35: The One Thing Your Trainer Never Told You About Your Period

What if the reason you feel exhausted, inconsistent, and like nothing is working isn't a lack of discipline, but that no one ever taught you how your body actually works? Adrienne Irizarry, host of The Reproductive Rebel podcast, joins this episode for a conversation that will fundamentally change the way you think about your body, your training, and your cycle. Whether you're in your prime cycling years or deep in the fog of perimenopause, this episode gives you the tools to stop working against yourself and start working with your biology. Adrienne breaks down the four phases of the menstrual cycle and explains what's happening hormonally, physically, and mentally in each one - and exposes how most women have been operating off a blueprint designed for a male body. You'll learn exactly when to push hard in the gym, when to pull back, and why ignoring those signals may be the only thing standing between you and the results you've been chasing.

Connect with Adrienne Irizarry:

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In This Episode:

• (01:20) Meet Adrienne Irizarry
• (06:15) The massive gap in reproductive education
• (11:00) Breaking down the 4 phases of your menstrual cycle
• (19:45) Training your life around your cycle
• (23:10) Why injuries happen at certain points in your cycle
• (28:20) When to push vs. pull back in your workouts

Connect with Daffney:

The Game-Changer Consult → This 60 min deep dive offers you clarity and insight into what’s possible for your next 60 days. Leave this consult feeling full of possibility and with the energy of purpose!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

A lot of women are training against their bodies. And it's exactly why you feel exhausted, inconsistent, and like nothing is working. Because no one has ever taught you this. Your body is not designed to perform the same way every single day of the month. And today we're going to break that sentence wide open. I am joined by Adrian Ayazari, a cycle alchemist who helps women understand exactly what's happening inside of their body throughout their menstrual cycle, and how actually working with your body instead of fighting it yields all the benefits. We're going to get into what your cycle really looks like when you push harder, when you pull back, and why so many women are feeling like they're failing when in reality they've been following the wrong blueprint. Welcome to Don't Fing Shrink, the podcast, where we stop playing small and start showing up big. I'm your host, Daphne Allwine. And I'm here to cut through the noise, ditch the self-doubt, and get honest about what it takes to live and lead with unapologetic confidence. Each week you'll hear unfiltered conversations, powerful stories, and in real life strategies to help you take up space in your life, your work, and your world. So buckle up because shrinking is not an option here. Let's dive in. Hey Adrian, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:24

I'm so great. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm it's a delight to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

I'm so excited to hear. And if you don't know already or you're not following her already, Adrienne has her own podcast, The Reproductive Rebel. And it is actually just really digging in. And we're not here to diagnose anybody, but we want to give you real thought leadership, real skills, real tools to consider your cycle, because it doesn't always require a pill or a surgery or an interaction. A lot of what we're feeling and acknowledging as women, especially women still in our cycles, in our in our periods, the way we are showing up in the world, whether it's our nervous system, our mindset, or physical ability, really does teeter and put a lot of emphasis and energy into how we move forward based on what cycle we're in.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Yes. Oh my goodness, yes. So I probably should define cycle alchemist a little bit. So I work with people in all of the seasons and cycles of their life. Okay. So I help young girls get their period started in a healthy way. Goodness, there are so many that have cramps these days. I help with period problems. So cramps, PMS, PMDD, when your cycle isn't working really well. And this actually dovetails with our conversation today. When your nervous system feels like it's being chased by a tiger, it will show up in your reproductive system. And you know, we can dive into why as we go through. But I work with the fertility journey. So when people are struggling to get pregnant, when they've been given that kiss of death, unexplained infertility diagnosis, and they don't know where to go. I am totally your girl. That's actually why I got started in this work, because I was one of those people. And I went to all the specialists in the land and there were no answers. And so I was like, well, you know what? I was the Y child growing up. Like, there has to be a reason why this is not working for me. And I went in search of that answer. So I'm I'm particularly versed at the fertility journey. Um, I specialize in 35 and older because that tends to be the portion of the fertility population that gets gaslit the most often.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

And now perimenopause, like, not just because I'm in it, but because there are millions of us hitting this phase of our life right now, going, what the fuck is going on in my body? And, you know, people who've had babies later, it's like, is it perimenopause? Is it postpartum? Like, you know, so there's so many aspects to this. And because we haven't had that like older grandmother kind of information transfer like we used to have. There's a lot of us that like learned about our periods because somebody stuck a box of tampons through the door and was like, figure it out, kid. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Can we start by telling our first period story? It sounds really close to what you just said. It was like here, get on the school bus. It's time to go. And like, what? Yes. It's traumatic if you don't know what's coming, if you don't know what's ahead. And as we know, public education has been sort of saddled with this idea, especially with the culture that we're in, the puritanical sort of culture where we don't talk about sex or we're we're afraid to talk about sex with our children, or any physical process that has to do with the reproductive, because there's this morality aspect where either, I mean, the truth is maybe parents don't have the answers and they don't feel equipped to explain that. So children, women, we're all sort of left with this idea of whatever was offered to us by the physical education teacher, right? Because that's their second job usually, is like the phys ed guy gets to talk about, you know, sex and reproduction. And it's a lot of giggles, it's a lot of, you know, uncomfortableness, but most of us don't get a solid education about what's going on with our body. And what we're finding out even more is that kids nowadays, or or young people nowadays, learned most of their information from the internet. And that is a wide stroke. You don't know where the information's coming from. So that's a whole nother topic for another day, very likely. But I can't tell you how many times I have worked with a client who is pregnant for the first time or is struggling to get pregnant in that sort of case. And the conversation is always, I had no idea.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

You know, whether it was that there are phases to their cycle, that there's a certain time that they get pregnant. And it's funny how the market has exploded in response to, I can wear this ring and it'll tell me, you know, exactly what day, hour, and time to get pregnant. So what are you seeing? What are you noticing in your practice? Is it folks trying to get pregnant, people not really understanding their own body?

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Oh my goodness. Okay. So are you ready for a soapbox, Daphne? Because of course. Of course. Let me get mine out. Yeah. Of course. This is what I step onto regularly. Yes. Our public education around reproductive health is abysmal. When I first started doing this work, I was like really passionate about creating like meaningful tools to like teach people about how to care for themselves in the different phases of their cycle. Yeah. And then like a year and a half into that, and and really not having a lot of traction, all of a sudden it hit me. They don't even know they have four phases of their cycle. Yes. Let alone that there's actually a care and use manual that goes along with it. And, you know, backing that out, I started kind of like polling my clients and being like, so random question. How did you find out about how your cycle works? Right. Yes. And a lot of it was this I got a box of tampons through the door, or I was told to keep pads in my bag just in case. And then when I saw blood, I had to go to the nurse's office because I didn't know what to do with the pad. Like there was no instruction whatsoever. I mean, I grew up in a Catholic household. God. Like it was a whole thing. Like, I'm I'm grateful that my mom sat me down with a book and was like, your body is gonna bleed at some point. But like there was nothing else.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

That's more advanced than I got. Go ahead. I was like, that's a lot more advanced morning. I was like, what just happened? Am I dying? What's going on? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Well, but that's the thing. Like, my mom, her, my grandmother started at nine. So my mom was afraid that I was going to have the same experience. And then I would be afraid because she remembered her mom talking about waking up with blood all through her bed thinking she was dying. And my mom didn't want that for me. So I'm grateful that she like took that step. But like I had to look at my peer group to really learn about like how the how the birds and the bees worked, right? Like, and all you got in high school was don't put the P in the V because you'll get pregnant. And if you put the P in the V, here's the long list of diseases you can get as a result of it.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

It's really about disease prevention. Yeah. It's not about education, it's about disease prevention. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Well, and at the time, like, and I'm gonna date myself, here we go. But like this was the this was the time frame where the AIDS epidemic was at a fever pitch, right? So of course, like prevention for sexually transmitted diseases was really the focal point. But I have had hundreds of women walk through the pro doors of my practice and go, what do you mean that's what day one is of my cycle? Like I've been counting from when I spot beforehand, when I stop bleeding. I haven't ever counted my cycle because I didn't know how. I had people that, oh my God, one of the cases that broke my heart the most was a couple that came in. They had been trying to get pregnant for three years. They had had diagnostics done at the doctor's office, they had been to specialists, she had had follicular scans, and nobody thought to tell them when her fertile window was. She had had a friend in high school tell her that you can get pregnant the five days before you have your period. And that is when this young couple had been trying month over month over month, and they couldn't figure out why they weren't getting pregnant. Now, granted, I did have to do a little bit of work with them to just make sure that their bodies were functioning optimally, but they got pregnant first try because they were in their late 20s. But think about all those years lost simply because they didn't know when the fertile window was. Like a lot of people take hormonal birth control for decades. Oh, yeah. Thinking that you can get pregnant all month long, because that's kind of the narrative that we're fed. Go on birth control so you don't get pregnant. Don't put the P in the V because you're gonna get pregnant. But that's not something that can happen all month long. You only have seven days, guys. That's it. Seven days. And there's no shame in that. Because honestly, it is a statement of the colossal falling down of body literacy here in the United States, particularly in the West. So this is where I get rather animated around some of the legislation that is coming out and being disseminated around regulating women's reproductive health. Because a lot of those women haven't even been taught how their cycle works. Yes. So your first day of fresh red flow is the first day of your cycle. Okay. No spotting beforehand, brown, red, pink, or otherwise. It does not matter. If it is spotting and it is not flow-like, it is not your period.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

What do we call this phase? Let's make it really, really clear for people.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

This is this is menstruation, which is the small micro event that kicks off the follicular phase. So we have two halves to our menstrual month. Each of those halves has a little event that starts it. Okay. So for the first half of your month, you are in the follicular phase. It is about substance. It is about building a blood-rich endometrial lining after you've shed the one from the previous month. So menstruation, when it is healthy, is four to six days of fresh red flow, no cramping, no brown blood, no clots, no funny business. And I know that there are people out there listening to this going, Girl, you are insane. That has never been my lived reality. Right. Yes. I was totally that skeptic before I started doing this. I have endometriosis. I had a shit period straight out of the gate. And I was one of the millions of women who found themselves on birth control by the age of 15 because my period was a hot mess express. I couldn't function. I couldn't go to school. The pain was unbelievable. I used to spend an entire week joking with my mother that I was going to give myself a grapefruit spoon hysterectomy because I was so miserable that I could not imagine that that could be any more painful than what I was going through. It was debilitating. So I'm I'm saying this from a place of I've suffered, I've been in the trenches. I get it.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Yeah. I remember. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

And that kind of birth control. So hormonal birth control is a class one carcinogen. It has a black box warning label on it, the same way that cigarettes and other things do. And a lot of people don't realize that. Well, that landed me in an ER at 25 years old having a heart attack because I had been on birth control for about 10 years at that point. So at that moment, I had to like completely rethink how the hell does my body work? Like, how do I take care of this body? Because the only way I had ever known was this pill that I relied on in order to actually be able to function.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

So knowing these phases of your cycle really does become a fundamentally important aspect of you being able to well and live your most vibrant life.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Yes, I agree.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

So menstruation, four to six days, fresh red blood only, no cramping, no clotting, no pain, no funny business. It comes in nice and light. It gets heavier day two, three, comes back down and cruises to the finish line. That's how it should go. And for the vast majority of women, that is not how it goes. So cramps are normalized, but they are not normal. Headaches and PMS and PMDD are normalized, but they are not normal. And I can come back to all of that in a second. Yeah. So once you get done your bleeding days, which is usually the only part of the month that most of us focus on.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Even talk about, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Exactly. Because that's the most disruptive part, usually, or the three to five days ahead of the period starting, because emotional and physical symptoms disrupt our lives as well. So in the follicular phase, it's all about development. You are on day three of your cycle, your FSH level rises, your follicle stimulating hormone. It rises and it starts the hormone cascade that tells your body we're going to prepare for pregnancy, regardless of whether that's your goal or not. Your body's always trying to get you pregnant. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Stand down. Stand down. Yes, agreed.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

So your follicle begins developing. That is where the egg is released for fertilization for that month, and the blood-rich endometrial lining begins developing. So it will continue to develop until ovulation. Ovulation is that other micro event that I was talking about that kicks off the beginning of the luteal phase. Ovulation is where you should feel the best of the entire month. If you're symptomatic, that tells a story. But it should be where you feel the best of the entire month. Go get your head shot, ladies, because your face will be symmetrical. And glowing. Yes. You will glow because your body is literally trying to attract a mate.

unknown 15:38

Yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

So ovulation really is like a 24 to 36 hour event. Like that's it. And then we start the remainder of the luteal phase, which the first five-ish days of the luteal phase, sometimes seven, we usually feel pretty good. We have more stamina, we have energy. We're starting to get more into that like planning-focused energy. Our our brains are like wired for like more depth in terms of strategic tasks during that time frame. And I teach a course on like essentially how to work in all of these phases because each of them gives us intellectual gifts too. But in the part that gets the bad rap in the luteal phase is in those few days leading up to the bleed, because this is where PMS symptoms start coming in. This could be physical like cramping, this could be headaches, this could turn you into a fire-breathing dragon, and you could hate everyone and want to lay waste to the entire kingdom. Um, whatever level of angst that comes with that is normalized. And we have tons of memes and all of these things about how this is a joke in our culture, but really it's your body's way of saying, Hey, I need a little more love and support. Please send help.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

All of the Can I also say anecdotally, the highest amount of testosterone for women? Yes. And I'm laughing about that because it we've all seen this meme a hundred times. As you're progressing towards that menstruation again, this is when testosterone is highest in your body. So in some ways, you're not acting like a woman, you're acting like a dude. Yes. So you are a little more aggressive, a little more. This is normal. This is not something that that is being, you know, performative. This is what happens when testosterone is at a higher level.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Well, testosterone is more of a self-centered hormone. So is progesterone.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

True.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

And estrogen is the community hormone. It's the softening hormone.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

I like the way you said that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

It's the one that makes us like focused on the people around us. And this is why when we get to perimenopause, like our field of fucks is barren. We we our threshold for dealing with garbage gets a lot lower because we have less estrogen. We're not trying to keep up with pleasing everybody any longer. The things that we've swept under the rug for years and years and years for the good of people.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Yeah, we don't need to. We don't need to be able to do that. We don't need to.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Yeah. It's refreshing. I mean, I started communicating this to my family years ago. Like my kids were trained. I'd be like, mom's moon time is coming. All the laundry needs to appear in the laundry room because I need to get it done before I get there. Because I wasn't lifting laundry baskets when I was, you know, like I move my body. I walk, I do qigong, I will do some like lighter yin yoga. Like I move my body when I'm on my period. I have to. But and we all really should. But like I am not trying to personal record my heavy lifting days during my bleed. Like, yeah, I won't lift laundry baskets. I am a minimalist in terms of how I am scheduled and what it is that I do because how we care for ourselves and the kind of rest that we give ourselves during these bleeding days sets you up for success the rest of the month. It makes you less symptomatic, have more energy, your immune system performs better. All of these kinds of things when you understand the needs of each phase. And my family's trained at this point. I'm just like, nope, my period's coming. Sorry. You're we're gonna have to wait a couple of days to do this thing. Or I will say, I don't have the energy for this right now. Can we put this on the schedule a couple days from now or something of that nature? Yes. And, you know, there was so much shame when I was young about being a bleeding body, like the tucking of the pad up the sleeve and the run to the bathroom because you didn't want anyone to know. Like it's such a thing. And it's really refreshing to see that younger women are are being more of an owner of this being part of their life. Um, I've seen a big mental shift as I've seen as I'm seeing younger clients, and and that part is really refreshing, but there's still a lot of misinformation out there, a lot of misunderstanding, and uh and a lot of people suffering because they simply don't know how their cycle works throughout the whole course of the month. And then, you know, by the time you've been cycling for many years and you get to perimenopause and your cycle starts going haywire, it essentially is highlighting the fact that it has experienced years of neglect through, and generally, it's through a lack of information and burning the candle at both ends and thinking we need to work like men when we're in Freudian rhythm beings and we are not testosterone-driven beings. Although, you like you said, it does change as we go through this process. And this is why postmenopausal women are amazing leaders because they have more of the linearness of the testosterone-driven beings, but they still retain a piece of their estrogen, which makes them more community focused.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

Yeah. They're building. Yeah, they're not trying to, they're not trying to stack a hierarchy. They're really, really trying to network in that way that actually benefits everyone. I I I'm always impressed when I meet female leaders or I talk to them on the show is that they get it. Like their power is not in like their ego of hierarchy to I'm, I'm, I'm senior to this person. It really is in their networking, in their I work well with this person, we're on the same page, and that sort of thing. Wow, I'm always astounded to see that. Now, one of the biggest things I wanted to go over with you on this show or dig into on this show is working, like you said, working against your own period, right? So we grew up in the 90s. I'm laughing about this. But I mean, how often was the girl bleeding through her white pants like a punchline in a show or a movie or that sort of thing? Like you said, there was so much shame around it and hiding, trying to keep that sort of ego approach where we were working against our bodies instead of with our bodies. And of course, that comes with all sorts of acne, hormones, nervous conditions, that sort of thing. Our body is fully integrated in those ways. So when we do when we are on the show, we like to talk about like activity. And I'm glad you said you have trained your family for this. But let's talk about day three, right? Let's talk about when, you know, a lot of times women, and I know a lot of them now, they're always pushing past. They want to make sure that they showed up, they hit their PR every time they came in. You know, and day three, as you illustrated earlier, we were talking about this, is one of those days where you better call it back. You better call it back. Cause that is one of the days that your body needs all the, it's not that there's something wrong with you. It just needs all the resources you have for this incredible piece of your cycle, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:08

Yeah. So day three is where our FSH rises. We tend to feel like we have more energy on that day than we did on day one and two. Well, we've also lost the majority of the blood that we're going to lose in this flushing of the endometrial lining process. So our tank is on E. Just about the time we start feeling like, oh, oh, I haven't gone to the gym in two days. I really need to get my ass in the gym and oh, I'm being lazy and da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Right. And we push ourselves in there and then we get hurt.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

The truth is that is one of the times when women are most noticing injuries at the at this phase of life, is during that mid-period phase, because you literally are pushing past when your body's telling you to calm the fuck down.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

Yeah. Mid-period. And there was a study done in the UK of a hundred um women soccer players, and the highest number of ACL injuries was just before ovulation. So again, just before another big hormonal shift in your 28 to 30 day cadence, okay, because your cycle should be on average 28 to 30 days in length from the first day of fresh red blood until the first day of fresh red blood appears again. So because of that, there are certain points during that time frame where you are built to deadlift a truck. And then there are parts of that month where you have to pull back. It doesn't mean don't move. It doesn't mean that you can't lift. It doesn't mean that you can't do certain things, but you have to pull the intensity back because you are more injury prone. And as we get older, that becomes like even more something to consider. Because I'll see perimenopausal women who are dealing with menobelly, so they feel very frustrated because all of their emotions have essentially dumped themselves into their abdomen. They're eating well, they're moving their body, but they're like, I don't understand why I'm not losing any weight. And if you're overburdening your system, you're getting a cortisol dump. So if you're if you're overtaxing the system, your body still thinks it's being chased by a tiger. Yep. So the kind of exercise and the intensity and duration that you were doing before you hit perimenopause, there is a huge invitation from your body to revisit how you're structuring that as you're getting into perimenopause in order to actually achieve the goals that you're looking for without essentially working against it. Because, like again, you and I were raised during that time frame where everything was low fat.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Oh, God, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

It wasn't that long after Title IX. So everybody, everybody, our female generation felt like we had to like live for the things that our moms couldn't do, right? Yeah. Same thing with going to college, right? Because fet financial aid had just really like revisited itself in how it was structured. So there were more of us that were eligible to go to college because of those programs. And so, like, there was this huge push for so many of us that fall in that like late 30s to mid 40s range to essentially be what our mothers couldn't be, so that they could live vicariously through us. At the same time, we were told that we had to work like a man in order to be successful. So, no wonder there's millions of us hitting perimenopause going, what the fuck is happening right now? Yes. Because our bodies have been overspent for so long, overextended for so long, that we then get to this big I saw a meme the other day that called it cougar puberty, and I just about died laughing.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

My favorite new term.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

Because it is, it is a form of puberty, just like our hormones are coming online in order for your first bleed to happen, they are going offline in order to stop bleeding.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

It's it's fascinating you say that. And I'm glad you brought up the training and the and the Title IX, because what I see and what I know is that coaching isn't specific in the way it should be. So when we talk about Title IX and coaching, a lot of women's teams were still being coached by men because they assumed that the way men train are the way women need to train. And we're still seeing that across the board. That is a big conversation we need to consider. It is a different training module. It needs to be. You're a different body, you have different physiology. So we said day three, you've lost the most blood. Imagine going to the emergency room and losing so much blood, and then telling yourself that you need to show up the next day and hit a, you know, hit a personal best. Now, like you said, we're actually pretty powerful as women as far as training goes. What is the ideal time or phase for us to jump in and do some of that power lifting and start hitting some of our personal best?

SPEAKER_00 28:26

Yeah. So ovulation. Just before ovulation. So ramp up. So once your bleed stops, give yourself two or three days to intentionally refuel. Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

So this lost the blood, folks.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

Yeah. You you've lost blood. You're your body's looking for key nutrients and it's looking for certain supports for the overall energetic body. So intentional refueling in that two to three days right afterwards is absolutely critical in order for you to have the energy and stamina that you need for the rest of the month.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

What are some of the key nutrients that you might suggest to a client who's coming through that phase?

SPEAKER_00 29:07

I suggest bone broth from the beginning of the bleed all the way through. And I know for the meat freers, that is not a super popular suggestion. But the reason for that is there are certain amino acid chains that we cannot get in a plant-based diet that we need to get from animal products. Bone broth is the easiest way to do it. So have the soup during your bleed. Make sure that you're getting something with bone broth, whether you're cooking your quinoa with it or your rice with it, or you're using it as a soup, or some of my clients just pour it into a cup and put a little Himalayan sea salt in it and just do it that way. But it's going to help you with the tools that you need to rebuild. Dark leafy greens are going to help you with the tools to rebuild. They also help with estrogen. So even long before we were able to kind of pull apart our food to see what their nutritive properties were, there was an understanding that certain colors of foods, at least in the Chinese tradition, support different systems in the body. So you're looking at things that are dark green in this phase and making sure that you're eating often. Okay. No, no skipping of lunch, please. No fasting or working out fasting during your bleed. You need fuel. You're going to start feeling your energy pick up. You're going to want to exercise a little bit harder. In that day or so before you ovulate, just be a little careful with your joints. You can do compound lifts, but when they're like in a line rather than things where like you're doing a lot of twisting, because that's where you're stacking your joints.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

Yeah. Cause that's where you're you're going to have more problems with your joints. And then when you hit ovulation, you're good. That's where you do your heaviest lifts. I find that I can really lift heavy from like ovulation, which is, you know, anywhere from day 13 to 17 of someone's cycle, depending on their cycle length. For me, it's usually like 13, 14. By day 15, I'm like definitely making sure that all my lifts are about as heavy as I can handle. And I will do that all the way through. I mean, there have been periods of my life that I find that I can go right up until my bleed starts. There have been parts of my life where like I feel like I need to start taking the intensity down incrementally in the two or three days beforehand. But that's where I invite you to really listen to your body because that kind of movement is great for you during the luteal phase because it helps to keep some of the cranky bug away.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Yes. Yeah. I mean you're moving your circulation. Right. And also these hormones are also affecting your nervous system. And movement is one of those great ways to keep the nervous system in regulation. So I love that you said that. Can we just like pat and pen this, by the way? Like we've got this new fitness diet where we tell people exactly what to eat, what day to lift, what day not to lift, because we know, especially as we're aging into perimenopause, that we don't want to skip a lot of lifting. We don't want to skip a lot of strength work. And that starts earlier. That starts as soon as we're post-16. It's, you know, a lot of times in health and fitness, we talk about not wanting to do a lot of lifting outside of our body weight until we're 16 because we have all those growth plates and things to consider. Once we're in that sort of phase where we've we've made our way into maturation, we're not worried about affecting our ability to grow and those sort of things. Lifting is really important, you know, having that strength training and then that means something different for each person. So, but I love that we are coming up with this exact format because it is so wishy-washy and back and forth. I know it there's always a lot of opinions because one, it's really hard to have a regulated period. We there's just so much concern. But I think this education that you and I are talking about is when we embrace our cycle, when we understand our cycle. And I'm sad that we're just figuring this out at 40, right? That we can share this with everybody. But for posterity's sake, it makes so much sense that this is not about shame. This is about knowing when your superpower kicks in for different things.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

100%. I mean, I look back at my 20s and I used to be a competitive martial artist. And so I look at the tournaments that I went to and the competitions that I went to when I was close to my bleed versus the ones that I went to in the middle of my cycle. I won every round and I never put that together. It wasn't until I was working with a trainer later on in my life, and I was doing more kickboxing and Muay Thai at that point. I was preparing for uh an exhibition fight for kickboxing. I hadn't had one in a while, and I I just needed to get back into the ring and essentially proved to that my old ass could handle it. So I was preparing for this fight, and my trainer said to me, He goes, Well, where are you in your cycle? He goes, Like, I really think that you could fight pro. And I was like, Oh God, I really like I feel like that ship has sailed because you know I'm in my 30s at this point, and I had a five-year-old daughter, and you know what I mean? Like, I just really didn't, I really thought that ship had sailed. And he's like, he goes, seriously, he goes, You have what it takes in order to do it. He's like, but he's like, I would need to know your cycle better than you do. And it was the first time, and he was an older gentleman. Well, it was the first time I had to do it. Who would write his name down? Let's save him forever. Yeah, let's give him a medal. And I remember saying to him, I was like, damn, Matt, like I had never thought about it that way. And as I started thinking about it, because again, this was like right on the early edges of, you know, I had already done my Chinese nutritional therapy training. I was like starting to figure out how I wanted to do this as work to be able to support other people. And that really hit me. And I started really thinking about it. And I even went back in my period tracker. I was like, okay, so I did this tournament here. I wonder like, where was I in my cycle? And sure as shit, every time I was near ovulation, I won. Anytime that I was in my late luteal phase, it was either close or I lost. And it's like, man, like, why do we not understand that in frame rhythm?

SPEAKER_01 35:43

Why are we not working with this? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

Yeah, infrabian rhythm is so important to understand for women to function optimally.

SPEAKER_01 35:52

Adrian, I feel like we need to dig into some of these, like these other nuances and specifics. Cause I know that, you know, even just the way we show up, you know, and at different phases of our our cycle sometimes is inconvenient for the uh for the corporate world and things like that. So I have a lot of clients who are high performing, you know, showing up in court, showing up in a boardroom. And a lot of times that's one of the biggest concerns we have is like where their energy is, where they are in their cycle. And some of them are, you know, into perimenopause and menopause in that case. So working with them in that way. But I think you and I could dig down even further into this. But Adrian, where can people find you? Where can people learn or even work with you?

SPEAKER_00 36:37

Yeah, absolutely. So my my business is Moon Essence. You can find me at mooness.life. Um, I'm on Instagram, Moon Essenceme for Maine M-E.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Oh, Maine, yes.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

Yes, I'm from Maine. I but I do telehealth. I would say the majority of my practice is actually telehealth. So location is no issue. You just reach out to me and we can figure something out. I love, love, love working with people one-on-one. Also, I have a program called the Alchemist Toolkit that essentially takes you through here are the phases of your cycle, here's how you care for the phases of your cycle, so that people get that guidebook that they've been looking for. And I have more specific things around perimenopause and fertility and and and those aspects of things, but really like it all starts with understanding like how does your cycle work? I talk about it a little bit on my podcast, Reproductive Rebel. But yeah, I I love questions. So please reach out to me. I would love to help you however it feels good to you.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

Oh, Adrian, thank you for this conversation. I I think that with with with regards to performance and showing up and giving people the tools or women the tools in particular to make their cycle work for them is an untapped resource. Uh Adrian, thank you for being with us. I'm looking forward to more conversations about how to optimize.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.