Goooood morning :) Sipping on my coffee & some warm ginger tea. I wanted to do a deeper dive into cycle syncing today, because understanding and applying it has changed my life. It has helped to balance my hormones, optimize my whole body health and also built trust in my body, self, and of course, my gut feelings.
I believe every single woman (& every person who knows a woman!) should learn about cycle syncing from a young age. It honestly blows my mind that we don’t. It is so important, and once you learn it, it helps you understand yourself and the way your body works x1 million.
Cycle syncing in general means aligning your lifestyle with your menstrual cycle. Tuning into your body and understanding your strengths in each phase, while making adjustments to food, exercise, self-care and even activities to support hormone health and well-being.
There are four phases in a female menstrual cycle: Menstrual, Follicular, Ovulatory and Luteal. In each of these phases, hormones, estrogen, and progesterone experience peaks and dips, causing mood and energy to follow a similar pattern.
Women operate on a 28 Day Hormonal Cycle. In contrast, men operate on a 24 hour testosterone cycle. This makes men and women operate very differently.
Men are more constant day by day. They wake up with peak testosterone, and it slowly starts to diminish throughout the day, then the next day this same process repeats. Whereas women experience changes in hormones, mood, and energy day by day.
Learning this was one of those enlightenment moments for me. Like woah… I should not be playing the comparison game or getting down on myself for not being as productive as I “should be.” Instead, understanding that female hormones are unique, and there is a reason why there are certain days where I am more emotionally vulnerable, tired, hungrier, less confident, or maybe feel weaker. That these ebbs and flows in mood, energy, appetite, confidence, creativity actually correlate with the phases of my cycle, and by understanding these strengths and weaknesses, I can forgive myself and use that to my advantage.
It has opened my eyes and allowed me to be kinder and more forgiving to myself. Really tapping into this more feminine flow state and energy has allowed me to build trust and intuition within myself.
Cycle syncing is understanding how our hormones ebb and flow in accordance to our hormonal cycle, and syncing our lifestyle to those stages to become the most optimized versions of ourselves. These dips in hormones and energy actually are a superpower in a lot of ways if used correctly. Through cycle syncing, you basically biohack your body to become the best performer you can be and use the strengths of each cycle phase to your advantage.
Now let’s dive into each phase, what it means, what your strengths are in each phase, what foods and workouts to prioritize, and the best activities for each phase so you can be the best version of you.