Dear Denise–
Week 1, week 2, week 3…WTH? Why can’t I just eat and exercise however I want to, whenever I want to? This breaking it up weekly is so hard.
–Over it in Oslo
Dear Over it—
You’re right! It is challenging. It’s new. And you can totally eat and exercise however you want to. However some weeks will be hard, draining and well, just hard– like rolling a boulder up hill, and others will be easy like skateboarding downhill–a thrill, super easy and full of energy!
But hey! You do YOU. Maybe you enjoy the struggle or have a belief that life has to be hard.
As for me, when someone shows me a shortcut to a month of weight loss wonderland, full of sleep, sex, productivity, strength gains and fat loss…I’m going to check it out.
When I first learned about my hormones I was 11. I just didn’t want stained pants or a baby. And I don’t “think” that health teacher was encouraging frisky time. And until I was in my 30s all I needed to know was how to and not to get pregnant. No one ever told me how my hormone cycle really worked.
But in my 30s it was quickly becoming clear that those hormones weren’t behaving.
Learn, Learn, Learn.
There’s all this technical stuff first…super quick
Hormones are messengers in the body to keep you ALIVE. Work with them you get to feel good about being alive. Keep ignoring them, they’ll do their best but you might feel like shit. The endocrine (hormone) system is about more that sex and babies (who knew!?) It’s about blood sugar and blood pressure regulation, staying alive, going to sleep and waking up, storing and using fat and soooooooo much more.
Now for men their hormones are fairly flat, stable week to week. They have to do the same things all month long to keep getting the same results.
Women however have the GIFT of cycling hormones. The GIFT of variety. The GIFT of growing new life. The GIFT of the cycle is to make life easier when you lean in. There’s a time to be frisky and a time to let life take hold. A time to sleep and a time to be awake. A time to run for your life and a time to digest. Once we’ve figured out the cycle we can be our womanly efficient selves, like only 30 minutes of exercise a few times a week or knowing when to start a new project and when to wrap it up. But also knowing how we can support the major hormone players so we are running at our peak. This is why we eat and exercise differently every week of your 4 week cycle.
When your period starts-body knows there’s no baby. To insure survival of the species estrogen rises causing friskiness in time for ovulation. After ovulation estrogen decreases as progesterone increase to aid in embryo implantation, making everything else feel harder is nature’s way of keeping you laying low.
So week 1 & 2 we support estrogen with pumpkin and flax seeds, cooling foods and protocols and leaning into the natural fuel selection to lose weight. Exercise is easy as the body is feeling no pain and since it knows no baby, you can lift heavy and run fast with EASE.
And as Progesterone starts to increase for weeks 3 & 4 we need to shift our support to sesame and sunflower seeds, warming protocols and foods and since pain receptors are open…lay low, relax, restore, stretch, massage, “let” him go to poker night with the guys as we’re just not feeling the social scene. Want to lose wight, quit with the carbs but gift yourself with a modified fasting day (I say modified but really I mean a female supported protocol, not the fasting protocols proven to work on men)
For more specifics on a quick cheat sheet…not just your dating profile, go snag it here.
xo,
Denise
