the bossbabe podcast - 139. Female Biohacking: Hormone Balancing, Morning Routines & Time Management with Alisa Vitti

Episode Date: December 22, 2020

It’s time we practice biohacking methods based on our own, female biology. Join BossBabe Co-Founder & CEO Natalie Ellis and special guest Alisa Vitti to unpack why your menstrual cycle isn’t something you need to tolerate- but lean into- as both a woman and an entrepreneur. If you’re interested in getting backdoor access to The Société, click here.  Allisa’s book: intheflobook.com Follow:  BossBabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie: @iamnatalie Danielle: @daniellecanty

Women are left out of medical, fitness, and nutrition research. Because of all of our conditioning in our male-dominated culture, we've become very judgmental and suspicious as women of our intuition. We are equal, no question, but we are also different without question. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance, and learning how to balance it all. I'm Natalie Ellis, co-founder and CEO of Boss Babe, and your host for this episode. First off, I want to wish everyone a happy holiday season. So I am in

Turks and Caicos. I'm going to be here until just before New Year and then I'm going to go to Miami to celebrate New Year and come back home. You guys, this has been a journey getting us on this trip. So obviously we wanted to be as COVID safe as possible and take all of the precautions and it was a whole process. So basically, we have to go through a whole checklist of things before we can get into the country. And so one of them was a COVID test. And we delegated this full process, just thinking it was going to be the simple process. And we just take a few boxes, get a COVID test, good to go. Bob's your uncle, as they say. Bob was not my uncle. Let's just say that. Bob did not show up to his uncle duties because basically we

did the rapid test instead of the nasal swab where they send it off to a lab. And so we got all of our documentation and we submitted it on Sunday, no Saturday, and we got to client entry. We were leaving on Monday and basically they said you were meant to submit 24 hours before. So Sunday was the latest, but we had to get in for another COVID test on Sunday morning. Then we didn't get the results until Monday afternoon and submit. And we finally got approval. But we were flying just like five hours after we got approval. So it was just a whole process.

But we are here. We're in a private villa. We have a private beach. We're not leaving. We're not doing anything. But we all had COVID tests. We're all absolutely fine. I had COVID tests when when we arrived we're going to be doing the same thing when we get to miami and then same thing when we get home so taking all of the precautions

but really just wanted to get out of our same surroundings and i know everyone doesn't have that privilege this year especially you know my family in the uk my brother can't even go up home he's in london he can't go up north. It's just been a whole thing. So I'm definitely not taking this for granted and knowing having this level of freedom is just not everyone's having this this year. But it's been really nice for us to get out of the house. And we're really excited about travel. But I'm feeling for everyone that's in heavy lockdown again, because it's just so exhausting. And I'm just praying that 2021 brings a different vibe and we can finally move

on from this. But it really just makes you so grateful for your health and for freedom. So if you're not able to be with your family or not able to travel this year, I'm sending you so much love. And I hope that this podcast might go a little way to cheering you up and interesting you and hopefully teach you a lot. I think probably after listening to this, you're going to dive into Alyssa's book as well, because I actually read her first book, which is the book that got me off of the pill. And if I hadn't have came off the pill, I wouldn't have known that I have polycystic ovarian syndrome and all of my symptoms were being masked, but I was always having like health issues. I always knew there was something there, but getting off the pill is what really showed that to me. And I wouldn't have gotten there had I not read her book

so that when her second book came out, I was was like we need to get her on the podcast because she taught me so much and I'm so grateful that's a big reason that I do so many podcasts about the contraceptive pill and really taking your health into your own hands because I didn't know anything about it until my friend Victoria recommended this book to me and I read it and it just changed everything for me so for all my fellow biohacking women this is going to be a really really interesting episode and what's uncovered is really a missing piece to a lot of conversations around women's health and that is hormones. So in this episode we're going to deep dive into all things hormone health, biohacking for female

biology and the importance of syncing up your nutrition, routines and projects with our biological clocks. And if you keep up with me on Insta stories, you know that I'm a total biohacking nerd and I'm always trying out new things to level up my health, my energy, and my focus. And over the last few years, I've really come to realize just how much information is out there on biohacking, but it can be really hard to find out what helps and discern whether it actually applies to women. And I'm going to say that because a lot of the research is done on men. When I first got diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome,

I tried a few diets and different things that were recommended. And when I did more research into them, I was like, this feels like it's very male-oriented and doesn't feel like my hormones are getting what they need or my cycle is really being thought of in this. So I love that we're doing this. So Alyssa Vitti is an absolute expert in hormone health. She's a women's hormones healthcare advocate, creator of Flow Living and is on a mission to teach every woman how to architect their peak flow state with their health, body, work, relationships and even motherhood. After experiencing exhaustion, anxiety, depression and

constant brain fog as well as physical symptoms she was seeing every specialist that she could see in the hopes of finding a solution and she couldn't find one so she started researching hormones to help her own body recover and that's when she discovered that as women we've got more than one biological cyclical clock that needs to be met in order for us to live on our most vibrant level and that's the thing that we're going to dive most into so sit sit back, have your notepad and pen. So sit back and prepare to sync up your nutrition routines and projects with your hormonal clock. And as always, take a screenshot and share your biggest takeaways and Insta stories. Tag me at IamNatalie and at BossBabe.inc.

A Boss Babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself, confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome Alisa to the podcast. Oh, thanks so much for having me here, Natalie. It's a pleasure. It's so funny because I feel like we just could have kept talking before I even hit record. So I'm like, let me hit record and let our listeners in on this conversation that we're having. And one thing that we were just talking about was this whole biohacking world that I know our audience is super interested in, but it's so male dominated. And your latest book really focuses on a lot of groundbreaking research

that isn't really being talked about in terms of female biohacking. So can we start there? What led you to write this book? Well, I was looking around me. I've been taking care of women's hormones for about 20 years. And I was looking around at this phenomenon that was taking place in the past, I don't know, five or six years where, maybe it's just the past five

years, where we've had this renaissance, if you will. Actually, I don't even think that's the right word because that would imply that it had happened once before. We've had a brand new moment in female recorded modern history where we've been talking about menstruation in a positive way and in a way to educate and to normalize the conversation and destigmatize the biological event. And you've seen that in the past five years on social media with people posting pictures of themselves and their periods with articles on wonderful outlets like Well and Good and talking about all sorts of information that you need to know about your period. And I thought to myself, this is historic. And so now that we

have more information and because of the internet, women have more access to this information, which is also historic in nature, that equation should equal more healthy women. But what I was seeing statistically was that it was not moving us in the right direction. In fact, the statistics show that 47% of women are struggling with hormone issues. And when we compare that with the cohort for men struggling with hormone issues, it's something like under 10%. So I started to ask myself, well, what is really going on here? How is it possible that almost half of the population of women are having hormone problems and men are not. What is really going on? And it can't just be endocrine disruptors because we're all exposed to that.

And it can't just be the way we're eating because so many of us don't eat in a way that is metabolically optimized. What is it? And what I found was really shocking and led me to write this next book. And the answer is twofold. First is that women are left out of medical fitness and nutrition research. And that's really, really, really important because every study that says this diet is the best, this workout routine is the optimal one, this timing of the day to organize oneself around

the schedule is the best way to be more successful. This was such a big deal that the NIH put out a, you know, a special request that any human clinical trials start to include women. This was back in 1996, because they know how dangerous it is not to have enough studies on medications or procedures, et cetera, being done on women who to have enough studies on medications or procedures, et cetera, being done on women who then would be using this medication or procedures. But as of 2016, the status report was that progress had been slim to none. So that's its own thing. But the nutrition and fitness piece is something that you might experience more on a day-to-day basis as you're reading through your wellness content and assuming

that all of these different diets from intermittent fasting to keto to high intensity interval training to power mornings to any sort of biohacking conversation is applicable to you as a woman, but the research is not being done on you. And so that was the first thing. And then the second thing was that we have a second biological clock that is not only something that we have never heard of before, but it is being left out of the conversation when it comes to, let's say, human optimization, the way that the circadian rhythm is being massively included and studied, right? We all know to wear our blue light blocking glasses and to wake up in the morning and go to sleep when it's dark and not to mess with that because we know that's going to create disease states short

term and long term in the body. Well, women in their reproductive years have a second biological clock and it has a name. And this name is the infradian rhythm, I-N-F-R-A-D-I-A-N, infradian rhythm. And it is equally, if not more important than the circadian rhythm because it affects and links six key systems of your body as a woman, your brain, your metabolism, your stress response system, your immune system, your reproductive system, and all of these things are connected. And these are the areas in which women are starting to have all of these symptoms, right? And so when we look at the combination of these two problems, one that you're attempting to use biohacking techniques, whether that be dietary or fitness or scheduling, right? That is not based on your actual biology, but is based on male biology. It is disrupting

your very specific infradian rhythm and causing suboptimal performance or breakdown in those six key systems of the body. And this really explained so much. And so of course, I didn't want to just paint a picture frame around the problem, but I also then wanted to present a revolutionary solution to women. And that solution, which I describe in the book, in the flow, is called the cycle syncing method. And essentially what that is, is a way for you to eat, exercise, and schedule yourself with whatever you're doing according to this infradian cycle so that you can optimize for your female biology as opposed to doing what you have been doing all along, which is not getting you the results that you want either in your health or in your career, which is

to organize and orient everything according to the circadian rhythm, which is the male hormonal pattern follows the circadian rhythm pretty identically, pretty closely. They do not have a secondary clock, for example, and you need to factor both in. And so that is what I'm eager to share with so many women is once you do that, so many things start to go right in your health, But then also you get to work smarter, not harder and achieve what you want in your life much more effortlessly. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so

it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe.

I'm so glad for this and it feels like such a breath of fresh air because everyone listening will know when I first got into the biohacking world, I started trying different things, the fasting, keto, and I wasn't feeling good from it. There were certain things that just felt like they didn't resonate with my body. And I was also speaking to other women who were feeling the same way. One thing I would love to get into is what are some kind of misconceptions around biohacks that work for men and women that you're actually finding don't work for women as well? You mentioned the power morning, and I'm sure there's more. What are these things? Oh, sure. I mean, let's break it down like with the science here. So for example, let's talk about intermittent fasting and keto. So the research is very promising,

and it's been done on men and postmenopausal women. So women who are no longer in the reproductive years. And the research is wonderful that intermittent fasting specifically, for example, will improve autophagy from a cellular point of view, will improve insulin sensitivity, will improve cognitive health, will reduce inflammation, will lengthen your life. I mean, it's just so wonderful. It will support metabolic optimization. There is a long list of reasons why intermittent fasting is a wonderful new research to come out of the biohacking conversation. However, what is not being given enough disclosure is that those studies are not being done on women in their reproductive years at all. And the little bit of research that we have has to do with how this approach in a female ecosystem creates the opposite result. So it worsens insulin sensitivity,

it worsens cognitive performance, it disrupts hormones, it can shrink ovaries, and in the case of keto can disrupt ovulation and thyroid health. So that's really important because if you're reading articles that say intermittent fasting is the best gold standard, that article should remove the gender bias or the gender assumption there and say for men and postmenopausal women, but for women in the reproductive years, here's the reality that actually this is not optimal for you and you need a different approach. Because I think it's really harmful that because we're left out of all this research, what are we left to do? Well, we're left to hope for the best, scratch around for research and take the crumbs of that research that's not being done on us and hope that it can help us because we are suffering. We are suffering with PCOS and fibroids and endometriosis and autoimmune

issues and thyroid dysfunction and infertility and low libido and insomnia and you name it. And we want to feel better. We hope that we can because we see that it's possible for other people. And by other people, I mean men who feel great, who are talking about how great it feels to feel great by biohacking. And it's not giving us those results. So I think it's really important to understand that piece. From a power morning point of view, if I can just dive into that really quickly, this one is really funny once you understand the science, right? So for men, right? Men, their hormonal pattern is that they go to sleep. While they're sleeping, they make all the testosterone that they're going to have access to for the next day, right? While they're sleeping. And they are actually awakened

by the surge of cortisol and this testosterone, right? And so that's what wakes them up in the morning. And ideally, if they get to sleep at the right time, which is about 10 o'clock, they would be waking up at five or six in the morning because this would optimize their entire physiology and hormonal biology. And they would wake up with this big surge of testosterone and cortisol. Men know what that feels like. Sometimes they can see it visually with an erection or whatever, right? But they know that they wake up full of energy and they need to use that physically. So this is why a lot of these success morning routines that you hear from success coaches will sound like get up and do a physical activity first, right?

And then after you do your workout, do some meditation and then go right into deep work. Now, that is rinse and repeat. If you have male hormones, this is exactly how you should organize your time and what you should do in the morning. Every single day will optimize every aspect of your health and your career. If you are female, however, there are some more factors to consider. For example, if you are in a heterosexual relationship and you feel like, gee, I should wake up with my male partner at the same time,

you are actually doing your cognitive performance an enormous disservice for the entire rest of the day. And in fact, possibly into the next day, because the female, due to its more complex nature, which I outline specifically all the wonderful superpowers the female brain has in chapter two of the book, you actually require every night 20 minutes more sleep than any male that you know or are in a relationship with. So if you were to say, I should force myself to wake up at the same time as my male partner or the guys that I'm seeing giving me coaching advice, right? You're actually hurting yourself. You are going to decrease cognitive performance for the rest of the day and disrupt your mood, not to mention raise cortisol levels, which we'll get into a little bit later. So there's that first thing.

So now you're already waking up cranky, low energy, foggy headed, and that you may not shake for the whole day. This is not a recipe for your success as a female, whether that be from a health point of view or as a mom or as an entrepreneur. Right. And why aren't we having that conversation? Just a simple oversight. You know, it's just we're not included in the research. And so no one's talking about it, but that's the fact of the matter. The other thing to consider is that, as I mentioned, the infradian rhythm affects your stress response system, the specific way that it does that. And we experience the infradian rhythm over the course of our menstrual cycle, of course, but it affects, as I said, all these other systems of the body. So it goes way beyond your period. But like we experienced the circadian rhythm in the course of one day, we experienced the infradadian rhythm in the course of one day, we experienced the infradian rhythm in the course of a month, so to speak, 28 days or whatever your cycle is. So when your stress response system, as that's being affected across the month by the infradian rhythm, in the first half of your cycle, the follicular and ovulatory phases, you actually

have lower levels of resting cortisol. And then in the second half of your cycle, you have higher levels of resting cortisol, the luteal and the menstrual phases. And what's interesting about that is you would want to plan different types of morning routines to optimize or to biohack those stress response natural states that you're in. Neither one is better than the other. They're just what is happening to you. And so you would want to opt out.

People ask me all the time when I get interviewed for articles, what's your morning routine as a wellness person? And I always say, well, I have four. And it just depends on which phase of the cycle I'm in, where I am across the infradian rhythm. And that is the big change that you want to start to make in your thinking as you're listening to this conversation

is no longer ask yourself the question or be on the quest for the what. What is the perfect diet? What is the optimal routine for success? What is the right workout? Stop asking yourself what and start asking yourself when. When should I do these certain things that are optimal for my biology in the right time? And switch from a one pattern perspective to a

four pattern perspective, because that's how many you have. You have a four repeating pattern algorithm in your body, right? So you have these four distinct hormonal ratios across the infradian rhythm that you experience in the follicular, ovulatory, luteal, and menstrual phases. And you have to acknowledge and address them and work with them. Otherwise, as we have talked about before, you're going to start to disrupt this infradian rhythm and all these systems of your body are going to start becoming disadvantaged. And you're going to start to feel the physical signs of that in various ways, whether that be with your cycle, with anxiety, with weight gain, with brain fog. I mean, the list can go on quite a ways. I love this so much. And you're just speaking my language because when I first met

my husband, I was trying to get up at the same time as him and it just threw everything off for me. And when I finally, I made him get a watch, which vibrates. So it's a really quiet alarm. And the minute I did that and started getting up later, I felt so much better. And it doesn't mean you get less done. I really think as women, our routines and rituals have to look different. And I think a lot of that for women is intuitive, but we've kind of been trained to turn off that intuition and just listen to all of these motivational coaches. And like you say, the research that generally comes from men. You know, I think it's really important what you're saying right now, Natalie, about how,

well, you said two really special things. The first was that we feel this intuitively, but then we condition ourselves to ignore it, right? And that's really significant that you have to recognize that you are actually doing that, that you are actively not listening to the cues that your body is signaling to you, this biofeedback, if you will, right? A big part of biohacking is to use biofeedback that your body is providing to start to optimize and tweak things, right? And if you've been conditioned basically from a young age, which all women have, you know, no big deal. Thanks, patriarchy. And, you know, you end up just having a lifetime of ignoring your body and feeling confused about why it's not performing the

way that you think it's supposed to. And again, then you're comparing yourself and your body's performance to what male performance and outcome should be, which just is totally illogical. We are equal, no question, but we are also different without question. And we should do self-care and fitness and life in ways that are appropriate for our actual biochemistry. And we shouldn't try to squeeze ourselves into something else. And I think it's really important that we have language so that it doesn't feel like this nice idea, right? So for example, before you knew, which you just found out about the infradian rhythm, right? You would maybe have a sense of some weeks feeling more verbally oriented, more socially oriented, right? And then other weeks feeling a little bit more interested in being introverted, right? But you would not know

why that was happening. And in fact, it would feel random to you and you wouldn't understand it. But once you understand and have a vocabulary to describe the actual happenings of your biology, right, and the functions of your system, you then can stand on your own two feet in a much more powerful way. You can say, oh, I'm in my ovulatory phase. And during this phase, the surge of estrogen, this very specific surge of estrogen, hyper stimulates the verbal and social centers of my brain. And therefore, I'm going to do things that take advantage of that advantage, right?

You have an advantage that week of having hyperstimulated verbal and social centers of your brain. So you would want to do things like, for example, I'm ovulating right now. I'm recording a lot of podcasts, right? That is something that really allows me to take advantage of the brain advantage that I have in this moment across my infradian rhythm. And it's not random. It is predictable. It happens once a month, like clockwork. And so do many other things. And so I think it's really powerful to have language. I mean, keep in mind, you know, that maybe it was, when did Eve Ensler come out with the vagina monologues? I feel like it was 25 years ago, maybe a little bit more. And before that, Natalie, we weren't having a transparent conversation about accurately naming

the parts of our genitalia as a culture, right? We'd call them pet names like Hoo-ha and Coochie and whatever your family called it when you were little. And then Eve wrote this groundbreaking book, The Vagina Monologues, and she really spoke to that. And then you had shows like Sex in the City, and it was like this whole new thing for women to have the correct language to describe their physical anatomy and their sexual experiences. And of course, women's sex lives and their experience of pleasure has improved tremendously because they have had agency by actually having the right words and terms. And just to put that into perspective, men have all the terms for all their parts and they fully understand their hormonal patterns throughout the

day. In fact, any athletic coach is going to train a male athlete based on the circadian rhythm and the male hormonal patterns around testosterone and cortisol to create maximum lean muscle gain and maximum fat utilization for fuel and reduction in injury, right? And corporate America, for example, or corporate culture in general is oriented around the circadian rhythm, which optimizes male productivity because women were only allowed into the workforce and corporate culture only very recently. So it's not optimized for our biology and it's not inclusive, which needs to change. And I'm doing my part to do that by going into corporations and teaching them about the infradian rhythm and how they can become more inclusive workplaces.

But this is not a nice idea. This is an important reclamation and taking ownership of how your system works and how you can use it to your advantage. Because, you know, it's not a new idea because the guys have been doing it forever. Yeah. And it's so incredibly important. And so what everyone now listening, they're starting to learn, they have an infradium rhythm.

When they start to get that awareness, what kind of changes do you suggest making? So what does it look like to be cycle syncing? So to use the cycle syncing method, the first thing that you need to do is to start to track your cycle. And of course, years ago, I built an app called MyFlow, which you can download at myflowtracker.com. And it will not only help you identify which of the four phases that you're in, but it's also the only app that is going to speak to you about the infradian rhythm and the cycle syncing methodology so that you can understand

what you need to do. And the fundamentals of it, which I outline in the book in the flow, really come down to the basic three pillars, which are changing what you eat based on which phase you're in. And I'll explain why you would wanna do that in a minute. You're gonna change which workout you're going to focus on in a given phase. And you're going to organize as much as you can your project plan for whatever you're

working on in accordance to where you are across the infradian rhythm. And so these are the three fundamental pillars. And so once you start to change your food, change your workouts and change your project map slash time management, it's really remarkable what starts to happen from a physical point of view. You'll start to notice, I would say, physical things very quickly in terms of increased energy, increased mood, massively decreased PMS, more creativity. You're going to feel like you have greater productivity with less stress. I mean, just things start to flow. And I hate to use that pun, but I picked that for a reason for the title of the book, because I remember being a young

woman, you know, being inspired by people like Tony Robbins, I'm still inspired by him, talking about achieving a peak flow state. And this idea of creating a peak flow state is something that many people, including Tony Robbins, have talked about how you can actually architect that. You can make sure that you are in a peak flow state. It doesn't have to just happen spontaneously. And I was always fascinated by that. And here you now have a method, the cycle thinking method, which is a way for you to architect and create consistent peak flow states for yourself as a woman, not just to give yourself that foundation of health that you so need because everything in the world is trying to disrupt both your endocrine system and your infradian rhythm, but also to give

you that peak flow state to really start to impact how you are creating whatever it is in your life, whether that be your career or your role as a mother or your relationship, whatever it is, you can start to really be in that peak flow state of yourself as you align more and more with the infradian rhythm. I love that so much. And I know there's so many women listening who are going to be so interested in what that looks like, because I really do believe that you can use your menstrual cycle as your superpower as a woman and and like you say show up in different ways in different times your cycle you're going to choose when you're speaking or when you're recording videos or having meetings pitching things like that okay so I want to interrupt this episode quickly to tell you about a brand that I am

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and save 15% on everything. So that's BOSSBABE at Organifi. So use the code BOSSBABE, 15% off at Organifi.com. And I'll let us dive back into the episode. When it comes to those three things, so eating, working out, and then the way you would organize your projects or work, let's just say for eating, for example, how do you recommend changing your diet based on where you're at in your cycle? And do you have any dietary principles that you generally would keep the same all month round? Great question. So yeah, I'll start with the general principles are don't eat foods that are inflammatory for you, for example, or don't eat them in great quantity. So you would want to like vastly limit all the things you've been hearing about. This should not be new news, right?

You want to limit your intake of caffeine and alcohol and sugars and simple carbohydrates and bad fats. So things like that you want to minimize in general. But the principles of the food flow chart in chapter four in the flow, this part of the cycle syncing method really comes down to two pieces. First, we have to take into consideration the metabolic shifts that take place in each of these phases of your cycle. And we also have to take into consideration the fact that you need to help your body both produce adequate levels of hormones and also break them down efficiently, right? So for any of you, for example, who have breakouts on your chin during ovulation, right? That is a great piece of biofeedback

telling you that your body is struggling, specifically your liver, your lymphatic system, and your large intestine to what is called metabolize or break down estrogen to get it out of your body quickly enough so that it doesn't lead to this sort of excess estrogen temporary state where it then causes, let's say, skin inflammation. Those are the basic tenets of why the foods are chosen the way they are and in that chart based on the cycle phases. So in, let's say, the follicular and ovulatory phases, your metabolism is actually slower.

And so you can eat fewer calories, you can eat lighter proteins, lighter grains, lighter fats. At the same time, you're beginning to produce, especially in the ovulation phase, massive amounts of estrogen. So you want to help your body by front-loading with a lot of raw veggies and fruits to help you over those three or four days supply the liver with a massive amounts of micronutrients, specifically glutathione, to help it go through its phase of detoxification to break that estrogen down. And so you have no symptoms, right? So we're helping the body by eating the right caloric levels that match our actual metabolism in real time, not some sort of like, oh, this is the amount of calories that is set for the day every day. No, actually you can

eat less, whatever feels good for you. And then also you want to use food as a way to work with the hormones that are rising or falling in that particular phase, contrasted by the second half of the cycle where your metabolism speeds up and you need approximately 270 more calories per day, right? You have to eat more. You have to eat foods that are going to give you slower, more sustainable doses of glucose. So, you know, complex carbohydrates.. And you know when you don't get that right, right? When you hold on to that diet mentality of, oh, because the toxic mythology in the nutrition community or conversation is that women have a slower metabolism compared to men, and therefore have to restrict calories more to achieve the same results from a diet point of

view, which is actually not accurate. We have different metabolic rates that are affected by the infradian rhythm, and we have to change how we're eating to take that into consideration. Because if we don't, for example, if you continue to try to restrict calories, like you have been doing in the first half of your cycle, if you continue to do that in the second half, what you're going to do is turn on fat storage 100%. And if you do that, if you restrict calories and you're not giving yourself enough blood sugar stabilizing foods and meals, you're also going to increase cortisol output, which is then going to cause a worsening of your PMS symptoms because it's going to create a pregnenolone steal and you're not going to

produce enough progesterone. And so what's going to happen is you're going to think that you're being so disciplined and you're going to stick to your willpower and you're only going to produce enough progesterone. And so what's going to happen is you're going to think that you're being so disciplined and you're going to stick to your willpower and you're only going to have those whatever 1200 calories a day every single day, like the guys do or whatever they're doing the same amount every single day. And at the end of the month, you're going to not have achieved whatever desired weight loss or maintenance that you are trying to have, and you're going to feel really frustrated and your PMS is going to be worse. And you may not ovulate on time the next month. You will have disrupted both endocrinologically speaking,

your system and from an infradian point of view, just by getting the diet wrong, by not accommodating this metabolic shift as affected by the infradian rhythm. You must start doing this for your own health and wellbeing. It's not something by the infradian rhythm. You must start doing this for your own health and wellbeing. It's not something you have to be afraid of. You can feel confident to eat those 270 more calories. The precise number is in the book. I think it's 279, but you can feel completely confident that that's actually going to help you burn fuel efficiently and use your fat stores efficiently, as opposed to feeling like you must constantly restrict, which is not necessary. So that's just the food piece. This also plays into

account when it comes to fitness as well. Your resting cortisol rates combined with your metabolic shifts really dictate which workouts are optimal for each phase. And the science is really clear. The US women's soccer team is using this to train their female athletes. This is something, again, you must make this shift if you are in your reproductive years, because now you know you have an infradian rhythm, you have to take care of it. Just like you know you have a circadian rhythm and you know that you would never skip a night of sleep and then stay up for three days and think that was good for you. I want you to start to feel that passionately about your infradian rhythm that you would not knowingly, you know, when these shifts are taking

place, do the thing that is in opposition to supporting that particular phase, because you should know that it's going to hurt you. So with fitness, looking at the combination of the metabolic shift and the resting cortisol patterns in the first half of the cycle, you want to do cardio to your heart's content and high intensity interval training to the heart's content. Once you cross over the ovulation mark, right? So give yourself, you know, till day 15 or 16, 17 even. After that, you must stop doing high intensity interval training because again, like restricting calories, what this is going to do in your system is turn on fat storage and turn on muscle wasting.

And this is really important because I remember back in the beginning of my practice, there was a phase of wellness history where people were training for triathlons to get fit, not for the competition purposes, but just as a motivation, like a goal, having a big destination goal. And women would come to me utterly confused, disheartened, and frustrated because for three months they had been running, cycling, or swimming for five miles a day and eating according to the training manual, and they had gained 20 pounds. And of course, that is completely logical once you understand that they were doing the same workout every day and eating the same caloric level every day, because that is exactly the result you should expect now that you understand the infradian process, that if you do not modify how you're eating and how you're working out, you should expect to at best have no change at the end of the month, but at worst, put weight on and lose lean muscle. So there's in chapter five, there's the fitness chart of how you would want to break down these workouts across the phases of your cycle. And there's many different things that you can do.

So don't worry if you're in love with your high intensity interval training, you will be working out all month as I do, but just in ways that are different for you. So that's just the fitness and food piece. And it's really powerful to understand that there's a real science behind it. You don't have to guess and you don't have to keep throwing spaghetti up against the wall, hoping that one of these food and fitness programs that you try will give you those results that you're longing for. In fact, I feel compassionate about the fact that women try so many things like keto or like intense workout regimes. I don't want to name names, but then they come to me or they've even reported to me that in

the forums on social media that a lot of women are reporting that they're losing their period or having big problems with their thyroid or they're gaining weight and they feel confused and also left out of the conversation. Because if you're told that this is supposed to work and then it doesn't work, there's no explanation. That doesn't feel very good. And it certainly doesn't give you an education about what happened. So I think it's important that we understand our unique hormonal distinctions, our biological rhythm distinctions, and really start to take care of ourselves appropriately. I agree. And I think it totally makes sense too. There's probably a lot of women like me who are listening and thinking, wow, that makes so much sense. I do feel hungrier during these times, or I don't feel like running during these times. But again, it's that we were not listening to our intuition. And there's not really any science behind it saying, oh, this is exactly why. And so hearing how all of this works is so interesting. Let's call it biofeedback and not intuition because unfortunately,

because of all of our conditioning in our male-dominated culture, we've become very judgmental and suspicious as women of our intuition. So true. Yeah, I love that. So let's not call it intuition because it actually is more biological. It is biofeedback, right? For example, let's take the biofeedback that you're probably used to during your luteal phase, which is also something you probably think of as PMS week, right? Which is not something you should have happen. You're not designed to have PMS at all or cramps, but we can get into that later if we have time. So during your PMS phase, your luteal phase, here's some biofeedback that you might be

experiencing. You're restricting calories as much as you can. You wake up, you have a smoothie or you're doing your upgraded coffee to do your intermittent fasting. And then you have something very light for lunch, some sort of green plant-based thing. And then you get home or on the way home, depending on what your commute looks like, you start the binging on things that you wish you weren't eating, like chips and salty things, or you go out and you start ordering things in quantity. And before you know it, the biofeedback is that your ghrelin is being secreted, a neurotransmitter to say, eat more calories. Metabolic rate has increased. You need

more calories. And your ghrelin is being secreted and you are going to respond. There is nothing you can do in the face of ghrelin. There is no willpower that you can summon. You will eat. And then of course, if you haven't proactively eaten the right slow burning carbohydrates from the beginning of the morning, you're going to end up, you know, binging on chips and cookies and things you don't want later in the day. And that's going to start a vicious cycle of not feeling good, not getting to sleep, insomnia, bloating. And there you are with your PMS. That's biofeedback. Your body is telling you you're not having stable blood sugar. So cravings are kicking in, neurotransmitters are kicking in. And then all of a sudden you're no longer in control. You're being driven by your biochemistry. So if you want to use your biofeedback in a more proactive way,

you would understand that when you wake up in that morning during the luteal phase and you are hungry, instead of forcing yourself to restrict, you would actually eat. And there's recipes and meal plans in the back of the book of what kind of breakfast you should have during the luteal phase. It does not look like some of the typical wellness breakfast you've seen of very light things and smoothies you want to eat. You're like power eating during the day to really take advantage of this sped up metabolism and to prevent these types of biochemical craving downward spirals, if you will. So it's powerful biofeedback that your body is providing you with, and you want to start listening to it. But you have to understand what you're listening for first, which is why getting educated at the beginning is so

important. You have to understand what you're even looking at. Oh, am I in my luteal phase? Okay, yes, I do feel my metabolism has increased. I do feel hungrier. I understand now that I need more calories. Okay, I'm going to do that. Wow, when I do that, I'm actually getting the biofeedback that I feel stable, calm, energized, focused, and ready to do what I want to do. Right. As opposed to how you normally feel during your PMS week, which is foggy, scattered, cranky, tired, not how you're supposed to feel. So let's talk about that not being designed to have PMS, because I think a lot of women assume that that's just the way it's supposed to be. You're supposed to get tired. You're supposed to get acne.

Bloating is normal. So how are we not designed to be having that? So your infradian rhythm is optimized. It was designed to have you function on all of these different systems of your body optimally because you are the half of the species that 3D prints the tiny human beings, whether you choose to be a mother or not. All these systems of the body are just really powerful, right? For example, your metabolism compared to men is very good at extracting more nutrition from your food and

storing nutrients for longer. You're not by default a nutrient waster. Your immune system is more powerful. Your fight or flight response is actually more advantageous to taking up leadership and taking care of a community during times of stress or crisis. There's just so much exciting differences that can be taken advantage of. So nature has designed you to be really, really healthy and powerful. And nowhere do we see this as we do in the cycle. So for example, in the luteal phase, you're supposed to have a ratio of progesterone to estrogen such that you do not have an excess level of estrogen. So meaning you're supposed to have a slightly more progesterone than estrogen production during the luteal phase. This is the longest phase of the cycle, 10 to 12 days. And during this time with this progesterone, several things happen. Progesterone

in this concentration in the brain makes you feel calm and focused and alert. And all of you are thinking to yourself, gee, but during my PMS week, I feel anxious and scattered and foggy and tired, right? And not focused and calm and alert. But that is, in fact, what healthy progesterone levels are designed to give you. And you are designed to have those during that 10 to 12 day period during your cycle. If you have the inverse, the inverse being more estrogen than progesterone, you will have PMS. That is actually what you should consider the definition of PMS, is that ratio of too much estrogen to progesterone, where you have all the symptoms from

brain fog to bloating to insomnia to mood swings to acne, breast tenderness, et cetera. And that excess of estrogen is due to the degree to which you are not taking care of your endocrine system with, and that's what I wrote about in my first book, Woman Code, making sure that you're not exposing yourself to unnecessary endocrine disruptive chemicals, making sure that you're eating to support your basic metabolic function. That's all described in Woman Code in the Flow Protocol. But also to the degree to which you are disrupting your infradian rhythm. And if you are eating the same calories every day and working out the same intensity every day, just those two things alone will put you on track to have more amplified premenstrual syndrome. And it's something that you can eat your way out of and change your lifestyle such that you can have that

be a thing of a distant memory for you very, very quickly within a few cycles. And it's just so exciting to be able to share that with you because I know that part of the toxic pathology that you've inherited as a woman is that your cycle is supposed to cause you suffering in various ways, right? From the mid cycle, not feeling good during ovulation to your PMS, to your cramping during your bleeding or heavy bleeding. It's supposed to be one miserable thing after another until someday you stop menstruating. but the journey of perimenopause is even more terrible and

unappealing. And then the ultimate solution for these problems that women are plagued with that are not even studied by the medical community is a hysterectomy, which is the most commonly performed surgical procedure in the United States. So this is not something that you come by without a lot of background, right? You think that you're supposed to have PMS because of all of these different factors seeping into your consciousness about what your period is supposed to be like. But from a biological point of view, you are meant to be symptom-free and pain-free.

And I'll speak to that pain part for a moment as well. For example, if nature designed you to have cramps, you would have more uterine contraction prostaglandins being produced by the body. There are three prostaglandins produced by your body that are involved in the uterine activity. If you were supposed to have more cramps, you would have two out of the three assigned to uterine contraction. But the biology is that you have two out of three assigned to uterine

relaxation and only one assigned to uterine contraction because nature is highly efficient. You only need to contract the uterus a little bit and then have a lot of relaxation for the endometrium to be shed or for labor to take place in the case of delivering a child. The only reason why you're producing too much of that prostaglandin that affects uterine contraction and suppressing the production of the prostaglandins that affect uterine relaxation is because you're eating the wrong fats. You're not eating enough omega-3s and you're eating too much omega-6s and 9s and there you have it, right? Cramp city. But you can eat your way out of that.

You can biohack that biofeedback, right? If you're getting biofeedback of cramps, you want to take action. That's the other piece of toxic mythology that I think is so important that you really get straight within yourself, right? So you've been taught from a very young age to ignore your period, right? That it's going to be a nuisance and just, it's going to be painful. It's going to be a curse and just do your best to live with it, but don't focus on it. And I don't know if you know, but in 2015 or 16, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists decreed that your menstrual cycle as a whole, not just your bleed, is now and forevermore to be considered by the medical establishment and by you

as a fifth vital sign, which means that it's on par with your temperature and your blood pressure, right? So the logic that you should somehow ignore your pain, ignore this biofeedback is as insane as if I were to tell you, if you happen to have a fever of 101, just ignore it. Just try to get on with your day. Don't worry about it. You're going to have a fever. That's just what it is, right? That sounds crazy because it is crazy. And it is crazy that we, as this half of the species, as a gender, that we have been taught to think that way about our biofeedback. A fever is a piece of biofeedback about a bacterial or viral infection. It needs immediate action to help the body do what it

needs to do. And so does your cycle. If your cycle is providing you with biofeedback of symptoms or even a gynecological disorder like PCOS, fibro, endometriosis, adenomyosis, et cetera, you want to take immediate massive action to help your body get back on track and not abandon yourself. But of course, that is what you've been taught to do. And that must stop immediately. I mean, it's just crazy that women have to go out of their way to find podcasts, books, to even get this basic knowledge about their periods. Like that must drive you crazy. I mean, I guess it's why you do what you do, but it's just crazy to me. You know, I am really passionate about getting this information out. I'm really proud of the fact that this book, In The Flow, is the first book to talk about the infradian rhythm. I'm very happy to have put together a new methodology that really can help

so many women start to thrive in their bodies and in their lives. And I agree with you, I don't think it should be this hard. But I went through that myself when I was going through my younger teenage and young adult years dealing with so many hormonal problems. And then I found myself as a student planning to become an OBGYN, though I did not become one at Johns Hopkins, I just found it to be just unacceptable that there wasn't any research that could help me answer these questions about what was wrong with me, what was happening with my hormones. I just found that to be not a good enough solution and that it was so hard to try to find a way to recover. And so of course, that life-changing experience set me on a very different path with my career. And I've been really on this mission to disrupt women's hormonal healthcare for women for 20 years. It's something that I'm just really thrilled to be doing because we deserve better, full stop, period, pun intended, right? I mean, you know, just to paint some perspective, okay?

Let's just take Lena Dunham as an example, who I love and admire tremendously. And I find her bravery around talking about her issues with endometriosis so important for women who are going through that, who on average do not get a diagnosis for anywhere from seven to 10 years, who are told during that entire time that their pain is all in their head and imagined. It's a very difficult journey to be on. But we now know that we have massive statistics of one in 10 women are affected by endometriosis, right? That's an enormous population size, but not much research is being done on it compared to, let's say, 30 years ago, some older guy walked into his primary care physician's office and said, listen, doc,

I've got a new younger girlfriend and my erection is just not where I'd like it to be. Do you have anything for me, doc? And he says, no, but I'll get right on it. And then billions of dollars of funding. In fact, in 1992, the molecule of the year was awarded to nitric oxide, which is the molecular basis for Viagra. And then we had PSAs with Bob Dole, for God's sakes, talking about his erectile dysfunction, normalizing that immediately. And an entire multi-billion dollar pharmacological industry arose around a non-life-threatening issue. And not that endometriosis is life-threatening, but my goodness, to see the journey that Lena has been on, which represents so many women who struggle with that particular gynecological disorder, we need more research. We deserve more research.

Where are the multiple millions of dollars of funding for that? Right? So, yes, I'm a little bit passionate about it. And I think rightly so, because, you know, it's time, it's time, it's time. And whatever I can do to be part of the positive change and to help is, of course, my privilege to be part of that and my pleasure. One more thing I wanted to just bring up that's very special in this book for those of you who are thinking beyond just your health and thinking about your life as an entrepreneur, as I do, and optimizing your performance, there's a very special time management tool that I put in chapter six of the book. And it is, again, born out of my own

trials and tribulations of trying to manage my own time, following the wonderful guidance of luminaries like Franklin Covey or Tony Robbins, doing my best to hack my performance, so to speak, and optimize my time and my scheduling. And what I found was that because those time management systems are predicated only on a circadian pattern, and they do not include my infradian rhythm, that I am set up to fail in using those time management systems, and so are you. And that has been my experience. They never have worked for me, and they've only made me feel really bad about myself, have increased my inner critical voice, and all of that stuff that I know you know about. So in chapter six, there is the first time management system that includes and incorporates both your circadian

rhythm and your infradian rhythm so that you can start to manage your time in a way that takes advantage of your biochemistry and biological rhythms and keeps you healthy, makes you more productive and reduces your stress. And I think it's a really important tool that we should start using. It's the third pillar of the cycle syncing method. Well, I love that so much. And I'm incredibly grateful that you are pioneering this work. And it really is a game changer. And I truly believe if we can empower women in this way, we really can change the world. So I'm really grateful that you're doing this. And I'm so glad that you're bringing out this research finally in your book.

For everyone listening, I'm going to put the links to both of your books below because I've read them and they're incredible. So thank you. So where can everyone find you find out about your books, programs, coaching, all the things. So if you're eager to buy the book, I encourage you to go to intheflowbook.com. And of course, that's flow without a W. So intheflowbook.com, because there are a lot of wonderful free gifts that you will get with purchase because I want you to get started before while you're waiting for the book to arrive, I want you to have tools to start really incorporating these changes and really taking the infradian rhythm factored into your life as quickly as possible. Let's see. If you need to find the app, you can find that at myflow, so M-Y-F-L-O, tracker.com. If you're struggling with hormonal problems and you need some support before you can

start cycle syncing, using the cycle syncing method, if you're having with hormonal problems and you need some support before you can start cycle syncing using the cycle syncing method, you know, if you're having PCOS and irregular cycles or missing periods, you've got to get that on track first before you can really start to take advantage of this beautiful infradian rhythm. You can come to flowliving.com and we have an abundance of resources, online courses, female specific biohacking supplements, and one to one coaching that can really help you on your journey to restore your hormonal balance. And you can find us on social at flow living or my personal as Elisa dot VD, the books are on wherever books are sold around the world. And I think that's everything. I love it. Well, thank you so, so much.

I love how long this podcast is because there's so much information in it. So for everyone listening as well, make sure you do share and tag us because this information needs to get out to more women. I really, really believe that. So thank you so, so much. Thank you for having me, Natalie.

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