Well with Arielle Lorre - 68: Alisa Vitti - Understanding Our Cycles + How to Optimize Our Hormones to Thrive

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

In this episode I talk to Alisa Vitti, functional nutritionist, women’s hormone expert, author and founder of women's tech platform Flo Living. She breaks down the different phases of our cycles; what changes occur in our bodies, minds and brains; how we can optimize each cycle to truly thrive; and how to support our bodies throughout the process. She explains that with women, period problems are akin to having a fever and should be treated as such. Alisa shares amazing tips and lifestyle modifications to regulate our hormones and say goodbye to the rollercoaster so many of us are on. www.blublox.com/blonde for 15% off your order www.publicgoods.com/blondefiles for $15 off your first order www.sakara.com/blonde for 20% off your first order! Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Hey, welcome to the Blond Files podcast. I'm your host, Ariel Lori, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits. I know there is so much information out there, so I'm here to help you navigate it all and live your best life. Thanks for listening. Let's get into it. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the show. Today's episode is a truly fascinating, dare I say paradigm shifting conversation with Elisa Vidi. She is a functional nutritionist, a women's hormone expert, author and founder of women's tech platform Flow Living. We go deep into periods, hormones, and the fascinating infradian rhythm that affects everything from our

energy, our metabolism, our moods, our brain structure, and more throughout our cycles each month. Elisa breaks down each cycle and how we can optimize our periods so we can absolutely thrive. Enjoy. Okay, so welcome, Elisa. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having the area. I'm thrilled to be here. So, so excited to get into all things, periods and hormones and your new book and everything. And we were just talking off mic a little bit about how I came to know you, which is through Woman Code years ago. And that was really paradigm shifting for me because, you know, I've always had irregular periods. It's just something that I thought was part of my makeup and I've been diagnosed time after time after time with PCOS, even though

the only real marker that I have of that is cystic ovaries. Everything else is, well, obviously, in the irregular period, but hormone-wise, everything is pretty normal. You know, I've been put on birth control and I always thought that that was the answer because that's what I was being told from the authorities. And so when I got your book, it was very paradigm shifting. I had never looked at periods that way. And so I really want to get into all of that and talk about your new book, which is so exciting. But to start off, why don't you just tell us a little bit about you? So I am a functional nutrition, women's hormone expert, and I'm the FemTech founder of Flow Living, which is a platform, a brand that is dedicated to helping women.

get the correct information that they need to understand why they're having period problems or fertility problems or hormone symptoms of any kind, and to then actually be shown very simply what the safe, you know, food-based methods are to recover hormonal balance. And it's something I'm really proud of because I myself went through my own hormonal issue in my teens and early 20s and was really shocked, surprised and shocked that there was no treatment for things like PCOS, which is what I suffered with. And I had much more of a classic presentation than what it sounds like you are dealing with. I had the obesity and the full-blown acne

and the anxiety and the depression and like no menstruation. And not only did I go undiagnosed for seven years, but then when I was able to help my doctor give me the diagnosis, because I was doing research. I was a student at Johns Hopkins, and, you know, that's sort of, I've been a nerd for a long time. So when I helped her diagnose me, she said, you know, there's really nothing that we can do. We can put you on birth control. And then as your other symptoms get worse, because you're at greater risk for diabetes and infertility and heart disease and cancer and dementia, you know, will, we'll just medicate you along the way across your life cycle. And I'm, And I just thought that that was just a really unacceptable version of support, you know,

was not fixing me. It was just, yeah, it was not a real treatment. It was just sort of like a stopgap measure as needed. So I decided that I was going to dedicate myself to figuring out how to help the endocrine system function better and that if I could do that, that I would build the place for periods for women around the world when they don't work. there needs to be a place where we can go, where we can help ourselves get them to work the way that they're supposed to. And I'm just really proud to have built that place because it's historic.

We haven't had a brand dedicated to this before in modern history or any time. And because it's an important issue, there's a big gender gap in the health care equation. And we deserve to have this kind of health care. So I'm a person who's personally suffered with hormonal issues. I'm an entrepreneur, but I'm also really a women's hormonal health care activist, if you will. Yes, and I love the app. It has been such a game changer for me. Again, I've been using it for years, and it's so helpful.

You know, the insights that you get when you log different symptoms and then the community, too. And I love reading other people's comments and their experiences and all of that. It's really, really amazing. Yeah, the My Flow app is something that, you know, is exciting because it helps you understand why you're having symptoms. And again, gives you that functional nutrition perspective on how you can use food for each of those symptoms to really improve your cycle as you are having them, right? Because I think that's the biggest piece of mythology that I think is so, is holding us

back from having our optimal hormonal health. And that piece of mythology is that your period is supposed to be problematic. And coupled that, coupled with there's nothing you can do to make it better. It's biblical in a way. Like women are supposed to suffer. And so it's the curse and it's just we'll never get any better. So when you have symptoms, right, you ignore them. And let's just do a little comparison here just to show the insanity of this mythology. So, when you have a fever, especially now in the world of COVID, like when you have a fever, right, you become really concerned about that, yes? And then you take action, right?

You seek medical freedom or you take a fever reducer or you make chicken soup or you hydrate, you rest, you do things that you know will support your body to overcome the virus. Right. When you have PMS or you have clots or you have massive cramping. or you have, you know, any of those PMS symptoms or irregular periods or too frequent periods or you name it. What do you do? Nothing.

Right. Right? And it is, it's insane because that is your body's biofeedback just like a fever to tell you that something is wrong and it needs your help. And in fact, this is not just my opinion. In 2015, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologist, decreed that your cycle is your fifth vital sign along with your temperature, your blood pressure, right?

Right. So you do want to take your period symptoms as seriously as you would take developing a fever and you want to get into immediate action. And that's what I love about the Myflow app and that you can download at MyflowTracker.com is that you're going to learn what those actions could be for you based on your symptoms. It's very empowering because then you're not guessing and you are. really learning as you go. By now, you guys probably know my love for blue blocks, blue light blocking glasses, and I just have to tell you about what happened to me last week. So I was traveling to see family.

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get free shipping worldwide and 15% off with the code blonde. That's B-L-O-N-D-E. Or you can go to blueblocks.com slash blonde. That's B-L-U-B-L-O-X.com slash blonde. B-L-O-N-D-E. Through their work with restoring vision for each pair of Blue Blocks purchase, they donate a pair of reading glasses to someone in need. So you're not only helping yourself, but you are helping someone else. So again, that's blueblocks.com slash blonde or use the code blonde for 15% off. Hey, this is Alexis Haynes. Join me every Monday for a new episode of my podcast, recovering from reality. Whether you're on the road to recovery, seeking self-care techniques for surviving the capitalist

machine, or just need a moment to remember that you're not alone in your loneliness. I'm here to deliver intimate conversations and expert insights to empower you on the road towards authentic wellness. So are you ready to recover from reality? So before we get into like cycle syncing and everything that you talk about, let's talk about the pill just briefly because, you know, a lot of people are either told to suffer through whatever their symptoms are or they're told to go on the pill. And I know for myself, like I really believed for many years that the birth control pill would regulate my hormones and regulate my cycle. And it wasn't in many years later that I learned that that's not really the case. So for people who don't know,

could you just briefly speak to that and what it actually does? Yeah. So the pill does not regulate your cycle. The pill shuts off your hypothalamic, pituitary ovarian access. And another way of saying that is it shuts off the conversation between your brain and your ovaries. So you do not ovulate and you do not menstruate. And you'll say, but Alisa, I bleed. So obviously I'm having a period. No, you are not having a period or a cycle. You are just having some occasional breakthrough bleeding, which for those of you who may have been on birth control for many, many years, you know that that too can just evaporate as well. And you may not have any breakthrough bleeding. And so you're just taking these synthetic hormones that are at very low levels that do not allow you to ovulate or

build up the lining of your uterus or to have a menstrual cycle. Now, the only form of birth control that allows you to ovulate is the copper IUD. So in that situation, you'll still ovulate and you then will have a real bleed. But a lot of women find that that copper IUD creates an intensification of cramping, and that's due to the actual copper, which can be modified by taking supplemental zinc. But, yeah, that's, you know, a lot of women are less interested in using IUDs as a form of birth control before they have children because of risk of scarring and difficulty with implantation.

So there's that. So I think the first thing off the bat is to just know that if you're taking synthetic birth control to fix your period, it is absolutely not doing that. It's just suppressing your natural hormonal cycle and giving you a synthetic one that is not actually doing anything. It's not ovulating. It's not menstruating. And why would you care about ovulation? Obulation is so critical. Every single ovulation that you have during your reproductive years puts money in your health bank account for when you are postmenopausal. Specifically, every ovulation protects your heart, your brain, and your bones while you are

ovulating. And then all of that ovulation that you are banking during your reproductive years protects your brain, your heart, and your bones when you no longer menstruate. So, so important. So if you want to set yourself up to be a super fit, strong, awesome, with it, woman, you know, 50 plus years old, you want to be ovulating from puberty to menopause. And that means you don't want to be on the pill. The other reason why you would want to reconsider taking synthetic birth control beyond the fact that it doesn't fix what's wrong with your period and that it really robs you

of a healthy future from a cardiovascular neuro and osteo point of view is that you also are being massively depleted of micronutrients while you take it, right? Because the synthetic hormones need to be flushed out of your system. There are study after study that documents how it destroys your gut bacteria balance. It robs you of magnesium. It depletes your B vitamins. It can reduce your vitamin D3 levels. All of these things are extremely critical for your health, short term and long term. And mind you, they also are this very same micronutrients that your body needs in abundance to even make healthy hormones in the first place. So oftentimes what women experience is that they feel worse after having been exposed to this medication because in fact it is creating a lot of internal

negative side effects that you then have to deal with in a cleanup kind of way when you come off of the medication. It's frustrating because no one is telling you that before you take it. It's like this very normalized thing. Like, oh yeah, everyone everyone's just normalized. this conversation to say, oh, just take it. It's totally safe. It's fine. And it, you know, it's relatively safe and it's relatively fine. But for the purposes, and if you want to use it just for strict birth control, that's totally your choice and should be. But if you're using it to fix PCOS or any other period problem or acne, there is 100 million percent a better way to go about it that is going to make you healthier in the short term and give you huge payoffs from a

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So could you tell us about all of that? Yes. So my new book, In The Flow, it is the first book to talk about the infaradion. And for those of you who are listening and saying, well, what isn't in Fradian rhythm exactly? We need to know what that is and I'll tell you why. But before I dive into that, I want to just sort of back up into why I wrote this second book because the origin story of this book is really, really important for you to know for your own well-being.

So I've been taking care of women's health for 20 years and I've been looking at some phenomenon that's sort of taken place over the past. five, six years, right? Five, six years ago, we started having this really interesting thing take place where people were talking more about menstruation in a public forum. People were really sharing that on social media. It was like a renaissance of, well, really, that would imply that there was a time before where we were talking about menstruation so publicly, but it was like a revolutionary moment. And I thought, gee, this is great. And I was being invited to participate with so many different stories on articles like with Well and Good

and mind, body, green. And I thought, wonderful. Okay, now we're finally, we have a platform that can universally distribute information about what information about menstruation you should know about. And we were having a very positive, proactive conversation. And I thought finally, we can turn the corner and we'll have more content, more access, and more healthy women. But what I saw instead, Ariel, was that the statistics were not budging, you know, because the reality is that almost 50% of women are struggling with the hormone imbalance, right? So if you think you're the only one, it is so not the case. It's half of women are struggling with a hormonal imbalance. And when I, and I said, gee, that seems like a high percentage. But let me compare. You know, when you compare

it to sort of the male cohort, it's something like under 10% of men struggle with hormonal issues. It's rare. It's the exception. Whereas for women, it's 50%. That's the norm. Right? We're talking 50%. That's a norm. So that's not right. And I started to ask why. Why is that the case? And I found two answers, and that was really why I decided to write this book. So the first thing that I discovered was that women are being left out of medical fitness and nutrition research. This is really unsustainable. And the medical community realizes that. And actually back in 1996, they put out a special, you know, request that women should be in. included in, you know, clinical trials with humans. And unfortunately, though, as of 2016,

the status report was that progress has been, you know, slim. So we still don't have enough medical research being done on actual females in their reproductive years. Then, so that's concerning for many reasons. But when we look at the nutrition and fitness side of things, this is, this is more problematic because, you know, we can appreciate that we maybe want to protect women in their reproductive years from drug trials because they may be pregnant or it may have adverse effects on fertility or on developing children. And so that's obviously why women are excluded. But when it comes to nutrition and fitness research where you're not actually taking any sort of experimental drug, right? There's really no excuse to leave women out of the equation.

So that was discovery number one. And discovery number two is that we have this second biological clock that you have never heard about before. And it has a name. And it is called the infradian rhythm, INF, R-A-D-I-A-N. And it's equally as important as your circadian rhythm, which you've heard loads about. In fact, a couple years ago, two dudes won the Nobel Prize for discovering which gene controls the circadian rhythm. Very exciting development in the science in the field of chronobiology. You know, wonderful. But nobody's doing any research on the infradian rhythm. Why? Because of our, I guess, our cultural bias to devalue the female body in some way. And so this gender bias is really problematic. So you have this second clock. It governs six key systems of

your body. Okay. So if you have a symptom that shows up in any of these systems of your body, this is why. It governs your brain, your metabolism, your immune system, your microbiome, your stress response system and your reproductive system. So if you've been walking around thinking, oh, gee, I have all of these unconnected issues. They're connected through the infradian rhythm. And guess what? All those diets, all those fitness programs, the way that you're living that is optimizing male biology, which follows its hormonal pattern, follows a circadian 24-hour pattern, is actively disrupting your infradian pattern, your infradian rhythm, and then causing these six key systems of the body to go haywire and become very symptomatic and and

troubled. And so that's the bad news. All of that's the bad news and and the good news is that I've been able to create a solution that allows you to support your infradian rhythm the way that it needs to be. And that is called the cycle sinking method. And that basically has, it's a three-pillar system. You have, you have to change what you're eating. You have to change the way you're working out. And then you manage your time a little bit differently to factor in both the infradian and circadian clocks. And it's super simple, right? Because you, like I said, you experience the circadian clock over the course of 24 hours. It controls bodily functions, for example, in systems of the body like when your bowels are most active, when your blood pressure is most elevated, et cetera. But you also have this

infradian clock from puberty to menopause. And it governs those systems. So you experience that over the course of 28 days, your four-phase cycle, right? And so you change what you're eating based on the phase of the cycle you're in. You change which workouts you do to optimize the biochemistry of that phase. And you take advantage of the cognitive superpowers that you get based on this affradian-infraean effect on the brain to work much more productively and efficiently while decreasing stress. It's a phenomenal solution where you stop finally disrupting your infradian rhythm and you start thriving in your body. Yes, you know, a lot of women report one of the first things that they, um, experiences like an elimination of their PMS symptoms

or a massive reduction in PMS and their cycle becomes much more regular. But then it's, then it's so much more than that. Then you're finally optimizing your metabolism. You're optimizing your immune system. You're optimizing your stress response system. You're optimizing your creativity and productivity. you get so much bang for your buck of investing in the right nutrition and fitness and lifestyle program based on your actual biology. It's just really exciting to be able to share that with women. So that's that's why I wrote it. It's time. You guys know I am all about nourishing my body with the most nutritious, wholesome ingredients I can find. And to be totally honest, it's been kind of a struggle to find the time and the energy to whip up meals from scratch with so,

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excited. Along with delicious meals, Sakara has daily wellness essentials and herbal teas to support your nutrition. To boost results, definitely try the best-selling metabolism super powder. It's an all-natural remedy for bloating, weight gain, and fatigue, and it is amazing. And you guys also have to try their bars. They're so good. I'm addicted. Sikara is delivered fresh nationwide, and you guys, they're offering my listeners 20% off their first order when they go to saccarra.com slash blonde. That's S-A-K-A-R-A-com slash B-L-O-N-D-E or enter blonde at checkout. Again, that's saccara.com slash blonde to get 20% off your first order. I can definitely trace part of my, like, journey, for lack of a better word, back to probably

massively disrupting my infradian rhythm because I definitely bought into what is really pushed on women, which is that we need to restrict more and work out more and harder. And, you know, I really, really, really ran my body down to the point where I could barely even function. You know, I had to massively step back, stop exercising for a while, focus on nourishing my body and my mind and rest and all of that. And then I incorporated more like slow, intentional kind of Pilates-esque movement, and that was really healing for my body. Obviously, I'm still experiencing some issues, but it does make a big difference. And so I want to get into kind of what happens biologically throughout the infradian rhythm. But I have a question first because I had people send in

questions on Instagram. And like myself, there were many women who don't really get periods or they get periods every three or four months. So my first question is, is how do you know where you are in the cycle if you're not menstruating? Yeah, that's my question. Yeah, so as I outlined, so there's a whole biohacking section within the book, a toolkit for all of these different problems in the flow. So it goes through a myriad of scenarios from what if you have PCOS, what if your cycle's irregular, what if you're having, what if you're breastfeeding,

what if you're postpartum, what if you're perimenopausal, what if you're on the pill? What if you're just coming off the pill? So I really went and made sure to answer all those questions in the tool fit. Because exactly, there could be so many different scenarios that you come to trying to support your infreidian rhythm. And because you have been unknowingly, and please, I mean, no one should be blaming herself for disrupting her infratian rhythm because you didn't even know that it existed. And you've been counseled to do things. things that further disrupted. So we've all been disrupting our infradian rhythm unknowingly, inadvertently. And so you may come to this practice of the cycle-syncing method with various

degrees of infradian disruption. And that could look like massively delayed periods. You could have a ludial phase defect. You could have a menstrual disorder. So there may be a need for you to do two to three months of what I call the sort of cleanup phase, which is the flow process. protocol that I outlined the first three steps of the flow protocol that's in woman code to get your endocrine system to come back online properly. And that just really entails you committing to a blood sugar stabilizing diet and a cortisol mindful exercise plan and really getting your elimination on track with your gut for a month or two. And once your endocrine system knows that it's getting these things in a regular interval, then your endocrine system, you know,

system will start to perform better and your cycles can start to be more for the people who are having these massively delayed periods it can make that really start to get back on track and then you can move into the cycle syncing method as you should for those of you who are having let's say so that's for if your period is you know three to four months apart you really you've got to fix that right that's just that's a pretty that's a pretty significant sign of severe infradian disruption right But if, let's say your cycle is, you know, 35 to 45 days long, right? That's not great. But you can absolutely start cycle sinking as opposed to having to do all that big cleanup, right? So it's really about the degree of severity. And then, for example, let's say you are somebody who has this slightly longer cycle, 28 to anything over 28 days. You would want to say, okay, well, I'm in. in an extended ludial phase. So you would do the eating and exercising and lifestyle piece that would be for that extended

ludial phase until you started bleeding. And then you would just start, you'd pick up the next phase as they came. Right. But that's what you're having. You're having a ludial phase defect. And eating more of the foods and doing more of the workouts from the ludial phase will actually help heal that leudial phase defect pretty effectively. Okay.

So can we break down a little bit? like what happens to our bodies and I'm really interested what happens in our minds. I know that you talk about like neurochemistry and I'm really fascinated by obviously all of it, but especially like what happens with our moods. It's so exciting. So in 1996, Dr. Catherine Woolley at Northwestern University took it upon herself because it's not like there's enough research being done. So she took it upon herself to really understand the female brain. And she had some pretty revolutionary findings, which were that the female brain changes structurally by 25% over the course of the month, right, this infratum cycle. So you are, the different regions of your brain are more or less

stimulated at different times across the cycle. And that's really powerful. Because, for example, during ovulation, because of the massive surge of estrogen that you have during ovulation, this very peak surge for a very short period of time, the verbal and social centers of your brain become hyper-stimulated, which gives you this enormous verbal and social advantage during this ovulation phase in real time that you can use in a variety of ways, right? You can use it to schedule things that allow you to reap the benefits of being verbal and social. That could be making a presentation at work, giving a talk, going to a networking event, going on a first date, whatever you want to use it for, that is happening to you. And why wouldn't you want to take advantage of it?

It's funny because I always know when I'm in that phase because I feel it. I mean, it's such a drastic difference from how I am throughout the rest of the month. It's so funny. But then I never get a period after, unfortunately. But I can tell, like, from changes in my body and my energy and my sociability and the pretty much the speed with which I can articulate things, you know, it's just all, it's a little, it's, it's way more enhanced than it normally is. Yeah, it's a natural, it's like you have this natural neutropic that your gift for it every month, right? You don't have to take one. You just have one. And it's exciting because, you know, and I always like to start when I introduce this concept to women because it

feels really foreign to us at first, but I do want to sort of really make an analogy to what men do, because men have been doing this for centuries. They biohack their circadian hormonal pattern all day long every day. In fact, that is what corporate culture is based on. That is what anything you've heard of any like morning routine, the power mornings, the whatever they call them, that early to bed, early to rise, that's because if men go to bed at 10 o'clock and wake up at 5 a.m., they will make a perfect concentration of testosterone for the next day. They'll wake up when it is being released into their body and they'll be able to take advantage of it while it is there available to them, which is why they also do that kind of morning

routine that involves like an intense workout and then some deep work because as they progress throughout the day, starting around lunchtime, their testosterone and cortisol starts to decrease in concentration and they are less able to concentrate and they're less able to gain lean muscle and they have less energy, which is why biohacking and neutropics and upgraded coffee and all of these things are so popular amongst the male biohackers because they do every single day fall off that energy cliff, whereas you do not, as a female, because you are not run by a single circadian clock like men are, you are run by circadian and this magical, powerful infradian clock, you don't fall off an energy cliff. But back to the original point, men are

cycle-sinking for themselves all the time. I mean, think about any male athletic coach training male athletes, right? They will select specific times in the day to do cardio, although they'll select specific times of the day to do strength training because there are specific documented research times of day based on this hormonal pattern in men where they can get a lot more bang for their buck if they're lifting weights at this perfect time, right? They'll gain more lean muscle doing it at a specific time than doing it randomly. And the same thing with productivity and sex drive and all of that stuff. The same is true for women. The problem is that we've been told that we have to use that circadian model. Right?

Get up early in the morning, do a big workout, you know, eat at the times that work for the male biological rhythm and then, you know, try to do as much networking as that. And every day the same, the same the same. Yeah. That is so fundamentally flawed and wrong for the female biological reality that that is why you are not feeling as good as you're supposed to feel as your nature has designed you feel. And that's why you're not achieving what you want to achieve in your life. Let me give you a real example of that when it comes to, let's say, the productivity piece and the brain piece. So let's say you're in your ludial phase. And I'm going to back up and break down the phases in a second. But let's say you're in your ludial phase. This is a phase where you have higher resting levels of cortisol.

And it's a time of the month where you have a faster metabolism. If you wake up at 5 a.m. Like you're quote unquote supposed to to do your power morning, you are actually going to disrupt cortisol and blood sugar for the entire day. You will be brain foggy and you will exacerbate your PMS symptoms and you might actually start turning on fat storage. Just from waking up when it's good for men. Right. Right. This is why it's so important to become fluent in the language of your female biochemistry

because it is distinct from that of men. See, the problem is, and you touched upon this earlier, Ariel, was that, you know, you were mentioning how you had sort of gotten yourself into a bad spot because you were over-training and all of that. Well, this whole idea that we have to push ourselves and force ourselves to do things that are not good for us that are to try to do what the men do is really hurting us, right? And if we don't know how our bodies work, we're going to do things that hurt them by accident. And that's what's happening for at least 50% of women, if not all, because we're all disrupting our infrating rhythm, like we said before, unknowingly. So let's break down the phases because, I'm sure you're all dying to know what these are at this point. So you have your four phases. You have the follicular, the ovulatory, the ludial, and the menstrual phase, the bleeding phase.

And I'll talk through metabolism and stress response and the brain piece so that you have like a basic understanding of the foundations of these three pillars for food, fitness, and time management. Perfect. So in the first half of your cycle, follicular and ovulatory, you have a slower metabolism. and you have lower resting levels of cortisol, which means what is optimal for you here is to have to eat less, eat lighter, and to work out more intensively, cardio and high intensity interval training,

because your blood sugar is naturally more stable with fewer calories and your body can sustain the intense workouts. This trifecta of the combination of what's happening metabolically with cortisol levels, coupled with the changes, what you're going to be eating calorically and how you're going to be working out, will result in you building the optimal amount of lean muscle and burning the optimal amount of fat. Whether you're trying to lose weight or not, it's just important that you use your fat stores for fuel when you're working out, right? That's what's going to happen in follicular and ovulatory phases. Plus, you're going to be

in chapter four of in the flow. There's this magical food chart, the food flow chart, and you're going to see which foods are listed for each of the four phases. And that's important, too, because it's not just about calories. It's also about what you're eating because, for example, as we heard earlier, you have this huge estrogen surge during ovulation. Now, some of you say, yeah, I notice that because I break out, right? That's a sign of improper elimination of your estrogen. If you have mid-cycle breakouts or mid-cycle, any sort of symptom that feels like PMS,

that's estrogen dominance. and that means you're not eliminating. In the food flow chart for ovulation, you're going to be eating a very plant-forward, very raw-oriented diet, salad, smoothies. Things are going to feel like a normal diet to you, like a typical diet recommendation. You're going to be using these raw veggies

to supercharge your liver with vitamin C, with selenium, with glutathione, with all of these micronutrients that you're going to need to actually help your body, go through the phases of detoxification that allow you to break down estrogen and prevent you from having those symptoms. So we're not just thinking about calories here. We're also thinking about how do we use the food functionally to support the hormones that are active in that phase.

And that's what's so magical about the food flow chart in chapter four of the book. Then in the second half of the cycle, the luteal and bleeding phases, your metabolism speeds up, as I mentioned earlier, and your resting cortisol levels are higher. So what this means is that, and this is documented, studied, and you should know this, that if you do high-intensity interval training after ovulation, you will turn on muscle wasting and you will turn on fat storage. Wow. Right?

So that's really, really important because if you think that the keys to optimizing your physique or getting more fit, are doing the same workout consistently, like show up, put in the time, no pain, no gain, and just push through it. Actually, it's completely false. And this is something that the U.S. women's soccer team uses this knowledge about the Infradian cycle and these metabolic shifts to train their female athletes to optimal performance. In fact, the other key thing that you need to know about your faster metabolism is that you need 279 more calories per day during the second happen. Hallelujah. And by the way, if you don't eat them, if you try to just say, well, I just, I feel more comfortable if I just eat smoothies and salads like I did last week in my ovulation

phase, well, if you do that and you keep that eating pattern in the ludial phase and you deprive yourself of the calories, guess what's happening? You're going to disrupt your blood sugar. You're going to start going into fat storage mode. And you're going to cause a cortisol response in the body, which is what causes that fat storage. It's so interesting not to interrupt you, but I'm just thinking about like my own cycle and, you know, I can easily recognize when I'm in these different phases. And like, for example, three weeks ago, you know, I had tons of energy. I could do hit workouts. I could go for long walks later in the afternoon. I didn't have as big of an appetite. All of that. And then like that lasts for a week or maybe a little more I can't

remember. And then things change and I have less energy and I'm hungrier. And it feels like, what happened? Something went wrong. So it's really encouraging to know that these are just kind of phases that we cycle through and that it's not something going wrong or something amiss in the body. It's just, you know, what's happening to us biologically. Yeah, your metabolism shifts. And again, when you don't know what's happening, you can feel alarmed or confused or concerned. And then again, then you don't know what to do. And so what we tend to do is we tend to continue to try to restrict calories. And then what happens is your biology takes over, right? You need these more, you need these calories. And so you need them for blood sugar stability. You need them for your cycle to function

properly. And so your body will create, will secrete, you know, powerful neurotransmitter, specifically ghrelin to stimulate your appetite. And then you will find yourself very quickly in a binge situation, right? You're like, you've been good all day, but then all of a sudden, the hungry monster takes over and you're eating everything in the pantry, right? And if that is happening, if you've had episodes of that, and you've just chalked it up to PMS, again, this is a sign that you have a fever, right? This is a sign that something is wrong. You're not giving your body. This is biofeedback. Your body needs calories. You're not giving it to them, and it will force you to eat anything in sight to get those calories. So instead of waiting for that, what you'll learn

in the cycle-sinking method is you're going to proactively front-load your diet with nutrient-dense foods that are calorie-rich in a healthy way during the ludial phase to keep your blood sugar stable, to keep your cortisol levels where they should be to not trigger fat storage. And you're going to feel great. You're not going to have cravings and your PMS is going to go away because you're also going to be eating foods that really help nurture progesterone production, which is what causes PMS. PMS is the hormonal imbalance of having too much estrogen and not enough progesterone. And when you're going to be eating the foods from the Luteal phase that help your body make more progesterone, that PMS is really going to be something

that's a distant memory, as it should be. You're not designed to have PMS. That's just a biofeedback that's letting you know your infradian cycles not being supported and you need to take some action. So that's the sort of high-level food and fitness piece. And then it gets really exciting with project and time management because those natural proclivities that your brain is being stimulated to have because of your hormonal fluctuations are just so much fun to take advantage of and to really use to your advantage. So, for example, we talked about the ovulatory phase with the heightened verbal and social skills. But the luteal phase is actually probably my favorite phase, which I know.

feels crazy because everybody thinks that's the worst phase rich with PMS and it's like, you know, a time that you feel like you get to waste every month. But nature gave you, that's the longest phase of your cycle. It's anywhere from 10 to 14 days because of this introduction of progesterone. Progesterone has this really extraordinary effect on the brain. It's very calming and soothing and focusing at the same time. So if you are calm and focused, you're on. unstoppable, right? That's the time for you to do your deep work. I always schedule, like, if I'm going to do writing for my book or if I'm going to, you know, create a new course or if I'm going to formulate products or whatever I'm going to do, that's like deep work. I'm doing it in my

ludial phase because I'm fully wanting to take advantage of this brain effect that is being triggered by my hormonal stages from this infradian rhythm, right? It's wonderful. And, And you can, and there's a planner. It's the first planner of its kind, actually, to incorporate both the infradian and circadian rhythm. It's in chapter six of in the flow. And you'll be able to use this to help you take advantage of all of these different cognitive shifts and to learn how to project plan across the month so that you can get more done with less effort by really tapping into what is happening in your brain chemistry across the infradian cycle. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I feel like I always know when I'm getting that progesterone because it's kind of, I mean, I sleep way better. I want to go to bed at like 9 o'clock and it happens right away. And it feels like I'm more optimistic. I don't know if that's just me or I don't know. I think that's a reasonable side effect of having healthy progesterone levels. Yeah.

Yeah, no, it's my favorite. I even said to my husband last month, I was like, ooh, I'm getting a progesterone. He's like, what are you talking about? But I could tell because I was very calm, kind of like rested but alert and, you know, like I said, sleeping really well and all of that. So super fascinating to learn about all of that. And obviously everybody listening should definitely go out. And if they don't have woman code, get that and then of course get in the flow so that, you know, we can all learn about this and we can all take charge of what's going on in our bodies instead of feeling victimized by it. I did get a ton of questions and I know we don't have very much time, but there were just a couple if we can go over those now.

Absolutely. Okay, great. So somebody said that they either have their period or they feel like their body is preparing for it. So in other words, like all the time, they either feel like they're probably PMSing or they have their period. And I can relate to that because that happened to me for a long time. Why is that? Where someone is constantly bleeding? I think she means like she's either she either has her period or I'll say, I'll speak to my experience with this. So I used to either get my period for like a week. And then the other three, four weeks in between, I felt like I was PMSing where I was bloated all the time. I would have like some kind of intermittent acne, sensitive breasts, all of that. Okay. So I think that it's really just a situation of perception

versus reality here in the sense that it's unlikely that after your bleed was completed, that you would go right back into sort of that PMS phase. Now you may have had acne and bloating that were that's unrelated to the ludial phase. So for example, you could have a gut microbiome disruption that would cause you to feel bloated all the time, right? That's about your gut bacteria you could have, which would also lead to more constant acne. When you have imbalanced hormones as a whole, you can have acne throughout the cycle. So there's many reasons why that can happen, but you are not in a three-week luteal phase and then bleeding. That just would not ever be the case.

So that being said, you know, again, you would just sort of, you want to start to ask yourself the question of what am I doing that is making it impossible for my body to do its beautiful job of balancing my hormones and creating a healthy cycle. Like what have you done? Because it's, it's something that we're doing, unfortunately, by accident often, right? So that could be things like, oh, could be eating dairy products that are A1 casein protein based, right? So cow dairy in the United States typically is is more the A1 protein that are creating tiny microscopic tears in the small intestinal lining that are then creating leaky gut that's creating like an autoimmune response in your body. And that's

creating all sorts of bloating and gut havoc and skin issues and making it difficult for you to have a healthy functioning body, right? That could be a thing. It could be. It could be, that you are taking medication like the birth control pill that is creating gut disruption, or you have a history of that you haven't recovered properly from. And anybody of you who has listened to the part that we talked about birth control and you are off of it or thinking of going off of it, please reach out to our team. You can email support at Flow Living and ask for our free birth control rehab guide to help you navigate properly, getting off that medication safely with your physicians

monitoring you because it's not it's not something you just want to jump off by yourself but you want to you do want to recover your gut your micronutrient load you really want to take the right supplements and it will show you how to do that safely with your your doctor and you know you want to you really want to become sort of like a citizen scientist and investigate why is this happening to me as opposed to feeling like a victim where you just give up and don't don't ask those questions because ultimately we have to get really active and take a lot of action to help our bodies kind of like in a maternal way, you know, if any of you have kids, you know, when your kid needs something, you're not like, oh, gosh, you're bleeding, you need a band-aid, what's wrong with you?

You know, you're just like, oh my goodness, let's, you get really positive. You're like, okay, let's put some soap and water and clean up the cut and let's get a band-aid. Oh, why don't you pick one that you like? And, you know, I have a little girl, so like, this is what we do when we get cuts, right? And we make it a positive experience, right? Because she needs to learn, not only do I want to take care of her, but she also needs to learn what it looks like to take care of herself, that it's a positive experience that you don't begrudge yourself, you know, taking care of yourself. But so many of us, because of how we've been trained to think about our bodies as women, we begrudge ourselves this

self-care. We're like, oh, my period, like, I just want it to work. I don't want to have to do anything about it. Why is this problem? Like just, you know, we have to get more invested, emotionally concerned about our periods and to develop a loving, compassionate response to it. So, I mean, there's many things to say, but I would say if that's happening, it's just a sign of a variety of things not going well in various systems of your body. And the more you start to support your infradian rhythm, the more you're going to take care of all of those systems. That's why this cycle-sinking method is so exciting because instead of feeling like you have to do this one thing for your gut and this one thing for your skin and this one thing for your brain fog

and this one thing for your period, you're doing one system that takes care of all of the bodies, major systems, one practice that takes care of all of these systems and you get, you get more relief in a variety of areas faster. Right. Okay. Somebody, said, am I even ovulating if my periods are three months apart? You might not be. You might not be. And you would want to, again, investigate why, what's going on that's preventing ovulation or your testosterone levels high or is your prolactin level off, is your thyroid level off?

You know, what is causing your amenorrhea that you're having these massively delayed periods? Is your insulin level off? you know, what is going on. You have to do a little investigation, but you absolutely should be having monthly ovulation and monthly bleeding. If you're not, you need to, you need to work until you do. Right. Okay. This could probably be its own podcast episode, but somebody said they were diagnosed with PCOS, but their hormones are normal. Why is this? That's an interesting question. It could be that they were misdiagnosed. You know, you have to have certain hormonal markers along with and not necessarily.

You don't need to present with cystic ovaries to have PCOS. It's really those hormonal markers that are required. So, you know, if you're not satisfied with that diagnosis, I would go and get some further testing and figure out what is going on. And, of course, what symptoms are you having, right? if you're having amenorrhea and someone thinks that you have PCOS but you don't have cystic ovaries and you don't have any hormonal markers for PCOS, then something else might be going on. You might want to look at hypothalamic amenorrhea.

You know, is there eating disorder taking place? Like what is happening that would cause your period to go missing? Are you overtraining? For example, just doing things like the ketogenic diet can cause a woman to disrupt ovulation. and cause thyroid suppression and throw off your cycle. So have you done diets that are disrupting your infradian rhythm, your hormonal pattern? There are so many reasons. There are so many roads that lead to hormonal disruption because the whole map is

really designed the map of all these different diets, intermittent fasting, high-intensity training, keto, upgraded coffee, whatever it is. All of that, those roads lead to. to male hormonal optimization and they lead to female hormonal disruption. So you have to start to look at, well, how many of those things, how many of those roads have you gone down? And how long has it been? And why are you in the situation that you're in? So do a little bit more digging. Well, I am so excited to start my cycle sinking journey again. It's been a few years, but you've really, you've definitely inspired me. And I fall into a lot of the categories, you know, that we

talked about and that people who sent questions in fell into, you know, a lot of, it's really kind of astonishing how many women are either diagnosed with these things or struggle with hormonal issues. And it's so nice that there's somebody out there presenting a solution for us. So thank you. Oh, it's my pleasure to do it. And yeah, because as you said, so many of us are struggling and so much of that suffering is totally unnecessary, right? Because I'm sure as you've been listening, you're thinking, gee, if it's just been a factor of all this diet and lifestyle disruption that has caused my system to go out of balance, that never needed to take place in the first place, right? Can you imagine if at 9 and 10 you were given an education like a heads up, like, hey,

you're going to have an infradian rhythm that gets activated at puberty. And then once it's active, you just have to start changing what you're eating when and which workouts you do which week, and then you're good to go. If that little, easy, simple information was given at the right time, it would completely change your health trajectory. You could avoid 20 years of hormonal imbalance and infratian disruption. Who knows where you would end up having had access to that information at the correct time. So yes, I think that's why I'm so passionate about sharing this information with women is

because so much hormonal imbalance is unnecessary and avoidable, but you need to have the correct education and information. And I'm very happy that in the flow is becoming this touchstone for women to help them understand and build that literacy with their biochemistry to know what to do to biohack like women because you're not tiny men. What applies to them does not apply to you. We have to start valuing how our bodies work and taking care of them the way that they would prefer. Absolutely. Well, you are amazing. Where can everybody find you? So if you need support with your period, it's super disrupted and you know that you can't start the cycle thinking method because you've got to get that back on track. Please come to flowliving.com. That is that, you know, period fixing platform

that I built for everybody so that they can get themselves sorted out. And we have a variety of programs and services there from coaching to digital programs. If you are struggling, with any sort of post-pill micronutrient depletion or you suspect that your micronutrient levels could be low from overtraining or over-dieting or birth control exposure, check out the balance supplements that we have at Flow Living that I formulated to specifically address that issue. If you are looking for the app, you can get that at myflowtracker.com and make sure it's the app that has the circle icon and not the feather because that's not my app. And then if you are interested in joining a global community of women who are using the cycle-sinking method, you can do that.

That's called Flow 28. And you can join us at Cyclesinking membership.com. You can download a ton of free gifts with the book purchase at In the Flowbook.com. And you can follow me on social at Flowliving and at alisa.viti. Amazing. Well, thank you again. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. I hope you enjoyed that episode.

If you liked it, and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes a long way, and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, you can head over to The Blonde Files podcast on Instagram. I'm always posting about each episode there or over on my personal page at Area Lauren. me.