pointed to help you get back to hormone balance than just cycle syncing. So I really want to differentiate those two categories and basically why and when to cycle sync, and then I'll wrap up the episode by talking about what do I have in the works for upcoming episodes, a kind of mini series I guess that I want to put together for you all so you know what is coming down the pipeline, what you can expect to see over the next couple of weeks and couple of months. With all of that being said, I will share with you my normal disclaimer that the information you hear today is for educational purposes only. It shouldn't be used as a replacement for any sort of one-on-one support from your healthcare provider or from a certified practitioner. Art in the market for one-on-one support, then you can always reach out to me. Check out the link in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 5:29

What I do is I work with women to understand what's going on with their hormones, or rather, I work with menstruators to understand what's going on with their hormones, what is the root cause of a hormone imbalance and those symptoms, and then designing a lifestyle together really and making sustainable change so that you can feel better, understand what's going on with your body and really support your hormone health for the long run. So with that out of the way, let's get into it, and I guess my intro for this one really was a bit more in depth than what I'd planned. But if you are just hearing about cycle syncing today for the first time, then let me give you a short intro to what cycle syncing is for the first time. Then let me give you a short intro to what cycle syncing is.

Speaker 1: 6:19

Cycle syncing is this practice of being aware of where you're at in your menstrual cycle throughout the four phases right so, your menstrual phase, follicular phase, ovulatory phase and then luteal phase and taking that information, that context of where you're at in your cycle, in order to better align your nutrition, exercise, social activities, work tasks and more with that cycle phase. Now, what's the point of doing this? Well, because we have four distinct hormonal landscapes throughout those four phases. It can help you to say, okay, well, for example, during my ovulatory phase, that's when estrogen is the highest, that's when I'm going to feel the most like communicating and being out and about with people. So, okay, on a work task note, maybe I will see if I can't schedule all of my customer meetings or my most important customer meetings during that time. Or another example here would be to say, okay, during my menstrual phase, while I'm on my period, I'm going to skip my whatever is my normal gym routine. I'm just going to rest and relax, because I know that during my bleed is when energy levels are at their lowest, hormone levels are at their lowest. So I'm going to cherish that, I suppose, and just give my body the opportunity to relax. So those are just two examples.

Speaker 1: 7:56

As I mentioned in the starter, though, cycle syncing isn't really the best tool to identify what is the cause of an imbalance. So, for example, if you're not ovulating, then you're not creating the progesterone that, in your luteal phase, would make you want to stay in and relax and get things done around your house, close up different tasks or close out other tasks, and so if you're just going through the motions of okay, how do I align to what should be happening in this part of my cycle, then it won't exactly have the synergy that you were looking for. For another example, if your cortisol levels are really high and remember that cortisol is our stress hormone we need it, but also we want there to be some balance. We don't want it to be too high. Anyway, if your cortisol levels are really high but you're following the cycle sinking recommendations as it relates to doing more high intensity workouts around the middle of your cycle, then that's not really helping to bring your hormones back into balance. If you are really stressed out, then what you should be prioritizing are low impact exercises like let's just go for walks, let's lift lighter weights, things that aren't going to be an added stressor onto your already stressed out body. With all that being said, variety is the spice of life, right? So, for me personally, I love just varying my workouts, varying my nutrition, varying my work tasks, because I like that change of pace. And for you, if that's the same, then I think that in and of itself, is a great reason to follow that cycle sinking path.

Speaker 1: 10:03

However, if you are really looking to understand what's going on with your hormone imbalance for example, why do you have such raging PMS every month? Why are you getting migraines? Why are you not ovulating or why are you not conceiving? If you're trying to conceive, then I would really recommend you to consider taking additional, let's say, taking in additional resources in order to get to where you want to be. If you're listening and you're thinking, oh, shoot, okay, well, I'm cycle syncing or trying to cycle sync when it makes sense, but how do I know if this actually is a good fit for me? How do I know if my hormones are imbalanced, then let me run you through just a couple of wickets that can help you to see where you fall on that spectrum.

Speaker 1: 11:00

The first thing that's most important to consider is are you ovulating? So ovulation is the star event of your menstrual cycle. That happens behind the scenes, right? Most people don't even know that they're ovulating, but that's when an egg is released for potential fertilization. So this is important because if ovulation doesn't happen, then progesterone is not going to be created, or at least not in nearly as high of levels as it is when you ovulate.

Speaker 1: 11:34

So how can we tell if we are ovulating? If you're somebody who tracks your temperature maybe you have a smartwatch or an aura ring or a device like that that tracks your temperature you should be able to see that your temperature rises the day after you ovulate. So, for example, I track my temperature with an armband thermometer that I wear to sleep each night. In the morning I connect it to my phone and it'll tell me what was my lowest temperature throughout the night. It does its own, you know whatever techie algorithm things in there to figure out what's the lowest temperature, but the long story short is that the day after that I ovulate, there is a jump of about 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit, and so that's a good indicator that you ovulated or that I ovulated. Another way that you can tell you are or did ovulate would be through ovulation test strips. If you are intense like that and really want to know for sure, that's pretty common actually. I don't know why I said intense, but common for gals who are trying to conceive and want to have a really good idea of are they ovulating and when, so that they can use that with their partners.

Speaker 1: 12:57

A third and final mention here, for how do you know if you're ovulating, or how do you know if you will be ovulating? On the lead up to ovulation, normally, as estrogen grows higher, what you'll see is an increased quantity of cervical mucus. So increased quantity. It sounds, I guess, a little bit mechanical, but what I mean by that is you should notice a change in your cervical mucus right more, and also, as it leads up to your ovulation day, you'll notice that it is like the most liquid, most wet that day. So whether that is wet, as in something that you see in your panties, or it could look wet like that kind of rope-like, stretchy cervical mucus. If you've seen this before, you know exactly what I'm talking about, but that stretchy cervical mucus, which is a good sign that, okay, ovulation is coming up. Your body's hormones are at the levels that you know they're expecting to be, and that's a good sign.

Speaker 1: 14:07

Now I know that in the last 10 minutes here I posed a lot of hypothetical questions, but the long story short of it and I know I said that before too but the takeaway that I want you to have here is, if you're practicing cycle syncing, are you really ovulating and do you really know which phase of your cycle you're in? Because if so, then that's going to get you the biggest benefit out of cycle syncing and also is going to be kind of the best case scenario for your health overall. Now, if you find that you are, in fact, not ovulating or not having the same hormonal fluctuations or ratios that you see in the textbook or that you would expect to see, that's okay too. Cycle syncing is still good to get a grasp on what's going on with your body and reflect on how you feel. But I would also encourage you to think about how can I really focus on getting my body back into balance and follow that guidance first, before focusing on just cycle syncing. I've got more to come on this topic in the next couple of weeks. So if you have any questions on anything I said just now, send me a message on Instagram or actually, if you take a little look at the show notes, there'll be a button or a link that says, basically, send us a text message, and you can send me a text message and that'll just come right to me. I can see that, understand your questions and incorporate that for the upcoming episode.

Speaker 1: 15:52

Once that cycle syncing series is out and ready for you, the next thing that I want to put together for you will be an overview of the main tenets, those foundational items, foundational categories of health that I go through with my clients so that, if you and I aren't working together, you still have access to the same principles as far as looking at exercise, nutrition, gut health, sleep and stress, endocrine disruptors and, as I love to talk about, blood sugar regulation, because those items are really foundational, especially for hormones, right?

Speaker 1: 16:32

That's why I'm talking about them here. Look forward to that coming your way in the future, here over the next couple of months, and, as always, if you have recommendations or requests for anything else that you want to hear me talk about, then send me a message on Instagram or through the link in the show notes. So, with all of that being said, I really appreciate you for listening and spending some time with me today while you drive or clean or whatever you're up to. If you thought that this episode was helpful or if you're looking forward to this upcoming series on cycle syncing, then I would so appreciate it if you would send a link to this episode to your friend or your sister or somebody else who you know would benefit from this, and I would really appreciate you helping me to grow the I'm Hormonal community. Thanks again for listening. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast if that's something that you're into. Can't wait to see you here again soon and talk to you next week. Bye you.