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Ok, so you're ready to track your cycle and take your life to a whole new level. You're in the right place! There are a few things you need to know first to start your cycle syncing journey. This post will give you the tools you need to start crushing your goals.
1. Learn Your Cycle Phases
First things first, you gotta understand your hormones (why you have them, what they do, why they're so important) in order to succeed in hacking your cycle. Our free Hormones 101 Class is a MUST to learn your cycle phases. It comes with a PDF download sharing details about your hormones and giving you a baseline to start with.
Next, you need to understand the four phases of your monthly cycle. This class has short video tutorials that walk you through each phase and include information like how you feel, what your thoughts will be like, what foods you'll want to eat, how you'll want to work, workout, and even hang out with friends.
This crash course is crucial to getting started and I really needed space to dive deeper with you rather than some impersonal blog post! I make all my clients go through this class first.
The perfect compliment to what you're learning is our Cycle Sync Guide & Journal Book, where I give you my cycle phase cheat sheets!
2. Track Your Cycle
Yup, there's an app for that. Download a cycle app and start tracking your period. With many of them, you only have to go in and say what day your period start and what day your period ends. This will give you a good idea to how long your cycle is so you know how many days your body lasts in each phase.
This is crucial knowledge because soon you're going to begin planning your life around it (don't worry, I'll make it easy).
3. Keep a Cycle Sync Journal
You always need a reason to buy some fresh new stationary! Creating a space where you can track your cycle is the key to your success. Here's what I want you to take notes on of for 2-3 cycles:
1. Date
2. What cycle phase you're in
3. How many hours of sleep you got the night before
4. What you ate - note all of it - meals, snacks, dessert, beverages and note how you felt after eating
5. Your workouts
6. Any hormone symptoms you notice like low energy, bloating, acne (where is it), irritability, stress levels, menstrual cramps, dry skin, poor memory, and lack of motivation
7. Bowel movements - yeah girl, your digestion can change from cycle phase to cycle phase
8. Food cravings
9. Your energy levels
This tracking will begin to build analysis of your thoughts, feelings, and behavior. For getting to know your cycle, you need to identify patterns. Then you'll be able to compare, not week to week, but cycle phase to cycle phase. That's key here.
You do not care how you felt last week with all that high energy to why you have low energy this week. You want to compare menstrual phase to menstrual phase, luteal phase to luteal phase, and so on. There will be four weeks inbetween those phases! But THAT is where you get the best insight into recurring themes.
You may start to notice you feel slightly bloated at ovulation and that's it. Now you know WHEN it's happening so you can change your habits to support WHY it's happening. This is what you need to create change.
Or you notice you have low energy exactly seven days before your period is coming. That's just a sign that your body is right on track (this time period can be different for each woman, this is just my example!). So maybe next month you can not schedule so many meetings on that day or you can cut out of work early. This insight will help you with the final step.
4. Start Changing Your Schedule
Now that you've collected all this amazing data on your cycle, that's when you can start making the necessary changes. This work is meant to help you grow and learn more about yourself. You'll finally figure out why you feel a certain way and when symptoms arise. If you don't know this data about yourself, your efforts will feel like you're shooting in the dark and things won't change.
Personally, I notice a slight energy dip exactly seven days before my period, then another two days. I make my schedule lighter on those days and won't push myself to do a tough workout. My digestion also slows down exactly three days before my period. So I make sure to eat more warming foods, sip on warm water with lemon, drink a Bloat Blast juice mix, and eat more fiber.
If you show up and commit yourself to doing this work, it will be INVALUABLE to how you live your life moving forward. You will not be sorry you did this!
