Hormone Basics & Why You Need to Know If You Ovulate | Ep. 140

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I'm Bridget Walton, a Women's Hormone Coach helping ambitious women ages 25-40 naturally restore hormone balance, fix irregular periods, feel confident in their fertility, and resolve gut health issues without restrictive dieting.

If you struggle with missing periods, PCOS symptoms, bloating, or unpredictable cycles, this women's health podcast will teach you how to support your hormones through strategic nutrition and lifestyle changes that actually fit your busy life.

On I'm Hormonal, you'll discover natural solutions for period problems, learn how gut health impacts your hormones, and get practical hormone balance tips from a functional nutrition perspective - no more guessing what your body needs.

We're going back to the basics in this episode and you'll get a refresher on how your hormones change throughout your cycle, phases of your cycle, and signs of ovulation. If you want to balance your hormones, knowing whether or not you ovulate is very important to figuring out the best path forward to balance. 

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For more info about tracking/charting signs of ovulation, check out the Fertility Awareness Project.

👉 DM us on Instagram @im_hormonal - we want to hear your biggest takeaway

Chapters

• 0:00 Bleeding Isn’t Ovulation
• 0:15 Back to Hormone Basics
• 3:13 Four Phases, One Cycle
• 6:05 Birth Control Nuances
• 8:55 Progesterone, BBT, and Confirmation
• 11:14 Predicting Ovulation Cues
• 13:08 When Signs Don’t Equal Ovulation
• 15:14 Apps, Data, and What Counts
• 17:44 If You’re Not Ovulating: First Steps
• 20:44 Ovulating But Symptoms Persist
• 22:52 Practical Wrap-Up and Resources

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Most women assume that they ovulate because they get a period or because their app tells them that they ovulated, but bleeding doesn't actually equal ovulation. And that distinction is one of the keys to figuring out what is actually going wrong with your hormones. Today we're gonna be going back to the basics of hormones so you can get smart on what's happening in your menstrual cycle and how to know whether or not you are actually ovulating. Welcome to the I'm Hormonal Podcast. I'm Bridget Walton, a women's hormone coach, helping busy, ambitious women through personalized coaching and science-backed solutions. Whether you are working with me one-on-one or listening here, my goal is the same to help you stop guessing about your hormone health and start seeing real progress. Let's get into it. All right, friend, welcome back to the podcast. This is episode number 140. And as I do from time to time, I wanted to bring it back to the basics because sometimes we can get into the weeds with certain supplements or certain if you have this situation, then do that. But none of that is as important as actually understanding like what the hell is going on inside your body. So we're gonna take it back to like ninth grade health class, hopefully a little bit more engaging, and talk about, you know, what's actually happening in your cycle, what hormones are involved. You know, we talk about estrogen or progesterone, but what are they doing? And then I want to focus on talking about tracking your temperature as a problem-solving step. You're listening to this podcast because something is going on with your hormones, something is up with your period. And as you heard in the intro, it is so important and so critical to understand if you're actually ovulating, we'll get into more about the why there in a second, but tracking your basal body temperature, tracking your temperature, that can be a really helpful way to get confirmation about whether or not you are ovulating so you can figure out the best course of action from there. Because if you are ovulating, amazing, beautiful. That will send you down one route of problem solving. If you're not, then you wanna figure out why you're not and address that root cause. This episode is for you if you have a menstrual cycle and not to be too broad. I like to be a little bit more specific, but if you are somebody who has really inconsistent or irregular periods, this will be helpful for you. You're gonna want to know, are you ovulating? And if so, when, of course. If you are totally, you know, you have really heavy periods, you'll want to know if you're ovulating. If you have, well, if you have missing periods, then you can assume that you're not ovulating, but it would be something good to incorporate in the future once your cycle comes back. And for sure, if you are wanting to conceive, you're gonna be interested in whether or not you're ovulating. If you want to avoid conception, you also probably want to know when you're ovulating so that you can avoid getting pregnant. So, with all of that word salad being said, this episode is for you. If you just need a little refresher on the basics, let's get into the cycle overview. So, a couple of pieces of vocabulary first. When I say menstrual cycle, what I mean by that is the entire, you know, month. Let's just say that we're talking about a cycle that is 28 days long, because we know that's about the average. So that menstrual cycle is the entire 28 days. When we're just talking about the time that you're bleeding, that's what we call menstruation or your period or your bleed. That's those are the terms that I use. When we talk about ovulation, that is an event that occurs generally in the middle of the cycle or 10 to 14 days before your next period begins. Also, let me break down the phases for just a hot second because you've probably seen something on the old Instagram machine about cycle sinking or about alludial phase. So let's cover what that means. Your menstrual cycle can be broken down into four different phases. And that's because in each of these four different weeks, let's call them, in these four different weeks or four different phases, there's a different ratio of one hormone to the other. So let's start at the start. The first day of your cycle is the first day of your period, that first day of your full bleed. And during that menstrual phase, this first phase, your hormones are at their lowest points of the entire cycle. So progesterone and estrogen are down real low. Then moving into the second phase of the cycle, which is your follicular phase, that is when estrogen is going to be growing. Estrogen is increasing. No progesterone yet. Moving into the third phase of the cycle, the ovulatory phase, you guessed it. That's the time when you ovulate. This phase is the shortest. It's generally just about three or four days. This is when your estrogen levels are the highest, testosterone is the highest. This is all of the, you know, exciting hubbub around the actual release of your egg from your ovaries. The phase that comes after that, of course, is the luteal phase. Luteal phase has like the worst reputation because there is, for most people, the largest chance that something will be off balance, either because maybe you didn't ovulate or because maybe you have higher levels of estrogen than what your body is hoping for. So that's all to say what's happening in the luteal phase is that progesterone is increasing to its highest point of the cycle, and then again, falling at the end of the luteal phase, hormones are at their lowest point, and that's what triggers your next bleed to begin. Let me summarize that for you again. We're gonna zoom out and look at the menstrual cycle as a whole, because what's happening is that when your period starts, your hormone levels are at their lowest. Then estrogen is going to start to grow. It's gonna grow high, high, and it will peak during your ovulatory phase. Once you actually ovulate, right, in the middle approximately of your cycle, that's when progesterone starts to be released. And it's gonna be the highest about a week after you ovulate. Then progesterone and estrogen levels both drop. When they get down to their lowest point, that's when the whole cycle starts again. So I know we had a lot of different aspects of the cycle and the phases there, but for this refresher, I hope that made a lot of sense. Of course, if you gals have any questions, then you can always send me a message on Instagram at I'm underscore hormonal. Um, because I would love to explain this better for you. A couple of nuances that I think are really important to call out, because this is something I was definitely not taught when I was a kiddo. By kiddo, I mean, you know, a teenager, nor during the time that I was using hormonal birth control. If you're using hormonal birth control, you'll want to do a little Google search, ask your provider, are you going to be ovulating on that type of birth control? Because for most types of hormonal birth control, the ones that are combination pills or IUDs, having both the synthetic form of estrogen and progesterone, you're likely not going to actually be ovulating. That's what the birth control is doing. It's kind of shutting down your cycle. So you're not actually going to have that, you know, roller coaster or that same pattern of hormonal changes that I just mentioned. If you are taking hormonal birth control, what's likely happening, although again, asterisk, there's some nuance depending on what exactly you're taking, your hormone levels or your natural hormone levels from your body are going to be uh pretty down close to zero and just consistently down low because your body's hormones are being replaced by the synthetic hormones that are coming to you through the medication. Once you start to take that placebo pill, that's when your natural hormones can go up. And that's what's going on. So a little bit of differences because again, we always assume that if we are having a period, it's because we ovulated, but it just may not be the case. And you will still bleed because right, all of this tissue is being built up in your endometrial lining, and it just naturally at some point needs to shed. Let's talk a little bit more about ovulation and this temperature shift that I mentioned earlier. So once you ovulate, then that follicle that was on your ovary, where the egg came out of, that actually turns into a brand new little baby endocrine gland that releases progesterone. Now, progesterone is the hormone that will be supportive of a pregnancy if you were to become pregnant during that cycle. It's also the hormone that can help you to feel more calm and chill. And so having a strong output of progesterone is, yes, certainly good and important if you want to conceive also important because if you're not producing adequate amounts of progesterone, then that can result in PMS and mooch swings and heavier bleeding. And so generally, we want to support progesterone production. Now, what happens once you ovulate is that your temperature will go up just a part of a degree, but for the rest of the cycle until your bleed starts again. So that's why tracking your body temperature can be helpful to confirm. Did you ovulate? This is one of the only ways to confirm after the fact if you ovulated in the past. So this is a really good data point to grab. You could sure use a thermometer where right once you wake up every single morning, then you're going to just pop that thermometer in your mouth and record it. Also, it's 2025. So maybe you have a smartwatch that's tracking your temperature and it will take what is the lowest temperature from your wrist throughout the night. And usually we reach our lowest temperature in the morning just before we wake up. So that's why if you don't have a watch or if you don't have a thermometer kind of on an armband that just does its own thing throughout the night, that's why you'll want to actually take your temperature just right away once you wake up before getting out of bed, before, you know, doing anything. So again, this is a way where you can confirm ovulation after it happened. Let's talk a little bit about what you can keep in mind if you want to try to predict ovulation, right? What are the signs that your body will send you to show you that, hey, okay, hormones are in right, the good uh hormones are in good shape to ovulate here shortly. And that could look like one of a few things. First, that could look like more cervical fluid than you might have other times in your cycle. Generally, during the day or a couple of days before you ovulate, you'll notice that your cervical fluid will be more stretchy. It will be maybe just overall more. There will be more liquid. And so that's a good sign that you are about to ovulate. If you are somebody who is checking your cervical position, you may notice that it's a little bit lower. I don't really get into the details too much on that. Honestly, I have a good um recommendation. I will link her up in the show notes if you do want to learn more about how to chart your cycle, how to chart all of these things. But suffice it to say that as you get closer to ovulation, your cervix is actually going to change in position. You're going to be producing more and a different consistency of cervical fluid. Of course, if you are somebody who loves numbers, you love the data, then you can always invest probably 30 bucks in some ovulation strips, probably available at the drugstore that is near you. And those would be strips that you would urinate on each day. And as your hormones change and that lead up to your ovulation, you would notice a spike in your hormones, like luteinizing hormone or follicle stimulating hormone. And so that is a way to predict if you're going to ovulate. Let me take a second to really emphasize this prediction on one hand versus confirmation on the other hand. I mentioned that tracking your temperature and seeing that increase in your temperature, that is a way to confirm ovulation, whereas ovulation strips or cervical fluid, those are changes that can help you to predict bonus points, five gold stars for you if you use both together. But you don't have to, girl, you got options. You can do whatever best suits you. If you're wondering, Bridget, why would my body be, you know, showing me that it's about to ovulate, but not actually do it? Great question. There are, you know, a number of reasons why this could happen. Maybe you suddenly, you know, come into a lot of stress and like kind of last minute your body says, hey girl, let's avoid this until next month. Maybe there's something else. Maybe there's another reason why that spike in hormones, just last minute, doesn't happen. Um, and this can happen to all of us menstruators from time to time, right? I don't know the stat off the top of my head. I think it's something like, you know, in a year, you in a year, an average menstruator who is regularly ovulating will just have, you know, one inovulatory cycle. Now, what you might notice after that is that your cycle is a bit longer than you expected, or maybe even shorter than you expected. You might notice that you have more of those experiences I mentioned, like PMS or heavy bleeding, that can be signatures of relatively high estrogen levels compared to progesterone levels. I know I'm kind of spewing a lot at you, but I just want to share with you some different experiences so you can start to correlate what you are experiencing in your life or what have you been noting in your cycle tracking journal or your cycle tracking app so you can start to make sense of it. As far as technology goes, personally, I've always used a thermometer from Temp Drop. I'll put a link in the show notes. If you want to go down this road, you can save 10% if you use the link there. But I think that temp drop is great because um they'll send you an armband, you'll put the thermometer in it, you just put it on your arm before you go to sleep, turn it on, wake up in the morning, sync it with your phone. It's super easy. There is an option to use a paid feature in that app, and it will give you more information about ovulation or expected ovulation dates, confirmed ovulation dates. I have always used flow to track my cycle and my cycle symptoms for like a hundred years now, I think. So personally, I just move that information, that data over to the flow app since I give them, I think it might be even just$12.99 a year for their paid version. Um, and that will help to provide me with information about in the future when I can expect to ovulate and just more data about that last cycle. I want to talk a little bit more about this for a second, and then we will um get ready to wrap up here. But just know that just because your app tells you that you ovulate, it if you're not giving it information about your temperature, then it doesn't actually know for sure if you ovulate. And that can be really confusing, especially if you've been on this journey for a hot minute to figure out if, you know, what's going on with your hormones, what's going on as you prepare for pregnancy. So it can predict, it can try to tell you trends, but unless you are giving it information about your basal body temperature, the apps actually cannot tell you for sure if you ovulate. This is something that I talk about with every single one of my clients, like from minute one, basically, when we start to interact on a consult call, because again, knowing whether or not you're ovulating will set you up for success in identifying the best next steps for you. Because if you're trying to figure out on one hand why you're not ovulating, that's going to be a very different like protocol than on the other hand, if you're trying to figure out how you can, you know, basically bolster progesterone production when you do ovulate. I can't understate how important this is. And I would encourage you, if you haven't already, if you don't track your cycle, grab an app, take a look at the different thermometers that are out there and available to you. I also want to say, you know, especially if you're just at the beginning maybe of your hormone balancing journey. Personally, I think that investing, it might be like$150. I'm not sure the latest pricing on these thermometers, but that is a relatively low investment. And it's something that, especially if you want to conceive in the future, or if you'd love to avoid conception, you know, it's a tool that you will use over and over and over for years to come. So as far as smart investments, I do think that it's generally worth it to spend that$150, or let's get crazy and call it$200, because your next step from there, after you're able to do some problem solving, might be, you know, spending a couple hundred more dollars on some testing. And so it's a good stepping stone to help give you more data. As we get ready to wrap up here, I want to leave you with a couple of more practical steps. So let's say, right, you listen to this episode, you're like, I'm all in, I'm gonna start figuring out if I'm ovulating, whether it's predicting or confirming ovulation. And let's say that you go through these steps and you realize, okay, it actually doesn't appear that I'm ovulating. Maybe you've tracked your cycle for the last three to six months and you weren't able to predict or confirm ovulation based on any of the methods that you used. If you're in that situation, I would encourage you to do three things first. Number one, examine what stress is like in your life, because stress is one of the things that will for sure impact ovulation and prevent it if stress levels are high enough. Number two, I want you to inspect your gut health. This is something that I see with my clients time and time again, where, you know, a woman comes to me because she's not having consistent cycles. We talk more about her digestion. Her digestion is crazy. So we do a gut protocol. And by getting her gut health back in line, her hormones balance out and her cycle becomes more regular. So, number one, examine stress. Number two, examine your gut health. And number three, learn more about blood sugar regulation and blood sugar stability. This is kind of an offshoot of stress because it can in and of itself cause stress. But suffice it for right now for me to say that learning more about blood sugar regulation, which you can do through other episodes that I've got here in the I'm a hormonal podcast feed, um, that is going to be really important for you. Let's say that on the other hand, you start to investigate ovulation, or maybe you already know, yes, I am ovulating. But let's talk about if you have inconsistent or unpredictable periods, then we'll talk about PMS and then heavy bleeding. So let's say you're in that first category, you've confirmed ovulation, but your periods are really inconsistent. This is actually again where I would come back to stress, gut health, and blood sugar regulation. Because if you are not ovulating consistently, there is some type of stressor, there is some type of, you know, some wrench being thrown in or a cog in the wheel, I guess, that is preventing you from ovulating regularly. And it could be the same thing that is preventing somebody else from ovulating altogether. Second example, let's say that you are ovulating and you're just like, dude, my PMS is out of this world. I want you to focus on estrogen elimination. There are a lot of things, top of mind would be stress, but also poor sleep, also, you know, intake of alcohol or caffeine. Do you have a lot of exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals? Those are all things that can contribute to PMS. Final honorable mention are you having daily bowel movements? Because if you are not, then that is also a really excellent way to have higher than desirable levels of estrogen in that week to 10 days before your period. Okay, third example here. If you are somebody who, yes, you are ovulating, but you are having really heavy bleeding during your period, I'm gonna encourage you to investigate the same things as the gals with PMS. Estrogen elimination, you know, again, what endocrine disrupting chemicals are you coming into contact with? How often are you drinking alcohol? Are you drinking caffeine? You know, are you having daily bowel movements? Do you need to increase your fiber intake? You need to get some more veggies, especially cruciferous veggies into your diet. So those are just a couple of things for you to noodle on as you start to move forward, start to get clarity on what is ahead for you. All right, girly, quick reminder: everything that I share with you here is for educational purposes only, not a replacement for medical advice. If what we covered today was helpful for you and resonated with you, I would love for you to share with me what really stuck out by connecting with me on Instagram at I'm underscore hormonal. Also, I'm excited because in the upcoming weeks, I will have a new free guide for you. So if you were somebody who feels like you have tried everything for your hormones, but you were still stuck, then you will be able to go to I'mhormonal.com slash guide to grab it. Or if you are listening in the future, then that link might be in the show notes already. Okay, well, thanks again. I'm Bridget Walton and I will see you next time.