Like I’ve mentioned in the very first episode of my podcast What A Mouthful, poor health can limit the experience of your life.
I see it happen all the time with women especially around your cycle.
And if you do the calculations, on average each of us spend 2.5 YEARS with PMS (that typically crappy week before your period).
Yep. 7.5 years.
So you gotta ask yourself – do you want to spend it in pain, telling people to piss off and eating foods that make you feel terrible??
I can help! You take your body with you everywhere and it’s the only place to live. So the podcast is going to be the “how to” when it comes to how to achieve a healthy mind and body in most easy-to-implement way, specifically for you as a female.
Plus, physical health is as important as your mental health. It goes hand and hand.
…and my tool to be able to help people with their mental health is through their physical body with training and food.
What else do you need to know about the podcast?
For the extremely cool humans I get on the podcast, I’m gonna ask them a common question and that question is: What’s the health hack that was a gamechanger for you?
Here’s my answer….
Training to match my cycle.
I know that there are plenty of you who started to follow me simply from that one episode I did with Sarah & Kurt on the Health Code Daily and its so amazing because some of you, as 30 or even 40…
…you’re coming to me saying “I can’t believe I am 30 and I have never thought once about my cycle and whether I should train differently based on it.
It’s not your fault.
Most of the research over the decades have been on men…
…or women in the 1st half of their cycle…
…when they’re most like men.
It’s really important you know we have this distinct 4 phases which I split into 2 halves.
In the 1st half of your cycle;
—> is when you’re most like a male in terms of what your hormones do for you. We’re generally the most energetic and we have the most masculine energy – and typically ‘society’ accepts us the most when we’re like this. Men who have a good level of testosterone are very confident, motivated and driven. Oestrogen can do that for us as women too. Mind you, we also have testosterone, but oestrogen can give us those qualities too.
In the second half of our cycle;
—> we transitioned into more of a feminine energy. This is our rest and recovery time where we should be listening to our body. We should be doing the yoga, the Pilates, the walking. We should be cooking our food (as opposed to having it raw), making it super nutritious and having good family time.
It’s a beautifully perfect rhythm called the Infradian rhythm.
Our 1st clock:
Our 24 hour clock – it’s run by the sun.
Our 2nd clock (which only women have):
Our roughly 28 day clock – it’s run by the moon.
Men’s 1st clock is the same as their hormonal clock but for women, we have a different clock that is often disregarded… like completely.
Let me ask you a question….
Has a personal trainer EVER asked you where you’re at in your cycle before going to smash you in a workout?
And if your answer is yes (which I highly doubt) do you feel they knew how to manipulate their session to work with your body vs against it?
Let me tell you, the knowledge in the health & fitness industry is limited, at best…
…and I’m on literally on a mission to help women understand this.
When I was an avid F45er back in 2014 I would think more is better and anything below 100% effort was unacceptable. I used to do doubles and leave nothing in the tank after a session… every time… regardless of where I was in my cycle…
…thinking this was the way one loses weight, right?
Well, as time went on I found it harder and harder to lose weight… even with enlisting help.
So after being VERY confused and devouring textbooks like it was my favourite past-time (which it now is) and I found that the missing link was the fact that nobody took into account my hormones, nor did I.
Once this clicked to me, I started to see a pattern. And I would look at the women in the HIIT studios I worked in and could see it there too – strong AF but struggle to lose fat. It was somewhat sustainable for the men but for the women, the more they trained, the more they burned themselves out and the less they were able to lose the fat which is the whole reason they went there in the first place.
What I have figured out was that my own journey with PCOS made so much more sense. When I look at these women and I understood stress…yes – calories matters – I’m a nutritionist… I program for calories… but I believe it’s just a reference range.
I understood that calories matter, but hormones matter more, specifically stress hormones, sex hormones, and brain hormones. And so for me, learning how to train around my cycle was such a game changer for me…and that is really when I started FlowFit – and it’s all about showing women how to eat and train for their cycle.
I feel very grateful to spend time bettering other people’s lives and working on my life’s mission, because I know how much it’s changed my own life.
Have a listen to the episode if you haven’t already. You’ll really enjoy it.
Dee xx
