52. Optimizing Food & Exercise to Your Cycle

In this episode of Cycle Wisdom, Dr. Monica dives into part two of our cycle syncing series. Today, we explore how to optimize wellness through tailored food choices and exercise routines. Tune in to learn practical tips for aligning your diet and workouts with your menstrual cycle phases. Discover how understanding your body's rhythms can enhance your health, reduce frustration, and help you to live your best life.

Transcript

Monica: 0:02

Welcome back to Cycle Wisdom, where we empower women to restore natural menstrual cycles to improve health and promote fertility. I'm your host, Dr. Monica Minjeur, and I'm so glad you're listening today. On today's episode, we're going to continue with part two of our conversation about cycle syncing. Now, last week we talked about how to adjust your daily activities. plans, and calendar to align with the different phases of your cycle. So if you haven't listened to that episode, make sure you go and check that one out first. Today I'll be talking about ideas for how to optimize your wellness in regards to food choices and movement or exercise to help you obtain the benefits of cycle syncing. So, let's get started with a patient story about a past client of mine who we'll call Amira. Now, Amira and I had been through a lot together. She had gone through some struggles over time in her medical journey with her weight, her mood, and anxiety concerns. And despite trying to eat healthy and exercise regularly, Amira was finding it incredibly difficult to stick with a routine consistently. She felt unmotivated at certain times, and at other times she felt so driven that she sometimes overdid it with her exercise and sometimes even got hurt doing so. She ascribed to the mentality that she just needed to eat less and move more and the pounds would eventually fall off. However, Amira had been working so hard on this for a few years by this point in time without seeing much success. She felt like a failure because she couldn't stick with a regular exercise routine. She didn't know what to eat and often found herself craving certain foods that she thought she needed to avoid altogether in the hopes of keeping her weight stable. Yet, she continued to gain weight and still had troubles with getting any of the weight to fall off. So, as Amira and I talked about her overall goals, it became clear that she needed a routine with her exercises and food choices that would allow for greater flexibility. We started to talk about the idea of cycle syncing, and I got her set up with a hormone coach to help with identifying her symptoms in relationship to her menstrual cycle. This allowed Amira to understand the rhythms of her body and be able to honor each phase of her menstrual cycle she was in with food choices and movement that were in alignment with what she felt she was capable of doing. Eliminating the mind drama she was creating and getting rid of the feelings of failure and guilt allowed her to create a routine that worked best for her. allowed her not to feel like a failure and eventually was able to break through and start to get the weight off and keep it off in a way that made more sense for her. Now, cycle syncing again, as I've mentioned last week is an art. This is not an exact science. At the time of this podcast posting, there have not yet been significant scientific studies done showing improvements in menstrual cycle as far as number of days, fertility, and other health benefits. However, I am advocating for empowering you with more information and have had many patients experience a profound improvement in their overall symptoms with cycle syncing. More importantly, the deeper sense of understanding your cycles and being able to modify your activities and choices based on where you are in your cycle can be incredibly rewarding. This can allow you to avoid frustration and guilt if you break away from what you were hoping would be a daily routine. So let's start off with just a quick reminder of what the four different phases are that we're going to talk about. Now, again, there can be different breakdown as far as what these phases look like, but in general, we're going to start with talking about the menstrual phase. Now, obviously this is the time when you're actually bleeding, shedding that uterine lining. From a hormone level, generally we're going to see a decrease in your levels of estrogen and progesterone during this time. The next phase that you enter into is the follicular phase. Now, that is as the follicles are being stimulated to prepare for ovulation that cycle. And typically this is going to be from the time that you stop bleeding until the time that you actually ovulate. During this phase of your cycle, you're going to have an increase in your estrogen and testosterone levels. The next phase is typically a very short time window, generally somewhere from one to maybe two days, and this is your ovulatory phase. Now this is when you actually are ovulating and you have that LH surge, so your luteinizing hormone increases rapidly, causing the follicle to burst open and release the egg. Generally at this time, estrogen and testosterone levels are at their highest throughout your cycle. After you ovulate, you enter into the luteal phase. So again, this is going to be from the time after ovulation occurs until your next menstrual cycle happens. During this time frame is when we see progesterone come out and you have this surge of progesterone as well as a decrease in your overall estrogen and testosterone levels. So let's talk a little bit as far as how we can sync up or align our food choices during each of these phases of our cycle. Now I do want to call out that I am not an advocate for saying we want to eat only these foods during these phases. First of all, that's just going to drive you crazy. I want things to be easy for you, and I want this to be something that is sustainable. So I would advocate for well balanced food choices at all times, not just exclusively to cycle syncing. One of the things that we pay attention to is what different foods are going to replenish or help support hormones during those times. Now, for example, if we're talking about something like estrogen, you have estrogen circulating in your system all the time. all the time, there are just times when it's higher than others, same would apply to progesterone. You have a low level of progesterone at all times, but we see a surge in that luteal phase. And so any of these foods are going to support healthy hormone stability throughout your entire cycle. But these foods may be ones that help in certain ways within each cycle. So when we talk about the menstrual phase, we're going to think about foods that are warming. So think about things like soup or tea. In general, we know that warmer foods can help to reduce uterine contractions and easing those cramps. And so for some women that suffer from really bad menstrual cramps or heavy bleeding, the warming foods tend to feel good. If you were left to your own devices, that might be what you would want to choose anyways. This is also a great time to remember to increase your iron rich foods. So think about your green leafy vegetables, broccoli, kale, spinach, um, beans are another great source of iron, as well as meat, mushrooms, wild rice, and flax. Flaxseed is amazing, especially during this time because it helps with estrogen production. Obviously, with the iron rich foods, we're wanting to replenish that iron that is being lost from losing the blood. Now, the iron that you take in during that menstrual phase, again, should be throughout your entire cycle because we know that it takes some time to regenerate blood cells and that can be anywhere from six six to eight weeks depending upon your turnover. So again, we want to focus on iron throughout, but really just kind of remembering this is a good time to boost up on that. During our next phase is the follicular phase. And again, this is when we're getting ready for that ovulation event to occur, the follicle is growing. So we want to be focusing on lots of whole grains. Now, as we pay attention to from our last week's episode, this is the time when you often have more activities, more brain power, so you want to have more energy in the source of those whole grains. for joining us. Other great food choices during this time are going to include your lean proteins like chicken or eggs as well as fresh and steamed vegetables. Again, we're doing lots of processing, planning, problem solving, and so we want to have those good healthy grains, those good whole grains and carbs in order to be able to have that energy we need. Now, during your ovulatory phase, again, remembering this is just kind of a day or two, you're going to be at your highest energy levels and we want to help encourage that luteinizing hormone surge. So this is the time when you want to think about those higher fat fish, um, so thinking about salmon, um, lighter grains, so quinoa, lentils, fresh fruit, um, cruciferous vegetables, all of these are going to, again, help with that energy surge. And then we get into the luteal phase. So again, this is the time after you've ovulated. And really during this time is when we see that for many women, when they start to experience PMS symptoms, it can be during this timeframe. And so there's a lot of different things that we focus on. to try and help offset cravings. So one of the ways that you can do that is really focusing on your B vitamins. Now what we know about B vitamins and B complex in general is that it helps to decrease sugar cravings. So B vitamins, again, you can get it from an actual supplement, but if you can get it through your food choices, that's going to be all the better. So again, focusing on those green leafy vegetables, amazing how that comes up frequently here, beans. Chickpeas, brown rice, sunflower, sesame seeds, and then also getting up to a point of, hey, I'm wanting to do some higher carb vegetables and other healthy foods to try and offset those sugar cravings. So think about roasted vegetables, turkey, beans, healthy fats. Um, another great thing to kind of focus on during this time, especially if you have PMS symptoms, is to try and get more magnesium into your diet. So luckily we can get magnesium through things like avocados, dark chocolate. Now again, we don't want to do too much, but a small amount of dark chocolate can help with that magnesium boost. Again, your leafy greens and your grains, all of those can help to reduce your PMS symptoms is. Especially as you get into that later luteal phase. So things to think about, again, when we're talking about overall a well balanced diet, any time is good, but just if you want to pay attention to how can I maybe optimize myself in a different phase, those are some things to think about from a food standpoint. Now, exercise luckily is a little bit easier and generally what I tell women is focus on what your body would want to do during this time, right? So menstrual cycle is pretty obvious. For most women this is a time when we want to just rest and take it easy. So this doesn't mean just do nothing, um, right? That is a good thing is to remember to take it easy, to rest when you need to, to get enough sleep. But we want to keep our bodies moving and keep involved in some sort of exercise so we don't break the exercise routine completely. So think about during your menstrual cycle perhaps something that is less intensity. So that might be something as simple as stretching or yoga or Pilates. It might be walking at a, at a lower pace or a low intensity strength or cardio. If you're trying to focus on building muscle, this is the time when you want to just maybe use a three or a five pound dumbbell instead of going really, really hard and strong. The next phase during your follicular phase and ovulatory phase as well is when we recommend to try something new. So this is the time if you want to try a new exercise and see how you're going, this is This is a perfect time to do that. You are more likely to be more social. So a group fitness class is a great thing to try at this time. You're also more likely to be able to focus on something that is a little bit harder or a little bit more challenging. So this is the time to try it. Something that's a more high intensity, whether that's strength training or cardio training, um, the high intensity interval training, all of that during this timeframe can be really beneficial. And then when you move into the luteal phase after you've ovulated, we want to kind of dial it down a little bit. So maybe backing down to just some moderate intensity, strength, or cardio. A few days before your period starts, you want to start going back to more of that rest phase. So thinking about heading back towards yoga or Walking and Pilates, you know, there's been actually lots of interesting studies done looking at injuries that women have especially people who are professional athletes and what we find is that there is a Significant increase in the number of injuries that women have during their luteal phase and oftentimes we tie this to the fact that women Are trying to do exercise that is maybe too intense for them or maybe their energy levels just aren't as high as they normally would Be and so they're not as capable focused on trying to avoid injury and so this is really, really important to pay attention to and honor the phase that your body is in so you're not trying to overdo it and not trying to have, you know, problems where you end up injuring yourself. In general, the recommendations that I provide to women are that when we're trying to balance your hormones, when we're trying to make sure that we're getting enough exercise, but not overdoing it, we want to aim for the equivalent of 30 minutes of walking daily. So what this means though, is that when you are doing that higher intensity exercise, then That's fine. But we just don't want to do 30 to 60 minutes of it. You know, we may want to dial it down and say, Okay, I'm going to do that higher intensity exercise, but maybe it's only going to be for 10 minutes at a time rather than going that full 30 minutes on the other days when we're doing the lighter intensity, the stretching, the yoga, the walking. That's where 30 minutes comes in. You know, something that's really been fascinating to me to watch is that this is something that's taking off. In a bigger scale. So if we look back to the year 2018, the USA women's national team, they won the world cup that year. And one of the things, and one of the ways that they did that is that they had every single one of their athletes tracking their cycle, tracking their menses, tracking their ovulation, and then helping them to identify what foods they should eat, what exercises they should do, how they should be training during that time. How amazing is it that if we can get a full team of women's athletes working towards this and really seeing the benefit and the power of working in concert with your body, that they can do amazing things. So I would empower you to say, Hey, I'm going to take what I know. I'm going to listen to my body. I'm going to honor the phase that I'm in in order to be able to move forward with my goals, but also to avoid frustration and guilt and feeling like, well, maybe I'm just being lazy or maybe I just. If you can't do this, imagine if you were no longer frustrated by your inability or supposed lack of motivation to stick with your exercise routine and choose foods that your body is craving and needs at certain times of your cycle. This way forward is possible. Our hormone coaches would love the opportunity to work with you and help you better understand your next step forward to help improve your health and promote fertility. If you're ready to work with our elite team of healthcare professionals, go to our website, radiantclinic. com, to schedule a free discovery call with me and learn more about our package based pricing for comprehensive care. We are currently able to see people for in person appointments in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa area, or can arrange for a telehealth visit if you live in the states of Iowa, Illinois, and now Minnesota. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please share this podcast with someone in your life who would benefit from our services. Remember to subscribe to this podcast for more empowering content that I look forward to sharing with you on our next episode of Cycle Wisdom.