I think I've finally figured it out; the secret to life, the Universe and everything! Well, maybe not the Universe and everything and maybe not all of life but certainly life as a woman in her thirties, who is running her own business. Maybe. I'm talking about finally figuring out my menstrual cycle and actually working in alignment with it and working with my body and my hormones, instead of against them. This has been a long time coming.
For years, I've loved the idea of being one of those women who knew what phase of their cycle they were in and knew when their period was due. During the twelve years or so that I was on the contraceptive pill, I did know exactly when my period was due and I loved having the ability to skip a period if it would inconvenience a holiday but as I've grown older, I've become much more aware and mindful of what I'm putting into my body. After twelve years of having my hormones controlled unnaturally, I knew in myself that it was time for a change and three years ago I had a non-hormonal intrauterine device (IUD) fitted.
I was told that it would take around five months for my periods to "return to normal" but having been on the pill since I was 16, I didn't know what "normal" looked like. The first five months were a breeze, nothing notable to report but then in month six after having my IUD fitted, I got a surprise. No period. Having been very regular up until that point, I assumed that I was one of the lucky ones whose cycle returned to normal immediately following the IUD but no such luck. Another two weeks later and my period finally did show up but not after Watson and I had had a slightly awkward conversation. What has followed in the time since then has been month after month after month of irregular periods, skipped periods, heavy periods and worst of all painful periods. Not fun.
Even back when I was on the pill, I loved the idea of eating to support my cycle, but every time I tried to research the topic, I was bamboozled by the amount of information out there. I didn't know what the follicular phase was or the luteal phase, I had no idea how to find out when I was ovulating and thanks to the number of different resources that started their explanations with different phases, I didn't actually know until this year that Day 1 of your period is Day 1 of your cycle.
My interest in this subject was rekindled when, in 2021, I came off the pill for good and decided it was time to start taking my periods seriously. Once again, I tried researching the topic and once again I was deterred by how confusing all the information was. Why couldn't it just be explained to me simply?! And then I came across Dr Mindy Pelz. Finally, here was a woman who was speaking my language! I first discovered her on the Feel Better, Live More podcast and found her explanations simple and accessible. It was still over a year before I finally read her brilliant book Fast Like A Girl, but hey, better late than never.
It's worth saying here that I was already a big fan of intermittent fasting so Fast Like A Girl: A Woman's Guide to Using the Healing Power of Fasting to Burn Fat, Boost Energy and Balance Hormones appealed to me right from the off. I binge-read it over a few days and when I finished it, settled down with coloured pens and my notebook to draw up my very own Fast Like A Girl plan. My goal was to balance my hormones, as I suspected that they were out of whack, and in doing so hoped to achieve the following outcomes:
regular periods (I dreamed of knowing exactly when I could expect my period!)
pain-free periods
lighter periods
more energy
The obstacle that I had been coming up against over and over again in my previous research, and the big thing that Dr Mindy cleared up for me was this:
How Do I Eat To Support My Cycle If I Don't Know Which Phase I'm In?
The issue I was having was that; because my cycle wasn't 28 - 30 days long, I couldn't use the one-size-fits-all guidelines that I was reading everywhere. It was no use to me eating x, y, z on Day 14 because I wasn't in the correct phase on Day 14! I didn't know what phase I was in! I assumed that I should extend each phase by a certain number of days in order to make up the additional days of my cycle (which was averaging 42 days) but couldn't find confirmation of this anywhere, and the problem with that was that one month my cycle would be 42 days and the next might only be 35, or at one point 47 so I still couldn't be sure what phase I was in! I was so confused and I needed help.
Help is exactly what I got through FLAG. I finally learned the answer and no, the trick was not to try and extend each of the phases, it was to treat the first three phases as the correct length and to allow the fourth phase to be as long as necessary. Don't worry - I am going to explain!
Phase 1: Days 1-10 (starts on the first day of your period)
Phase 2: Days 11-15
Phase 3: Days 16-19
Phase 4: Days 20 - 30 (or until the first day of your next period)
This simple schedule seems to be working. It's still a bit too early to say for certain but I've been eating and working in alignment with these phases for three months now and I can say two things for certain: one, my periods are lighter and two, my periods are almost entirely pain-free. At the risk of sounding hella nerdy (which I totally am), I need more data before I can report on regularity. So far, the time between periods has certainly gotten shorter, but it's too soon to say whether or not they are now going to be regular. As for energy, well...
To make the four phases super simple and to tie in some of what you will probably already have noticed about your own cycle, I like to think of them as two phases.
Phase 1: Days 1 - 19
Phase 2: Days 20 - 30 (or until the first day of your next period)
What I have found through reading FLAG and eating and fasting accordingly, is that during Phase 1 my energy is much higher than in Phase 2. Phase 1 is my Get S#it Done phase and I love it. During these twenty or so days, I am bursting with ideas and full of energy. I can barely stop myself from working because I get into the flow easily and I power my way through to-do lists like no-one's business. I used to think that this level of awesomeness and productivity should be my everyday standard but I have finally, finally, finally realised that this level of output is not only unsustainable, it's unnatural. Which brings me to...
Phase 2. My sleepy phase. Rest time. I like this phase because it has always been my one anchoring point within my cycle. Even back when I had no idea what was going on, I can pinpoint when this phase was occurring because of four very clear signals:
I'm always hungry (and craving carbs in particular)
I'm more tired and irritable than usual
Breakouts of spots
Breast tenderness
It's the hunger that has always stood out to me, as someone who is very food orientated. I've been making my own granola for several years now and during Phase 1 (in my pre-intermittent fasting days) it would keep me going from 6am until 1pm easily. In Phase 2, I would be hungry again by 11am. (I will add here that being tired also increases your hungry signals so coupled with needing more sleep during this phase, it's no wonder I was always so hungry.) The irritability and spotty skin I would experience during this phase was only ever apparent as a symptom after my period arrived and if social media is anything to go by, this is common for a lot of women. The breast tenderness is something that I have only recently been able to pinpoint to this phase, now that I am consistently tracking my cycle. It still amazes me how many of my symptoms I have noticed for years but have only been able to relate to actual stages within my cycle now that I am tracking it properly.
What used to confuse me and what took me so long to see these symptoms for what they were (ie: clues that my period was on it's way) was that I was under the misconception that these things should have been the stereotypical symptoms of my actual period, not the lead up to it. You know, the classic let's sit on the sofa and cry into a tub of ice cream while watching a romcom. I gained some clarity when I heard someone explain that these symptoms appear during the week before your period but it still didn't quite add up for me as I was noticing these things two weeks before my period. Now that I know that my cycle is longer than average, and that this stage and these symptoms start around Day 20, it finally makes sense to me that I was seeing them two weeks before my period during a 35 day cycle.
Back to Phase 2, I like this phase now because it gives me permission to rest (I still struggle to give that permission to myself sometimes). During this time, I set my alarm later, let myself skip Barney's weekly agility class if I need to and on the weekends we tend to stay home. What's most exciting for me now, is that I have just this month realised the noticeable difference in my energy levels between Phase 1 and Phase 2 and have started planning my work weeks accordingly.
During my Phase 1 days of this month, I was an absolute powerhouse. I found myself with too many things that I wanted to do and when I'm feeling like that, the best thing for me to do is to make a list. I made a long list of all the things I wanted to get done and then I began ploughing through that list, ticking things off one by one. In two days I had completed it and felt an immense sense of achievement. My energy levels were high and I was roll a motivational roll.
I'm going to take this moment to share with you something that has been a game changer for me in recent weeks and I can't remember whether or not I've already shared it. I recently heard a mindset coach share an analogy about filling your cup and needing rest. She held up a Starbucks cup and said:
Imagine this is your cup (as in "you can't give from an empty cup").
When we burnout, our cup empties and we're forced to rest.
As we rest, our cup fills a little bit.
When it's no longer empty, we feel better and the mistake we make is that we then spend all that energy on unimportant things, usually housework or social engagements we don't even want to go to.
Now our cup is empty again.
What we should really be doing when we start to feel a little better, is rest more.
That way, once our cup is fuller, we can do the housework and the social engagements without burning out all over again.
That one little lesson has been dramatic for me. Now when I feel myself getting tired or overwhelmed, I stop and I rest. And when I start to feel a little better and feel tempted to do the housework (why is it always housework?), I don't do it. Instead I rest some more. I've even started delegating jobs around the house to Watson. Now that really is progress.
Going back to my story about my work schedule and my energy levels for this month. I realised while I was on this to-do list smashing high that this level of productivity couldn't last and that if it did, I would exhaust myself. By some miracle, I put two and two together and realised that the reason why I had so much energy was because I was in my Get S#it Done phase: Phase 1. With that realisation in mind, I planned out the rest of the month with Phase 1 and Phase 2 in mind.
If I could power through tricky tasks during Phase 1 then what kind of jobs would I enjoy doing during Phase 2? I suspect that I would enjoy the creative tasks for my business; things like writing blogs and creating social media posts, but I could be wrong. On the one hand, these jobs can be done cosied up on the sofa or in bed with a cup of tea, but they do still require quite a lot of mental effort. So the jury's still out on that one and this month and this Phase 2 is putting that theory to that test. It may be that I actually need to get up and go energy of Phase 1 to spark the creativity required for these tasks. We shall see.
So there you have it, I think I may have finally cracked it. Watson once said to me "It seems backwards - working hard all week so that you need to rest on the weekend. It should be the other way round" and I totally agree with him. Achieving my own idea of work-life balance (I believe it's personal for everyone) is something that it is very important to me and is something that I am lucky to have quite a lot of agency over being my own boss, so when I hit upon productivity hacks like this one I get tremendously excited. I suppose it's all part of my overall mission to create my ideal life. Either way, I have enjoyed sharing my findings with you and I shall write an update when I've spent a few months trying out this new way of scheduling my work load.
Until next time!
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