Cycle Syncing Series, Ep 2: The pre-work that can set you up for success | Ep. 41

Curious about how to harmonize your lifestyle with your menstrual cycle? If you're wondering how you can start cycle syncing, this episode is for you. You certainly can dive right in. BUT. If you take a minute to get familiar with your cycle before making any changes... I think that will support your cycle syncing journey.

Download your free cycle syncing guide to get more familiar with how you can incorporate this practice into your routine. CLICK HERE.

This is episode two of this cycle syncing series. In this series you will hear about:
1. Why cycle sync? What's the benefit? **this was last week's episode
2. How to prepare for cycle syncing **today's episode
3. Why your hormones should be balanced before cycle syncing
4. Workshop: Mapping your cycle to sync it effectively
5. Why ovulation is important for cycle syncing

Books referenced:
- Period Power by Maisie Hill
- In the FLO by Alisa Vitti

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Chapters

• 0:05 Preparing for Cycle Syncing
• 8:49 Menstrual Cycle Phases

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? Welcome to today's episode of I'm Hormonal. We are going to be talking about what you can do to prepare for cycle syncing. So this is the second episode in this cycle syncing series. If you didn't listen to last week's episode, which covered the basics of cycle syncing and why you might want to do it, then go back and check that one out first. But today what we will be looking at, as I mentioned, is how to prepare for cycle syncing. Why do we want to prepare for it? Really? So that once you get into the full swing of applying these different changes and tweaks to your exercise regimen, to your meal planning, to your social calendar, then you can make sure that it's kind of just working for you, that you get the most I don't know, bang for your buck, to put it in a kind of masculine energy sort of way, but it's really just to help you start to get familiar with your cycle and really that's the baseline, the foundation for cycle syncing. So if you are somebody who has thought about incorporating cycle syncing into your life or maybe you're just learning about cycle syncing and you want to understand what it's all about then this podcast will be a good episode for you to start off with. If you are a returning listener, then I just want to say welcome and thank you so much for coming back to listen a little bit more. I know you have a lot of options for places or content that you can listen to, so I really appreciate you coming back to spend some time with me. If today's your first time listening, then I'm so glad that you found me. My name is Bridget and I started this podcast because I think it's really important to share what I know, what we all collectively know about our hormones and menstrual cycles, so that we can all feel better, right? So hopefully, if you were here to learn about your body and learn what your cycle symptoms are trying to tell you, then you'll find this really helpful and a good source of information. One quick reminder as always, the information that I share with you today is for educational purposes only, and it should not be used as a replacement for any sort of medical advice, diagnosis or one-on-one support from a certified practitioner. Now, that being said, if you are in the market to work one-on-one with somebody, then check out the link in the show notes where we can connect. I can learn more about you, because that's what I do. I work one-on-one with gals who are trying to understand the root cause of their hormone imbalance and make changes to diet, lifestyle and other factors so that you can feel better again and have a lifestyle that really works for you and your hormone goals. So check out the link in the show notes for that.

Speaker 1: 3:41

Let's go ahead and dive in to the content for today, the topic for today of how to prepare for cycle syncing. So if you're somebody who is about to embark on this cycle syncing journey, the first thing that you want to do is get to know your cycle, and a good way to do that is by tracking your cycle, whether you have or find an app that you like, or you're an analog old school kind of gal, you like to write things down on paper. Whatever works best for you, whatever you can be consistent at. That's probably the most important part of this. But whatever works for you, whatever you can be consistent with, will be just fine.

Speaker 1: 4:21

Personally, I use an app called Flow, although there are a million great cycle tracking apps out there. They can make it really easy to pull up a graph or other visual of what symptoms you've been experiencing, at what point in your cycle you have experienced those symptoms, and they just give you a good range of factors to consider if you're new to tracking your cycle. So, for example, when I look in my app, I can track information like yes, when did my period start, how long did it last and what were the like was it heavy, light, medium flow that day? But I can also track how did my mood change throughout the month? How did my symptoms as far as like any PMS symptoms or any other cycle related changes, what did those look like throughout the month? You can track things like travel, exercise, stress, illness all things that can factor into or influence what your cycle is like.

Speaker 1: 5:31

So, if that's new to you, check out a couple of options, see what makes sense. There are a lot of free options out there. You don't necessarily have to pay for one there. You don't necessarily have to pay for one. Or if you are the kind of person who likes to journal, then maybe set aside a couple of pages at the end of your journal where each night, you can make some notes. The main things that you're looking at here are one general awareness of your body, your experience, how you change throughout your cycle, but also, I think one of the important things to look at is surrounding ovulation and basically, are you ovulating?

Speaker 1: 6:14

Your menstrual cycle has two main events, really, and the first one is your period. Right, that's for most of us, pretty easy to tell what is the first day of your period. But the other important event in the cycle is ovulation, and that's why it's important to track. Sometimes you may not know that it's happening. For most menstruators that's probably the case. But getting to know your body and look for those signs that indicate you're about to ovulate, as well as signs that you have ovulated, can help to make sure that your health is in line right, because our bodies should be ovulating, but also, if you're not ovulating, that's a good sign to say okay, how can I better support my body to go through and complete this ovulation process?

Speaker 1: 7:10

And the last thing that I want to mention here, for why ovulation is important for cycle syncing, is because if you didn't ovulate, for example which that happens sometimes for all of us, but if you didn't happen to ovulate in a particular cycle, then your luteal phase, which is the phase that follows ovulation, might not look the same as what you expect it to. Right, the luteal phase is characteristic of having high progesterone, and that's what helps you to feel relaxed and calm and want to nest and complete tasks. But if you didn't ovulate, then your levels of progesterone won't be nearly as high, and so it would make sense that you'll notice your mood, your symptoms, etc. Are a bit different than in other months of your cycle, for example. I want to come back to something that I mentioned earlier about generally growing awareness of your body, your cycle and how your experience shifts throughout the cycle. I think that we can be quick to jump to change. Oh, I heard this new tip. Let me just go ahead and implement this change right away, because it should be good, and while, yes, that very well may be the case, I think there's also a lot of value to taking a beat to reflect and understand where we are now. What is the starting point that I'm at right now and where can I go from here?

Speaker 1: 8:49

Coming back to the consideration points, as you grow your awareness of your cycle, as you get in the habit of tracking symptoms of your cycle, you'll also want to naturally learn about the four phases of your cycle. So, if you are a girly who likes to read, a couple of books that I like to recommend are One Period Power by Maisie Hill, or Two In the Flow by Elisa Vitti. I think those are really good resources that will give you a super thorough rundown of each of the four phases of the cycle so you can learn what to expect, what is a, I guess, archetype of that phase. And I think the most important thing is that you understand the you know textbook I'm doing air quotes over here, but the textbook version of what each phase of your cycle might be like for you, and then you can reflect again on what is your actual experience and see where your experience deviates from the textbook. That's the best thing, or one of the good things I think about cycle syncing is that you can say okay, let me grow this awareness of my body. Let me understand the four phases of the cycle, what they mean, how they differ, what each phase might say about my mood and personality and likes or dislikes in that phase. But ultimately it's something that and maybe you've heard me say this before, but it's something that you keep, or take what works for you and leave the rest. So if you don't find that your experience aligns with what any book or podcast says, then that's totally fine, that's great, and you don't have to force yourself to align with what the textbooks say. Let me try to make that make more sense by walking through each of the four cycles so you can understand what many menstruators feel during that phase.

Speaker 1: 11:02

So the first phase is the menstrual phase. This is, yes, you guessed it the phase that you're in while you're on your period. So this could be cycle day one to maybe cycle day seven, cycle day five. For me, I normally bleed for three or four days. So for me personally, the menstrual phase is days one through four, and during that time is when our hormone levels are the lowest, namely estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, and that can lead to feeling or experiences that align very closely with the winter, so being more staying to one's self, wanting to be at home, not really feeling particularly outgoing and, like you, want to be the center of attention. It's more a reflective period of time, an introspective period of time. So during your menstrual phase, which again are the days that you're on your bleed, you might experience some of those things. If you feel so called to do so, then maybe pause me for a second here and take a second to reflect on you and your experience and how do you normally feel during your bleed, and then come back to me when you're ready, moving on to the next phase, which is the follicular phase.

Speaker 1: 12:32

That is going to begin just once your period is over with and it will conclude a couple of days before ovulation. So if you're not sure exactly when you ovulate, but you have a 28-day cycle, you might ovulate on the 14th day of your cycle. So let's do a little bit of math. If you have a five-day period, then the follicular phase could be from days six through 12 of your cycle. Now, during this phase of the cycle, your hormone levels are growing higher, so namely estrogen and testosterone grows a little bit during this phase as well. So you may feel more like you want to get out and about, you want to try new things, you want to be a little bit more social. Maybe you want to start a project. Those are some traits or characteristics kind of quintessential for the follicular phase.

Speaker 1: 13:32

Moving on to the ovulatory phase these are the couple of days surrounding ovulation, so it could be a three-day, four-day window of time when you're feeling really at your peak when it comes to being outgoing, feeling really good about yourself, being on top of communication, you want to get up in front of people, you want to chat, you want to meet new people, and so those are things that are characteristic of the ovulatory phase. Moving on to the luteal phase, which are the remaining days of your cycle, so if ovulatory phase were days 12 through 15, so maybe that's four days total. Then we look at the luteal phase, which could be days 16 through 28. So this one is longer than the others. All the phases won't necessarily be the same length. It can be individualized to you, though that it could be.

Speaker 1: 14:32

Your cycle and the phases of your cycle will be and are individual to you. They're not the same for everybody. But, coming back to the luteal phase, during this phase progesterone levels are growing high and then falling. So they peak in the middle there and then fall down and that's when our period starts and the cycle begins again. So during this phase you're characteristically less interested in being out and about. You're a little bit more homey. This would be like autumn, right, you want to nourish yourself, stay in, you want to have people over, but you're not feeling that you want to be out and about trying anything new. It's more a time to wrap things up. I know that can be a lot to chew on. If you're new to this or if you just want to have a visual representation of what I just talked through, check out the link in the show notes where you can download my psychosyncing guidebook, which will walk you through a lot of the things I just mentioned. It'll give you suggestions for which days of your cycle correlate with each phase and also know that later in this cycle syncing series I'll do an episode that really is like a workshop, so there'll be a downloadable that goes along with it and that can be an opportunity for you to listen to the episode while actually, you know, sitting down to map out your cycle and really get a good idea of which phase falls within which days of your cycle. So you have that to look forward to.

Speaker 1: 16:13

Okay, gang, we talked about picking a method to track your cycle. We talked about learning the four phases of your cycle as well as next starting to note the signs of ovulation. So this ties back to what I mentioned earlier about why ovulation is important, because that will inform what is going on with our hormones in the second half of our cycle. But it's a good piece of body literacy to know, also helpful if you're somebody who is trying to conceive or if you're somebody who is trying to avoid conception. So, looking for signs of ovulation, including change in cervical fluid before your expected ovulation date, if you track your temperature, then you'll notice that the day following ovulation you should see your temperature jump and it would remain high through the rest of your luteal phase. There's a lot more detail to go into here than just those two things, but overall, just know that tracking your ovulation, or being aware of what ovulation might look or feel like for you, is one thing that will be important and can better inform your cyclo-syncing habits.

Speaker 1: 17:30

That is just about it for today. Come back next week. I'm going to be talking more about what are some obstacles or troubleshooting steps that you can take if, again, you're getting into cycle syncing. So, for example, if you want to start cycle syncing but your period is really irregular you don't know when she's going to show up, then I'll be sharing some tips with you about how to rein your cycle back in so that you can identify those phases of your cycle and start to cycle sync. Now one asterisk here of course, you can always cycle sync at any time. Right, it doesn't have to be an exact science. However, if you want to cycle sync in a way where you really get the benefit from the high estrogen levels or those high progesterone levels, then understanding what's the health of your cycle will be really important and will support you in getting the most bang for your buck in that regard. That regard, if you found this conversation to be helpful, or if you have a friend who is also getting into cycle syncing, I would be so appreciative if you would send this over to her and have a conversation about it.

Speaker 1: 18:45

If you liked this episode, you can also subscribe, rate and review the podcast. Take a quick look too. This is a newer one. In the notes there's a button that says something like send us a text message and if you have any questions or feedback on an episode, you can click that button, type in your message and it'll send it right over to me. Thanks again for listening. My name is Bridget. I will look forward to seeing you again here next week. You.