Realfoodology - 27: Learning How to Live in Your Flo with Alisa Vitti

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

Did you know that only 4% of women are included in medical fitness and nutrition research?  Today's episode teaches us about this huge gender bias and it also shines light on how important it is for women to be mindful of our workouts, our work flow and the foods that we are eating based on what part of our cycle we are in.  We are joined by Alisa Vitti who is the author of two bestselling books: "WomanCode and "In the FLO."  She is also the creator of the MyFLO Period Tracker app - helping you have a better period the more you use it. Show Links: https://www.floliving.com/ Code to receive one FREE month of FLO 28 : REALFOODOLOGY Sign up here: http://cyclesyncingmembership.com/ https://apps.apple.com/us/app/myflo-period-tracker/id1152657123 https://www.amazon.com/FLO-Unlock-Hormonal-Advantage-Revolutionize/dp/0062870491/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=in+the+flo+alissa+vitti&qid=1614799395&s=books&sr=1-1 https://www.amazon.com/WomanCode-Perfect-Amplify-Fertility-Supercharge/dp/006213079X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=woman+code+alisa&qid=1614799461&s=books&sr=1-1 https://www.floliving.com/supplements/ https://www.floliving.com/cycle-syncing-supplement-kit/

on today's episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. Jack and Jill, you know, they're both fat and frustrated. So they go on a diet and fitness program together for 30 days. And you watch Jack after 30 days, his little, you know, circular body has like a six pack. And Jill is still fat and frustrated. Jill needs help. Jill needs this medication, right? Yeah. And I'm like, no, Jill just needs to stop doing Jack's diet and fitness plan and Jill will be just fine. Hi guys. Welcome back to another episode of the real foodology podcast. I am your host Courtney Swan. I am the creator behind real foodology, which is obviously this podcast, but it is also a food blog and Instagram and now more recently a TikTok as well. So if you are on any of those platforms, please find me and follow

me at Real Foodology. You will not be disappointed, or at least I hope not. Today's episode is with Alisa Vitti. She is a women's hormone and functional nutrition expert and a pioneer in female biohacking and femtech. And I mean, you guys, this woman is a powerhouse. I really think that you're going to resonate with this episode if you're a woman or maybe if you're a man, but really, truly this message is for women. But we welcome everyone listening to it, obviously. And I hope that you will stick around even if you're a man, because if you have a woman in your life that you care about, you're going to want to get this information to her. You may already be aware of Elisa's work.

She is most well known for writing the book Woman Code. And then more recently in the flow, she also created a period tracker app called My Flow, which is incredible. And she was really, at least for me, the first person to put on the map, this concept that we really need to be mindful of our workouts or workflow and the foods that we were eating based on what part of our cycle that we are in. And we're going to fully, we're going to really dive into this. So I'm not going to give you too many details right now, but basically we have four different

phases that we go through during our cycle, and we have different needs during those time periods. You're going to want to be doing more higher intensity workouts during one phase of your cycle, and then you're going to be wanting to do less intense. And the same with your food. You're really going to want to focus on certain foods that really support certain aspects of your cycle, and it fully is dependent on where you are in that phase of your cycle. So in this app, you plug in all of your cycle. And it fully is dependent on where you are in that phase of your cycle. So in this app, you plug in all of your data, you tell them, you know, when your period is

usually how long your cycle is. And then over time, it learns your cycle as you use it more. And it tells you what phase you're in. It also gives recommendations for workouts, depending on what phase of your cycle that you're in, what foods are really good for supporting that cycle. It's a really great resource and I highly recommend it. Did you know that most cookware and appliances are made with forever chemicals? Yes. That means your nonstick pans, your air fryers, your waffle makers, your blender could possibly have PFAS and yes, even our beloved crock pots and pressure cookers. I have actually been talking about this for so long. Back in 2006, my mom came to my dorm room and made me get rid of all my nonstick pans

because she was concerned about me being exposed to something called Teflon. Teflon is a coating that is used on nonstick pans and a lot of these appliances that I just named. So I've avoided Teflon, nonstick, PFA coated appliances, pots and pans, you name it, for a very long time. And the only option for a very long time was just stainless steel pots and pans. So I was really excited when a company like Our Place came out because they started creating really beautiful cookware and appliances that are like pieces of art. Every appliance that I have from our place, I legit want to store it on the counter. And I'm the type of person that does

not want anything on my counter because I like it to look really just clean and minimal. But I'm so obsessed with all the our place products that I have so many of them displayed on my counter because they are legit pieces of art. Our place is a mission driven and female founded brand that makes beautiful kitchen products that are healthy and sustainable. All their products are made without PFAS, which are the forever chemicals, and also made without PTFE, which is Teflon. If a company is not outwardly stating that they don't use these chemicals, then if they are using non-stick coating on their appliances, they are absolutely using forever chemicals. And there's been

increasing global scrutiny for their impact on the environment and our chemicals. And there's been increasing global scrutiny for their impact on the environment and our health and recognizing this impact. The EU plans to prohibit PFAS by 2025. Our place has always been PFAS free and they offer durable toxin-free ceramic coatings, ensuring a healthy, safe cooking experience. And let me tell you, you guys, they are changing the game with non-toxic appliances. They have a blender, they have an air fryer, they have a crock pot, not to mention their amazing always pan. They have a perfect pot, which is just the perfect size for soups. And they also just came out with a cast iron that I'm loving as well. And I more recently replaced all of the bowls and plates in my kitchen

because I really needed an upgrade. My other ones were so old. So I got some from our place and they are so beautiful. The ceramics are beautiful. The colors are amazing. Like I said, everything is like a piece of art. If you want to try any of the products from our place, go to fromourplace.com and enter my code realfoodology at checkout to receive 10% off sitewide. That's fromourplace.com, code realfoodology. Our place offers a 100-day trial with free shipping and returns. Imagine having a metabolic coach in your pocket that you could access at any point, any time in the day, whenever you want.

That's what Lumen is. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath. And on the app, it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs and gives you tailored guidance to improve your nutrition, workout, sleep, and even stress management. I have so many podcast episodes about metabolic flexibility and why it is so incredibly important for your overall health and longevity. And now thanks to Lumen, you can actually see in real time, your body's ability to efficiently switch between using

different fuel sources like carbs and fats. There's preferred times to use each and how well you can switch places between burning carbs versus burning fats will tell you a lot about what is going on in your metabolism and where you are in the metabolic flexibility spectrum. All you have to do is breathe into your lumen first thing in the morning, and you'll know what's going on with your metabolism, whether you're burning mostly fats or carbs. Then lumen gives you a personalized nutrition plan for that day based on your measurements. You can also breathe into it before and after workouts and meals so you know exactly what's going on in your body in real time.

And lumen will give you tips to keep you on top of your health game. Why is this so important? Your metabolism is your body's engine. It's how your body turns the food you eat into the fuel that keeps you going because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does. Optimal metabolic health translates to a bunch of benefits, including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleep, and more. Now this is a really cool feature too. It can actually track your cycle as well as the onset of menopause and adjust your recommendations to keep your metabolism healthy through hormonal shifts. So if you want to take the next step in improving

your health, go to lumen.me and use real foodology to get $100 off your lumen. That is l-u-m-e-n dot m-e and use real foodology at checkout for $100 off. Thank you so much to lumen for sponsoring this episode. So we really dive into that during this episode. We also talk about hormones and nutrition in regards to our menstrual cycles. We talk about the infradian rhythm, which if that is a new word for you, do not worry. You are not alone in that. We often hear about the circadian rhythm, which is the biological rhythm, 24 hours sleep-wake cycle. But what I didn't even know is that there's actually an infradian rhythm, which is the biological rhythm that

women function on. So we, we dive really deep into that. It was so, so interesting. So you're definitely not going to want to miss that because she really gives us a roadmap on how we can get to the root of our health issues and feel better and good in our bodies when we work in sync with our own biological rhythm based on what's going on in our bodies as women. We also talk about hormones and nutrition and the menstrual cycle, why we're seeing so much infertility in women these days. And we also dive into how she feels about keto, low carb, intermittent fasting for women specifically. And we go a little bit into PMS, bloating, all of the symptoms that you see with a menstrual

cycle that are, like I've said before on another episode, that are common, but they're not normal. So we dive deep into that. And you know what? Let's just, with that, let's get to the episode. I'm so excited for you guys to hear this. Today's question comes from Jessica and she asked, is cheese really that bad for you? As always, these answers and this podcast are just for educational and informational purposes only. I am an integrative nutritionist, but I'm not a doctor. And I don't know you personally,

I don't know what's going on in your body. So just know that this information on this podcast is not a sub for individual medical or mental health advice, and it doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, talk to your doctor first. I actually talked about this pretty recently on my Instagram. And if you guys have been following me for a while, you know that I don't like to vilify any sort of food group, but I will say the thing with cheese is tricky because if you're not buying organic cheese from grass-fed pasture-raised cows, you're getting conventional dairy, which comes from sick animals. Like, I don't know how else to say it, but they are sick animals fed GMO feed, pumped with growth hormones, and often given antibiotics. And you're also supporting horrible factory farms, but we won't even go into that today.

But here's the real talk about dairy. A lot of people have issues with dairy. You know that person that's always clearing their throat? They're always like, I know many of them in my life. that is usually from a mucus buildup in the back of your throat. And that is a inflammatory response to dairy. Now, if you can eat dairy and you don't see any sort of effects on your body, that's amazing. I just highly recommend buying organic, like I said before, and from grass pasture raised cows, then you're fine. But I think more people are affected by dairy than they even realize. We talk about this on one of my episodes. You can go back and listen to it. Dr. Laura Bryden,

she talks about the component, the connection between period cramps and period pain and, and eating dairy. And I will say personally, anecdotally in my own life, I started getting pretty intense cramps when I started eating dairy kind of on a regular basis recently. And I have since cut out dairy and I have since gotten rid of my cramps again. Now, look, it's not going to be that easy for some of you listening. So please like seek medical attention, but sometimes it is going to be just as easy as cutting out something as simple as dairy. And then my friend Celeste talks about this all the time, but a lot of people get breakouts from dairy. So if you have acne prone skin, she highly recommends that you cut out dairy

for your skin. I also have a girlfriend who can literally, she literally sees a pimple on her face within 24 hours of eating dairy. So just be mindful of the symptoms that may pop up. And fortunately, if you do have a sensitivity to dairy, there's so many wonderful, amazing vegan options these days that it's pretty easy to cut out dairy if you really have to. Elisa, thank you so much for coming on today. I'm really excited about this episode. I'm so happy to be here, Courtney. It's great to finally chat. Yeah, it's so great. So for those listening who are not really aware of your work, can you give a little bit of a background on what you do and how you got here? Sure. So, you know, my mission is to make, um, women's hormonal issues and navigating those, you know, from your first bleed to your

last, just so much easier and less overwhelming and less complicated and less frankly expensive. Because I think so often when we have hormonal issues and we're searching for solutions, we can really go from place to place, you know, trying a lot of different things and not really achieving those results that we want, not getting across that finish line of what we have as a goal. How I ended up doing this, why I'm the most passionate person about your period that you'll ever meet is because I, of course, myself had period problems. And it really gave me two specific, you know, perspectives. One, what it feels like, you know, viscerally to suffer and struggle with hormonal issues that can really take over your life on a day-to-day basis and really deeply impact the quality of your life. So there's that. And then the other piece is that

I really got to see the limitations of what conventional medicine has to offer women who are struggling with these chronic long-term hormonal issues, period problems, you know, what they're dealing with. And I just thought that if I could help, that it would be a really great thing to be able to bring some innovation to just the conversation around hormonal healthcare, because it is so sorely needed. I mean, up to 80% of women will struggle with a hormonal issue in her lifetime. That's a staggering statistic. That's really crazy. Do you think that has to do with our modern environment and our food? I mean, it's a conflagration of several things. Certainly we are dealing with

more endocrine disruptive chemicals than any generation has ever been exposed to. And that cannot be underscored enough. I mean, we have frogs in, you know, aquatic environments that have been polluted with these endocrine disruptors who are, you know, flipping genders and, you know, having reproductive, you know, issues. So we know that this is impacting our bodies, precocious puberty in humans. So it was for a while just among teenage young girls, but now it's affecting boys as well, is on the rise dramatically. Idiopathic infertility, meaning infertility with no known cause is on the rise in both men and women. Many reproductive experts, you know, there was a recent article I was reading about how they consider this now sort of a crisis.

We're at a sort of a crisis stage of humans being able to reproduce. I read that too. Yeah. I read that recently. Was it New York times? I can't remember. It was, it was wild. I read so many things. I remember the source all the time with the media outlet. So, you know, I do think that that's a big piece, but the other thing that's really exciting, and that's sort of what compelled me to write my second book, In the Flow, was that we're, as women, really getting it wrong when it comes to taking care of our hormones and our bodies. And we're getting it wrong because we're just getting the wrong information and that's okay. So like nobody's at fault. It's just, we have been missing a critical piece of

information about how our bodies operate. And we've been doing all of our dieting and exercising and self-care on the wrong premise altogether, which further exacerbates hormonal disruption and can create it in some instances. And so those two things really together, endocrine disruptive chemicals, and then sort of us disrupting our own hormonal ecosystem without realizing it is a, is a recipe for, you know, this sort of huge growing population of women struggling with issues like PCOS, fibroids, endometriosis, severe PMS, irregular cycles, premature ovarian failure, you know, infertility and, and early earlier and earlier perimenopause, you know, which is a sign of premature hormonal aging and, um, you know,

sets you up for increased risks of disease of inflammation postmenopausally. So it's a, it's an important conversation for us to be having. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you touched on a lot of different stuff that I'm excited to dive into first and and foremost, I think I've heard you talk about this a lot and I want you to go more into detail about this, the kind of the inbuilt patriarchal nature of medicine and how there's literally zero. Well, I don't know if I should say zero, but there's very small amount of studies being done on women of childbearing age. They're all in men and perimenopausal women. Post, post. Or I'm sorry. Yes, post. So the statistic that I've seen recently published on a different media site was that it's about 4% of women are, in medical fitness and nutrition research. That's insane. You know,

and what's problematic about that, first of all, I think, you know, you should have whatever feelings you have about why we're being left out. You know, one of the reasons, there are a few reasons why women are, have been historically left out. I think a very valid one is you don't want to be doing, you know, drug testing on women who may or actually be pregnant. So that, of course, is a valid one. But we have better ways of testing now than people did in the 60s, I guess, when that was more of an issue. But one of the main reasons why women are left out is this, uh, comes from

that place of insidious gender bias. Like, oh, well, women's hormones are more complex and therefore less easy to study. They're almost like, oh, this is too hard. We don't even want to go there. Yeah. That's like, this is too hard. Doesn't really jive well with me because the amount of funding and research that's been done on the circadian rhythm and sort of the fluctuations within that, which are very nuanced, it's not a flat ecosystem, right? They have figured that out. So it's really, it's the same technique. I think it's know, inherited gender bias that needs to be looked at and addressed as a, you know, sort of a research culture. Yeah. But I think that, you know, the impact of that is more important than the politics, you know, of how, or even our emotional reaction, like it is what it is, it's done.

Here we are. But the impact of it is really important for you to understand as you try to navigate your own healing path, right? So here are some of the key pieces of impact. One, the assumption that's made from all this research is that, well, women are simply smaller versions of men. And therefore, we'll just, whatever recommendations we find from the research, we shall just say, you know, women might have to restrict more calories or work out more or compensate for their slightly, you know, less optimal, you know, ecosystem. The impact of knowing that you're being told information that doesn't actually apply to you is important because anytime you read research now, like, oh, this was just discovered that, you know, this diet does X, Y, Z. Now you'll be able

to understand that that research was done on men and that they're making this enormous assumption that it should work for you, we hope. But here's the thing about that. I bring this commercial up all the time because it's just so reflective of the whole scenario and how dysfunctional it is. So there was a drug that was created a couple of years ago to help with weight loss for women. And so the commercial would like these two little stick figure drawings. And it was like, Jack and Jill, you know, they're both fat and frustrated. So they go on a diet and fitness program together for 30 days. And you watch Jack after 30 days, he, his little, you know, circular body has like a six pack and Jill is still fat and frustrated.

Jill needs help. Jill needs this medication. Right. Yeah. And I'm like, no, Jill just needs to stop doing Jack's diet and fitness plan. And Jill will be just fine. So the whole premise of that is the reason why she's, you know, so, so that's the thing that that's the second piece of the impact is that, um, you're, so not only are you reading information, thinking it applies to not realizing that it doesn't, but then you apply that to your body, right? And you do not get the results that you were told you would based on the research. And then you can actually create further disruption. We see this a lot all over the place with keto and intermittent fasting on

social media groups. People are like, oh, what happened? I'm following this exactly as I was told and I've lost my period or my period's so much worse or I'm breaking out. There isn't a more nuanced conversation happening in the biohacking community or even in the wellness community as a whole saying that our recommendations must be tailored to a biological rhythm specific subgroup. Right? Yeah. And we can get into these rhythms more specifically because women don't know what these rhythms are and what, how they're different from those of men, but we need to, because without that information to stand on, we really are going to just get pulled in any

direction with this research, you know, being done mainly on men that's never going to really benefit us until we're postmenopausal. Wow. I mean, that's just profound. You were, I think the first person that I heard that this information from, and I just was blown away because of course it makes sense that, you know, so many women are struggling with, like you said, their periods or with weight gain, and they can't figure out why their boyfriend or their husband is just, you know, losing weight like that. And they're both doing the same thing. But of course, like now that we know that I'm like, of course it makes so much sense. So now that we know that, um, how do we then direct women to, I guess, resources into how to figure out what works for them being a woman versus, you know, what we've been taught as,

you know, from the studies of men. Well, that's just the thing, you know, what we've been taught as, you know, from the studies of men. Well, that's just the thing, you know, that's why I decided to write the second book because I wanted to sort of create, you know, sort of share the information that I was able to find in my extensive research. You know, we, we have, we put, I put so many studies into this book that I couldn't actually publish them all physically. So we had to build a special webpage for all the studies because it was going to make the book so much bigger. So just so you're aware of how much research went into it. So I guess where we should start is to sort of just explain what you need to know at first. And then, you know, the resources are all in the book and on our website.

So let's start with this biological rhythm that I uncovered in my research that I think really changes the conversation for women. And it's called the infradian rhythm. So we all know about the circadian rhythm, right? That's 24 hours and it controls like when you're waking and sleeping, but it also governs sort of the timing of different functions of your body, right? So for example, it's really ideal that your body has a timing for when your bowels are most active, right? Kind of great. Because otherwise, who knows? You could just get woken up at 2.47 in the morning in the middle of

the night and have it to go number two. That's not optimal because then you're messing with your REM cycle and your blood sugar and your cortisol. So it's really nice that we have a biological rhythm that kind of helps modulate the timing of these types of bodily functions. But women from their first bleed to their last have a second biological rhythm called the infradian rhythm. And just like it's a little too simplistic to think about the circadian rhythm as only governing your sleep-wake cycle. The infradian rhythm, you do experience it across your menstrual cycle. So it does govern like when you're ovulating, when you're menstruating, but it's too simplistic to think it's just about your period, right? It actually impacts your brain, your metabolism, your stress response system, your immune response system,

and the entirety of your reproductive system, which is comprised of your cycle, your fertility, and your sex drive, right? So this is super, super, you know, so it's a sort of a watershed kind of thing to think about, because if you think about connecting the dots from all your different symptoms, your brain fog, your immune issues, your weight issues, your anxiety, your period problems, your confusion about your sex drive, right? Without the knowledge of the infradian rhythm, everything feels like it's in a different silo and needs a different approach and a different solution. And you're constantly chasing your tail, trying to make headway in these areas.

And it's like whack-a-mole. Once you kind of get one thing organized, then something's changing in your body and the next thing's flaring up. You're never getting anywhere because we aren't factoring in this infradian rhythm. Once you get that piece and you start to support it, there's no more whack-a-mole. There's no more chasing your tail. You're supporting the deepest system that affects all of these other areas of your body. And you can really achieve a completely

different level of health optimization with much less effort and, you know, much more of an elegant solution, a simple, direct, elegant solution. So that's super exciting to be able to sort of share that. And let me give a great example to make it real for you, like how the infradian rhythm affects your metabolism, for example. We know how it affects your period, right? Your hormones fluctuate different ratios. We'll get into the four phases, but let's just talk about your metabolism. So most of us, because of all this gender bias in the research, we have adopted a mindset,

whether you're conscious of this or not, you on some level believe that because you're female, you have a slightly sluggish metabolism compared to men because your observation of them is they have such an easy time losing weight when they want to, right? And that you have to work, you store more fat, you know, in your hips and your butt and all of that. So you have to work out harder every day, right? Do more cardio, whatever it is in your mind. The reality is your metabolism is not the same every day, but by treating it that way,

you actually make it less functional. So in the first half of your cycle, your metabolism is slower, slightly compared to yourself, not compared to men. So slightly slower for you. And, and in the second half after ovulation, it's slightly faster. So just that alone requires that you modulate your caloric intake to accommodate that metabolic reality. With a slower metabolism, what would you do? You could eat fewer calories, right? That makes sense with what's happening with your metabolism. When you have a faster metabolism, in order for you to keep your blood sugar stable, you must eat more calories. And specifically the studies show, it's not just like this random number, like, oh, have a free for all, you know, go nuts, eat whatever you want. It's 279 more calories per

day. Okay. Right down to the T. So, you know, it's exciting because so many of you will associate the second half of your cycle with PMS. You have a worse PMS. If you continuously force yourself to eat that same reduced calorie level intake that worked really well for you in the first half of the cycle, if you bring that across ovulation into the luteal phase, you will just keep your blood sugar disrupted, have insulin being produced in ways that it doesn't need to be. That will dysregulate cortisol and that will affect progesterone production, which will exacerbate your PMS and your anxiety, right? Not to mention the impact on all the weight stuff, which we'll get into, but this is just one piece of understanding

the impact of this infradian effect. And it, it's the, it just, it's the key to unlock the big question in your mind. It's like, why is it so hard? Why am I struggling? Why do I have all these symptoms? That's why, because we're just messing with that rhythm. This is really exciting. Organifi now has kid stuff. They just released two kid products. One is called Easy Greens, and it's a refreshing green apple juice where kids will never know that it's packed with veggies. And the other one is called Protect.

It's a delicious wild berry punch like the Kool-Aid that we used to have as a kid, but without any sugar. This is really exciting. And if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know that I'm a huge fan of Organifi and most specifically because every single product that they make is glyphosate residue free. So you know that you're going to be able to give these powders to your kids and know that they will be able to consume them safely without any glyphosate in it. So let's break down each one. The Easy Greens is a nourishing and delicious blend of superfoods and veggies that provides essential nutrients, probiotics, and digestive enzymes to bring balance to kids' growing bodies without fillers,

additives, or junk. It helps to fill in nutritional gaps, aids in growth and development, supports digestive health, has a rich micronutrient profile, and includes digestive enzymes. This would be a great way to sneak in greens for your little one without them actually knowing that it's healthy for them. And the second one, which is the wild berry punch similar to Kool-Aid is called Protect. And it is to support your child's daily immune health with food derived nutrients that work to strengthen their body's first line of defense. I know just through girlfriends of mine that have children that when your kids are going to school, going to daycare, they're coming home sick a lot more often just because they're getting exposed to different kids and different viruses when they're out in the world playing with kids.

So this would be a great way to help to support your little one's immune health. It's organic, and it's also made with real whole food ingredients. It has a delicious berry taste, and it's low sugar, and it's gentle enough for kids to take every single day. And I really love the ingredients in this one. It's orange and acerol cherry, which is a powerful source of vitamin C and antioxidants, astragalus, elderberry, and propolis. These are all really great for overall immune health. If you want to try the products that I talked about today or any of the Organifi products, go to Organifi.com slash realfoodology and use code realfoodology for 20% off. Again, that's Organifi. It's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com slash real food ology. Do you want to hear the biggest discovery of our time for promoting healthy

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episode. Well, it's interesting too, because I feel like as probably most women listening, I've spent most of my life doing kind of that cycle. Like you said, where I'm, I was just constantly, I was trying to work out really hard every single day. I was trying to kind of keep my food intake around the same amount every single day, no matter what day, you know, 30, 30 days out of the month. But when I started really tuning into my body and my needs more, it's interesting because I, as I hear you talk about this, it makes me feel as though I was really able to get in sync with my own cycle and my own needs, because I have found personally for me that there is about a, yeah, like a two week window where I am just so ravenous that I eat way

more calories than I would the other two weeks. And then the other two weeks, I find myself really not that hungry and I don't eat as much food as I do during those other two weeks. And then the other two weeks, I find myself really not that hungry. And I don't eat as much food as I do during those other two weeks. And so it's this leveling out. And I've just learned to lean in, you know, and I'm like, okay, you know, this week, I'm really hungry. It must mean I'm on, I don't know. I haven't been able to figure out the cycle.

You're going to download the MyFlow app. You're going to know where you are and why. That's a great example of what a healthy relationship with one's body can look like where you lean into the biofeedback. What you're saying is you were receiving biofeedback from your body about hunger. Hunger is a form of biofeedback. Neurotransmitters are involved. Blood sugar is involved. We think it's free will, but it's really, we're just like a bag of biochemicals running the show. The better you support them, the better it is for you. So that's really, but the problem is most of us are so conditioned to fear our bodies because they're female, right?

Our periods are, I mean, think about the cultural narrative around the female body, right? It's the period is a curse. Your hormones are unpredictable. Your curves are unacceptable. You know, puberty, you're going to like, you just sort of like gain all this weight and it's uncontrollable and you have to battle it all the time. So more of us than not, unfortunately don't have the kind of relationship that you've evolved with yourself, where you feel like you can lean into that biofeedback. Most of us are so afraid of our bodies as women that we instead cling to this idea of there's a perfect diet and a perfect day.

And if we could just be the same every day with our caloric intake and when we wake up and which workout intensity we're doing, and if we just kept that sameness every day, then somehow we'd get what we want. And, you know, it is frustrating and sad. And I, I'm, I think it's coming out soon, an article I'm doing with another outlet, you know, they wanted to sort of have me break down these conventional success, you know, pieces of wisdom, right. And they're so tied into supporting the circadian rhythm that we don't even realize how this can be really damaging for us as women who have an active infradian rhythm that doesn't operate exactly the same way. So think about like three pieces of success wisdom that you hold in your mind as this gold standard of how you should

judge yourself during the day of whether or not you had a good day. Here it is. Ready? These are the three I think are pretty common. One, you wake up really early. Two, you do a really intense workout. And three, you eat a restricted amount of calories. Oh God. Yeah. Right. And if you hit those three things, you're going to be the success of your life, right? You're going things, you're going to be the success of your life, right? You're going to, you're, you're going to have the body you want. You're going to make the money you want. You're going to, I mean, there are, there's like clubs for waking up early online. There's all this stuff, you know, a lot of it. You know, there are men who are really excited about sharing these success tips because guess what, as they should be,

that optimizes their hormonal pattern, which follows a circadian pattern, right? So in fact, for men who make all their testosterone at night and wake up with the huge surge of it early in the morning, they should, in order to optimize their health and their lives, wake up early, do the same kind of workouts at the right time during the day to optimize lean muscle gain and fat utilization. And they should eat the same amount of calories at the same intervals throughout the day. And it's rinse and repeat, groundhog day, whatever you want to call it, every 24 hours. And that is a path for success health-wise for men. But that's not how your body works. Your body is cyclical. That infradian rhythm is a repeating cycle over the course of the month. So you've got to unhook yourself from the goal of perfection and sameness every day with your

self-care and embrace your four patterns within this infradian cycle and watch what happens. Wow. This is really profound. And I'm so happy that we're waking up to this and that women are, are starting to learn more about their bodies and their cycles. So with that, let's go into all the different phases. And then I want you to dive into this a little bit about how there's different. We want to be mindful of our workouts, our workflow, the foods we're eating based on what phases we are in, in our cycle. Right. So in the book, in the flow, I didn't want to just unpack like, Oh, we're being left out of research and, and here's your infradian rhythm. I wanted to provide a system in which you could start supporting this infradian rhythm. And that's

called the cycle thinking method. And it has three pillars. It's about modulating your food based on where you are in your cycle, modulating your fitness based on the phases and sort of, you know, orienting your time management based on what's happening with your cycle. Right. And when you do these three things, you just, I mean, having lived this myself for a long time now, you unlock your best health and your best life. I mean, I know it sounds a little like, could it really be true? You know, listen, if I can, I love giving this as the sort of explanation. It does work that men are cycle syncing. They are. They just don't know it. Well, that's an inspiration for us, right? But the problem is we've been trying to apply the wrong cycle syncing method to our different cycle, right? So I just want you to apply the right cycle syncing method to your infradian rhythm and stop trying to synchronize your self-care to a circadian only rhythm because it's not

working for you. If it would work for you, it would have done that already. And that's why Jack versus Jill had those different results on that commercial. So we don't have to keep trying the same things, expecting different results and going crazy while we're waiting, right? So how does it work? So you have these four phases of your cycle, the follicular, the ovulatory, the luteal and the menstrual or

the bleeding week. Isn't it confusing that we have such imprecise language about our cycle? Like it's a cycle. Yes. That mean the whole month or when you're bleeding could mean both or menstruation. Is that the whole month or when you're bleeding could mean both. Or menstruation, is that the whole month or when you're bleeding? Could mean both. This does not exist in male biology. There's like one word for every one thing. So I just like to call it the bleeding week because that's what it is. There we go. Yeah. Okay. So we have these four phases and in each of these four phases, you have a specific hormonal ratio that is taking place, and you can learn all about this in great detail. There's charts and graphs in the book, and you can also download the MyFlow app, which will tell you which phase you're in,

so you don't even have to guess. It'll tell you where you are and what's going on hormonally, but essentially, we talked about the metabolic piece. So you understand that you have to shift your calories. However, because you are also having the effects of different concentrations of estrogen at these different phases, for example, some of you listening may notice that mid-cycle during ovulation that you break out or that you have some ovarian pain, or you even could feel bloated or have other symptoms, right? This can be a side effect of what's happening from an estrogen point of view. Estrogen has a peak surge during ovulation, which is normal, but your body may be struggling to break that estrogen down. You may be struggling with

constipation. You may not have enough fiber in your diet. There could be a variety of reasons why your skin is sort of, you know, dealing with the, the, the effects of estrogen because your body's not able to, to break it down and get it out through the bowel. Right. So it's not just about using, it's not only about, the cycle syncing method is not only about modulating caloric intake as needed by this metabolic shift, but also using food strategically during each phase to help offset what stereotypical hormonal vulnerabilities you have in that phase. So in the ovulatory phase, you know, like I said, you can have this excess estrogen in the luteal phase because of our,

you know, the, the shift in our metabolism, when it speeds up you can, you're more vulnerable and susceptible to blood sugar destabilization, right? So using more root vegetables, more whole grains, more cooked foods that are going to help your body digest and rest and really absorb micronutrients as efficiently as possible while bulking up fiber, because you have the introduction of progesterone during this phase, which slows down the transit time in your gut. If you always wondered, gee, why am I constipated before my period? It's because of progesterone and you want to use food strategically to stabilize your blood sugar, increase your fiber, keep your bowels moving the way you want. So it's not just about increasing calories and just calories, you know, any old calorie will do. It's exactly which foods you're

using to really help your body do what it's doing, but just do it. Yeah. We want to dial in the nutrition. This is a really important component of it. Yeah. So there's a food chart in chapter four that breaks down, you know, which foods you want to use in each of the phases. There's recipes in the back of the book. Women who really are like, we have a whole community, the cycle syncing membership called Flow 28 that we call ourselves the Infradian girls living in a circadian world. And, you know, so you get grocery lists, meal plans, recipes that really help you in each phase. You don't have to, you know, figure this out on your own. We've had enough trying to figure it out on our own. And so I'm just dedicated to

building all the tools that you could possibly need to just make this easier. Some women also need extra micronutrient support. And I'm really proud to have launched the first supplement kit that is supporting this cyclical nature that you have. It's called the cycle thinking supplement kit. And it really helps. There's a specific formulation for each of the four phases that really allows you to support and those typical symptoms that you're dealing with in each of the phases so that you can reduce them over time in addition to what you're doing with your food. So that's just the first pillar. Some people really like to get started with the food, but some people really like to experiment with the second pillar,

which is the fitness piece. So let's talk about cortisol because this is really what dictates what intensity of workout you should be doing. In the first half of the cycle, your resting cortisol levels are lower. And that allows you, coupled with your slightly slower metabolism, this is the perfect time for you to do your HIIT workouts and your super long cardio sessions and have fun, right? Do the things that you're comfortable doing. Once you're done ovulating and you've moved into the luteal phase, the research is conclusive. If you were to continue doing HIIT workouts after ovulation, guess what happens? It's like, just wait, just wait for it. Take a breath. I'm going to lay on you. It's a big deal because it's like, you're

going to say, Oh my God, this explains why I make no progress at the end of every month. Here's what it is. If you do hit workouts after you ovulate, you will ready. Oh no. Turn on fat storage and turn on muscle wasting. Wow. So here you are being so, I mean, listen, when I hear somebody say something like, Oh, you know, maybe you just need more willpower. I, I just, I just want to like, I don't know, do something like do the same workout each and every day, you take your two steps forward in the first half of the cycle with your cardio and hip and your restricted calories, like you've been told you should do every day. Then as soon as you cross over to the luteal phase, you will undo all that progress. So at best, at best case scenario, at the end of every month, you've gone nowhere fast.

Worst case scenario, which happens to a lot more women than we're even talking about is that you'll gain weight and you're losing lean muscle. Yeah. God. I mean, again, this is just so profound because I think about all of the years that I spent, um, I call myself a recovering cardio bunny where I would just every day, I, sometimes I'd try to hit the gym twice a day or do two full cycle classes a day. And I look back and I'm like, no wonder I was, I mean, honestly, I was bigger than I am now. I could not figure out how to lose the last like couple of pounds around my waist that I wanted to get rid of. I was constantly bloated. And it was the second I took that shift away from just absolutely killing myself in the gym every single day.

And I allowed myself to just go on walks, you know, and do the like resting phase for part of my cycle again. I feel like this was almost just an intuitive thing for me that, I mean, I've seen such a difference in my body. And truly the way I feel too, which is really important to me. Yeah. Because so I have two things to say, you know, one, that's the thing that bothers me the most is that you see slogans like, you know, be committed and just, just work hard. You know, I'm not trying to actually call out real slogans, but you know the ones I'm talking about. So you see those slogans and they're hypnotic. They're mantras, right? You push no pain, no gain, right? So you do that. And then you don't get the results that Jack is getting. You're the Jill. And you self-criticize, you develop body hatred and resentment, you feel frustrated and

super self-critical. And you just feel so defeated. And it's psychologically unnecessary, just like PMS and other period problems are unnecessary and avoidable. This emotional turmoil and angst we have with our bodies is completely unnecessary and avoidable. It's all, all of these things are predicated on mythology and misinformation. And so I'm just, I'm just, I just want to bring the correct information so we can just move on from all this negative stuff. And the second thing I want to say is specifically around weight loss, because I once was obese. So if you're somebody who's really struggling with your weight, I want you to know that I've maintained a 60 pound weight loss for two decades. That's amazing.

I'm leveraging the knowledge of my metabolic patterns via the infradian rhythm, via the cycle with no struggle, zero struggle, zero dieting. This is not supposed to be hard. Nature has designed the female body to be much more efficient than the male body. Why? Because we, Oh, you know, no big deal. 3d print, tiny human beings. Okay. We're magical. Yeah. No biggie. So, you know, um, because of that, we, you know, just have a much more, we extract nutrients better for our food. We retain them longer. We, we don't, we're not nutrient wasters. We, we, we are not supposed to have so much stress on our system to get the results that we want. Right. So if you're working hard and you don't feel like you're getting the results that you want, there's a reason for it. It's because you're not armed with the correct

information about how your body works. So get school, get, get in the flow of your body. It's so much more fun. It's much more pleasurable. And that's the reason why I called the book in the flow, because the idea is everything that we've experienced so far with our healthcare as women, it feels like we're swimming up or paddling upstream in a canoe without the oars. You know, it's not, it's really difficult. And it really should feel like instead you're on this beautiful journey, you know, on a river, taking in the scenery, enjoying yourself. That's what, that's what I want for you.

So we've covered, you know, the first two pillars and the third pillar, just briefly, really, you know, Dr. Catherine Woolley in 1996 at Northwestern University uncovered that the female brain changes up to 25% over the course of the month. Now this they've proven and thank goodness, because I don't know why they, of all the things that need funding, I don't know why this got funding, but it turns out that men and women, you know, we can do everything the same cognitively. Okay. Just in case anybody was worried about that. The fact that we even had to do a study for that is, you know, how about doing a study

on endometriosis and finding a cure for that? That would be worth a couple of million dollars. Yeah. Of research. Sure. So, but yes, so you can do anything at any time, but what's really exciting is nature has given you little cognitive advantages during each of these phases that you can use to your own personal advantage, right? So for example, during ovulation, because of that, remember that

super surge of estrogen that you have that helps the egg release from the ovary. This hyper stimulates the social and verbal centers of your brain more so than at any other time of the month. Of course, you can speak and interact at any time of the month, but during ovulation is just like effortless for you. You're like, you know, you walk into a room and you're the magnetic one and you're, you know, attracting all the things you want to and you're having these fabulous interactions with people. That's the ovulation phase. That's a little extra bonus for you during that time. During the luteal phase, which most of us malign as the PMS time, if you're having PMS, you're having a hormonal imbalance. You've got to take that seriously. Unaddressed PMS in your reproductive years increases the risk that you will develop diseases

of inflammation, the four big ones, postmenopausally. So PMS is simply an imbalance of estrogen and progesterone. But what you're supposed to have is an abundance, more progesterone than estrogen during the luteal phase. And what that does to your brain, it has this extremely calming effect. I know people are like, really, I'm supposed to be calm because that's the week that I'm anxious and depressed and irritated. That's just a sign that your hormones are imbalanced. That's biofeedback you want to listen to. You can change your supplements and change your food and boost your progesterone production, right? Especially while you're cycle syncing, you're going to stop doing the things

with diet and exercise that are disrupting that progesterone production. So it gives you this calm and this like ability to focus and get things done, like at no, you know, just so much more than during other phases of the cycle. And this is the longest phase. So for those of you who are into the conversation of manifesting, for example, you know, there's a pattern to manifesting according to the manifesting experts, which I am not, but you know, it's like you come up with the idea, you talk about the idea and then you get to work on the idea, right? Yes. Then you bring it into fruition by doing, right? You don't just think about it. You don't just talk about it. You get busy. And the luteal phase is your longest phase is 10 to 14 days for you to just be so effortlessly

getting down to business. It's so fun because for example, I project plan according to understanding these extra little cognitive superpowers I get at different parts of the cycle. So I will schedule speaking events as much as I can. I try to crowd them into my ovulatory phase. And then I definitely carve out a huge amount of deep work time during the luteal phase because I just get so much more done with less stress in less time because my brain is disoriented that way. So again, men are

doing this too, by the way, right? So just in case you think, Elisa, you can't plan your life around your cycle. You can't plan projects around your hormones. Who does that? That's nuts. Guys do that. They just don't know they're doing it. They don't talk about it in this way, but let's just break it down. Just so you are clear that I mean that for certain, let's look at corporate culture. And, and after I explained this male pattern to you, you tell me if you don't think it's not based on male hormonal patterns. So what time are we supposed to get to work in the morning? Early. What happens to men when they wake up at six o'clock? They're flooded

with all the testosterone and their cortisol surge that it's part of the circadian pattern and what they've made the night before. So they wake up early, they do a workout, they get to work. And because of this testosterone and cortisol, they are focused and ready to do their deep work early in the day. So they do their projects. Then after lunch, they start to have meetings because their testosterone and their cortisol starting to wane around three o'clock. I had somebody, some woman, she was bringing this to her team at work. And she's like, you guys have your, your testosterone drop. She called it the TD. I was like, I love that. You fall off the cliff sort of in the afternoon, which is why nootropics are so popular amongst male biohackers because in the afternoon, their ability to focus and concentrate and have energy and stamina is lessened because they're having decreasing concentrations in testosterone and cortisol, which is just their daily pattern. So what, what is scheduled in corporate culture after four o'clock happy hour?

Oh yeah. Because that's when they're most primed to socialize because their testosterone is low. They're less able to focus. They're better able to socialize and interact. And then after like dinner, it's time to go back in the man cave, go to sleep, make the testosterone, get up, rinse and repeat every day. So men are also project planning in ways that are optimizing and taking advantage of what is happening with their, the interaction between their hormones and their brains. So if they have created an entire culture, which you could call the patriarchy, but political labels aside, how about just looking at it from the lens of they just oriented all of their work around their biology. We as women have the right to do the same. You can organize your

work and your project flow around your biology. Who's going to stop you? Yeah. Wow. Only your conditioning, only the conditioning you've received that that somehow the male pattern is the gold standard. It is for them. It's not for you. Yeah. I mean, I'm just a little bit speechless right now because I've never thought about it like that before and heard someone explain it. That's really incredible. You touched on something that I want to just briefly go a little bit more into because I know this is a really hot topic. Acne and PMS and like bloating, basically any sort of like mood swings, PMS having dealing with, yes, all the PMS symptoms

dealing with periods. That's usually a sign of some sort of hormonal imbalance, right? It's definitely a sign. Okay. So it's definitely a sign. So I, I mean, it's, and it's a really heated, I only found this out recently. It's a pretty heated conversation. I had a Tik TOK video go like semi-viral about this. And I said, period, period pain is common, but it's, or yeah, it's common, but it's not normal. And the amount of comments that I got back from people saying that I was, why was I trying to make people scared? And that it was misinformation. It was inaccurate. I mean, I was mind blown. So I feel like we need to go into this a little bit so that women understand that they don't, it is not there. They're, they don't, they're not designed to suffer. I feel like we're like taught that women are just meant to suffer. We just have to

suffer through our childbearing age, but I don't think that's true. Well, you're right. And you know, here's the deal. In 2015, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists decreed, decreed that your cycle is to now forevermore be considered a fifth vital sign. And for those of you who are like, well, what's the big deal about that? Vital signs are like, there's four of them and they take them in the emergency room when you come in, right? Your temperature, your blood pressure, et cetera. The problem is, A, that that's not widely known enough, nor are we being educated about, well, what does that mean? What should we know about it, right? And that's important because

you've been conditioned and you've been educated across your lifetime to know what to do with your other vital signs. Right. So what happens when you have a fever in our COVID environment now? If you have an elevated temperature, you take that really seriously. You monitor it. You medicate. You hydrate. You rest.

You have a whole mental checklist of things to do. If you're getting biofeedback, that that vital sign is struggling. Yeah. The problem is because of this mythology and this, this toxic cultural narrative around women's hormones and menstruation, right? You've been conditioned to do the opposite, to ignore the signs and signals of your body and to do nothing, to take no action, which of course puts you at a huge disadvantage because if you took no action when you had a fever, when that vital sign was, you know, the red light was indicating we got a problem, Houston, we got a problem, right? If you didn't do that when you had a fever, you know what would happen problem, right? If you didn't do that, when you had a

fever, you know, what would happen? You know, things would go pear shaped really quickly. But, but, but you don't do that. The indicator light is flashing when you've got PMS and you ignore it month over month. Because we've just been told it's common or it's normal. We've been told we've normalized female suffering around hormones. And so because of that, you're not taking important action that can really improve your health short-term, but also protect your health long-term. Like I said earlier, the biocycle study that was done 15 years ago, it's published on the NIH.

You can go look it up. It indicates that just garden variety PMS, if untreated in your reproductive years can increase your risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and dementia post-menopausally. So there's that. And then also, so many of us are also conditioned to think that the only way to quote unquote fix our period problems is to take synthetic hormone replacement or birth control forms of birth control. And what we don't know about that is that one, it shuts off your whole infradian rhythm. It shuts down ovulation and you do not actually have a period.

And that's important because a lot of women think, oh no, I'm still getting my period. I'm on the pill, but I'm getting my period. It's just a pill bleed. It's just a breakthrough bleed. And what's problematic about that is that every ovulation you have puts money into your bank account postmenopausally because it, while it's happening to you, while you're ovulating, it confers cardio, osteo and neuroprotective benefits, but it also puts money into the bank account postmenopausally when you're no longer ovulating to keep your brain, your heart and your bones protected. So none of this is about being scary. This is about presenting correct, accurate information so that you're empowered to make healthcare choices

that support yourself and so that we can really unhook from the conditioning that says, you know, take no action. You know, just sit and suffer in silence and that should be good enough. But let me assure you, let's just put it this way. 30 years ago, 35 years ago, some guy walked into his general practitioner's office and he said, Hey doc, you know, I'm in my sixties. I've got a new, slightly younger wife and my erection's not like what it used to be. You got anything for me, doc? The doc said, no,

but gee, I bet we could do something about that. And billions of dollars went into funding research to figure out, in fact, the 1992 molecule of the year that was uncovered from this research was nitric oxide, which is what powers the drugs that power erectile dysfunction. We have now four different medications to deal with erectile dysfunction, which compare erectile dysfunction to PMS or PCOS or fibroids or endometriosis, which take over the quality of your life in daily ways for four decades of your life and also have long-term health effects, it's just not in the same galaxy of urgency, right? Erectile dysfunction, it's just not. I mean, listen, I'm sure it affects the quality of your sex life and that's a bummer. And so I'm glad that they developed medication for it. But my goodness, if that was worthy of so much funding and research,

we should have it in the other direction as well. And the reason why I bring that example is not just because I would love to call for more research and funding on that research for women's health, but because you should have the expectation for yourself to not tolerate a substandard experience of your health. Yes. I mean, we've essentially been gaslit for lack of a better word into thinking, you know, we've been gaslit into just thinking that we're just meant to suffer. We're destined to suffer as women and we just have to suffer in silence or it's all in your head. That's another one too. You go in and you're like, I have X, Y, and Z symptom. And your doctor's like, we don't see anything. You're fine. Go home. That's a real phenomenon. They've actually done studies. They know that, you know,

if they, if they have equal amounts of men and women going into the same physician's office. If any male complains of pain, there's a percentage of how seriously they will take that versus women, which is a much lower percentage. So that's not like your experience of being taken seriously around your suffering is also a problem. So you're also then getting that feedback from the environment that, you know, you should just ignore it. It's a really difficult situation to try to navigate through. That's why I built Flow Living, because we need a place to go where we can get the right information, we can get products and education and support that really just help us navigate this very complex situation. And, you know, the hope is that in a decade or two, that so many of us have had our new normal, right. Within

ourselves of like, Oh, I can orient myself around my cycle. And I can feel, I can feel a way that I didn't even know was possible. If I have a hormonal challenge that comes up, I know where to go to get support in addition to my physician. And, you know, this is just an easy, like, you know, it's, it's great to take care of my hormonal health, right? And that we have a generation of girls, right? Think about the generation of girls who grew up seeing their moms go to work and have their own bank accounts and make money, which now sounds so crazy, but there was a first generation that got to see that, right? Yeah. What would it be like if we had a generation of daughters seeing their moms just not suffer with period problems and to be taking action and to be

teaching that action to their daughters? I have a daughter. Yeah. Teaching her now little ways of interpreting her body's biofeedback. Right. So for example, she knows how to evaluate her bowel movements. She's six. Right. Right. She's six and a half. So if she has, she calls them dinosaur eggs, if they're a little dinosaur egg looking like things, she's them dinosaur eggs, little dinosaur egg looking like things. She's like, mommy, I think I need more water and vegetables. Cause that's what I told her that

means. And if she has a nice banana shaped, you know, poop, she's like, I'm doing great today. Right. So she's empowered to interpret the language of her body in age and stage appropriate ways, which I'll continue as she grows and develops. That's what we should be having, right? That when, you know, she already knows about her infradian rhythm, it's going to get activated when she's like nine or 10. She doesn't exactly know what that means because she's six, but she has the vocabulary, right? And I think it's important for us to really empower ourselves first. You know, they say this in medical school, do one and teach one, right? Especially for surgeons, do one and teach one, right? We should do one, we should take care of ourselves. And then we should pass that

information along to other women in our, in our communities, because that's how we'll get the job done of really changing this cultural narrative as a whole. Yeah, because that's the goal. We all just want to feel good in our bodies. We deserve to have a great quality of health as women. And it really is like walking around with a giant cement brick tied to your ankle when you don't have the right information about how to, you know, properly care for the ecosystem that you have, you know, and, and it does slow you down and it does create symptoms where there need not be. And it does create, it's like, it does have a psychological

effect on you. It has every kind of possible effect. So, you know, get the book in the flow, cut that cement brick off your ankle, you know, start using the cycle syncing method, download the app, um, use any and all the tools that we have so that you can just get, get going as soon as possible because everything is on the other side of you optimizing, uh, your health in this way. Absolutely. Before we go, I want to ask you one more question. What are your thoughts on keto, low carb, intermittent fasting, all these diets for women? Well, you know, sort of what I'm going to say probably by now.

So the, listen, it's, it isn't really even about my opinion. My opinion is informed by research. The research shows that intermittent fasting and these other diets, which have been extensively studied on men and postmenopausal women, confer all the benefits that they talk about. Increased autophagy, improved blood glucose, improved cognitive performance, decreased inflammation, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. But the research shows for women in their reproductive years, these things can have the exact opposite effect, worsening insulin sensitivity, you know, And that's kind of the foundation of your body. Right. Um, you know, increasing stress response in the body,

decreasing or worsening cognitive performance, right? Like, so you have more brain fog and you're not as sharp as you should be and can do things to your specifically that are unique for the female perspective, like affecting your thyroid in a negative way, affecting your ovaries in a negative way. So it has impacts on your fertility, on your cycle. And that's just not being talked about in the media. It's like, oh, this study shows that this is excellent. It would take just one more sentence to have that journalistic transparency to say, and this study was done on male cohorts in this age. Everybody else, this is nice information to know. We just don't know yet if you should try this.

But what that's not being, and I've had really beautiful conversations with so many journalists and they just said, gee, I can't believe I've been so conditioned by this insidious gender bias that I didn't even think to do that. Right. So it's they're not withholding this information from you on purpose. This whole culture of it should work for women if it works for men. But the research, the little bit of research that we do have really shows that it doesn't. And there, like I said earlier, there's plenty of women on these chat forums and social forums that are really showing,

you know, their observed reaction to these types of diets. It's not optimal. Now you absolutely, can I talk about all of these different diets in the book? Um, you can do one great type of fasting every day, which is the golden 12 hour fast between dinner and breakfast that you should be doing. Great. That's what I do. Okay. And then in the first half of your cycle, you, you know, you can just really work on doing a little bit more with calorie restriction because that will work for your metabolism. And then as you go through towards your perimenopausal years, which start at 35, you know, you can start to play in the first half of your cycle,

the follicular and ovulatory phases with a little bit more extended intermittent fasting. But not until you're postmenopausal, can you do it the way you're hearing, you know, male biohackers talk about it, nor should you, it doesn't give you any health benefits until that point. That's interesting. Well, again, this goes back to what I was sharing earlier. I've found a system that really works for me. And I do kind of that golden, like 12 hour fast where I don't look, I, I do what I call intuitive and like flexible fasting where I don't hold myself to any time. I'm not like sitting by the clock being like, oh, it's, you know, I can't eat until this specific time.

But generally what I do is I won't eat past dinner and it'll be, you know, 6, 7 p.m. whenever it is. And then I won't eat until the next day when I'm hungry. And sometimes that looks like almost immediately when I wake up. Sometimes that looks like, you when I wake up, sometimes that looks like, you know, 10, 11 AM. Sometimes I won't be hungry until noon. And I think I've been able to kind of sync that up with where I am in my cycle because when I find myself hungry, I want you to do the research on your, I'm going to, we had,

we were chatting about that before. And I said, I bet you have been intuitively timing that more extended fast in the first half of your cycle, because your neurotransmitters won't let you do it in the second half. The ghrelin will be secreted to get those extra 279 calories in the luteal phase. And if you were to try to keep extending that fast, your body would have a lot of powerful biofeedback to try to stop you from further disrupting your blood sugar and your insulin levels. Right. So, so track where you are in your cycle, start tracking, you know, because it's really all, um, there is a structure to

how your body works and the more you align with it, the better results you get period pun intended. Boom. I love that. Well, this was such an amazing conversation for everyone listening. Where, where can they find you? So if you're having any issues with your period, please come to flow living.com. That is the brand that I built to help you deal with any challenges that you're having hormonally. Um, If you want to get all these great freebies with the book, you can go to intheflowbook.com and pick those up with the book purchase. If you're ready to be an infradian girl living in a circadian world, join us at cyclesinkingmembership.com for the Flow 28 experience. And you can find us on social at, uh, flow living

and at Elisa.vd. And of course you can download the, my flow app, which has the circle icon to be, to be clear. It's not the other one. Uh, we do not share your data. We don't sell your data to anybody. Um, so that's myflowtracker.com. And that's the only cycle syncing method app on the market. It's amazing. It's a really great app. And your books are such great resources. So I really hope everyone listening will go and purchase them and read them.

They're really amazing. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on today. This was so great. I had so much fun. Thanks for having me. Me too. Guys, I am so excited. Elisa is giving our community one free month to try out her amazing

flow 28 cycle sinking membership, which is a revolutionary roadmap for women to balance their hormones and care for their bodies so that they can look and feel their best all month long. It works by syncing up your daily activities, eating, working, socializing, fitness, et cetera, with your infradian rhythm to promote optimal health and hormone function. Here's what you get in this flow 28 membership recipes, shopping lists, and meal plans. So know what to eat during each phase of your cycle with new recipes, shopping lists, and meal plans each month, workout videos. So you stay energized and gain strength with new exercise videos tailored to each phase of your cycle each month, a monthly planner. So you can track your efforts easily along with how you're feeling. This planner makes cycle syncing simple and seamless master chats. So you get advice directly from Elisa herself, including time for Q and a during

monthly master chats, the cyclecle Syncing Roadmap. This is the new member's guide that contains everything you need to know about the cycle syncing method. And then, of course, community support. So learn from and thrive alongside thousands of other women and get 24-7 support in the private group forum from their flow counselors. This is a Resonant Media production produced by Drake Peterson and mixed by Chris McCone. The song is by Georgie. As always, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast.

It really helps me in this show a lot. See you next week. Thank you. I know that Thank you. Bye.