Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Lifestyle Hacks To Naturally Balance Hormones – With Dr. Stephanie Estima

Episode Date: April 19, 2021

// R E A D Y • S E T • R E S E T This episode is all about your hormonal needs depending on your reproductive cycle. Our lifestyle should be matched to these hormonal needs! Dr. Stephanie Estima is a chiropractic doctor with a particular interest in metabolism, body composition, functional neurology, and female physiology. She's been featured on Thrive Global, of the Huffington Post, has over 3.5 million article reads on Medium.com. It has helped thousands of women lose weight, regulate hormones, and get off medications with her signature program, The Estima Diet. You can hear her every week on her podcast, Better! With Dr. Stephanie. In this podcast, we cover: What to ask your doctor about your hormonal needs Why women are left out of research Women vs. men: what to know about your hormonal cycles The most crucial period facts explained A menstrual cycle workout plan to optimize your training   // E P I S O D E   S P O N S O R S  Feel the impact of Organifi - use code PELZ for 15% off all products!    // R E S O U R C E S   M E N T I O N E D The Betty Body Book Dr. Stephanie's Website Clue App Dr. Stephanie on Instagram Dr. Stephanie on Facebook Dr. Stephanie on YouTube   // F O L L O W Instagram | @dr.mindypelz & @theresetterpodcast Facebook | /drmindypelz & /theresetterpodcast Youtube | /drmindypelz   Please note the following medical disclaimer: By listening to this podcast you understand that this video is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice. Always seek the guidance of your doctor with any questions you may have regarding your health or medical condition.  

For women, when I train about how women are different than men, I often will give the parallel that men are like the sun and women are like the moon. So when we think about men, they will go through their entire hormonal milieu in about a 24-hour period. They will cycle through their testosterone and estrogen patterns in about a day. And for women, we will cycle through our testosterone and estrogen and progesterone and LSA, like all of our patterns, not in a 24-hour period, but in about a 28 or 29 day period. I am a woman on a mission that is dedicated to teaching you just how powerful your body was built to be.

I like to do that by bringing you the latest science, the greatest thought leaders, and applicable steps that help you tap into your own internal healing power. The purpose of this podcast is to give you the power back and help you believe in yourself again. My name is Dr. Mindy Pels, and I want to thank you for spending part of your day with me. On this episode of the Resetter podcast, do I have a treat for you? Hopefully those of you that have been following me for the last several years know that I have become obsessed with helping women understand how to map simple lifestyle tools like exercise and eating and fasting

and supplements and sleep. How do we map all of that to our hormonal needs? Now, here's the crazy part is every woman has a different hormonal need, and you have different hormonal needs at different times of the month and different ages. So, as you all know, for example, a postmenopausal woman has massively different hormonal needs than a 25-year-old woman trying to get pregnant. And our lifestyle needs to be matched to these needs. And it's difficult to have really in-depth discussions with experts on this topic. But have I found an expert for you?

This was one of my most favorite conversations I've had all year. And it was with Dr. Stephanie Estima. She is the author of the Betty Body. So go check out her book on Amazon. She is a doctor of chiropractic and has a special interest in metabolism, body composition, functional neurology, and she takes all of that and maps it to female physiology. So it doesn't matter what age you are, you are going to benefit from the information that we talked about in this episode.

Now, I'm going to give you a little bit of some hints as to what you're going to hear. So for starters, let's talk about understanding our hormones in the first place. So we started at the beginning. How should we map out our hormones? How should we look at our hormones? So all women and men, you're going to benefit from this as well. If you have a woman in your life that you love, you're going to want to hear this conversation. So what do we need to know about our hormones?

Then we go into talking about how we can change our exercise according to our hormonal needs, how we can change our food. She even dives into sleep. She has a whole theory around morning. routine for women needs to be different than men. We even dove into understanding how we can talk to our doctors differently and help our doctors understand our hormonal needs. This was such a rich conversation. The two of us, we could have talked all day long. So Dr. Stephanie Estima, this one is going to blow your mind as I hope all my interviews do, but this one holds a very special place

in my heart as women need to hear this. Dr. Stephanie Estima, get ready. This one is going to change the paradigm of health for you. So here's where I want to start this conversation. I feel like you and I have very similar philosophical messages to women. And I have been interviewing so many women on this platform that aren't looking at their lifestyle mantras or their lifestyle approaches and mapping that to her hormonal cycles. So I really want to start this conversation off with a thank you to start with. I just am grateful to be having this conversation with you and that more of us are trying to help women map exercise and food and all the things that we do in our life to keep us healthy,

how we can map it to our cycle. But my first question to you is, why do you think we have this huge gaping hole in women's health as far as advice on lifestyle choices mapped to a menstrual cycle? Oh, this is a good place to start, man. All right. So I'll say that, you know, first of all, I think that with the work that you're doing, the work that I'm doing, I think in a few, you know, hopefully it's just in a few short years that you won't even find any practitioner who is not willing to say, okay, we're going to create a plan for you,

but first we need to understand what your menstrual cycle looks like. And I think that, you know, for too long, it's been we derive our protocols from evidence-based literature, right, which is great. That's what we want. We don't want to be just pulling out numbers and things from the air. there's there's a couple of problems so first most of the research traditionally that we find in pub med and the literature at large as it relates to metabolism as it relates to reducing obesity type to diabetes you know cerebral vascular cardiovascular disease all of these things a body composition most of the test subjects historically have been men and it's not that I don't think that there's been malicious intent here.

I don't think that it's been like, you know, these women, they're just too extra. But what has happened is that we have been excluded because our menstrual cycle presents a confounding variable to these very strict rigors that if you're doing, for example, a randomized control trial, all that you're doing is you're trying to manipulate one variable and see how that one manipulation,

that one manipulation is going to alter the two cohorts. So if you have a woman who is cycling, any woman under 55 really or, you know, whenever you transition into menopause in your early 50s, you'll find that she's different every single day of the month, right? She's got a different and over the course of a month, of course, that's how she runs through her entire hormonal milieu. So that in and of itself, from a research perspective, when you're just trying to change one thing, is changing, you know, it's changing daily. So, you know, you can understand it from a, you know, in the strictest sense of we really just want to see what happens when we fast, you know, obese subjects and we just want to look at what the outcome is going to be. And there is some literature on obese, like when we manipulate fasting as a variable, for example, or ketogenic diet or, you know, whatever, whatever, you know, thing you're looking at,

we do see a lot more abundant literature with obese subjects. But for someone with a body composition like you or me, or maybe, you know, maybe has five or 10 pounds to lose, you know, something like that, though that population isn't really studied. So if you're looking to look into longevity, how I can increase my lifespan. How can I increase not only the years that I live, but the years that are spent healthy, there's actually not a lot. So as it pertains to females. So that's part of the reason why I wrote my book, The Betty Body, which I'm sure we'll

talk about a little bit today. But I think that that's maybe a long-winded answer, but generally, I think we've generally been ignored. The protocols that we derive have been for men by men. And what we're finding now is that when women apply these things over time, we have very different results. Yeah, we do. Yeah, we do. So, okay, it's interesting because in just listening to you, I'm thinking, well, then it's near impossible for women to be studied because there's too many variables. And if it's near impossible for us to do research studies that are women only, then will we struggle to be able to get the attention of just, let's say, the medical community that is really driven by research articles to determine best

practices and treatments? Well, this is, this raises a really, this is an excellent question. And I think when we're looking at evidence-based protocols, if we just look at the definition of evidence-based medicine, it is taking, what's available from the literature, which, you know, to your point, we need more work. We need more studies that are looking at not only the menstrual cycle, but how, you know, you, what the mitochondrial, what are some of the changes in the mitochondria over the course of the, what are the sleep pattern? That would be amazing. Right. So that we can, so that we can control for those things. You can, in your statistical analyses, you can, you can, you can, you can look at

the mathematics and you can, you can regulate for that. But that's not the only, you can, piece of evidence-based medicine. And I think that a lot of people really get stuck on, like, is it a double-blind RCT? And where's the meta-analysis for the, you know, where's the medallion, you know, but what you, the other pieces to evidence-based medicine is, A, you have the literature, what's available in the lit. The other piece is the clinician's expertise, which is often not considered. So is the clinician familiar, for example, with female physiology? Does she or he have female patients. Has she in the clinical application of some of these protocols, has she observed patterns or things that are common and can she control for them or he control for them? And then the

other piece of evidence-based medicine, which is almost never discussed, is the patient's goals. So when you think of these three things, now you have an overlapping Venn diagram of literature, clinician experience, and pattern recognition, and the goals and drive. And, of the patient. It's not just what's available on PubMed. So yeah, that would be my answer to that. And then the other piece of it, of course, is I would just love to see more clinicians, more doctors, listening to women and not dismissing them. Like lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, right? Because there's not a double randomized control. That doesn't mean that this isn't true for this woman. So, yeah, that's, again, that's sort of my views.

on that. Like there's a lot more evidence based than just what's available on PubMed. I could not agree with you more. I have heard, and I'm sure you get the same thing, I have heard so many women who are frustrated feeling unheard. And it starts in her doctor's office. And what unheard looks like is take this pill for the rest of your life. Or you, you know, we see it with the menopausal women. You now are gaining weight just because you're going through menopause or maybe your problems all will be solved with an antidepressant. And this has to stop. This is not okay.

And for me, what I feel like we've got to do is we have to empower each woman to be able to ask really good questions to her doctor or whoever is coming up with a health plan for her. So help my listeners understand what would that look like? if I walk into my doctor's office and I, let's say, get a thyroid, a bunch of thyroid tests done on me, and the doctor comes back and says, okay, you just have to take thyroid medication, that'll solve your problems. What kind of questions can I ask my doctor to get him or her thinking at a deeper level about my hormonal needs? Oh, this is good. This can be a fun podcast.

I'm a deep thing. Yes, you are. You are. So I think, even. So I think, even, before we get to that, it's necessary to go just one more step up. And that is to understand when you are going to any type of practitioner, whether it's a medical doctor, a naturopath, a chiropractor, an osteopath, whatever regulated health professional you are going to, you have to understand what their philosophy around health is, because that is going to be a big predictor of the types of interventions that are going to be recommended to you. So, And this is changing, but generally we see more allopathic physicians, more conventional physicians who have been sort of, you know, born and raised in the medical establishment,

what I would probably call more consensus. There's consensus medicine, which is maybe an entirely different topic, but they are very likely going to give, as you mentioned, you know, a woman who's perimenopausal, a menopausal, she's going to be put on the pill, she's going to put on the statin. just can be put on, is you going to be putting on all these, like the pill when you're perimenopause. It's like, are you kidding me? Right, right. Well, anytime or what about when you're 15 and this will solve all your problems, your hormonal problems? That's a whole problem. That's a whole, I mean, that's a whole other beast. Right. Exactly. So you have to be, you have to understand what type of response you're most likely to get from, for example, an alopathic physician versus more of, you know,

what's called CAM, right? So complementary and alternative medicine. So that might, you know, might seek chiropractic under there, naturopathy in there. Osteopathy sort of, you know, kind of as a switch hitter sometimes, depending on where you go. So, you know, you'll, you sort of have to understand generally the philosophical underpinnings and premise of that practitioner. And that's really going to help you predict what kind of, what kind of outcomes you're likely or what kind of answers you're likely to get from that practitioner. Now, if you are going in, let's say, to your conventional GP, your primary health

provider who happens to be a medical doctor. And there is a script that's that's written for you. So maybe it's the birth control pill. Maybe it's a statin. Maybe it's, you know, whatever it is. I would really want to try and get an understanding of the risks as well as the benefits. Because one of the things that I see that, and this is not, you know, if you understand the risks and you still make the decision that this is a good intervention for you, then do it. But I think more often than not, and this is what I think you were referring to earlier, when women feel that they're unheard, that they have been rushed through these appointments, is that the medical doctor has not adequately explained the risks. And I think as a very fast-paced modern society, in general, you know, you can't just blame the

medical doctor for this. Like, the patient will go in saying, like, I want something fixed and I want it now. Like, I need you to do something for me. Like, this is unbearable. So it's sort of a dance between the willingness of the patient to say, okay, have I mastered some of these foundational lifestyle interventions? And if I have and I'm still in need, then maybe there is an intervention there from your GP. And I would also, you know, as a, as a, you know, as a doctor who spent 16 years in private practice, you know, give your doctor the heads up that you want to have this bigger conversation. I would have, you know, I would have, I sort of, the way that I used to structure my day was I would have a certain allocation in the day for a new patient or report of

findings, like these are longer appointments. And then I would have shorter appointments for body work. You know, body work doesn't, you know, once you've mastered, adjusting and rehab, like it's not as big of a time, you know, intervention. So if you have someone who's coming in for a 15 minute appointment and you're like, hey, I have seven questions. I need to ask them to you right Now, like, the doctor is going to be like, I have 30 people in the waiting room. Like, I can't do this. So I would call the office ahead of time and say, hey, you know what? I have some questions that I would like to ask my GP.

Can she or can he set aside some extra time for me when I come in on Thursday or if that's not possible next week? Yeah. And so when you do have that appointment where the doctor is expecting you to have some of these more elaborate questions, you really want to understand what some of the long-term consequences of taking medication might be. And, you know, with PubMed now, it's relatively accessible to most people. Like, you can kind of do some of your own due diligence. Like, it's not, it's your health, right? Like, you have to help come to that decision with the coach, with the guidance of your medical

doctor or your primary, whoever you're speaking to. But really understand what the, what the risks are. Because I think, you know, as a society, we attach ourselves. Like, we get married to the allure, right, of the promise, right? It's like, oh, the problem. I'm going to have no symptoms. I'm going to have sex without condoms. I can, you know, and then, but then we divorce ourselves from the risks, right? And when I talk about sex without condoms, I'm referring to the pill.

But we don't talk about, you know, upping inflammatory pathways. We don't talk about, you know, killing libido, about vaginal atrophy. We don't talk about any of those things. So really understand, you know, what you're playing with. And then when you understand those risks, say, okay, am I good with that? Like, am I okay with that? Right. If it's a yes, then go ahead. You've made an informed decision. Yeah, I love that. The block that I see happening for a lot of women who would go with that approach might be where the doctor dismisses the downside. There's a lot of that where the doctor's like, there's not a lot of risks at all. And so then do you ask to see, like, can you point me

towards some research? Do you have to go look at the medication you're taking? What do you do if you're like, well, can we read the insert together? And can you explain what some of these things mean? And do you think that this is applicable to me, given that maybe you know my labs, you know my history? Maybe I have a, you know, a longstanding rapport and relationship with this doctor. Like, you know, and maybe. it is very low risk for that patient. Right. You know, maybe it's, it's, it's, the doctor is absolutely on point with that. Yeah.

But the, it's not just the doctor's responsibility to make that decision. It's also, as I was talking about with evidence based medicine, it's the clinician's experience, but it's also the goals and the dreams of the patient. Yes. I love that. Yeah. So I would, I would say, you know, if the doctor is very dismissive, it might be that they're right. Maybe that it, it isn't that big of a deal for.

you, given your history, given your familial, you know, if you have no history of familial, you know, hyper-cholestrelemia or, you know, if we're talking about statins or whatever, you know, maybe it's completely fine for you. But maybe when you do your own research on PubMed, you might come to a different conclusion and you should feel comfortable enough to speak to your primary and say, what about this? Like, this concerns me. And I think generally, you know, in sort of Western society, we say, you know, the customer is always right. And I think that the patient is usually right. Like, heal thyself, doctor. Like your intuition is always going to be better, right, than mine. I can use data to conclude and to come to a logical, inductive,

you know, inductive reasoning, you know, inductive reasoning. But if the patient's worried about something, it's our obligation to address that with them. Yeah. If they're not willing to, get a new doctor. Agreed. And what I always tell my patients is what you're doing in the act of what you just explained is you're actually training your doctor to start to think at a deeper level. So if that doctor starts getting multiple women coming in and saying, tell me the risks, is this something I have to be a medication I have to be on for the rest of my life? When we start those conversations over and over and over again, there becomes this opening that starts to get the doctors, the good doctors, hopefully to think a little deeper and see what the needs of the patients are.

But when we go in, we dump our symptoms out, we're given a prescription, we walk out, and we just accept that, then we haven't helped the doctor see what we're needing. So I'm all about creating collaborative conversations. How do we bring all these amazing doctors and healthcare professionals together to benefit women, which is why I love books like yours and discussions you're having and I'm having about, okay, women, we have to do this different. And I love that we've started this with, it starts with how you communicate with your doctor. That was what doing this different looks like.

And I hope the women listening to this are grabbing that. Before I dive into things like I want to talk about exercise around your menstrual cycle and some of the fun things that you and I will enjoy geeking out on, let's help women understand why does a woman need to think differently about her health than a man? Like, let's go to the basics because I'm sure you're finding this. So many women have no idea about her hormonal cycle are so out of touch. we have no idea we're supposed to be doing things differently than men. Yeah. Yeah, that's actually one of the big reasons why I decided to write the book. So I was doing a presentation to these like seven and eight figure female entrepreneurs. I was invited to speak. And the topic of the presentation I was giving was how to use your menstrual cycle to make a million bucks. So that was like

the fun title, right? So these are very successful women, right? These are entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, like CEOs of companies and whatnot. And these women have gone to every, you know, business growth, you know, like any type of training that you can imagine to sort of get a competitive edge. Like these women have, you know, been exposed to in some capacity. And so I gave this presentation. It was supposed to only be 90 minutes. And I was the last, pardon me, it's only supposed to be like 45 minutes. And I was the last speaker of the evening. And then what ended up happening was this like two hour Q and A that followed. Like, what about this? And what about, like, these women had not been exposed to, a, what is a normal menstrual cycle, first of all, versus what is a common, you know, common symptoms

that we experienced. I know that you talk a lot about this, the difference between normal, which is, you know, physiologically normal supposed to happen with predictability and repeatability versus commonly occurring in the population, which people often conflate. We often mix up. Well, I get common headaches. I get common pain. I get, you know, we've, we've, especially around our menstruation, you know, menstrual cycle pain has really been normalized and you see this in advertising, right? It's like, just take some might all, just take some, you know, take a little, take a day off. And, you know, while there should be some cramping, right, like your uterus is contracting, you're shedding and endometrial lining, it shouldn't take you out. Like, you should still be able to do

absolutely everything that you would do any other day of the month. So, so, so that's, so, that's, was one of the big like, okay, these women don't know, that means that like there's a vast majority of women that haven't seen a graph or even explained what their menstrual cycle has been since high school, right? And even then we were probably like putting our hands over our ears going, oh my God, make it stop. So right. I think that for women, when I, when I train about how women are different than men, I often will give the parallel that men are like the sun and women are like the moon. So when we think about men, they will go through their entire hormonal milieu in about a 24-hour period. They will cycle through their testosterone and estrogen patterns in about a day.

And for women, we will cycle through our testosterone and estrogen and progesterone and LSA, like all of our patterns, not in a 24-hour period, but in about a 28 or 29-day period. So, and that's what we refer to as your menstrual cycle, right? So it's all very similar to the lunar cycle, right? So the lunar cycle, the moon cycle is about 20, 29 days. And so it's important for us to really distinguish ourselves from men in terms of our daily rhythms because we are different every single day versus men who are different at different times of every day, but generally they are the same every day of the month. So the first thing that we really need most women in their reproductive years to be understanding

is that distinct physiological difference of our reproductive cycle. And for them to really start tracking, like to start tracking and getting amalgamating data on what it is that happens for you, particularly, like getting data on what's the length of your cycle, how long is your bleed week, what happens in your bleed week? What's the color of your blood, the flow, the, you know, do you get cramping? Are there clots? Like, what's the color change over, you know,

there's so many things that you can start aggregating when you start tracking your cycle. And then you can start overlaying that with nutrition and exercise and sleep and stress reduction and supplementation. But it really only, you know, it's really kind of useless to think about, you know, being cyclical when you don't have any data on your cycle. Yeah. So well said. And I feel like this is a concept that we need to teach every 13 year old girl. Oh, yeah. Like if why are we learning it when our hormones are a hot mess? Why don't we learn it in the beginning so that our hormones never become a hot mess?

Tell me what tracking device you like because there's a lot of good ones out there. And I'm, you know, we, a lot of our listeners are menopausal women. A lot of them are postmenopausal saying, I should have done this years ago. But they also have an influence on the teenagers growing up and the 20-year-olds. And so one of my mission cries has been, as you learn it as a woman, you need to turn around and teach it not only to other women, but we need to go down and teach what you just said, this concept of us. I love the moon analogy of our hormonal swings happening in a, let's just use 30-day cycle.

We need to know that from the beginning. And I love this idea of tracking. So do you have a tracker you recommend or how do women go about doing that? Oh, there's so many. I use Clue. Yeah, me too. C-L-U-E. Super easy.

I have the free version and it's just, you know, when your period starts, you enter, is it light, is it medium, is it heavy? You know, what's your skin look like? What's your sleep look like? What's your energy look like? And then you can go back as you're tracking. You can go back in the data and say, okay, so my sleep tends to be disrupted around day 25.

You know, I have a really heavy period. The first couple of days, you know, my energy levels look like this during the month. So there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's. You just have to go into the app store like clue. I was going to say clue is my favorite too. It's the easiest. When I first started using Clue, the Clue app in my early 40s, I was like, oh my gosh, it has such a cool visual.

Yeah. I was like, I should probably send this to my husband so that he knows where I am. Yeah. And maybe even my staff so they know like where because it it has that little fuzzy PMS period. time. And I was like, oh, this would be really helpful if you understood where a woman was in her cycle. You may be able to relate to her different. You may be able to understand her different. You would definitely know when her libido is at its peak. It's a really cool visual that they give. And even just from a business perspective, I love that you're, you know, I wish I could share this

with my, you know, my team members because there's times of the month where you are much more articulate, right? There's times of the month where you have estrogen just like bathing your verbal, you know, your verbal centers in your brain around speech. So there's times where you should be, you know, recording a podcast like this, for example, you know, like speaking, you know, publicly giving a presentation, asking for a raise. Like there's so many great little hacks in terms of how you, you know, interact with your cycle and your career. Like that's another layer that you really play with as well. Yeah, but we, and why aren't we taught this? It's like, I'm 51 and I'm like, why am I just starting to put this into a place as I went through menopause? I, that's how I started

to discover it because I wanted to understand what the missing hormones, why were they, why were they making me feel so weird? And oh my gosh, well, what is, was it supposed to do? And it's just, it was a whole awakening for me in my 40s that I want women to have in when they're 13. So I, that's why, I, again, I love concepts like, let's just start teaching them to track. And for the 13-year-old girls, like any moms that are listening now for their 13-year-old, 15-17-year-old daughters, also this is a, like 16, 17-18, you know, shout out to my colleague, Nat Kringudis in Australia. She talks a lot about, you know, this time, 15, 16, 17 years old where your cycle becomes

irregular. It is actually part of your maturation where you kind of start to look a little PCOS-y, like, you you know, polycystic, ovary syndrome-esque. You know, you become fertile, maybe a misd period. And then, you know, the mom is concerned. The daughter is concerned. They go to the doctor and they usually get a script for a birth control pill at that time. And so, you know, if we knew that, hey, just expect that, you know, in your early menstruating years,

just like when you learn a new skill, you're not going to do it right. You're not going to just ride a bike when you're, you know, a newborn. You've got to learn. You got to learn a couple of like preliminary skills. before you can walk and run and get on the bike and have balance and all that. So it's the same with our early menstruating years. There's going to be like little rough patches and just know that those are normal. That's not there's something abnormal with you.

That's just, you know, the maturity of your reproductive system. Yeah, I love that. So walk us through. Let's just say, I always say 30 days. I get, you know, it's 28 for some, 34 for others. But let's just say walk us through the hormonal changes that are happening. in a 30-day cycle so we can pull the listeners up to speed. And then I would love to take that conversation and talk about, okay, how can we match exercise

to that? How can we match the keto cycling that you talk about in your book? How can we match some of the everyday things that we're already doing? How do we match that to this cycle? Amazing. All right. So this is going to be like a, you know, quick back of the envelope, menstruation 101. Right.

Exactly. All right. So a couple, there's four main parts, right? There's four main areas of your entire menstrual cycle. So we have, and I typically divide them into four weeks just for ease, you know, 28 days, as you said, 30, 32, you know, but just for ease, we're dividing these into seven day chunks. If yours is a little longer, you're going to shorten these. If it's a little shorter, then you'll, you'll elongate them. So the first week, you know, everyone knows popular girl, the bleed week, right? This is like when. you can see what's happening. There's blood, right? This is the endometrial lining that has become eschemic, meaning that there's been no oxygen that's been derived because the week prior, we had a dip in progesterone and estrogen. And now there's no pregnancy.

Your body's like, all right, we got to scrap this lining. We're going to do it again this month. See if there's another, see if we're going to have a potential for a fertilized egg. So the bleed week is, I categorize that as seven days. most people don't bleed for seven days. You'll often find the average is somewhere between four and six. But what you want to be paying attention to here from a hormonal perspective is you'll see estrogen is relatively low this week. Progesterone, she's gone.

She's not really involved in the first half of the first two weeks of the cycle. The only hormone that really is around is something called FSH or follicular stimulating hormone. And she's kind of holding down the fort. And what she's doing is she's, as her name suggests, You know, she's a she's a she in my world. I know, I love it. I love it how you call it a she. It should be that.

I love it. So FSA is developing the follicle, right? So the follicle is the pristine, you know, inside is the, you know, is the pearl, right? It's like the egg that we're trying to mature to release around ovulation. So as I was saying before, a lot of things that you can be looking at this week. You can be looking at your, you know, the quality of your blood. So what's the color from start to finish? Most people will start off with like a deep red and then towards the end of the bleed.

It's more oxidized blood. We start to see it looking brown. But there are other variations. I talk about some of the variations in the book and what that means. You might want to look at the flow, like how heavy your flow is. And of course, you've only ever lived in your body. So you don't necessarily know what heavy is versus light. So I put some parameters again in the betty body for you to look at.

But some general things to be looking at is are you changing your pad or, your cup or your tampon, you know, whatever, more than two to three hours in the first two days, more than 70 milliliters, if you're measuring it through a menstrual cup. Is there clotting, right? Some clotting is normal. The size of the clots, right? So it should be less than a dime, you know, over, like if it's like kind of a size of a quarter, that's too big, maybe some signs of estrogen dominance, which we'll get to today. So that's kind of week one. And so you see, you finish the bleed and then what's happening hormonally as we move into the week before ovulation. So week two is all about now we're driving up. It's all about developing that egg.

We want the egg to be mature so that we can release it, the follicle and the egg that that's housed within the follicle. So hormonally, what's happening is we see estrogen peak. She makes her biggest and quickest apex in this week. So she'll go from, you know, in week one, we said estrogen is relatively low. I've seen labs that have been like five, six peaky grams per deciliter all the way up to, you know, moving into week two, it can climax from like five or six to like 500 or 600 piquigrams per decilator. So there's a huge ski hill, if you will, when you look at it on a graph in terms of estrogen

concentration. And we also see in this week before ovulation, we'll see testosterone as well. So testosterone, this is. where we call week two like flirty, sexy, you know, you're like, you should be more interested in sex. Like, you know, a crude measurement without, you know, looking at your testosterone levels is, are you wanting to have more sex? Are you wanting to orgasm more? And that's Mother Nature's, you know, insurance policy to try and get you to have sex so that there's sperm potentially around a couple of days before the egg is released and then there can be fertilization, whether or not you

want a baby. So just, you know, this is a time if you want to get pregnant, lots of penetrative sex. If you do not want a baby, then, you know, other things, right, play with other, other modalities, other things. So we come to about ovulation is about, you know, call it 14, day 14-ish. It can be day 12, day 16, but for most people, it's right around day 13, 14. The follicle releases the egg. and then the egg sort of waits around like the queen for the sperm to find her. Okay. I love your descriptive. It's like you could almost write a children's book on this.

You know, maybe that'll be my next book, actually. I'm like, you're telling me a story. It's so funny. I was on a podcast several months ago and I was describing lutinizing hormone. So I didn't mention it, but LH is, you know, it also increases a lot in concentration in week two. And it sort of comes up and then out, right? And I always likened it to like, you know, whenever you go to like a family gathering, we all have that one, you know, uncle or aunt who sort of barges in like middle of the dinner comes in and

like, hey, what's up, you know, like hits you on the back and you're like, ugh. You know, kind of what LH does, right? It comes in like a whirlwind, you know, causes the egg to be released. But these are the ways that I remember them. So I teach this way. It's super smart. Yeah. I love it.

So after, so this is, these two weeks in general are the follicular phase. So you were talking about, you know, how do we layer in nutrition and, and, you know, exercise. So generally, these two weeks you're much more, um, attuned to restricting your carbohydrates. These are great weeks for keto, right? Great weeks for, um, for doing a restrict, like restricting the carbohydrates, maybe even the protein a little bit as well. I'll talk about some nuance, uh, when we get to it with week two. But then when we, we move into the next two weeks, this is the, what we would call the secretory or the luteal phase of the cycle. So now the follicle has turned into the corpus luteum, right? So now there's secretion of progesterone. We see estrogen drop, and then she comes back up again, sort of midweek of mid-week three. And then towards the end of week three and the beginning of week four, you'll see estrogen, pardon me, progesterone reach her peak. And this is a distinguishing factor of the luteal phase is that progesterone is present. So when we think about progesterone, she is, you know, she stimulates our appetite. She helps us, you know, she has potent effects on the

brain in terms of GABA, a neurotransmitter. So she helps us feel cool and chill and calm, but she also slows everything else down too. So you may find that you're bloated, that you're not having as many bowel movements as you usually do. And you're generally a bit more distended, right? So you, you know, if you're eating a meal, you kind of just feel a little bit more gassy, distended, bloaty. So that happens. So we have, you know, progesterone reaches her peak somewhere around the end of week three, beginning of week four.

And then if there's no fertilization at that point, what we see is the corpus luteum can, is, you know, over the course of this luteal cycle is degenerating. And then there's not, then the, the progesterone secretion stops and the estrogen stops. And you see this like nose dive of both of these hormones. They come down together crashing often together within within a day or so. And then this is often the time where PMS, you know, if you have a tendency to feel more inflamed, if you have a bit more of metabolic dysregulation and dysfunction, you know, you're going to look a little bit more like you have that metabolic dysregulation during

this time. You're a bit more insulin insensitive. Yep. And the PMS, the moodiness, the sleep disturbances, all of that happens here. And then eventually you bleed, right? So eventually the endometrial lining is not receiving that progesterone anymore, becomes ischemic as we started off in the beginning,

and then the cycle starts again. So beautiful. I swear there needs to be a kid's book. I love that. Or like a teenage book that, you know, a lot of conversations I've had with functional medicine doctors recently has been about our own personal experience of health education, that we got in our sex ed that we got when you, you know, we were in the seventh grade.

And it was basically, it was a banana and a condom. And we were all like, oh, God, get me out of here. And it was, you're bleeding now. You can get pregnant. Here's how you manage your blood. And like that explanation you just gave like should be in some kind of pamphlet or book that every girl gets so that she understands that. And the two of the points that I really started to tap into in my own cycle, as again, I went through menopause is where it started to rear its ugly head. One is this thought that testosterone for women only kicks in at one part of that 30-day cycle. For a man, it's surging every couple of hours. So, you know, in our relationships, now we're just assuming a heterosexual relationship that you are, you could be an easy mismatch and there may be an, you may need an, uh, to explain to your

partner when your testosterone is supposed to kick in and, and have a discussion about how he's getting it every couple hours and yours is coming once a month. That sort of was my first interesting aha. Now, if you're in a same sex relationship, you can also be mismatched and have testosterone coming at different times. But this mismatch of libidum, I feel like based off of hormones coming in could be a marriage saver. Could be, it could save so much heartache if we understood our partner's pattern of libido based off of the testosterone rushes. Yeah.

And I think for a lot of women, you know, as you just said, there's like this pulsatile component to testosterone and men. So they're kind of ready all the time, right? They're just like, hey, we can go right now. But for women, you know, and I think that this. is, you know, digressing a little bit from just the physiological hormonal pattern. But for women, foreplay is all day long. You know, it's like, it's like the dishes are done or it's like the little sexy test.

Like the little. Are you listening? The dishes being done is foreplay. That is like, that was golden there. I hope every man heard that. Or, you know what, honey? I thought you might be hungry. So I ordered you some, you know, like, if you can feed, you can.

can predict when your woman is hungry, you are going to be getting so much sex. But I'm just, yeah, and a foot rub would probably work too. Exactly. So foreplay for women, I think, happens all day long. It's not just at the end of the day or the beginning of the day or whatever. It's it's the interactions that we have with our partners. So I like that, you know, having an understanding of the differences in our testosterone and our estrogen patterns, because men and women have both just in different concentrations and different patterns. and different patterns, as you mentioned. But also, you know, when we think about the, what, you know, what turns on a woman?

It's like with the dishes being done or like, you know what, honey, don't, I got this. I'm going to put the kids to bed. Like, you go and, you know, you do your, you know, your oral care. Like I, you know, I'm just referring to my own husband because I love to do this like really elaborate oil pulling and like thing that I like to do. So if he puts my kids, if he's putting the kids to bed and I have time to do like my brushing my teeth and then the flossing with the essential oils and the oil. on the oil pulling and then I get to put oils on my body.

Like that is how I actually, you know, in many ways, like, you know, get into the mood for when the boys are like in their bed and he comes in and I'm like, I'm all like oiled up and feeling good and ready to go. Yeah. Oh, my God. This is like golden. Again, I hope men are listening. So, okay.

And then my other like aha in understanding hormones that I think women should grasp is this week before our period. This progesterone, I have a chapter in my book called Dear Progesterone, I'm sorry I took you for granted because I feel like I had no clue what progesterone was doing for me until I moved through my 40s and it went away. As to your point, she went away. And as she went away, I was like, why can't my body relax? Why am I not able to sleep? There were so many things that I realized, why do I all of a sudden have anxiety and I don't really understand this. So when we are feeling like slowing down the week before our period, when we're feeling like we want more carbs, when we are in more of

an introspective mood, I want every woman to know that's okay. There's a physiological explanation for that. And that's a really important time in your cycle. So I will often talk about this idea that when we see progesterone and estrogen taking that nose dive, right? So there's no fertilization. There, you know, the endometrial lining is about to become schemic and we're going to shed it. This is when we as women tend to move into, you know, what I would call a negativity bias. So, you know, everything annoys you, right? Like your kids annoy you, your husband annoys you, your job annoys you. You can't pick the right nail polish. All your clothes are the, like the worst, you know. And, but that is such an

important part of your cycle not to be disregarded because that is your body asking you to look at the parts of your life or the people and the relationships that you have that are not working right now. How is the parenting relationship not working right now? How is your relationship with your partner not working right now? How is this career? How is your boss or the career that you've chosen not serving your soul? This time, this like three or four days where you're weepy and you're like everything is wrong. That is your soul saying these are the things I need. These are the things I need. And I think we generally want to ignore it. We want to push through it. And I've seen memes on the internet where it's like, you know, last week didn't make sense.

And then I got my period. And it's like, oh, yeah, right. You know. But if you say, okay, I know, like, if you track your cycle, you know when that's happening, first of all. And so what's coming up for you emotionally, pay attention to that. These are the whispers from your soul. That's like, like here's how this is what I need you to do for me, girl. Like this is what we need to be focusing on. Yeah. And I, it's kind of like fasting. You know, we do a ton of fasting with our, our group, our resetter group.

And I always say when you get that agitation or that thought that pops in your head when you're 17 hours into a fast, it's an opportunity to understand your belief around food and how you use food. And it, I had never thought about that with that week before you're. cycle. So that was, yeah, well said. And again, I hope everybody's taking notes and listening to that. So map, now that we've done a basic understanding, map exercise, you already talked a little bit about keto. Exercise is a huge one. And, you know, as a former competitive athlete, I also had to learn that as I move through my 40s, yoga was going to benefit me a lot better than trying to run a marathon.

And I love how you map exercise to your menstrual cycle. So talk a little bit about that. Well, first, let me say that the type A personality and me honors and loves the type of personality in you. If you are a competitive athlete, you are competitive with yourself, your heart on yourself. And what tends to happen is you tend to put your head down and punch out the workout, even though you don't feel like it. Amen. Yeah. And what often happens is I'll have women come to me and say, you know, I don't know,

I've been doing like five of these like hit training workouts, you know, this week. And I've been doing it for like four or five months. And the weight keeps creeping up and my belly fat is going up. And I can't seem to get rid of this belly fat. And really this is a cry from your body. Because if you are doing that much high intensity, like I love hit training, right? There's a time in place for it. And we'll talk about how there's times in your cycle.

that you should not be. You should not be training hit. We'll talk about that in just a moment. But if you are constantly working out as if you are about to die, like if your heart rate needs to get to like 170 every time, that's not appropriate. You're sending this stress signal like, hey, every day I got to run away from a tiger to save my life. Like I got to hold on to some fat, like a bit of an insurance policy here because this is not a safe situation for me. So with that said, I think that when we, I'm a really big fan of resistance training. I think that it trains your resistance. So it makes you harder to kill. So whatever pandemic and whatever virus and whatever mutant and variant and the better and more muscle mass that you have,

the more, you know, generally speaking, your immune system is going to be healthier. Your metabolism is going to be healthier, your mood, your energy, all of these things are going to be ameliorated. But I would say that the way that you resistance train and the way that you apply your cardio should change through your menstrual cycles. So for example, training with heavy weights, I think, or moderate weights, I think, can generally happen all through the month, but you're best suited for moderate. And when I say moderate, I'm saying, some are between, call it eight to 12 to 15 reps. Okay. So whatever that number, whatever that weight classes for you is going to be different for everyone. But generally, you should be able to

punch out three or four sets of eight to 12 repetitions. That is really well suited for your bleed week. So obviously the first day or two, a lot of people feel quite lethargic. So if that's you, you know, take like go for a walk, Pilates, yoga, as you said, spend some time in nature. A lot of cross-crawl stuff. So the walking is really good for the corpus callosum. Really, really love that for day one, day two of your bleed week. But then once you kind of get into the rhythm of your period, I think it's appropriate for you to start lifting moderate weights. As we move into week two, so you stop the bleed. Now you're in that pre-ovulatory phase. Your, as we said, testosterone peaks here and so does estrogen. So these are two anabolic hormones, meaning that they are growth hormones.

So this is a wonderful time to profit. This is the one time that testosterone is going to have this big piece. Yes. So you want to profit from that by lifting heavy weights. And when I say heavy, five to eight, five to eight reps. So that means that the weight class is going to jump. You're going to, you may need a spotter. But you should be, you know, the last three repetitions should be incredibly difficult.

And you should only be able to do somewhere between five and eight. This is also a time for you to stay away from high and intensity interval training for the exact reason why you should be doing heavy weights. So as estrogen comes really high in this pre-ovulatory phase, what we know about estrogen in terms of its effects on the musculoskeletal system is that it makes our ligaments more lax. So more when we say ligamentous laxity, that's just like a fancy word for loosey-goosey, right? Like your ligaments are lucy-goosey.

And it makes your tendons stiffer. So stiffer tendons, I mean, obviously there's a continuum. We don't want them so stiff. when they are stiffer, then you can lift heavier weights because now, let's say if you're doing a bicep curl, as you are contracting the bicep muscle, the bicep muscle is going to be pulling on a stiffer tendon, which can pull on the bone. So you can actually take your weight up this week. But with burst movement, with explosive movement, with high intensity stuff, you are setting yourself up for injury if you're doing hit training here. Because of those loosey-goosey-loosey

ligaments when you do any type of burst movement. So if you think about like a burpee or a sprint or, you know, even if you're doing like a bike ride and then, you know, the instructor says, okay, like everything you got for 30 seconds or, you know, an all out balls to the wall like 45 minutes sprint or 45 second sprint. You are the tense, the tension that you are putting through these ligaments, particularly I'm talking about the knee and the shoulder. These are two very joints that are very susceptible to injury. You will injure them this week. Like you will tear the second week. We're in the second week. So you'll tear the labrum in the shoulder. You'll, you'll rupture the ACL. And we actually see this in the data when we look at the propensity of

where we see the most injuries in women when they are not menopausal. So when they are in their reproductive years, it tends to be ligamentous injuries. And then when we transition into menopause, we actually start to look more like the guys in terms of our injuries now are not ligamentous in nature as much, but they move more now towards muscle strains because we don't have the ligament, we don't have the estrogen making our ligaments loosey-goosey anymore, or at least that that high fluctuation. Yeah. So stay away. Love that week. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So then what about when you move into the week before and progesterone's high, is that a time we want to change like hardcore marathon running or, you know, progesterone so susceptible to any increases in cortisol.

Is there something we should do different that week? Yeah. So when we're thinking about the Luteel phase, so week three and four, so now if you look at estrogen, we see a bit more of a sustained release of estrogen. So high intensity interval training is completely appropriate in week three and four. But a lot of times in week four, we don't feel like it, right? We're kind of like achy and inflamed. So in terms of the resistance training, I like to actually bring down the weight, but increase the repetition.

So you're still bringing the muscle to fatigue, but you're doing it in a slightly gentler way. So you bring the weight down in terms of the weight, the amount, the absolute amount of weight that you're pressing or pulling. And then you are maybe now doing 15 or 20 or 25 reps. So you're still working the muscle, but now it's really more of like a flush. Like you're kind of flushing, trying to flush out, you're getting the myokines that are being released. And now you're going to be reducing inflammation. And if you're someone who is very stressed, so this is all women until proven otherwise, right? If you are someone who has had long-term chronic stress, that includes pregnancy and child-rearing,

sleep disturbances, which we know happens when we're mothering our, our young children who don't yet have a circadian rhythm that's established. You know, you're taking care of aging patients or parents, rather, and there's, you know, all the things that happen with life. It's, it's important for you to be gentle with yourself. I think so many women were like, no, I set out today and I'm going to do this thing and I'm going to do it. And like, these are my type A betties. These are like the betties that are like, no, I'm going to do it no matter what. And this is when you hurt yourself. So first of all, you're pushing your body. Your body's always smarter than you. Like your body, if you just listen to her, she's always smarter than you.

If you need to modify your workout or, you know, your eating patterns, particularly in that week four, right, I actually love, as you said, increasing the total amount of calories, increasing the total amount of carbohydrates. You need it. You're building an organ. But if you don't have that flexibility of thought, you're like, no, I need to stick to this one diet and I'm going to do it all the time, you know, it's, you know, Vegas or bust, then you're going to bust, you know, it's like, it's with this all or

nothing thinking, we usually choose nothing. So I'd rather you just modify it a little bit so that it's easier. Like health doesn't need to hurt, you know, like being, being gentle with yourself and having the grace and the wisdom. I mean, you're, you know, if you're 40 or 50, like, you're a smart woman. You've had, you've had to get through stuff, right? You've had, there's been a lot of trials and tribulations. So being able to just, you know, go in a little bit. And and say, okay, girl, like, what do we need today? We need, we need a walk. Okay, let's do a walk. You know, we're not, we had planned for the 10 mile, you know, whatever, but today we're going to do a walk. We're going to listen to a podcast. I'm going to listen to, I'm going to go to the woods where I can

get some of the, you know, the trees. And that's what I'm going to do today. And I'm good with that. Yeah, which is really hard for the type A woman. I mean, I will, I will say that that was my huge lesson in my 40s was giving myself grace to say, I planned this workout and my body is telling me I need a different, I need a different thing to do. I need to get out into nature. I need to sit on the couch. I need to do yoga because the way that my brain had always thought of that is I was being lazy. And when I got into my-

That is a patriarchal construct. That is a patriarchal construct that our to-do list is our worth. So I, every type A person that's listening to me, trust me, I have been there. I am still there in many, like many days, you know, like that drive to achieve is very much baked into my DNA. But it is the, it is the wisdom of aging in some ways where we have the not, like knowledge is useless if it's not integrated into wisdom. And you can, you can know all, like most of us know all the things, right?

We know fasting helps with our hormones. We know that we need to prioritize protein in whole foods. We need, we know that we need to move more. But it's the gap between knowing and doing. And that's the wisdom. Yeah. Peace. So well said.

Yes. So it's the wisdom of saying, okay, like I know that, you know, doing a really heavy leg workout was on the schedule today, but I don't have it. I had a bad sleep last line.

I'm really stressed at work. Something's happening with my kid. Like, I'm just going to be gentle on myself. This is where we can move. That's actually how you'll get way more results because you know this doc. You know that like all your results, it doesn't happen in the gym.

It happens when you're, cover. So we're talking about muscle gains a lot today. Your muscle gains don't happen in the gym. They happen when you take a couple of days off and you allow for the metabolic and the mechanical stress that you put on those muscles to heal. And that's when the hypertrophy and the strength gains and the power and the explosion gains happen. Yeah. So well said. Okay, what does the perimenopause and menopausal woman need to know about if your cycle is hard to predict or you don't have a cycle? You know, the post-menopausal women, you know, our hormones are really going low. How, what do we need to know about diet and exercise for that time of life?

I love this. So I included this as well in the book. And I think that for women who are menopausal, post-menopausal, so you're not, you haven't had a cycle for at least a year, instead of following, you know, the cues from your bleed week and ovulation and test out, we don't have that anymore, right? No. So as I was saying before, men are like the sun. women are like the moon. I still think that menopausal women, just by being, just by nature of being a

woman, we are cyclical creatures. So I like to follow more of a lunar cycle. So the lunar cycle is, you know, 20, 29, 30 days depending on the month. And generally, you know, the new moon is where we let things go. This would be equivalent to the bleed week in our, in our menstruating women. So the bleed week is where we can do moderate weights. We can do the keto, you know, the waxing moon, which is, you know, sort of the, the moon, the new moon you can't see the moon in the sky. The waxing moon is sort of the crescent moon. And this would be akin to, you know, the pre-ovulatory. So you can lift heavier weights during this time.

You can, you can still do hit training as a menopausal woman because you don't have that really high fluctuation. If you look, if there's like a Peloton class that you love, you know, go for it, have at it. But heavier weights is really called for here. And then you're kind of cycling, right? So you're doing moderate weights, new moon week. You know, the waxing moon, you're doing heavy weights in the waning moon, which would be week three in your menstrual cycle.

You come back to those moderate weights again. And then the week four, which would be, or pardon me, the full moon would be your ovulatory moon, or sorry, your middle of your cycle. So this is, again, like the same thing. The waxing moon to the full moon is when we do those heavy weights. And then the waning moon is week three. back to those moderate weights again. And then week four is the dark of the moon. So again, this is where we see the weight, that crescent moon kind of disappearing. And then, you know,

you're doing lighter weights that week. You're taking some recovery days, right? You're going for the walks. You're doing the yoga. You're doing the Pilates. You're doing the, you know, the, I love to put some, you know, podcast in my ear and I go for like an hour or two hour walk. And that's how I would structure it for for her. I would still, I still like to cycle the keto. So I would do week one and three, where she's doing more of a ketogenic specific diet. We know with menopausal women, generally, they tend to be more insulin resistant. So as we age, it's just a sort of a natural progression as we start to see estrogen dipping. We also see our insulin resistance increasing. So one and three for week one and three. So that would be your new moon and just after the full moon.

And I like a higher protein, like weeks two and four. I like higher protein in those weeks. And we're doing that for our menopausal ladies also, and this is also true in our menstruating women, to profit, to create more muscle. You know, one of the things we want as menopausal women is we want our bone density. We want to be concerned about bone density and our lean muscle mass. So the more you lift weights, the more you are creating and preserving the muscle tissue that you have, but you're also directly influencing your bones. So your bones and your muscles are sisters. When one is, you know, dense, you have a lot of it.

You have a lot of the other. And as you lose muscle, you will also lose bone density. And you probably know this, you know, more even more than I. But women who are osteopenic and then even move into osteoporosis, the one thing that tends to to take them out is like a silly little fall. Right. Or a little trip or they, you know, they fall on these like we call them like fush injuries, right? like fall on outstretched hand injuries. And then you get this like fracture along a long bone.

Like you fracture the hip, you fracture the humorous, you fracture the femur. And then you can't do anything, right? Then you're out of commission for three, six, nine months, which then has knock on effects on your cognition and your brain health.

It has knock on effects on your, obviously your body composition, your mood, your energy, all the things. Yeah. And I really hope that people listening are like, whoa,

I've never thought of my workouts, plan in accordance with my hormones. Like that, I mean, when I was in college, I played competitive tennis and I had a bunch of injuries that I was struggled to heal from. And now I look back and I go, oh my gosh, if I had just been thinking about my workouts according to where my, the ebbs and flows of my hormones, I may have never even had those injuries, injuries that led me to surgeries. And then when you go into perimenopause and menopause, it's like, A, you're fighting for

the motivation to work out and you're losing muscle and you never think, oh, gosh, in a 30-day period, I should probably time and change the way that I work out. This, I hope it becomes a common language, but I'm sure a lot of people listening to this are like, whoa, never thought of it this way. And I hope, I hope people are having that aha moment. Do you find, are you getting a lot of that from your book? A lot of it. Yeah. It's such a great. concept. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, a lot, it's been really well received by the public as well as my peers, which is always really important. So, but a lot of people like, I've never, I never thought of it like that before. Or I was always scared of doing keto or I tried keto and it didn't work for me. And I was

like, you probably didn't do it like a girl, you know, like, right. But you got to do keto like a woman, you know, in order for it to be sustainable for you. So we talk about what keto is for, you know, woman versus like the bacon butter burgers and repeat, which is often sort of like this dirty type of keto that we see propagated in and sort of, you know, with keto experts. And as long as it fits your macros, it's like, no, no. Yeah. Or the keto experts say no women shouldn't do it. We, we actually came up with something called a fasting circle that does a 30 day cycle and looks at, I teach six different fasts. And it shows when you can use each one of these fasts according to the cycle. So I'm actually geeking out listening to you.

I'm like, yep, yep, yeah, that's. So I'm thinking as you're talking exercise, I'm thinking, yeah, that's when you can do this fast and that fast. This is when you shouldn't fast. Because we saw so on my YouTube channel, I got so many women who came from the hardcore fasting world and was like, my hair is falling out. I'm losing my cycle. And it was like, wait a second.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Can't do it this way. So I just, I love that you have. I love, I love that you have different. I talk about this in the book as well. There's different, I sort of talk of it like there's three levers you can pull with fasting. One is like the frequency, the, the, the type of fast and then the sort of the severity. Like is it a water fast? Are you doing caloric liquid fat? Like is it a bone broth fast? Are you doing fasting memetics? So I love that you talk about that because I think that most people assume that fasting is just either a dry or a water fast when there's so. much nuance in terms of how you can apply fasting as a woman, not only to your cycle, but, you know, to whatever your goals are. Like some people say, well, does a coffee break a fast? And does this break? I mean, that's, I don't know if you, I find that's like the most common. All the time. I, I answer that question like 10 times a week. Yeah. I should have it tattooed on my

arm. Yes. And like the short answer is, well, what's your goal? Exactly. Like, is it, is it a digestive goal? You're trying to heal the gut. are you trying to lose weight? You're trying to do it for clarity of thought? Like, what's the goal? And then you can answer the question based on what your goal is. So yeah, yeah, love that. Yeah, exactly. We do a, I do a YouTube live every Thursday and I get every Thursday, I'm on there for an hour for my community and I get questions all the time of like, what should, what fast should I do for this and for that? And my, my, my, always my response is, well, it depends what you're trying to do. What are you trying to do? And I think a lot of the problem that we have is the one,

unsize fits all mentality that more conventional health care has taught us, we try to bring that to more alternative strategies. And there is no one size fits all. And then from there, we have to look at the fact that we're a woman and that we need to match it to our hormonal cycle, which is why I just love what you're talking about because I'm over here talking about it. You're talking about it. I've seen a couple other women talking about it. And we need to amplify our voices so that that women hear this and start to implement life differently and stop the suffering. It is time. We are no longer in a place where we need to do this like men. We need to do it like women. And we need to understand what that means. So I just, I love this.

Can I get an amen? Yeah. Amen. Right now. Okay. Last couple of things. And then I've got some questions, rapid fire questions for you. There was something that you put in your book that it was on Amazon when I was reading some of the things that I was like, wow, what does she mean by that? And it was, you say that our morning routines are sexist. Yes, yes. What does that mean? All right. I'm so excited we're talking about this.

All right. So, yes, I proposed in the book that the way that we know morning routines are, they're pretty sexist. So if you think about some of the morning routine expert gurus, they wake up at some ungodly hour like three o'clock, four o'clock, five o'clock. And then they have like a tea ceremony. And then they have like, you know, ideation and they write, they'll read like half, you know, like 30 to 50 pages. And then they'll go and work out for an hour. And then from there, they'll meditate. And then they'll do all these things. And it's like, okay, if you're able to do that, like God bless, right? Like amazing. But if I were to wake up that early, first of all, as a woman, my sleep cycle is longer

than amends by at least 15 minutes, but in some cases up to 45 minutes. So cutting your sleep cycles short is probably, you know, probably one of the most deleterious things that you can do to your metabolism, mood, energy, body composition. So no, break up with the 4 a.m. Club, not good for you. But also, where are your kids? Like, if I woke up and I was like, you know, making tea downstairs, then I was working out for an hour. My kids, like, they need. you know, they need to be dressed and brush their teeth and get dressed for school. And like, you know, so a lot of times when you hear these men talking about these elaborate morning routines, they usually have a wife or, you know, if it's a woman, there's some help, right, that's doing some of

the child rearing. So for women, and for me personally, I used to feel like a huge failure because I would see these guys and it's like, yeah, and I write for an hour and then I work out for now. So well said. And it's like, what's wrong with me? Why can't I do that? And it's like, because I have toddlers, because my morning routine was my kids like kind of, you know, coming into my room, like, mommy, you know, that was my morning routine. Like they're waking me up. And of course, it's changed now. My kids are a little older. You know, I have a 10 and an 8 year old. So they sleep in generally on their own. Sometimes we get an odd nightmare or if they're sick overnight, like I'm up with them. But for women with young children, you know, you're already going to be sleep deprived by

nature of because they don't have circadian regularity yet, they don't have a circadian rhythm that tells them to go to sleep, you know, every night at 8 o'clock or 7 o'clock. Like you, that has to be trained over several years. And of course, they also wake up multiple times overnight because of that. So you already have these sleep deprived women that are trying, and we put so much pressure on our women to get like get back to the pre-baby body weight and get back, you know, get back. Look at this. look a certain way nine months up, nine months down. It's like, F you. Like I am breastfeeding. Like I, you know, I breastfed my kids. My first child I breastfed him for 18 months, which I thought was long. And then my second child had breastfed him for three freaking years.

Like he could not give up the boob. And I was like, okay, I just have to go, this is what my baby needs. And this is what I need to do right now for my children. So I had no morning routine for like close to five years. And I started off, as I think most women do, feeling like we're failures and why can't we do this like everybody else? And why, like, these are what the experts are saying, until you realize that the experts are men. And they have no idea. Like most, when in the book, I talk about consensus surveys. And I took data from Canada, the US, the UK, like, you know, the Commonwealth and the, and the Americas. And typically, it's the woman who does the majority of the nonpaid work. So she goes.

to her job gets, you know, gets paid for that. But then she comes home and she does cleaning. She does laundry. She does homework with her kids. You know, she stays up for night, you know, puts them to bed, all these different things. So she's working around the clock, but she's only getting paid for the time that she's, you know, at her job. So it's completely sexist to, to expect that women are going to be able to cut their longer sleep cycle short and then also do all of these things without having their children interrupt them because their little kitties need, have, you know, needs that need to be attended to. Yeah.

So I talk about, okay, what are some gent, what are things that you can spread out, you know, over the morning, right? Cold shower is one thing I propose. Like, whenever you take the shower, last 30 seconds, you know, even 10 seconds, if you're not used to it, like cold shower helps with reducing inflammation, helping with brain fog and, you know, increasing mitochondria biogenesis. That's one thing. We talk about journaling or even just doing some type of gratitude.

So it could just be that your toddlers come into your room. They wake you up. And then you open your eyes. You're like, I'm so grateful that I even had the ability to get pregnant and have these kids, you know, because that's a present that's not afforded to everybody. Yeah.

And then some movement. So I used to, the way that I used to get my movement with my kids is that we would put on, what did they used to, Thomas the Train. Okay. So like, you know,

they used to be obsessed with Thomas the Train. So we would put on that, that show tunes, like the songs that they had on that show. And we would dance. You know, we dance in the morning. And that was my workout. I would just take them and we'd be like, I'd pick them up and we'd be spinning around. And it was like five, 10 minutes maybe before they got bored to do something else. But that was my workout. You know, that used to be how I got my movement in. Yeah. So I'm thinking actually maybe men should do the parenting in the morning is what I'm actually thinking should happen. But I love your creativity. So I wish my kids are 21 and 18.

So I wish I had known that I had thought of that when they, because I was also the woman who was, you know, going to work all day, taking care of the kids in the morning, taking care of the kids at night. And there was that moment of just like, wow, this is two jobs. And it is a lot. And it is a hormonal destruction that can happen that is happening to so many women. So, okay, well, this is amazing. I could talk to you for hours. But I'm going to sum this up. with five of questions that just, you know, looking, doing some review on you and looking at your book, which I really want to encourage everybody to get your book. And we'll talk about how they get that in a moment. But here are my five questions for you. So obviously you love exercise. If there was only one exercise you could do for the rest of your life to keep yourself fit. There was only one. You couldn't vary it to your cycle. But it's what exercise would that? be. Sumo squats. Sumo squats, easy. That would be the number one. Because it does everything, right? Awesome. Okay. And just so we know, what is the sumo squat? So, sumo squat is when you are,

it's a squat with a, yeah, sorry, I think you were just cutting out a minute there. So it's a, it's a squat where your legs are a little further apart, feet are turned out to about 45 degrees. I might, yeah, I might have for a moment. Yeah. And then you come down and then you can either hold a bar, can either put weights on your shoulder or you can also hold a bar, as well. So you can do this with barbells, kettlebells, dumbbells, and you're getting your back, you're getting shoulders, you're getting abs, you're getting your entire lower legs. So sumo squats are my favorite. Okay. Awesome. Okay. Okay. So second thing, if you could go back to your 13-year-old self and give her some advice, what would you tell her? Oh, that's a good question.

You know, I'd just give that girl a big old hug. Like I just, you know, say, you know what, girl, you're doing the best that you can given, you know, the life circumstances and the cards that you've been dealt right now. And, you know, everything about you is beautiful. You're fine. You're not broken. And just keep going. Yeah. That's how I feel about my 13-year-old self-tile. Like, gosh, I wish I could go back and give her some advice. Okay. What book has had the greatest impact on your life? Oh, my goodness. What a question. Biggest. Okay, so there's a couple of them that I've read several times. The Alchemist, Paolo Coelho, I've read his quite a few times.

The Art of War. I'm blanking on his name. The 50 Rules of Power and the 50 Rules of War. Robert Green is the author. Am I only allowed to choose one? Is it just one book? No, you can. know, because you're creating a book list for people right now.

Okay. The women who run with wolves, that was a phenomenal book. And then the heroine's journey, what's her name? Margaret Murdoch, I believe, is the author's name, a heroine's journey. We always talk about the hero's journey, right? The Joseph Cambillion, like, you know, the separation, initiation, return. But the heroine's journey is written. She was a study. She was a student of Campbell, but she wrote it specifically for women. So I love that was, I've read that book. I don't know how many times.

Those are good, yeah, those are good recommendations. Okay, if you could spend the day with anybody alive right now, who would you want to spend the day with? Hmm, anybody alive? God, this is a hard question. Can I come back to it? Can I let my conscience think about it? Okay. Yeah, then my last question is if you had one message, you could get in every woman's brain that in the whole planet. It was like a one line, one two, two line message that you could help her see life differently or help her address her health differently. What would that be? I would say that it's just like the Wizard of Oz, everything you need to go home. You already have everything within you is already all there.

So, you know, it's really just about unhitching, you know, yourself from the patriarchal sort of toxic society that we live in where we think that achievement is related to your worth, but your worth is actually inside you. So you just got to, you know, click your heels twice to go home. It's, it's, it's a little, a little more complicated than that, but it's the same principle that you are. You're already who you are. You're already everything you need. I love that. I love that. Okay, who are you going to spend the day with? Oh my goodness. Oh, my goodness. I would say, you know who I would spend the day with actually Diane von Furstenberg. So she is the, you know, the wrap dress. She's really well known for that. But she is, you know, when we think about big, when she sort of came up in like the 60s and the 70s with this

wrap dress, it was very, you know, fashion and fashion houses were all very male, right? When we look at the difference between fashion houses that are men, we would see these like really, you know, like very constructive, you know, the models sort of were not not unrealistic, but kind of unrealistic for like what the morphology of the typical woman is. And I think that von Furstenberg, DVB's dresses were kind of the first that we're like, we're going to use some fabric that is an everyday fabric like a jersey that most women, like you're wearing jersey, I'm wearing jersey right now, that we would, we feel the most comfortable in. And it would, it was something that every body type could, you know, could wear. And I think that her,

I've listened to her talk on business and how she views the world and how she's, she pushes when she needs to push, but she breaks when she needs to break. And she's an achiever, but she loves herself. And it's like, I would just love to have lunch with her. Amazing. Wouldn't that be, it's just fun to dream about for a while, right? Yeah, it's a great question. So many wise women out there just to have a moment to sit. and pick her brain. And it's just incredible. And we're so good as women of the gift of gab and connecting with each other.

And it would be really cool to tap into some of those incredible women. And I just want to tell you, this has been so much fun for me. So I really appreciate you coming on. And I have sat with that hormonal cycle for hours and hours and hours looking at the science on fasting, Keto and really trying to understand how to map this for women and then coming out of that discovery and realizing everything we do needs to be mapped to this. And there were moments when I first felt that, that I felt alone. Like, why aren't we talking about this? And then books like yours appear and people like you appear. And we just elevate the conversation and we're

able to help women see this differently. So thank you. so much for your book. And please tell my audience, how do they find you? How can they connect with you? Well, thank you. And let me just reflect back to you that it's been wonderful chatting with you. We are like, you know, soul sisters. Yes, we are. We have very, very similar philosophy. So it's been a joy for me as well. So you can find the book is called the Betty Body. It has a bright pink, it has a bright pink cover, me on a purple dress. You can find this on Amazon, you know, worldwide. In the States, you can also find it in. Barnes and Noble. If you're in Canada, chapter Zindigo also has it. And when you do buy the book,

I would invite you if you felt so inclined. We've also created some bonuses for you because I like to treat my betties. So we've done nutrition, fasting, rehab, and fitness programs. So if you head over to betty, betty, b-od-y-b-o-k-o-k-com, they're free. They're free. They're for you to download. So I would love to have you have the programming as well as an accompaniment to the book. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. Well, thank you for writing the book. And let's just keep screaming this because women, if you're hearing this, please share this episode out, get Dr. Stephanie's book, start the conversation with other women. Like, we just have to bring this to the attention of women all over the world. So thank you, Dr. Stephanie. Just keep shouting. But be sure you,

you take some breaks too. Thank you. I will. Thank you. Thank you. Sage advice. Hey, resetters. I just want to start off by saying thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews and those of you that have left me comments on iTunes. I just greatly appreciate your thoughtfulness and how much you guys are enjoying these episodes. And it seems like you're enjoying them as much as I am enjoying doing them. One of the things that I've learned in just interacting with so many people is that we've really lost the art of deep conversations. And for me, the Resetter podcast stands for having meaningful conversations with people who are thinking about health, about life, about mindset in a way that we may not be getting on social

media or in mainstream media. And so I just want to say, give you guys a shout out and just say thank you for participating in this process with me. because as much as I absolutely love delivering the information to you, I love even more knowing that it's impacting your life. So please let us know if there's anything we can do to make this podcast more customized to you, to make it better. We are now officially in season two,

and we are working to bring you the best conversations that health influencers have, that mindset changers can give, and to really deliver you something that you're not able to get anything. anywhere else. So from the bottom of my heart, as I always say my YouTube, from the bottom of my heart, I am deeply appreciative of you. I am deeply grateful to be on this journey with you. And let's get healthy together.