June 15, 2021 • 44 mins
Co-hosts Adrienne Herbert and Tamara Pridgett speak to Alisa Vitti, women’s hormone health expert, author, and founder of FLOLiving. Alisa gives us a crash course on women’s hormonal cycle, the power of working with your body through cycle syncing, and how to tailor your fitness routine and more to each phase of your cycle.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Women have to factor in their in freighting rhythm and
we experience it over the course of our monthly cycle.
But it is way too simplistic to think it just
governs your period and your ovulation. Then that's why I
created the cycle sinking method. It has three pillars, food, fitness,
and time management. Also that you can align with that
in freightian clock and when you do that, you get
(00:22):
out of hormonal chaos and you get in the flow.
This is what The details a collaboration with Underrama and
I Heart Radio, a podcast made for women by women
that puts our training journeys, goals and mind set at
(00:43):
this centurn. I'm Tamera Pridget and I'm Adrian Herbert's. Every
episode we'll hear from athletes, trainers, and experts who will
give us insights into how our bodies and minds work
together in training and composition. In today's episode, we are
talking about training with your cycle. We're going to dive
into how we can learn more about our body and
(01:04):
the ways we recover by working with, not against our cycles.
Our guests A Lisa Vidi is a woman's hormone expert, author,
functional nutritionists, and founder of the app My Flow Adrian,
I honestly know nothing, truly nothing about cycle thinking, so
I'm really excited to learn more about this and how
(01:26):
our bodies work and how we can maximize our training
and recovery and performance with our mentoral cycle. Yeah. Tamara,
I'm also really excited to dive into this episode because
I am somebody who has been trying to cycle sink
for a little while. I've read a few books, I've
read a lot of articles, but I'm certainly not an expert,
(01:47):
so I'm really looking forward to hearing from Melissa. Yeah,
it's definitely something that is intriguing. I've seen a lot
of conversation about it recently, so ready to learn. So
let's dive into this interview with Alissa VD. Yes, let's
do it. Hi A, Lisa, welcome to sweat the details.
(02:13):
We are so glad to have you here today. Can
you tell us about how you arrived at where you
are now with flow living and what flow living is.
It's so great to be here, Tamara and Adrian. Yeah,
it's an interesting story in the sense that I found
myself at a young age with major hormone problems. You know,
I was a young woman, I was obese, I was
(02:34):
covered in acne sister acne, all over my face, chest
and back. I wasn't getting my cycle, and I went
to all the doctors and everybody said that there was
nothing wrong, and clearly that just couldn't be true. So
at one point I was a student at Johns Hopkins
University planning to become an O B G y N.
And you know what does an obi sacn a girl
(02:55):
do on a Friday night, Well, she's at the medical
library trying to research what's wrong with her. And so
in an obstetrics journal one evening, I came across an
article that described my symptoms and a disorder called stein
levenhal disease, which was the original name given to polycystic
ovarian syndrome, and all those symptoms just checked all the boxes.
And so I felt really excited in a way because
(03:17):
I had something to take to my doctor and we
did a whole bunch of testing, and when I came
back in later for the results, she said, you're right,
you do have PCOS. Sorry that we missed it, you know,
And I was like, what do we do now, and um,
she said, you know, we really can't do anything for you.
These symptoms that you're having. Now we're going to evolve
(03:38):
into potentially other conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and fertility
and cancer. We don't have a cure, we don't even
have dedicated medication to fix what's wrong with you, but
we do have some other medications that we can kind
of use to maybe help some of the symptoms maybe.
And that was sort of a big moment, and I
just remember hearing my body say that's not your future.
(04:01):
So I decided that I would figure out what it
is that was needed to really help rebalance the endocrine system,
and that if I could do that, that I would
build a platform, a new type of hormonal healthcare destination
for women. Because I recognized that I was not the
only one. I mean, the statistics around hormonal issues are staggering. Right,
(04:22):
eight percent of women will have a hormonal problem in
their lifetime. Did not know that eighty percent? Okay, and
right now, as of this moment that we're speaking of,
the female population has a hormonal problem right in this moment.
So flow living dot Com was born out of this
desire to build a destination healthcare platform for women's hormones
(04:44):
that really solved what in my research over the past
two decades, has really come to be unnecessary hormone problems
that you deal with from your first period to your last.
And I say unnecessary because the only reason why they're
happening is simply because you haven't been taught how your
body were and how you have to work with your
body to make your hormones work optimally to bio hack
like a woman. And that's sort of where I come
(05:06):
in as a passionate period person to help you understand
how that works, and full Living works with women all
over the world to help them deal with their period issues,
their infertility issues, and anything that's going on with perimenopause. Amazing,
to be honest, there's so many questions that we have
for you, and I'm sure the listeners are probably you know,
(05:26):
just really desperate actually for this information. And you know
when you mentioned then about working with the flow and
figuring out the ones, you have this information. Once you
figure out what's going on and you get some of
the answers I guess to our questions today, hopefully that's
going to really help them and they'll be able to
implement some of these things into their lives too. Yeah,
and I mean, I should say that implementing my own
(05:46):
protocol years ago, you know, resulted in me having sixty
pounds melt off my body without deprivation. For example, my
skin cleared up, my cycle and ovulation restored. You know,
I was able to have a child at thirty six, naturally, right.
So it's amazing that we've been fed a whole bunch
of mythology that says your period is supposed to be miserable,
(06:10):
your hormones are mysterious and unfixable. Once you have a
condition or a problem, if your mom's or your auntie's
had it, you're stuck with it for life. It's your destiny.
It's all mythology, but it really does hold us back
because we believe it, and so therefore we take no
action right to make changes that might help us. But yeah,
I I do know the pain and suffering that women
(06:32):
are going through. It's way more than just affecting your period, right,
affects the quality of your life. Women who have chronic
pain from endometriosis or fibers I mean, or just even
really bad cramps, you can be taken out of your
life for a few days out of every month. If
you add that up, that's years of your life where
you're not getting to be at your a game because
of this alleged hormonal curse. That we really can do
(06:56):
so much, We have so much agency over our hormones,
we just haven't been the right way to do it.
Can you tell us what cycles thinking is, why we
should do it, how we can bio hack our cycle
just to perform better, whether it's athletically or just day
to day. So the second book that came out, In
the Flow, came out in January of last year. I
(07:18):
was writing this book because I wanted to answer the question,
why is it that so many women are still suffering
with hormonal issues, you know, compared to men, and just
compared to ourselves, Because in the past five years there's
been an explosion of normalizing the conversation on social media
and wellness sites, like we're all talking about our periods,
which is amazing and historic, but we're still sick hormonally
(07:43):
and why is that? And so I dug in, I
dug into the research, and I found two things that
just totally blew my mind. The first is that and
you should know and be aware, women are left out
of medical fitness and nutrition research. That is significant because
what that means is any time you hear okay, hit
(08:04):
workouts or intermittent fasting, that's the thing you should do.
That's going to get you the results that you want.
The gender that was studied was mail, and the results
are there for optimizing the mail ecosystem. The assumption that
is being made by the researchers is that women, you know,
(08:24):
we're just smaller versions of men. So whatever is working
for the guys should work for the girls. If you
even just say it out loud, it sounds crazy. You know,
we've got to just move forward from that and really
start including women in studies because what we are finding
is that things like intermittent fasting, for example, which confer
all these benefits to guys and to post menopausal women,
(08:44):
have the opposite effect on women in their reproductive years.
So if men get increased autophagi, increased sugar utilization by
the cell, improved brain function, improved metabolism, women in their
reproductive years when they do intermittent fasting have the opposite.
They increase brain fog, increase insulin resistance, uh damage thyroid performance,
(09:07):
and can shrink your ovaries. Right, So it doesn't translate.
The research that's coming out that's being done on men
doesn't apply to you. So any time you read something
forevermore you should ask the first question is who was
the study done on And if it wasn't your gender,
don't do it. Don't try it because it's likely if
it's not including your biology, then there's no guarantee that
(09:29):
it's going to support your biology. Right, So that was
the first thing. The second thing is that I uncovered
that women have a second biological rhythm called the in
Fredian rhythm. This in Fredian rhythm govern six key systems
of our bodies, our brain, our metabolism, our stress response system,
our immune system, our microbiome, and our reproductive system, which
(09:52):
includes our period, our fertility, and our sex drive. If
you are disrupting it, then you are forcing those systems
of your body to perform suboptimally. Right, You're not going
to be thinking at your clearest, you're gonna have more
brain fog, you're gonna have immune issues, you're going to
have metabolism problems, you're gonna have period problems, and you're
going to think that they're all somehow disconnected. But once
(10:14):
you understand the science of the Infredian rhythm, and you'll
see that everything is connected through this, just like it's
too simplistic to think that the circadian rhythm only governs
your sleep wake cycles. Women have to factor in their
in freightingan rhythm and we experience it over the course
of our monthly cycle. But it is way too simplistic
to think it just governs your period and your ovulation.
(10:37):
Like I said, it governs these other systems of the body.
So when we factor that in and I looked at
these two things, I said, no wonder women are suffering
at a greater rate than men, And no wonder, we're
still suffering even though we have all this conversation about
menstruation taking place, because without the foundation of the Infredian
rhythm to stand on everything that we're doing, like we're
(10:59):
not eating the right calories at the right time of
the month, we're not doing the right workout intensity at
the right time of the month, and all of that
disrupts the and Fredian rhythm and causes you to have
more symptoms with your cycle, and then other symptoms in
these other systems of the body. It's a game changer,
and that's why I created the cycle sinking method. It
(11:19):
has three pillars, food, fitness, and time management. Also that
you can align with that in Fredian clock. When you
do that, you get out of hormonal chaos and you
get in the flow, not just in the flow of
your hormones, but in a peak state of flow with
every aspect of your life, which is how nature intended
you to feel fantastic every day of the month. There's
(11:44):
so much good stuff in here. I'm honestly sitting here
nodding along as I mentioned, you know, I think my cycle,
but it's a new thing, and you're right, it's a
game changer. If anyone's listening right now and they're thinking, Okay,
there's a lot here, it can be so overwhelming. And
when you broke it down then into food, fitness, time management,
I'm thinking, okay, let's kind of break it down. So
(12:05):
maybe starting with fitness. You know, if you're a listener
of the show and somebody who wants to optimize their
workouts for each stage of the cycle, Yes, where should
we stop? Super easy? Just understand the science ready, here
it goes. You have four phases of your cycle follicular, ovulatory, luteal,
and menstrual. These each have unique hormone ratio signatures that
(12:25):
cause certain structural things to happen in the body, like
ovulation or the creation of the endometrial lining or the
loosening of that lining. But these hormonal signatures also affect
our metabolism and in the case of fitness, are resting
cortisol patterns. So in the first half of your cycle,
follicular and ovulatory, you have lower resting cortisol levels, which
(12:46):
means that you can do cardio to your heart's content,
do high intensity interval training, and go hard with your workouts.
By doing that in the first half, when resting cortisol
is lower, you're going to build the most lean muscle,
the easiest, and the fastest, and you're going to use
(13:07):
stored fat as fuel. Once you cross over ovulation and
you're now in the second half of your cycle and
the luteal phase, resting cortisol levels are higher, just naturally right,
And the studies show that you must not do cardio
or hit workouts at all. If you do do them,
(13:28):
you're going to ready take notes, turn on fat storage,
and turn on muscle wasting. What does muscle wasting mean?
Meaning you're gonna instead of using fat as fuel, You're
gonna burn your muscle. Yeah. So here you are trying
to be good. You're trying to just you know, stay
committed to your workout plan. But you're staying committed on
(13:50):
the premise of what optimizes the male hormonal pattern, which
follows the circadian pattern, which means, if you're a dude
and you want to bio hack and you want to
build your lean muscle and burn your stored fat, you
do want to do the same type of workout day
and in day out. But if you have ovaries and
you have all of these female hormones, you do not
want to have the same training intensity daily. It will
(14:13):
undo your results. So the first half of the month,
you're doing your cardi, you're doing your hit workouts, you're
building lean muscle, you're burning stored fat. If you keep
doing that after ovulation, you're going to cancel that effort out.
You're gonna negate it. And so we have a four
letter acronym to sort of give some human energies. I
guess to each of the four phases, and we call
(14:34):
that the power acronym p O W R. So, in
the follicular phase, you want to think about preparing. In
the ovulatory phase, you want to think about you know,
opening up expansion. In the lootal phase, you want to
think about work right, like deep work. And in the
menstrual phase you want to think about rest. And this
has implications beyond just your fitness. It also has to
(14:56):
do with your brain changes. Your brain changes up over
the course of the month. This was discovered by Dr
Catherine Willie at Northwestern University. So what workouts should you
do in the louteal phase right? For example, you want
to do strength training without a cardio component, because that's
what's going to build your lean muscle and burn your
stored fat and jack up your metabolism and you're gonna
(15:18):
get huge results without actually really doing any cardio. It's
remarkable how efficient the female body is. Um, we are
just design more efficiently because you know, no big deal
with three D print human beings, so we have to
have a more efficient metabolism and no big, no big problem.
And so you know, that's the idea that you don't
(15:38):
have to work as hard every day to get the gains.
You want to think about training yourself, cross training yourself
over the course of your cycle so that you get
huge benefits with the least amount of effort, and certainly
by decreasing injury right and then during the bleeding week,
you can walk, you can do yoga, pilates, any sort
of like active stretching and sort of recovery type stretching
(16:02):
workouts that you can do. A lot of women really
enjoy doing yin yoga, which is a specific type of
yoga that's really about restorative poses. So you just want
to work smarter as a woman, understanding all of these
aspects of your health and your hormones and not push,
because it's the pushing that actually disrupts your hormones and
(16:22):
causes a snowball effect. And then all of a sudden,
you're having really bad PMS, and now it's not just
hell week during your bleed, but it's now also hell
week during PMS. And then that backs into having, you know,
symptoms during ovulation. Now you're having breakouts, and then instead
of feeling energized when your period ends, you feel tired
during the follicular phase. These are all signs that you
have been disrupting that in Fredian clock, and it has
(16:44):
a trickle down effect by not synchronizing what you're doing
in the correct alignment. With these cycle phases, you start
to feel the effects pretty quickly. I have two thoughts
that I want to clarify before we move forward. So first,
when you said psych goal, initially I just thought about,
like the days that you're bleeding. We're bleeding, and you know,
(17:06):
I'm just gonna admit it, because I'm sure there are
others out there like me. I really only consider that
to be my cycle. I really don't pay much attention
to it. I'm like, okay, it's here, tampon, boom boom,
period underwear. There we go. So just to clarify, the
cycle is beyond just when we bleed. Correct. I love
so much that you brought this up, Tamera, because it
(17:28):
is only with language around our cycle that I have
found this lack of precision in any biological description anywhere. Right,
there's like a technical term for every single thing everywhere else,
but for us, for our cycles. You're absolutely right, it
is so confusing. The bleed is the menstrual phase, got
(17:48):
it right. You have a cycle it is a month
long approximately, okay, and then you have a bleeding week
where you're bleeding, okay, And that's really clear, right, Yes,
I'm glad we got that clarified, because, like I said,
I know, I'm not the only one that was wondering that. No,
And that's important because the American College of Astetrics and
(18:10):
Gynecologists decreed that your cycle is now to be considered
your fifth vital sign, which means that you want to
take it as seriously. Any symptom throughout your cycle you
want to take as seriously as you would take the
other four vital signs that they take in the emergency room,
like your temperature or your blood pressure. If you have
(18:31):
an elevated temperature or elevated blood pressure, you have been
conditioned and trained and educated to take immediate action and
seek medical help. Right. You wouldn't be like, oh, you
know whatever, I just have a fever, right, But we
totally do that with our periods, like, oh whatever, I
have p MS, Oh whatever, I have fibroids, Oh whatever,
I have heavy bleeding and clotting, Oh whatever, I feel terrible.
(18:52):
Fifty of the month, we brush it off because we
have no idea what we should be doing when our
hormones are imbalanced. We have been very disempowered to take
action because we haven't received a proper education and that
has to change. Got it. So earlier you were speaking
about the circadian rhythm and the and Fredian rhythm. Can
you explain how those two go hand in hand because
(19:13):
we kind of touched on them separately, but how do
they work together? Yeah, So the circadian rhythm, you experience
it every single day, right, and that really has to
do with cortisol patterns for your sort of day to
day experience. So, right before you wake up, your body
releases the maximum concentration in a healthy individual of cortisol
that you're going to have for the day. Then you
(19:34):
have a couple of other surges in the morning and
early afternoon, and then it starts to decrease in the
mid till late afternoon and evening, where you have the
lowest levels of cortisol throughout the day. This is sort
of a circadian cortisol pattern, and this is one of
the ways that it influences your energy throughout the day.
It's really important, right, because if you had, let's say,
the same level of cortisol throughout the day, would be
(19:55):
impossible for you to relax and go to sleep. So
this is one of the ways you experience it. Hey,
you also experience your circadian rhythm with the timing of
your bowel movements, like your your bowel is most active
in the morning and the least active during the middle
of the night. So that's how the circadian rhythm kind
of functions. And really think of it as sort of
(20:16):
a layering effect for women once you hit puberty, from
your first bleed to your last, you have the secondary
clock that works in parallel to the circadian clock. So
you have this happening. You have your twenty four hour cycle, right,
you have a sleep wake cycle, and you have an
in Fredian clock that governs these elegantly complex set of
(20:36):
hormones that you have that are you know, part of
this reproductive system. Right. So because you have that system
in a way that is unique, um, we needed a
different biological clock to govern that as well. So with
a whole month cycle as a picture, I know you
mentioned one month and you bleed for one week typically,
but I know, you know for myself from speaking to friends,
(20:57):
some people they might be twenty two days, others it's
thirty five. And some people might bleed for three days,
others bleed for seven. So if you're just like listening
to this and thinking, Okay, I'm going to start taking no,
I'm going to start tracking. I'm going to start trying
to get onto some kind of rhythm so I can
bio hack and get scheduled. What's the best way to
go about that? And if your cycle is longer or shorter,
(21:18):
does that mean each phase is the same or do
you have one longer phase than others because it's not
always like a calendar month, right, Yeah, So I use
these terms loosely because everybody has a unique hormonal pattern
for how long they're cycle. Typically is you need to
establish what's normal for you. Some women have a twenty
eight day cycle and that's normal for them. Other women
(21:39):
have a thirty two day cycle that's normal for them.
The range that is, you know, studied to be healthy
and normal as anywhere between twenty seven and thirty two days, Right,
that's sort of that's a normal range. If you're having
your cycle between those timings, that's good and healthy. Anything
that's happening sooner, like if we have a cycle every
twenty two days, something is off with your hormones. If
(22:01):
you have a cycle that's longer than thirty five days,
something is off with your hormones, and so that you
want to look at as part of how you evaluate
your cycle health as that fifth vital sign the length
of the cycle as a whole. You also want to
look at the length of the bleed. So a healthy
range for bleeding days is anywhere between four and seven days.
(22:22):
If it's shorter than four days, we've got issues from
a hormonal point of view. If it's longer than seven days,
there's also hormonal imbalance there, right, So you want to
check the length of the bleed itself. Then you want
to look at the color of the bleed. If it's
a fresh, healthy red color all as well. If it's dark,
you know, really dark colored blood with clots, that's typically
(22:45):
indicative of excess levels of estrogen that have built up
too much of an endometrial lining and now it's coming
out in heavy clots and dark colored blood. If it's brown,
kind of like prune juice colored, right, you want to
look at that because that could mean that you're not
making enough project strone, which could mean it could have
effects on your cycle length and your fertility. And if
it's light pink like pink lemonade, right, that could be
(23:08):
indicative of not enough estrogen, especially if you're overtraining, you
have short cycles like three or two or three day cycles,
and it's light pink in color. That could have a
whole set of side effects in terms of bone density
and heart health, and so you really want to look.
All of these things are bio markers for you to
start to bio hack your hormones, and you've got to
be looking before you flush every month certainly. And then
(23:29):
on top of that, you do want to add in
a tracker. I built. My Flow tracker has a circle
icon um to help you not just understand when you're
going to get your period, it's so that you can
understand why am I having a symptom during ovulation? Why
am I breaking out during ovulation? Right? You need to
understand why that's happening. There's a reason why, and it's
(23:51):
different from the reason why you might be breaking out
or having PMS symptoms in your luteal phase and why
you're having cramps. There's a reason behind that that you
will learn about if you're having that symptom by tracking
in the my Flow app, and it will tell you
kind of what you can start doing with food and
supplements to really make improvements so that you can improve
your period month over month. You should have a symptom free,
(24:14):
healthy cycle, healthy color bleed, optimal amount of days. You
can make that happen if you start interacting with your
cycle with food and lifestyle at least as you're talking,
you know, thinking a lot about you know. Under LMA,
we look at the fitness three pillars, So train, compete, recover,
And if you are someone who is a professional athlete
(24:35):
or a competitive athlete, then you're not always in control
of when you might have to compete, or when you
might need to train, or you know when you can
recover and travel, and you might have a race that
you're working towards. So for anyone listening who's thinking, you
know what, I can't have complete autonomy over my schedule
and training and competing. What would your advice be to
those athletes, I would absolutely say that is irrelevant. And
(25:01):
think about it this way. If you train while you
do have autonomy and control over your schedule in a
way that optimizes your biology and your performance. Right, you're
making faster gains, you're recovering faster, you're having less injury
and stress on the body, so overall you're just training
in a way that is optimal, so that way, whenever
(25:23):
you have to go and do the competition, if it's
in a suboptimal time, like if you happen to have
to run the marathon while you're having your period, you
know there are a couple of things you want to do. One,
you're going to be so well prepared because of the
training schedule that you did do if that was in
line with your in Fredian clock, that when you do that,
you're going to perform better than you normally could during
(25:45):
that phase A and B. You're going to strategically support
yourself right, You're gonna hydrate, You're gonna use maybe under
armor gear that helps you with heat management and recovery.
You're gonna do things that you know will help give
you some comp station factors for what's happening with your
body in real time. You should not go in to
any competition just expecting that you should just arbitrarily perform
(26:09):
at a certain way. You should go in with the
awareness of where you are in your cycle, and you
should help yourself. All of it should be synchronized to
optimize your biology so that you can give your best
performance on the schedule. Date, even if it's not optimal
for your cycle phase. That being said, would be amazing
(26:30):
if we could find a way to start to incorporate
female biological reality into these events and the scheduling around them. Indeed, Yeah,
and frankly, you should be evaluating who you're working with professionally,
who you're paying to work with professionally, based on how
deeply they understand the science of your hormonal biology. Right,
(26:52):
because if they're freaked out about a conversation like, hey,
I'm menstruating, their response should be thanks for letting me know.
So based on that, we're going to switch up your
training schedule today. That's what is needed, That's what women deserve,
because the science is there. Right. For example, in the
first half of your cycle, your metabolism is slower, okay
(27:12):
relative to yourself, and so you should and can successfully
restrict calories, not extremely, but just you know, eat less.
In the second half, once you cross over ovulation, studies
are conclusive that you need two hundred and seventy nine
more calories per day In a ludeal phase, your metabolism
speeds up. Why why is your metabolism speed up because oh,
(27:34):
you know, no big deal. You're just manufacturing an organ
out of the micronutrients of your body, the organ being
the endometrial lining, right, that could be the substrate of conception. Right.
It's not why people say they'll have cravings. Then they'll say,
like week three or week four, they're like, I'm craving cabs,
I'm craving sugars, I'm craving more saytiating food than in
(27:56):
the first two weeks. Yes, because your metabolism speeds up,
and when you stick to the diet of let's say
you're doing a tw calories in the first half of
the cycle and you're trying to stick to those calories
in the second half. If you do that, then your
body is going to secrete a neurotransmitter called grillin because
your metabolism has sped up, and it will make you
(28:16):
hungry for those two hundred and seventy nine extra calories. So,
instead of waiting to become hungry and binge eating things
that are not in your best nutritional interest, proactively eat
slow burning carbohydrates. It's so critical to dial those calories
in um, to dial the workouts in the right way.
And once you do it, even for one full cycle,
(28:39):
you feel immediately the difference. You feel energized, you feel brighter,
you feel more powerful, and that's how you're supposed to feel.
Absolutely I can attest to that. You're right. The more
I learned about it, the more I kind of actually
pay attention and make sure that I'm kind of aware
of tracking and stuff. It's making a huge difference. And actually,
now if I can look at my schedule and say,
(29:01):
you know what, I'm going to do that in my
power week, then great, because I know I'm going to
show up, I'm going to have good energy, I'm gonna
feel like I can basically do anything as opposed to
later on when I don't have that. And I think
it shouldn't have these huge fluctuations, right, So hopefully with
time is going to get better. But I know for
a lot of women, they do have these big changes
week week and week. Yeah, it shouldn't be You're absolutely
(29:23):
shouldn't be that way. And the more you use the
cycle thinking method, Adrian, the more you're going to find
that that power week becomes a power month. So for example,
let's talk about the brain changes and the time management piece,
because I think it's pretty revolutionary. So most of us associate,
for example, the luteal phase with feeling bad right the
PMS phase. The only reason why you have PMS is
(29:43):
because you have an improper ratio between estrogen and progesterone. Specifically,
you have more estrogen than progesterone. What you're supposed to
have by nature's design is more progesterone than estrogen, and
you feel very energized throughout the month. Project Astrone is
a powerful hormone and we only have it for those
(30:03):
ten to fourteen days during the luteal phase. It has
a calming and focusing effect on your brain. This is
in my experience having been doing the cycle thinking method
now for two decades, this is really your power week.
If you want to get stuff done, if you want
to carve out time to write your book or do
your thing with work, this is when you want to
(30:25):
do it. You can do this with fitness too, because
this is when you can get the most muscle gain
by just doing heavy lifting. So again, as you cycle
think more, you're going to learn that each phase is powerful.
The follicular phase is really about brainstorming and new ideas
and trying new things, and trying new fitness classes and
doing that dance, cardio thing you've been thinking about trying. Um.
(30:48):
The ovulatory phase is really because of the hormonal pattern.
There you have your peak social and verbal skills, so
you know, schedule talks, scheduled first dates, have fun with
your friends, go to networking events, you know, with a
mask on, and that kind of a thing. The luteal phase,
that's when I try to get as much done as possible.
And then in the menstrual phase. Actually, what's happening with
(31:09):
your brain chemistry is that the right and left hemispheres
of the brain are speaking the most to each other
at this time, which makes you primed to evaluate what
is happening in your life, in your career, in your fitness.
You can evaluate the facts and how you feel about
what's happening. This is the gift of the in freighting
effect on our brain chemistry. And every week is a
(31:30):
power week. If I didn't have the ability to synchronize
all of the various things that I do for my
self care, my career, and my parenting with my cycle,
I would be burnt out, no questions asked. But being
able to do this, I've been caffeine free for twenty
years for example, and I have boundless energy because I'm
(31:52):
leaning into my biochemistry and in the way that it
wants to, and that gives me huge, huge benefits. We
are going to take a short break, but don't go
too far away because we're going to be right back. Hey, everyone,
welcome back to sweat the details. I really think this
(32:13):
is going to be helpful for so many listeners. I
know it has been for for myself. So Tamara, should
we move on to our final section? Yes, So, we
have a fun segment lined up that's called super Cycle.
We're gonna give you a list of common menstruation management
practices and we want you to tell us if they're
(32:33):
super or if maybe we should be looking to level
up this ready, Hilaria, I'm so excited. I've never first
first for me. Okay, yeah, I feel like we're gonna
get some mythbusting. So during our period, should we indulge
in junk food? No? I mean, first of all, you
should indulge in things whenever you feel like you want
(32:55):
to indulge in things. But no, I mean you should
not ever just you know, lay on the couch and
eat bond bonds and chips and um fried foods. That's
a sign that your body is not getting the nutrition
that it needs, and that you're deeply fatigued and you're
missing calories and and there's been an accumulation of that
over the month. So if that's happening to you, don't
(33:16):
buy into the cultural narrative that says that's what you
should be doing at this time. You should look at
it as h some biofeedback here, something's not right. I
need to change what I'm doing. So during the bleed,
do we need more sleep? So should we be sleeping in?
Should we be taking a nap? I think if you
are recovering from a major hormonal problem pcos fibers and demetriosis,
(33:41):
you want to consider napping a workout and any time
of the cycle, okay, because you're still recovering. If you're
actively recovering. If you're not actively recovering your cycles, okay,
then you know you don't necessarily need more rest during
your period. If you're very fatigued, that's a sign that
you haven't been caring for your in freighting rhythm enough.
(34:02):
In the other phases of the cycle, you've been pushing
too hard. There's a reason why you're tired, you have
to ask yourself why am I tired? But I think
you know, resting is something that we should embrace a
little bit more as women because we do so much,
we really do. We care take our families, we care
take our friends, We give more than it is asked
(34:22):
of us in our careers. Um, we always seem to
put ourselves last. So if you do find that you
just want to rest, by all means, resting is a okay.
Should we take medication for p ms and tramps and
pain that we may experience during our period. I mean, listen,
(34:43):
if you're in acute pain right and you need some
sort of analgesic or ibuprofen or something that's going to
help you, you know, in that real time, and then
you need to address that. However, you need to really
start to ask yourself what is the source of this pain?
And that's really important because there's two reasons why you'd
(35:04):
have pain. One would be that there's something structural taking
place in the uterus, like endometriosis or fibroids or a
denomiosis that would be causing you to have more painful cramping.
The other reason would be biochemical, and it turns out
that we have these three prostaglandins that control uterine contraction
and relaxation. Nature has designed you not to be in pain,
(35:26):
and we know that because you have two prostaglandins pg
E one and three that control uterine relaxation, and you
only have one prostagland in pg E two that controls
uterine contraction, so you're not supposed to be in pain.
You have twice as many relaxation prostaglandins as cramping ones.
If you eat the wrong fats, fats that are high
in omega six, you increase the production of that pg
(35:50):
E two and you suppress the production of Pg one
and three, resulting in inefficient action of the uterus more
pain than is necessary to expel the endomet trium. By
changing the fats and focusing on increasing more omega three
fatty acids, you're going to actually invert that ratio and
have more PG one in three, more efficient action of
(36:12):
the uterus. No pain, it's it's remarkable, So you want
to get to the source. Don't accept it passively like, oh,
you know, it's a period supposed to be painful. Work curse, no, no, no,
figure out what is happening. Is it your diet or
is it something structural with the uterus and you need
to have some other medical attention to deal with it. Well,
(36:32):
one more actually on diet. I know you mentioned that
you've been caffeine free for twenty years, but what about caffeine.
Is there a specific phase where people might be thinking,
I'm just can't survive without my caffeine. Are you going
to feel the effects more in certain times in the month. Yeah,
So of the population, um has a deficiency in a
gene that makes an enzyme that breaks down caffeine in
(36:54):
the body. And if you have that gene variation, you
actually by taking in caffeine create caffeine talk City as
a response in your body. You can go on the
Mayo Clinic's website and even just look at caffeine toxicity
and understand what those symptoms might be. If you find
that you're more anxious after you drink caffeine, that's a
sign that you're not breaking it down for example. But
if you were going to take it on, I would
say taking it on in the first half of the
(37:15):
cycle is going to be the best time to use it,
and not at all in the second half, because again
resting cortisol levels are higher naturally in the luteal phase.
Putting in that caffeine in the second half is going
to really hyperactivate the adrenals, make PMS worse, and deplete
micro nutrients that you need to get through that second
half successfully. Because every time you drink caffeine it flushes
(37:36):
vitamins that are water soluble, and it's not a good situation.
So I would avoid it more than you think you should,
and never ever have it as breakfast on an empty stomach.
Have food. You need food. You are not a dude.
You need food in the morning all the time. Final question,
what are your thoughts about using heating pads to treat
(37:57):
any discomfort pain one maybe experience. Yeah, I think that's great.
Heating pads. I think CBD oil topically is good. I
think you know some women use the old fashioned castor
oil packs. These are things that can really help loosen
the fascia, which is the connective tissue that is part
of your pelvic floor and the pelvic bowl, if you will,
(38:18):
So little hacks like this make a huge difference. Thank
you so much, Alsa, This has been so wonderful. I've
certainly written half a page of notes. I have more questions,
but I hope that the listeners will hopefully feel empowered
to take some of this knowledge action into their lives,
start to track their schedules, to start to train and
sync with their cycles, but also to keep learning about
(38:40):
this and to do more work and to find out
whatever information they need to be able to perform at
their best, feel their best, and really optimize their training
and ultimately their lives. So thank you so much, thank
you for having me. I look forward to a future
where we all as women bio hack like women and
stop using the stuff that's not applicable to us because
(39:00):
we deserve that. Yeah, you definitely need to come back
because I feel like there are so many other areas
that we didn't really even get to explore. So you're
welcome back any time whenever you want to talk about this.
I would love to any time. Thank you again to a.
(39:21):
Lisa Vitt for sharing all of that incredible knowledge about
how our bodies work and how powerful it can be
to embrace the functions of our cycles. It's such a
great and intriguing conversation. I really love that she said
that we should definitely be talking about our cycles with
our coaches and our trainers, just so that we can
(39:42):
create a training program and a plan that works best
for us and not against us. And I was just like, yes, yeah,
of course I wrote down. Honestly, I wrote down notes.
As I mentioned, I was very enthusiastic during the episode
because honestly, I kind of feel like, how did I
go through my entire twenties without knowing this? It was
just like a surprise every month because now that I
(40:04):
am tracking and trying to cycle, think it has been
such a game changer for me personally and my training.
So I hope that the listeners are gonna really get
a lot out of it and start tracking their cycles
as well. Yeah, and when she was like, your cycle
isn't just like the days that you're bleeding into this
like whole you know period, I was like, oh, good
to know, because I had no idea. But you know,
(40:26):
the more you know, So I'm definitely going to be
thinking about all of these things for a while. But
now I think it's a great time for us to
check in on our goals. Okay, so the weeks are
flying by, and I actually can't believe this, but my race,
my half marathon, is less than three weeks away. This weekend,
I did my longest training run in a while, so
(40:48):
I did ten and a half miles. I did negative split,
so I was trying to increase my pace with each mile,
and I don't know it started off, I wasn't feeling great,
but then suddenly about mile six, mile seven, I just
got this boost and I was like, oh, I started
to feel good, pushed through it, and then finished really
really strong. So it was a good training week. But
as I say, less than three weeks ago until that race.
(41:11):
So yeah, feeling good, but it's come around really quick. Yeah,
I think it's would be so much fun. I think
running races, no matter the distance, there's just always so
much good energy. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's
how it is for you, I really hope. So so
how about you, Tamara. Yeah, So for the listeners that
are new or who maybe forgot right now, my goal
(41:32):
is to one get back in track shape, to train
for the heptathlon, and then three compete in the heptathlon.
So right now I'm just doing my foundational training just
as I get back into the groove of things, and
to also just not like overwhelm my body, especially my hip.
I had a training session the other day and I
(41:53):
was just like in the zone. I haven't felt that
way in a long time. So I feel good, I'm happy.
I'm like I just want to repeat that energy, that
feeling like over and over and over again. That I mean,
that's great, and those sessions you really have to yeah,
celebrate those. Yeah. I was also like talking to myself
(42:14):
in third person, like you're amazing. You got you know,
like do all these weird things like to hide myself up.
So I think that was also a part of it. Well,
that all sounds great, Tamara. I'm so glad that you've
had such a strong training week. And for the listeners
of the show, please let us know keep us up
today on your goal progress. Let us know so we
can cheer you on and you can keep supporting and
(42:34):
cheering us on as well, because we all train and
improve and get stronger together. So if you want to
reach out on social you can find me on Twitter
and Instagram. It's at Adrian Underschool l d N. And
you can find me on Instagram at TAM's Going Ham
and on Twitter at Tamara Pridget. That's it for this
(42:54):
week's episode. But don't forget to join us next week
when Elite Ultra marathon runner and under arm athlete Eo
Wing joins us to talk about endurance training. This sounds
like it is right up your alley, Adrian. Oh, absolutely,
I cannot wait for this episode because also I just
want to get some top tips from Eo myself before
my race, so I can't wait for listeners to join
(43:15):
that conversation as well. Until next time, stay tuned in,
stay motivated, and don't forget to Sweat the Details. If
you liked what you heard on the show, subscribe for
free or follow the show on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen, and don't forget to
(43:38):
leave a five star rating and review. Sweat the Details.
As a collaboration with under Armour and I Heart Radio,
our show was hosted by me Camera Pridget and me
Adrian Herbert. Our executive producers are Jess tribe Stein, Chazelle,
Luis Archibald and Molly Sosia. Our supervising producer is my
(43:59):
A Cole. Our producers are Ellen Kaplan and Kelly an Tol.
Our assistant producers are Natalia Tamayo and Bella Walko and
as sounds and engineer is Sarah Gibel Laska. Keep up
with the latest news and women's fitness by following under
Armour Women on Instagram at under Armour Women
Women have to factor in their in freighting rhythm and
we experience it over the course of our monthly cycle.
But it is way too simplistic to think it just
governs your period and your ovulation. Then that's why I
created the cycle sinking method. It has three pillars, food, fitness,
and time management. Also that you can align with that
in freightian clock and when you do that, you get
(00:22):
out of hormonal chaos and you get in the flow.
This is what The details a collaboration with Underrama and
I Heart Radio, a podcast made for women by women
that puts our training journeys, goals and mind set at
(00:43):
this centurn. I'm Tamera Pridget and I'm Adrian Herbert's. Every
episode we'll hear from athletes, trainers, and experts who will
give us insights into how our bodies and minds work
together in training and composition. In today's episode, we are
talking about training with your cycle. We're going to dive
into how we can learn more about our body and
(01:04):
the ways we recover by working with, not against our cycles.
Our guests A Lisa Vidi is a woman's hormone expert, author,
functional nutritionists, and founder of the app My Flow Adrian,
I honestly know nothing, truly nothing about cycle thinking, so
I'm really excited to learn more about this and how
(01:26):
our bodies work and how we can maximize our training
and recovery and performance with our mentoral cycle. Yeah. Tamara,
I'm also really excited to dive into this episode because
I am somebody who has been trying to cycle sink
for a little while. I've read a few books, I've
read a lot of articles, but I'm certainly not an expert,
(01:47):
so I'm really looking forward to hearing from Melissa. Yeah,
it's definitely something that is intriguing. I've seen a lot
of conversation about it recently, so ready to learn. So
let's dive into this interview with Alissa VD. Yes, let's
do it. Hi A, Lisa, welcome to sweat the details.
(02:13):
We are so glad to have you here today. Can
you tell us about how you arrived at where you
are now with flow living and what flow living is.
It's so great to be here, Tamara and Adrian. Yeah,
it's an interesting story in the sense that I found
myself at a young age with major hormone problems. You know,
I was a young woman, I was obese, I was
(02:34):
covered in acne sister acne, all over my face, chest
and back. I wasn't getting my cycle, and I went
to all the doctors and everybody said that there was
nothing wrong, and clearly that just couldn't be true. So
at one point I was a student at Johns Hopkins
University planning to become an O B G y N.
And you know what does an obi sacn a girl
(02:55):
do on a Friday night, Well, she's at the medical
library trying to research what's wrong with her. And so
in an obstetrics journal one evening, I came across an
article that described my symptoms and a disorder called stein
levenhal disease, which was the original name given to polycystic
ovarian syndrome, and all those symptoms just checked all the boxes.
And so I felt really excited in a way because
(03:17):
I had something to take to my doctor and we
did a whole bunch of testing, and when I came
back in later for the results, she said, you're right,
you do have PCOS. Sorry that we missed it, you know,
And I was like, what do we do now, and um,
she said, you know, we really can't do anything for you.
These symptoms that you're having. Now we're going to evolve
(03:38):
into potentially other conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and fertility
and cancer. We don't have a cure, we don't even
have dedicated medication to fix what's wrong with you, but
we do have some other medications that we can kind
of use to maybe help some of the symptoms maybe.
And that was sort of a big moment, and I
just remember hearing my body say that's not your future.
(04:01):
So I decided that I would figure out what it
is that was needed to really help rebalance the endocrine system,
and that if I could do that, that I would
build a platform, a new type of hormonal healthcare destination
for women. Because I recognized that I was not the
only one. I mean, the statistics around hormonal issues are staggering. Right,
(04:22):
eight percent of women will have a hormonal problem in
their lifetime. Did not know that eighty percent? Okay, and
right now, as of this moment that we're speaking of,
the female population has a hormonal problem right in this moment.
So flow living dot Com was born out of this
desire to build a destination healthcare platform for women's hormones
(04:44):
that really solved what in my research over the past
two decades, has really come to be unnecessary hormone problems
that you deal with from your first period to your last.
And I say unnecessary because the only reason why they're
happening is simply because you haven't been taught how your
body were and how you have to work with your
body to make your hormones work optimally to bio hack
like a woman. And that's sort of where I come
(05:06):
in as a passionate period person to help you understand
how that works, and full Living works with women all
over the world to help them deal with their period issues,
their infertility issues, and anything that's going on with perimenopause. Amazing,
to be honest, there's so many questions that we have
for you, and I'm sure the listeners are probably you know,
(05:26):
just really desperate actually for this information. And you know
when you mentioned then about working with the flow and
figuring out the ones, you have this information. Once you
figure out what's going on and you get some of
the answers I guess to our questions today, hopefully that's
going to really help them and they'll be able to
implement some of these things into their lives too. Yeah,
and I mean, I should say that implementing my own
(05:46):
protocol years ago, you know, resulted in me having sixty
pounds melt off my body without deprivation. For example, my
skin cleared up, my cycle and ovulation restored. You know,
I was able to have a child at thirty six, naturally, right.
So it's amazing that we've been fed a whole bunch
of mythology that says your period is supposed to be miserable,
(06:10):
your hormones are mysterious and unfixable. Once you have a
condition or a problem, if your mom's or your auntie's
had it, you're stuck with it for life. It's your destiny.
It's all mythology, but it really does hold us back
because we believe it, and so therefore we take no
action right to make changes that might help us. But yeah,
I I do know the pain and suffering that women
(06:32):
are going through. It's way more than just affecting your period, right,
affects the quality of your life. Women who have chronic
pain from endometriosis or fibers I mean, or just even
really bad cramps, you can be taken out of your
life for a few days out of every month. If
you add that up, that's years of your life where
you're not getting to be at your a game because
of this alleged hormonal curse. That we really can do
(06:56):
so much, We have so much agency over our hormones,
we just haven't been the right way to do it.
Can you tell us what cycles thinking is, why we
should do it, how we can bio hack our cycle
just to perform better, whether it's athletically or just day
to day. So the second book that came out, In
the Flow, came out in January of last year. I
(07:18):
was writing this book because I wanted to answer the question,
why is it that so many women are still suffering
with hormonal issues, you know, compared to men, and just
compared to ourselves, Because in the past five years there's
been an explosion of normalizing the conversation on social media
and wellness sites, like we're all talking about our periods,
which is amazing and historic, but we're still sick hormonally
(07:43):
and why is that? And so I dug in, I
dug into the research, and I found two things that
just totally blew my mind. The first is that and
you should know and be aware, women are left out
of medical fitness and nutrition research. That is significant because
what that means is any time you hear okay, hit
(08:04):
workouts or intermittent fasting, that's the thing you should do.
That's going to get you the results that you want.
The gender that was studied was mail, and the results
are there for optimizing the mail ecosystem. The assumption that
is being made by the researchers is that women, you know,
(08:24):
we're just smaller versions of men. So whatever is working
for the guys should work for the girls. If you
even just say it out loud, it sounds crazy. You know,
we've got to just move forward from that and really
start including women in studies because what we are finding
is that things like intermittent fasting, for example, which confer
all these benefits to guys and to post menopausal women,
(08:44):
have the opposite effect on women in their reproductive years.
So if men get increased autophagi, increased sugar utilization by
the cell, improved brain function, improved metabolism, women in their
reproductive years when they do intermittent fasting have the opposite.
They increase brain fog, increase insulin resistance, uh damage thyroid performance,
(09:07):
and can shrink your ovaries. Right, So it doesn't translate.
The research that's coming out that's being done on men
doesn't apply to you. So any time you read something
forevermore you should ask the first question is who was
the study done on And if it wasn't your gender,
don't do it. Don't try it because it's likely if
it's not including your biology, then there's no guarantee that
(09:29):
it's going to support your biology. Right, So that was
the first thing. The second thing is that I uncovered
that women have a second biological rhythm called the in
Fredian rhythm. This in Fredian rhythm govern six key systems
of our bodies, our brain, our metabolism, our stress response system,
our immune system, our microbiome, and our reproductive system, which
(09:52):
includes our period, our fertility, and our sex drive. If
you are disrupting it, then you are forcing those systems
of your body to perform suboptimally. Right, You're not going
to be thinking at your clearest, you're gonna have more
brain fog, you're gonna have immune issues, you're going to
have metabolism problems, you're gonna have period problems, and you're
going to think that they're all somehow disconnected. But once
(10:14):
you understand the science of the Infredian rhythm, and you'll
see that everything is connected through this, just like it's
too simplistic to think that the circadian rhythm only governs
your sleep wake cycles. Women have to factor in their
in freightingan rhythm and we experience it over the course
of our monthly cycle. But it is way too simplistic
to think it just governs your period and your ovulation.
(10:37):
Like I said, it governs these other systems of the body.
So when we factor that in and I looked at
these two things, I said, no wonder women are suffering
at a greater rate than men, And no wonder, we're
still suffering even though we have all this conversation about
menstruation taking place, because without the foundation of the Infredian
rhythm to stand on everything that we're doing, like we're
(10:59):
not eating the right calories at the right time of
the month, we're not doing the right workout intensity at
the right time of the month, and all of that
disrupts the and Fredian rhythm and causes you to have
more symptoms with your cycle, and then other symptoms in
these other systems of the body. It's a game changer,
and that's why I created the cycle sinking method. It
(11:19):
has three pillars, food, fitness, and time management. Also that
you can align with that in Fredian clock. When you
do that, you get out of hormonal chaos and you
get in the flow, not just in the flow of
your hormones, but in a peak state of flow with
every aspect of your life, which is how nature intended
you to feel fantastic every day of the month. There's
(11:44):
so much good stuff in here. I'm honestly sitting here
nodding along as I mentioned, you know, I think my cycle,
but it's a new thing, and you're right, it's a
game changer. If anyone's listening right now and they're thinking, Okay,
there's a lot here, it can be so overwhelming. And
when you broke it down then into food, fitness, time management,
I'm thinking, okay, let's kind of break it down. So
(12:05):
maybe starting with fitness. You know, if you're a listener
of the show and somebody who wants to optimize their
workouts for each stage of the cycle, Yes, where should
we stop? Super easy? Just understand the science ready, here
it goes. You have four phases of your cycle follicular, ovulatory, luteal,
and menstrual. These each have unique hormone ratio signatures that
(12:25):
cause certain structural things to happen in the body, like
ovulation or the creation of the endometrial lining or the
loosening of that lining. But these hormonal signatures also affect
our metabolism and in the case of fitness, are resting
cortisol patterns. So in the first half of your cycle,
follicular and ovulatory, you have lower resting cortisol levels, which
(12:46):
means that you can do cardio to your heart's content,
do high intensity interval training, and go hard with your workouts.
By doing that in the first half, when resting cortisol
is lower, you're going to build the most lean muscle,
the easiest, and the fastest, and you're going to use
(13:07):
stored fat as fuel. Once you cross over ovulation and
you're now in the second half of your cycle and
the luteal phase, resting cortisol levels are higher, just naturally right,
And the studies show that you must not do cardio
or hit workouts at all. If you do do them,
(13:28):
you're going to ready take notes, turn on fat storage,
and turn on muscle wasting. What does muscle wasting mean?
Meaning you're gonna instead of using fat as fuel, You're
gonna burn your muscle. Yeah. So here you are trying
to be good. You're trying to just you know, stay
committed to your workout plan. But you're staying committed on
(13:50):
the premise of what optimizes the male hormonal pattern, which
follows the circadian pattern, which means, if you're a dude
and you want to bio hack and you want to
build your lean muscle and burn your stored fat, you
do want to do the same type of workout day
and in day out. But if you have ovaries and
you have all of these female hormones, you do not
want to have the same training intensity daily. It will
(14:13):
undo your results. So the first half of the month,
you're doing your cardi, you're doing your hit workouts, you're
building lean muscle, you're burning stored fat. If you keep
doing that after ovulation, you're going to cancel that effort out.
You're gonna negate it. And so we have a four
letter acronym to sort of give some human energies. I
guess to each of the four phases, and we call
(14:34):
that the power acronym p O W R. So, in
the follicular phase, you want to think about preparing. In
the ovulatory phase, you want to think about you know,
opening up expansion. In the lootal phase, you want to
think about work right, like deep work. And in the
menstrual phase you want to think about rest. And this
has implications beyond just your fitness. It also has to
(14:56):
do with your brain changes. Your brain changes up over
the course of the month. This was discovered by Dr
Catherine Willie at Northwestern University. So what workouts should you
do in the louteal phase right? For example, you want
to do strength training without a cardio component, because that's
what's going to build your lean muscle and burn your
stored fat and jack up your metabolism and you're gonna
(15:18):
get huge results without actually really doing any cardio. It's
remarkable how efficient the female body is. Um, we are
just design more efficiently because you know, no big deal
with three D print human beings, so we have to
have a more efficient metabolism and no big, no big problem.
And so you know, that's the idea that you don't
(15:38):
have to work as hard every day to get the gains.
You want to think about training yourself, cross training yourself
over the course of your cycle so that you get
huge benefits with the least amount of effort, and certainly
by decreasing injury right and then during the bleeding week,
you can walk, you can do yoga, pilates, any sort
of like active stretching and sort of recovery type stretching
(16:02):
workouts that you can do. A lot of women really
enjoy doing yin yoga, which is a specific type of
yoga that's really about restorative poses. So you just want
to work smarter as a woman, understanding all of these
aspects of your health and your hormones and not push,
because it's the pushing that actually disrupts your hormones and
(16:22):
causes a snowball effect. And then all of a sudden,
you're having really bad PMS, and now it's not just
hell week during your bleed, but it's now also hell
week during PMS. And then that backs into having, you know,
symptoms during ovulation. Now you're having breakouts, and then instead
of feeling energized when your period ends, you feel tired
during the follicular phase. These are all signs that you
have been disrupting that in Fredian clock, and it has
(16:44):
a trickle down effect by not synchronizing what you're doing
in the correct alignment. With these cycle phases, you start
to feel the effects pretty quickly. I have two thoughts
that I want to clarify before we move forward. So first,
when you said psych goal, initially I just thought about,
like the days that you're bleeding. We're bleeding, and you know,
(17:06):
I'm just gonna admit it, because I'm sure there are
others out there like me. I really only consider that
to be my cycle. I really don't pay much attention
to it. I'm like, okay, it's here, tampon, boom boom,
period underwear. There we go. So just to clarify, the
cycle is beyond just when we bleed. Correct. I love
so much that you brought this up, Tamera, because it
(17:28):
is only with language around our cycle that I have
found this lack of precision in any biological description anywhere. Right,
there's like a technical term for every single thing everywhere else,
but for us, for our cycles. You're absolutely right, it
is so confusing. The bleed is the menstrual phase, got
(17:48):
it right. You have a cycle it is a month
long approximately, okay, and then you have a bleeding week
where you're bleeding, okay, And that's really clear, right, Yes,
I'm glad we got that clarified, because, like I said,
I know, I'm not the only one that was wondering that. No,
And that's important because the American College of Astetrics and
(18:10):
Gynecologists decreed that your cycle is now to be considered
your fifth vital sign, which means that you want to
take it as seriously. Any symptom throughout your cycle you
want to take as seriously as you would take the
other four vital signs that they take in the emergency room,
like your temperature or your blood pressure. If you have
(18:31):
an elevated temperature or elevated blood pressure, you have been
conditioned and trained and educated to take immediate action and
seek medical help. Right. You wouldn't be like, oh, you
know whatever, I just have a fever, right, But we
totally do that with our periods, like, oh whatever, I
have p MS, Oh whatever, I have fibroids, Oh whatever,
I have heavy bleeding and clotting, Oh whatever, I feel terrible.
(18:52):
Fifty of the month, we brush it off because we
have no idea what we should be doing when our
hormones are imbalanced. We have been very disempowered to take
action because we haven't received a proper education and that
has to change. Got it. So earlier you were speaking
about the circadian rhythm and the and Fredian rhythm. Can
you explain how those two go hand in hand because
(19:13):
we kind of touched on them separately, but how do
they work together? Yeah, So the circadian rhythm, you experience
it every single day, right, and that really has to
do with cortisol patterns for your sort of day to
day experience. So, right before you wake up, your body
releases the maximum concentration in a healthy individual of cortisol
that you're going to have for the day. Then you
(19:34):
have a couple of other surges in the morning and
early afternoon, and then it starts to decrease in the
mid till late afternoon and evening, where you have the
lowest levels of cortisol throughout the day. This is sort
of a circadian cortisol pattern, and this is one of
the ways that it influences your energy throughout the day.
It's really important, right, because if you had, let's say,
the same level of cortisol throughout the day, would be
(19:55):
impossible for you to relax and go to sleep. So
this is one of the ways you experience it. Hey,
you also experience your circadian rhythm with the timing of
your bowel movements, like your your bowel is most active
in the morning and the least active during the middle
of the night. So that's how the circadian rhythm kind
of functions. And really think of it as sort of
(20:16):
a layering effect for women once you hit puberty, from
your first bleed to your last, you have the secondary
clock that works in parallel to the circadian clock. So
you have this happening. You have your twenty four hour cycle, right,
you have a sleep wake cycle, and you have an
in Fredian clock that governs these elegantly complex set of
(20:36):
hormones that you have that are you know, part of
this reproductive system. Right. So because you have that system
in a way that is unique, um, we needed a
different biological clock to govern that as well. So with
a whole month cycle as a picture, I know you
mentioned one month and you bleed for one week typically,
but I know, you know for myself from speaking to friends,
(20:57):
some people they might be twenty two days, others it's
thirty five. And some people might bleed for three days,
others bleed for seven. So if you're just like listening
to this and thinking, Okay, I'm going to start taking no,
I'm going to start tracking. I'm going to start trying
to get onto some kind of rhythm so I can
bio hack and get scheduled. What's the best way to
go about that? And if your cycle is longer or shorter,
(21:18):
does that mean each phase is the same or do
you have one longer phase than others because it's not
always like a calendar month, right, Yeah, So I use
these terms loosely because everybody has a unique hormonal pattern
for how long they're cycle. Typically is you need to
establish what's normal for you. Some women have a twenty
eight day cycle and that's normal for them. Other women
(21:39):
have a thirty two day cycle that's normal for them.
The range that is, you know, studied to be healthy
and normal as anywhere between twenty seven and thirty two days, Right,
that's sort of that's a normal range. If you're having
your cycle between those timings, that's good and healthy. Anything
that's happening sooner, like if we have a cycle every
twenty two days, something is off with your hormones. If
(22:01):
you have a cycle that's longer than thirty five days,
something is off with your hormones, and so that you
want to look at as part of how you evaluate
your cycle health as that fifth vital sign the length
of the cycle as a whole. You also want to
look at the length of the bleed. So a healthy
range for bleeding days is anywhere between four and seven days.
(22:22):
If it's shorter than four days, we've got issues from
a hormonal point of view. If it's longer than seven days,
there's also hormonal imbalance there, right, So you want to
check the length of the bleed itself. Then you want
to look at the color of the bleed. If it's
a fresh, healthy red color all as well. If it's dark,
you know, really dark colored blood with clots, that's typically
(22:45):
indicative of excess levels of estrogen that have built up
too much of an endometrial lining and now it's coming
out in heavy clots and dark colored blood. If it's brown,
kind of like prune juice colored, right, you want to
look at that because that could mean that you're not
making enough project strone, which could mean it could have
effects on your cycle length and your fertility. And if
it's light pink like pink lemonade, right, that could be
(23:08):
indicative of not enough estrogen, especially if you're overtraining, you
have short cycles like three or two or three day cycles,
and it's light pink in color. That could have a
whole set of side effects in terms of bone density
and heart health, and so you really want to look.
All of these things are bio markers for you to
start to bio hack your hormones, and you've got to
be looking before you flush every month certainly. And then
(23:29):
on top of that, you do want to add in
a tracker. I built. My Flow tracker has a circle
icon um to help you not just understand when you're
going to get your period, it's so that you can
understand why am I having a symptom during ovulation? Why
am I breaking out during ovulation? Right? You need to
understand why that's happening. There's a reason why, and it's
(23:51):
different from the reason why you might be breaking out
or having PMS symptoms in your luteal phase and why
you're having cramps. There's a reason behind that that you
will learn about if you're having that symptom by tracking
in the my Flow app, and it will tell you
kind of what you can start doing with food and
supplements to really make improvements so that you can improve
your period month over month. You should have a symptom free,
(24:14):
healthy cycle, healthy color bleed, optimal amount of days. You
can make that happen if you start interacting with your
cycle with food and lifestyle at least as you're talking,
you know, thinking a lot about you know. Under LMA,
we look at the fitness three pillars, So train, compete, recover,
And if you are someone who is a professional athlete
(24:35):
or a competitive athlete, then you're not always in control
of when you might have to compete, or when you
might need to train, or you know when you can
recover and travel, and you might have a race that
you're working towards. So for anyone listening who's thinking, you
know what, I can't have complete autonomy over my schedule
and training and competing. What would your advice be to
those athletes, I would absolutely say that is irrelevant. And
(25:01):
think about it this way. If you train while you
do have autonomy and control over your schedule in a
way that optimizes your biology and your performance. Right, you're
making faster gains, you're recovering faster, you're having less injury
and stress on the body, so overall you're just training
in a way that is optimal, so that way, whenever
(25:23):
you have to go and do the competition, if it's
in a suboptimal time, like if you happen to have
to run the marathon while you're having your period, you
know there are a couple of things you want to do. One,
you're going to be so well prepared because of the
training schedule that you did do if that was in
line with your in Fredian clock, that when you do that,
you're going to perform better than you normally could during
(25:45):
that phase A and B. You're going to strategically support
yourself right, You're gonna hydrate, You're gonna use maybe under
armor gear that helps you with heat management and recovery.
You're gonna do things that you know will help give
you some comp station factors for what's happening with your
body in real time. You should not go in to
any competition just expecting that you should just arbitrarily perform
(26:09):
at a certain way. You should go in with the
awareness of where you are in your cycle, and you
should help yourself. All of it should be synchronized to
optimize your biology so that you can give your best
performance on the schedule. Date, even if it's not optimal
for your cycle phase. That being said, would be amazing
(26:30):
if we could find a way to start to incorporate
female biological reality into these events and the scheduling around them. Indeed, Yeah,
and frankly, you should be evaluating who you're working with professionally,
who you're paying to work with professionally, based on how
deeply they understand the science of your hormonal biology. Right,
(26:52):
because if they're freaked out about a conversation like, hey,
I'm menstruating, their response should be thanks for letting me know.
So based on that, we're going to switch up your
training schedule today. That's what is needed, That's what women deserve,
because the science is there. Right. For example, in the
first half of your cycle, your metabolism is slower, okay
(27:12):
relative to yourself, and so you should and can successfully
restrict calories, not extremely, but just you know, eat less.
In the second half, once you cross over ovulation, studies
are conclusive that you need two hundred and seventy nine
more calories per day In a ludeal phase, your metabolism
speeds up. Why why is your metabolism speed up because oh,
(27:34):
you know, no big deal. You're just manufacturing an organ
out of the micronutrients of your body, the organ being
the endometrial lining, right, that could be the substrate of conception. Right.
It's not why people say they'll have cravings. Then they'll say,
like week three or week four, they're like, I'm craving cabs,
I'm craving sugars, I'm craving more saytiating food than in
(27:56):
the first two weeks. Yes, because your metabolism speeds up,
and when you stick to the diet of let's say
you're doing a tw calories in the first half of
the cycle and you're trying to stick to those calories
in the second half. If you do that, then your
body is going to secrete a neurotransmitter called grillin because
your metabolism has sped up, and it will make you
(28:16):
hungry for those two hundred and seventy nine extra calories. So,
instead of waiting to become hungry and binge eating things
that are not in your best nutritional interest, proactively eat
slow burning carbohydrates. It's so critical to dial those calories
in um, to dial the workouts in the right way.
And once you do it, even for one full cycle,
(28:39):
you feel immediately the difference. You feel energized, you feel brighter,
you feel more powerful, and that's how you're supposed to feel.
Absolutely I can attest to that. You're right. The more
I learned about it, the more I kind of actually
pay attention and make sure that I'm kind of aware
of tracking and stuff. It's making a huge difference. And actually,
now if I can look at my schedule and say,
(29:01):
you know what, I'm going to do that in my
power week, then great, because I know I'm going to
show up, I'm going to have good energy, I'm gonna
feel like I can basically do anything as opposed to
later on when I don't have that. And I think
it shouldn't have these huge fluctuations, right, So hopefully with
time is going to get better. But I know for
a lot of women, they do have these big changes
week week and week. Yeah, it shouldn't be You're absolutely
(29:23):
shouldn't be that way. And the more you use the
cycle thinking method, Adrian, the more you're going to find
that that power week becomes a power month. So for example,
let's talk about the brain changes and the time management piece,
because I think it's pretty revolutionary. So most of us associate,
for example, the luteal phase with feeling bad right the
PMS phase. The only reason why you have PMS is
(29:43):
because you have an improper ratio between estrogen and progesterone. Specifically,
you have more estrogen than progesterone. What you're supposed to
have by nature's design is more progesterone than estrogen, and
you feel very energized throughout the month. Project Astrone is
a powerful hormone and we only have it for those
(30:03):
ten to fourteen days during the luteal phase. It has
a calming and focusing effect on your brain. This is
in my experience having been doing the cycle thinking method
now for two decades, this is really your power week.
If you want to get stuff done, if you want
to carve out time to write your book or do
your thing with work, this is when you want to
(30:25):
do it. You can do this with fitness too, because
this is when you can get the most muscle gain
by just doing heavy lifting. So again, as you cycle
think more, you're going to learn that each phase is powerful.
The follicular phase is really about brainstorming and new ideas
and trying new things, and trying new fitness classes and
doing that dance, cardio thing you've been thinking about trying. Um.
(30:48):
The ovulatory phase is really because of the hormonal pattern.
There you have your peak social and verbal skills, so
you know, schedule talks, scheduled first dates, have fun with
your friends, go to networking events, you know, with a
mask on, and that kind of a thing. The luteal phase,
that's when I try to get as much done as possible.
And then in the menstrual phase. Actually, what's happening with
(31:09):
your brain chemistry is that the right and left hemispheres
of the brain are speaking the most to each other
at this time, which makes you primed to evaluate what
is happening in your life, in your career, in your fitness.
You can evaluate the facts and how you feel about
what's happening. This is the gift of the in freighting
effect on our brain chemistry. And every week is a
(31:30):
power week. If I didn't have the ability to synchronize
all of the various things that I do for my
self care, my career, and my parenting with my cycle,
I would be burnt out, no questions asked. But being
able to do this, I've been caffeine free for twenty
years for example, and I have boundless energy because I'm
(31:52):
leaning into my biochemistry and in the way that it
wants to, and that gives me huge, huge benefits. We
are going to take a short break, but don't go
too far away because we're going to be right back. Hey, everyone,
welcome back to sweat the details. I really think this
(32:13):
is going to be helpful for so many listeners. I
know it has been for for myself. So Tamara, should
we move on to our final section? Yes, So, we
have a fun segment lined up that's called super Cycle.
We're gonna give you a list of common menstruation management
practices and we want you to tell us if they're
(32:33):
super or if maybe we should be looking to level
up this ready, Hilaria, I'm so excited. I've never first
first for me. Okay, yeah, I feel like we're gonna
get some mythbusting. So during our period, should we indulge
in junk food? No? I mean, first of all, you
should indulge in things whenever you feel like you want
(32:55):
to indulge in things. But no, I mean you should
not ever just you know, lay on the couch and
eat bond bonds and chips and um fried foods. That's
a sign that your body is not getting the nutrition
that it needs, and that you're deeply fatigued and you're
missing calories and and there's been an accumulation of that
over the month. So if that's happening to you, don't
(33:16):
buy into the cultural narrative that says that's what you
should be doing at this time. You should look at
it as h some biofeedback here, something's not right. I
need to change what I'm doing. So during the bleed,
do we need more sleep? So should we be sleeping in?
Should we be taking a nap? I think if you
are recovering from a major hormonal problem pcos fibers and demetriosis,
(33:41):
you want to consider napping a workout and any time
of the cycle, okay, because you're still recovering. If you're
actively recovering. If you're not actively recovering your cycles, okay,
then you know you don't necessarily need more rest during
your period. If you're very fatigued, that's a sign that
you haven't been caring for your in freighting rhythm enough.
(34:02):
In the other phases of the cycle, you've been pushing
too hard. There's a reason why you're tired, you have
to ask yourself why am I tired? But I think
you know, resting is something that we should embrace a
little bit more as women because we do so much,
we really do. We care take our families, we care
take our friends, We give more than it is asked
(34:22):
of us in our careers. Um, we always seem to
put ourselves last. So if you do find that you
just want to rest, by all means, resting is a okay.
Should we take medication for p ms and tramps and
pain that we may experience during our period. I mean, listen,
(34:43):
if you're in acute pain right and you need some
sort of analgesic or ibuprofen or something that's going to
help you, you know, in that real time, and then
you need to address that. However, you need to really
start to ask yourself what is the source of this pain?
And that's really important because there's two reasons why you'd
(35:04):
have pain. One would be that there's something structural taking
place in the uterus, like endometriosis or fibroids or a
denomiosis that would be causing you to have more painful cramping.
The other reason would be biochemical, and it turns out
that we have these three prostaglandins that control uterine contraction
and relaxation. Nature has designed you not to be in pain,
(35:26):
and we know that because you have two prostaglandins pg
E one and three that control uterine relaxation, and you
only have one prostagland in pg E two that controls
uterine contraction, so you're not supposed to be in pain.
You have twice as many relaxation prostaglandins as cramping ones.
If you eat the wrong fats, fats that are high
in omega six, you increase the production of that pg
(35:50):
E two and you suppress the production of Pg one
and three, resulting in inefficient action of the uterus more
pain than is necessary to expel the endomet trium. By
changing the fats and focusing on increasing more omega three
fatty acids, you're going to actually invert that ratio and
have more PG one in three, more efficient action of
(36:12):
the uterus. No pain, it's it's remarkable, So you want
to get to the source. Don't accept it passively like, oh,
you know, it's a period supposed to be painful. Work curse, no, no, no,
figure out what is happening. Is it your diet or
is it something structural with the uterus and you need
to have some other medical attention to deal with it. Well,
(36:32):
one more actually on diet. I know you mentioned that
you've been caffeine free for twenty years, but what about caffeine.
Is there a specific phase where people might be thinking,
I'm just can't survive without my caffeine. Are you going
to feel the effects more in certain times in the month. Yeah,
So of the population, um has a deficiency in a
gene that makes an enzyme that breaks down caffeine in
(36:54):
the body. And if you have that gene variation, you
actually by taking in caffeine create caffeine talk City as
a response in your body. You can go on the
Mayo Clinic's website and even just look at caffeine toxicity
and understand what those symptoms might be. If you find
that you're more anxious after you drink caffeine, that's a
sign that you're not breaking it down for example. But
if you were going to take it on, I would
say taking it on in the first half of the
(37:15):
cycle is going to be the best time to use it,
and not at all in the second half, because again
resting cortisol levels are higher naturally in the luteal phase.
Putting in that caffeine in the second half is going
to really hyperactivate the adrenals, make PMS worse, and deplete
micro nutrients that you need to get through that second
half successfully. Because every time you drink caffeine it flushes
(37:36):
vitamins that are water soluble, and it's not a good situation.
So I would avoid it more than you think you should,
and never ever have it as breakfast on an empty stomach.
Have food. You need food. You are not a dude.
You need food in the morning all the time. Final question,
what are your thoughts about using heating pads to treat
(37:57):
any discomfort pain one maybe experience. Yeah, I think that's great.
Heating pads. I think CBD oil topically is good. I
think you know some women use the old fashioned castor
oil packs. These are things that can really help loosen
the fascia, which is the connective tissue that is part
of your pelvic floor and the pelvic bowl, if you will,
(38:18):
So little hacks like this make a huge difference. Thank
you so much, Alsa, This has been so wonderful. I've
certainly written half a page of notes. I have more questions,
but I hope that the listeners will hopefully feel empowered
to take some of this knowledge action into their lives,
start to track their schedules, to start to train and
sync with their cycles, but also to keep learning about
(38:40):
this and to do more work and to find out
whatever information they need to be able to perform at
their best, feel their best, and really optimize their training
and ultimately their lives. So thank you so much, thank
you for having me. I look forward to a future
where we all as women bio hack like women and
stop using the stuff that's not applicable to us because
(39:00):
we deserve that. Yeah, you definitely need to come back
because I feel like there are so many other areas
that we didn't really even get to explore. So you're
welcome back any time whenever you want to talk about this.
I would love to any time. Thank you again to a.
(39:21):
Lisa Vitt for sharing all of that incredible knowledge about
how our bodies work and how powerful it can be
to embrace the functions of our cycles. It's such a
great and intriguing conversation. I really love that she said
that we should definitely be talking about our cycles with
our coaches and our trainers, just so that we can
(39:42):
create a training program and a plan that works best
for us and not against us. And I was just like, yes, yeah,
of course I wrote down. Honestly, I wrote down notes.
As I mentioned, I was very enthusiastic during the episode
because honestly, I kind of feel like, how did I
go through my entire twenties without knowing this? It was
just like a surprise every month because now that I
(40:04):
am tracking and trying to cycle, think it has been
such a game changer for me personally and my training.
So I hope that the listeners are gonna really get
a lot out of it and start tracking their cycles
as well. Yeah, and when she was like, your cycle
isn't just like the days that you're bleeding into this
like whole you know period, I was like, oh, good
to know, because I had no idea. But you know,
(40:26):
the more you know, So I'm definitely going to be
thinking about all of these things for a while. But
now I think it's a great time for us to
check in on our goals. Okay, so the weeks are
flying by, and I actually can't believe this, but my race,
my half marathon, is less than three weeks away. This weekend,
I did my longest training run in a while, so
(40:48):
I did ten and a half miles. I did negative split,
so I was trying to increase my pace with each mile,
and I don't know it started off, I wasn't feeling great,
but then suddenly about mile six, mile seven, I just
got this boost and I was like, oh, I started
to feel good, pushed through it, and then finished really
really strong. So it was a good training week. But
as I say, less than three weeks ago until that race.
(41:11):
So yeah, feeling good, but it's come around really quick. Yeah,
I think it's would be so much fun. I think
running races, no matter the distance, there's just always so
much good energy. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's
how it is for you, I really hope. So so
how about you, Tamara. Yeah, So for the listeners that
are new or who maybe forgot right now, my goal
(41:32):
is to one get back in track shape, to train
for the heptathlon, and then three compete in the heptathlon.
So right now I'm just doing my foundational training just
as I get back into the groove of things, and
to also just not like overwhelm my body, especially my hip.
I had a training session the other day and I
(41:53):
was just like in the zone. I haven't felt that
way in a long time. So I feel good, I'm happy.
I'm like I just want to repeat that energy, that
feeling like over and over and over again. That I mean,
that's great, and those sessions you really have to yeah,
celebrate those. Yeah. I was also like talking to myself
(42:14):
in third person, like you're amazing. You got you know,
like do all these weird things like to hide myself up.
So I think that was also a part of it. Well,
that all sounds great, Tamara. I'm so glad that you've
had such a strong training week. And for the listeners
of the show, please let us know keep us up
today on your goal progress. Let us know so we
can cheer you on and you can keep supporting and
(42:34):
cheering us on as well, because we all train and
improve and get stronger together. So if you want to
reach out on social you can find me on Twitter
and Instagram. It's at Adrian Underschool l d N. And
you can find me on Instagram at TAM's Going Ham
and on Twitter at Tamara Pridget. That's it for this
(42:54):
week's episode. But don't forget to join us next week
when Elite Ultra marathon runner and under arm athlete Eo
Wing joins us to talk about endurance training. This sounds
like it is right up your alley, Adrian. Oh, absolutely,
I cannot wait for this episode because also I just
want to get some top tips from Eo myself before
my race, so I can't wait for listeners to join
(43:15):
that conversation as well. Until next time, stay tuned in,
stay motivated, and don't forget to Sweat the Details. If
you liked what you heard on the show, subscribe for
free or follow the show on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen, and don't forget to
(43:38):
leave a five star rating and review. Sweat the Details.
As a collaboration with under Armour and I Heart Radio,
our show was hosted by me Camera Pridget and me
Adrian Herbert. Our executive producers are Jess tribe Stein, Chazelle,
Luis Archibald and Molly Sosia. Our supervising producer is my
(43:59):
A Cole. Our producers are Ellen Kaplan and Kelly an Tol.
Our assistant producers are Natalia Tamayo and Bella Walko and
as sounds and engineer is Sarah Gibel Laska. Keep up
with the latest news and women's fitness by following under
Armour Women on Instagram at under Armour Women
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