The Secret To SYNCing Female Hormones With Fitness
Jenny Swisher, health coach and hormone expert, shares her personal experience with hormonal imbalance and the secret to syncing female hormones with fitness to get RESULTS.
Don’t miss Jenny’s expert advice on leveraging your hormones to maximize your health!
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
- Jenny’s own experience with hormonal imbalance
- Life-changing moment for Jenny’s health
- The causes of hormonal imbalance
- How to define sex hormones
- How birth control affects your menstrual cycle
- How to manage hormones
- Jenny’s personal struggle with infertility
- How to sync your cycle and nutrition
- How to sync your cycle with exercise
RESOURCES/LINKS MENTIONED:
- Click this link https://sync.jennyswisher.com/sales-page1594227286899 to sign up for a SYNC course to learn how to fuel and train in sync with your hormone cycle
- Lara Briden books:
- Period Repair Manual| Paperback: https://bit.ly/3ua5woZ
- Hormone Repair Manual| Paperback: https://bit.ly/3jbKbFi
- Seed Cycling supplementation: https://nourishedbynutrition.com/seed-cycling-for-hormone-balance/
ABOUT JENNY SWISHER
Jenny is the creator of the women’s program SYNC: How to Fuel and Train with Your Hormone Cycle Digital Course. She is a Certified Personal Trainer and Nutritionist specializing in helping women sync their fitness and nutrition with their hormone cycles for maximum energy. She has an extensive history as a top health and wellness coach and also leads a team of over 500 other health coaches.
CONNECT WITH JENNY SWISHER
- Website: https://jennyswisher.com/
- Podcast: SYNC Your Life: https://jennyswisher.com/podcast/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennyswisher
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/JennySwisher
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennyswisher/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennyswisher/
- Email: jennyswisher@gmail.com
Transcript
Welcome to the imperfectly empowered podcast with leading DIY lifestyle blogger on a Fullmer where women are inspired with authentic stories and practical strategies to reclaim their hearts and homes by empowering transformation. One imperfect day at a time. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the imperfectly empowered podcast.
I am your host on a former today. We have Jenny Swisher on the show. Jenny is the creator of the women’s virtual program sync. It is a course that teaches you how to fuel and train with your hormone cycle. She is a certified personal trainer and nutritionist who specializes in helping women sync their fitness and their nutrition with their hormone cycles.
For maximum energy. She has an extensive history as a top health and wellness coach and leads a team of over 500 other health coaches. Welcome women’s health and hormone expert. Jenny Swisher, Jenny, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me have you here. Yeah. I like to be here. I like your poster in the background.
I’m just noticing that. Is that your name? It’s the world’s most awkward painting, but it’s amazing. Yeah. My, my network marketing company awarded that to us a few years ago and it’s like, like a pop art painting of my face. So my husband, my husband jokes around, like when we first got it, he’s like, where, what are we gonna do with this?
Like he wanted to put it like I’m to put it on the wall behind you for my niece. He joked around that he wanted to put it on the mantle, like in our living room. And I was like, no, but it’s going to go in my office. And this is the only wall in my office. I have windows. So it’s the only place. So I have so many people ask like, is that, is that you okay?
I know. Well, I can, you can sorta see the letters and then like half of your face. I like it. I think it’s cool. Now I want. It’s pretty nifty. So you you’re a health coach, but your story, like so many, it didn’t necessarily start out quite as clear. You might not have guessed that you would be in the position that you’re in.
Um, it actually started, you told me a little bit of your story with battles against migraines, but give us some of your backstory. How did you get to where you are today and becoming an expert? Sure. So, you know, I like to tell people, you know, usually success comes from struggle and, um, that’s definitely my story.
I started probably in my early twenties, my husband and I were high school sweethearts, and we got married right outside of college, like three weeks out of graduation. And I had just secured a job with a book publishing company. And that’s what I thought was my dream. I thought my dream was going to be, to kind of work my way up and have a corner office, you know, in a corporate building and, and work in book, book publishing.
And so I had the job that I wanted. I had the man that I wanted and, um, a few months after we got married, I started to have these debilitating migraines. And I had had some, I had had headaches throughout my teenage years off and on, but I had never had. This intense, ongoing what they called status migrainosus, which is basically just, you have a headache all the time.
And so we did everything we could obviously to try to relieve that pain cause sitting under those fluorescent lights in my cubicle every day was not, it was not helping. So we did everything. I did everything from Botox injections, for migraine to anti-seizure drugs, to drug trials, to, I had four neck surgeries.
Um, you name it? I have tried it and I got to a point where I was in a really dark place like mentally. Um, I like to share just so people have perspective. Like here I was a newlywed and my husband and I would, would basically, I would push myself through the work week. I would just get through the work week and then Friday night we would go out to do.
Have a nice dinner somewhere. And then he would take me to an urgent care to get some form of injection, some form of painkiller that I could survive the weekend with. And then I would start all over again on Monday. Um, I kept painkillers in my pocket. I was just, I was a totally different person than the person I knew.
Um, and so one day a person at work suggested that I try lunch hour yoga. She said, there’s this girl that comes to the, to the corporate building. And she comes for every everyday at lunch and she teaches yoga. You should come. And I thought, well, at this point, like I have injected myself with everything.
I’d been to a chiropractor. I tried acupuncture. I tried holistic measures, but I was like, you know, we’ll try yoga and see if I can. And so I took a yoga class and it just so happened that this, this girl that was teaching the classes now one of my very best friends and she had a very rigorous form of training.
It was a very intense yoga class. It was not what I was predicting. I was thinking it was going to be touch your toes yoga. And it was not. And so what I found was I came out of that 45 minute class feeling like it was the first time I had been distracted enough from the pain and quite some time. And so for me, it was like, okay, this, like, it’s not relief, but it’s a distraction from the pain.
And so I kind of became just really addicted and obsessed with exercise. Like I got to not, not in an unhealthy way, but it’s just in a very healthy way. It became my focus. Um, and so I started a home fitness program. Some people might remember the old P90X DVDs. I started those, this was back in 2010. How much were you exercising before that?
Just for perspective, like what did your routine look like before. Yeah. So that’s a good question. My husband was a division one All-American runner. And so he was even outside of college. Right after we graduated. He was competing professionally with Brooks. Um, he, we were traveling the country for him to run.
So I would, I started doing just five Ks with him. Like he would run in racism, you know, on the road and, and I would hop in and do the five Ks. I would kind of walk, run those five kids, but I’ve never been a runner. It was just my way of sort of staying active. And I think I told myself like, as long as I could do the 5k, I was fit enough.
Like that was okay. As long as I can do that. Right. But I didn’t enjoy it. I never enjoyed running. It was never something that I, you know, looked forward to. So yoga was different. It was a different kind of challenge. Um, and it led me to this other stuff, like lifting weights and doing these things that really kind of brought out my inner athlete.
Like I was an athlete in high school. Um, but I hadn’t done any of that, like for four or five years at that time. So it was, it was kind of just a re-ignition to that flame. So that have corresponded my journey into, okay, let’s start looking at nutrition, right? Like I started to get results from the fitness and, um, everybody was kind of in my world at that time was like, you need to embrace the nutrition and you’d really need to start focusing on your nutrition.
And I’m like, um, maybe someday, right. But six months later, I got to the point where I was ready and I started to really dive into what does it look like to tweak my diet and see, eat cleaner foods and to eliminate processed foods and slowly through that journey? Um, we always laugh because we say that we were like the hamburger helper, couple, like that was the type of food we were eating first marriage when we first married.
And so it was a big change. It was a big change to, you know, organize our pantry and. I have everything completely, um, new and things that we’d never tried before. So that was the beginning of what I would consider to be sort of, my holistic path was really just like eliminating all the junk, um, moving my body every day, starting to hydrate more.
Right. And the whole time I’m living with a migraine, like I’m still living with a migraine that entire time. So, and when you say that you were seeing results, are you talking like, um, like losing inches kind of results, not necessarily results as in your migraines were feeling better? Was there any. With the migraines.
Yeah. So the one thing that I noticed that what it was when I started to tweak my nutrition, I eliminated for me, it was dairy. I eliminated gluten. When I started to eliminate those types of foods that I found were really sensitive for me. I started to see improvement with the headaches. I wouldn’t say that they were gone by any means, but I did start to see improvement.
So one day I was actually on a hike with the same yoga instructor, my friend. And I said to her, Jen, I just can’t keep doing this anymore. Like I S I’m still having a headache. I still can’t hardly go to work every day. Like, I’m still miserable, even though I’m so much better, right. I still was struggling with the pain.
And she said, you can’t give up, you’re your own best doctor. Like, you know that this is figure out-able. And at that point I had seen 14 different specialists. I had seen neurologists, headache specialists, you name it. I had seen it. And so she gave me the name of a functional medicine, integrative practitioner.
Uh, and that was really just. A complete life-changing moment because I told her, I said, no, I’m not going. I’m not going. I’ve seen enough doctors. And she’s like, no, I’m telling you it’s different. It’s different. You got to go. And so I took her word for it and I scheduled the appointment. And this doctor here, I had been struggling for five years with this ongoing pain.
And this doctor did all kinds of, of lab work, urine testing, saliva testing, not just my blood work. And I had never had that done before. Like here, I had been this person who no doctor could figure out, but yet nobody had looked at any of my endocrine system. They hadn’t looked at anything in my hormones, um, hormone panels.
So the doctor says to me, my first appointment, she says, okay, well I have your testing here. It’s pretty obvious what’s going on. Like your hormones are very out of balance. I want you to cut all the neurological prescriptions, cold Turkey, and we’re going to put you on some, some bio-identical hormone replacement.
We’re going to put you on some supplementation and you should be feeling good in about three months. And I was just like, okay, great. Sounds good. Like, you know, I really didn’t even, I didn’t want to do it. Like I literally told my husband, like, there’s no way this is going to work. Yeah. It becomes that exhausting cycle.
I mean, again, as somebody who worked in medicine for many years, I saw that in patients, you know, in the ER, we never did follow up, but you know, I heard the story, oh my gosh. How many times, you know, w it becomes an emotional cycle where you just are tired of the, yet you think you have an answer, but really you don’t.
So it is, it’s an emotional, and there’s probably a lot of people listening and watching who may be in that journey or are with somebody, or are. You know, in a relationship or know somebody who is in a journey like that. So hang in there, you’re not alone. There’s a lot of people in this position.
Absolutely not with the hormone necessarily just in general, with that medical, you’ve seen a million specialists and you’re still not feeling like you’re living your full quality of life. Hang in there. Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve actually ever really good friend of mine. Who’s in that same journey right now, not with hormones with something else.
And, um, she just messaged me yesterday saying, you know, oh my gosh, like, I feel like I put all my faith into these appointments. Right? Like hoping that this, this next doctor is going to be the one that knows. And if you’re, yeah, if you’re, if you’re listening and you’re in that position, don’t give up and just know that you are your own best doctor and the better you can communicate what you’re feeling and what’s going on and really push for like, I, I mean, I had to push for some of these tests.
I had to push for some of this testing. I had to push some answers, so don’t give up well, and I will also say really quickly from the provider side of things. Try to have grace because as a provider, you you’re exhausted, but believe it or not, we’re just as exhausted. We may not be in the pain that you’re in, but it is very, very discouraging as a provider to have a patient that you just, you don’t know, you don’t know, we’re limited.
We’re human and. We don’t have all the answers. So it is it’s, it’s an, it’s a need to show grace on, on both sides. So hang in there, if you’re a provider listening to, because especially now more than ever, it is very, very hard and yeah, a lot of them don’t get enough credit. So hang in there on both sides.
Yeah, absolutely. I agree. Oh, no worries. So basically that’s what really started this, uh, that’s when the, I started to see the light was when I started to use the, I started to use the hormone creams and I started to use the different supplementation that she put me on. It was off on your hormone panel.
So for people listening, especially a lot of women, they might not even know what hormones we’re talking about here. Like, you know what hormones are involved when somebody is taking a panel, you are young. I’m guessing you’re probably in your twenties during this time. So what were moans, were they even looking for and what was off?
What should they have been and what was. That’s such a great question. And it’s a question I haven’t yet been asked. So, so yeah, so, uh, so what’s interesting is, yeah, I’ve been with my height. My headaches started when I was 22 and by the time I got to this point where people were looking at the right thing, I was 27.
And so, um, When the doctor did the panel, she did, what’s considered a cycle map test. So she looked at my urine. She looked at, we also did a saliva test to look at my cortisol levels and stuff like that. But basically what we wanted to do was we wanted to look specifically at my sex hormones because we had done the blood work to kind of know that thyroid was in check.
Right. You know, my blood sugar was in check. So she’s like, we need to take a look at your sex hormones and see what’s going on. I had been on the birth control pill since I was, I think I was around 16. Um, and I share this story on my podcast as well, but my mom came home from her OB GYN appointment when I was 16 years old, it was her appointment.
I didn’t even see the doctor. She walked into my bedroom and threw me a pack of birth control pills. And she said, Hey, you know, this is the nineties or whatever, you know, You need to start on this. Um, cause at that point I had struggled with acne and I’ve struggled with irregular cycles and a lot of cramping.
And so she was just like, but you know, my talk to my OB and he wants you to try this. Never even saw the doctor. So I started on birth control from a very young age. And um, when I got to cut it to see, I didn’t put two and two together until later, like, you know, years later I could look back and say, oh, but I, when I went to college, um, around 18, I, that particular birth control pill had been discontinued.
So I had to switch to something else. And I went through this two year rollercoaster of trying different forms of birth control and every single one of them made me feel crazy. Yeah. It gave me, I had, I lived in the cold dorm and my sorority house. So I had hot flashes living in a 40 degree room, you know, miserable.
I felt like I was going through menopause at 20. And so, but I didn’t put two and two together because I didn’t necessarily have the migraines. They didn’t pop up until later. So. So looking back, I think, I mean, and I don’t want to say this, you know, I, I’m not a doctor and I certainly don’t want to say that this is the cause for me, but I do think that for me, the birth control pill had to have played a role in this, how my body.
Did or did not know how to operate from a cyclical sex hormone level. And so, uh, long story short, my testing came back. My progesterone was basically non-existent. So your progesterone is your female fertility hormone, right? Tell people the sex hormones. So sexual hormone, progesterone, estrogen, and a little testosterone in there.
Um, so basically, you know, your progesterone comes into play after ovulation. So after you obviate, if you ovulate, most women just assume they do because they have a period, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are. I’m assuming you ovulate. The progesterone starts to surge to protect a potential pregnancy.
So for me, I was not getting any sort of progesterone surge. I really didn’t have any progesterone there at all. So therefore I was living in a constant state of what we call estrogen dominance and estrogen dominance means. My estrogen actually wasn’t considered high, but it was high in relation to my progesterone.
So that ratio was what’s considered to be estrogen dominance. And that is for me, my primary trigger and a lot of the women that have taken my course and they have come to me specifically with migraines are finding the same thing. Like, I don’t want to say that it’s all, you know, it’s not always going to be the case, of course, but I’m seeing so many women who are, who are relating to my story who were having similar symptoms and then they find out, oh, this is what’s happening for me too.
You see any relationship to how long they were on birth control? Has there been any correlation may most of the time I’ve, I’ve made the correlation that most of the time these women have been on birth control at some point, but they’ve been on, they’ve been on it for a handful of years or so. So yeah, and I think, you know, of course when you come off of it, of course, doctors will tell you, oh, you could have a little bit of a rollercoaster, you know, with your periods for awhile or with your regularity for awhile.
And that makes sense. For me, it was just like a downward rollercoaster at the time, from the time that I started switching it up. So, um, so that was what my specific issue was. And then we had also kind of picked up on some, some other things, like I had vitamin D deficiencies. I had my ferritin and my iron were very low.
So that was probably contributing to my energy levels. But we started treating with just literally, she’s like, you know, head to whole foods and get these supplements and I’m going to call this apothecary and they’re going to send you this cream in the mail made out of VM route. And I thought she was looking for cocoa puffs.
Like, I was like, no way, like, this is the way like I’ve been on every possible pharmaceutical and nothing has worked, but shout out and keep you on birth control at that point. Were you still on, so you went off birth control. I had been off birth control since we married. We went on, I went off of it. Um, when we married because I, I knew that it was causing such a rollercoaster of emotion.
Gotcha. And it just wasn’t worth it. It was like, okay, if we get pregnant, we get pregnant. And of course, this is a whole other story that we can if you want to go into. But when we say. Later in life, like closer to thirties when I started having it was relieved, relieved from the headaches. Um, and I kind of had that figured out with all the right supplementation, my husband and I started investigating, what are we going to do with, are we seeking fertility treatment?
Are we, you know, what are we going to do here? So you would have problems with fertility as well in this. Yeah. We didn’t really pay attention to it because at the time it was just like, you know, let’s get Jenny feeling burned, right? Yeah. Yeah. It was a back burner thing. But you know, we had been off of birth control since we married and nothing was happening.
And so finally my OB GYN was like, Hey, you know, I think we might want to just see a fertility specialist and see if there might be something going on. And, um, this was all around the same time as I saw the functional medicine practitioner. And so when I went in to see the fertility specialists. It’s interesting because he never looked at my progesterone levels.
He never looked at anything like that. Um, he just simply wanted to see if I was operating and then immediately started putting me on injections and things to get me to ovulate. And then we of course started that process, which is a whole, a whole other story. But, um, so you were not obviously. I was not ovulating consistently.
Yeah. So I was finding that I have actually, my unique situation is that I have one ovary that seems to work a lot better than the other. So I have alternating months kind of, of, of my pattern. Yeah, my pattern. So, um, but I find that most women don’t even don’t really know like what their bodies are doing.
They assume that because they have a bleed that they’re ovulating or because, you know, if you’re, if you’re listening to this, if you’re having a bleed and you’re on the birth control pill, that’s not actually considered a period. That’s considered a pill bleed. Right. And so your body’s not actually ovulating.
And so that’s what, one of the things that I like to teach and, and really help women understand is just how their body is supposed to function. Because I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t understand it till I was in my thirties. And I really wish that someone would. Like spin, like, okay girl, listen to this.
Like, we’re going to teach you this, like in your twenties so that you don’t have to suffer before going on birth control, you almost should be given like some sort of education that’s mandated that you understand exactly what’s a normal process and how birth controls interrupting it. And to be clear, I don’t think either of us are knocking birth control.
Let’s be all or none at all. Very clear there, but, but you do need to be educated. I agree with you. I think, you know, I’ve watched it happen, you know, in GYN offices where there’s, there’s really not a whole lot of education that goes into, you know, here’s what your cycle is normally doing. Make sure you understand that first before we do birth control.
So. I think it’s a band-aid I think a lot of, I think a lot of doctors prescribing this is not a knock on doctors at all. Right? Like, I think there’s definitely a need out there for birth control for, for certain women. But I also think that it’s over-prescribed I drank that, you know, especially when we look at, I mean, I have a good friend of mine who has teenage daughters and she tells me all the time, like every, every teenager, female, teenager is on birth control and, um, it’s like the thing.
Right. And so it’s just a matter of when they’re going to go on it. And a lot of times these, these girls are having, I have a client that I’m working with one-on-one right now. And it’s actually, she had her, her daughter to the two of them together. And the daughter is having all kinds of troubles. Like she was having.
Really long bleeds. Like she would sometimes bleed up to two weeks or she was having a lot of irregularity with her cycles. Um, and of course she saw two different specialists and both of them were like, well, we just need to get you on birth control because that’ll straighten things out. Right. And it’s like, well, but what’s going on to cause her to be in that situation.
Like that’s not treating the root cause that’s just treating the symptom. Yeah. So more education before birth control. And I think also to parents in fairness to, again, obviously I I’m quick to try to see both sides as a provider, but I also think sometimes providers are pressured to put patients either by the patient or by parents because there’s like a fear factor there it’s like get on birth control.
So, but it’s a, it’s definitely a two-way street there because on the flip side, then we’re too quick to be like, okay, here’s the birth control. We do, you know, terrible education or lack thereof. So I think that’s a great point. So for people listening and watching. Get yourself educated. And if you’re a parent with a teenage daughter as well, make sure that you have taken the time to educate yourself and your daughter because your provider may or may not have the time to do it.
So I love that takeaway there, make sure you’re educated and educating. Absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, Laura Bryden is a doctor that I follow. She has a book called period period repair manual, and now she has a new one called a hormone repair manual. I highly recommend those books. They are kind of what started me on just nerding out over say that one more time.
Cause we’ll make sure those go in the show notes. So say them one more time. Yeah. Her name is Laura L a R a Bryden and she has two books. The one that I would recommend for the majority of people is period repair manual. And then she also has a newer one called hormone repair manual and it’s more geared toward the perimenopausal menopausal woman.
So. You know what she says in there. And she says often through her social media, as well as is the, you know, girls in their teenage years, their body is trying to really figure itself out. And so I think a lot of parents, or even the teenage girl herself feels like, you know, her cycle is, is off. Like maybe her friends are more regular and she’s not.
And so it’s, it’s almost like, uh, a reason to go on birth control right away. And really it’s like, you know, sh Lara Briden recommends. And I know she says this in her book and you guys can check it out, but she talks highly about like, just letting those teenagers, letting your body kind of figure itself out.
And I sometimes I wonder if that’s what happened for me because I really, I had only been having a period for less than a year when I went on birth control. And so. Was my body kind of in that initial, let’s figure this out. How am I supposed to operate phase? And then all of a sudden we just shut down ovulation, we shut down everything and kind of covered it with that synthetic hormone.
So it’s interesting because my experience is what exactly what you’re saying. Mine was very irregular. Initially through high school, I got it late. I think it was like 15. Um, but then interestingly, my freshman year of college, I became on the dot every 28 days. So I didn’t start birth control. Um, so I it’s interesting what you’re saying.
Cause it probably took me about three years and it was heavy. I did bleed a lot, but um, yeah, so it’s, it’s an interesting, that would be my story. It did make, I did regulate on my own then and uh, you know, very consistent, kind of very predictable every 28 days. So anyway, that’s an interesting, yeah. Yeah, for sure.
I mean, it makes me wonder too about myself. Like what if I had just kind of held out, you know, and, and my body figured out when I was 16, I probably could have saved myself some pain. Well, and maybe I’m also wondering if people are more willing to try. Cause I think the other reason that girls go on birth control is because of the pain.
Yes. And, um, and that I do understand I’ve always had bad cramping. Ironically, it’s actually gotten worse. Apparently I’ve gotten more sensitive to the prostaglandins as I’ve had kids who knew that happened, but apparently it does, which is kind of miserable, but oh, well, um, so I’m also wondering too, if we need to hold out again, thoughts for women, especially a lot of moms or grandmas here listening, but you know, for their granddaughters or their daughters to also try to find more natural ways to, or non-birth control ways to help manage the pain.
So like I get it. I would get really not. Terrible cramping. I did just take ibuprofen. Sometimes I’d even do ibuprofen mixed with Tylenol as well. Like every four hours Tylenol the next four hours ibuprofen. Cause it is, it’s hard depending on how bad they are. It’s hard to walk around and then you can try ginger for the nausea or you can even get a nausea medicine.
Like what I’m hearing from you is that we probably need to be trying other things to manage it before going on birth control. So that’s what I’m putting in there as somebody who does understand, but that’s what I did and my cycle. Normalized. So it might be worth trying, hanging in there. Absolutely. To do that.
So I apologize. I took us on a major segway there, but I would love to hear more. So keep talking about the infertility piece, cause you were struggling with that as well. I mean, overall in our, in the big picture of our marriage and, and the past 20 years, uh, our, our infertility journey was very short and it was, we really, we saw the fertility specialist.
I walked into his office the very first day. And at that time, my husband and I owned a gym. I was a personal training twice a day. At the very least I was extremely lean and extremely fit. Um, and he looked at me and he said, Your body fat percentage is too low for us to do any, any form of, of, you know, whatever.
And so that was the first sort of like, oh, okay. And then I had filled out a questionnaire for him and I didn’t think anything of it. I just thought it was like a doctor’s questionnaire and he sat down and he said to me, he goes, I want to, I want you to talk to me a little bit here about why you, um, why you’re taking so much ibuprofen on your cycle.
And I was like, oh, I just, I thought, I just honestly thought that’s what women did. I just thought, well, I would have cramping, you know, for the first couple of days. So I take ibuprofen and he’s like, well, you’re taking way too much ibuprofen. Like I was taking six to 800 milligrams every like six to eight hours just to get through the first 48 hours of my, of my period.
And I just had always done that. Like, since I came off birth control, I’ve just always done that. And so he’s like, we really need to take a look at potential endometriosis or something else that’s going on in here. And so long story short, I did have an endometriosis surgery. And then after that surgery, we did a cycle of, I can’t remember the name of the injection that he gave us, but some sort of make you obsolete type injection with the whole, everybody loves the time sex, right?
Like how sex with your partner at 8:00 AM tenant? We know you’re like, okay, super. So it takes an emotional toll, right? Cause then you’re like, oh, like this is, you know, this is not exciting anymore. Um, but then we also discovered like, after some trying there, uh, this whole journey was maybe six months. Um, my husband also, he said, you know, I think we should also send your husband.
So it was interesting. I had endometriosis surgery, we did these oblation injections. And then after maybe four or five months of all of that, they said, Hey, let’s look at your husband, which I always like to bring up, because if you are in a relationship right now and infertility is part of your story, it takes two to make a baby my view.
So, you know, so my husband was checked and he had some, um, some winter called Baraka seals. And so he had varicose seal surgery. And then at that point, we got to this place where we were kind of just like burn out like six months in of like, oh my gosh, like, how long is this going to take? How much is this going to take as far as finances?
Like, what are we, what what’s the emotional toll going to be here? And the physical toll. Um, and so the fertility specialist said to me, you know, I think you really need to like, think about what you want to do. The next step for us at that point was in vitro. And I went to my holistic practitioner, the same one who I just was mentioning that helped me on my journey with headaches.
And she said, Jenny, I want to tell you this. Like, you can do whatever you want to do. But I can’t guarantee you that you’re not going to go through this in vitro process. Headache-free she’s like given that we know you’re a migrant newer, like you’re just somebody who’s going to get a headache. Um, she’s like, you know, we really need to just, I just need to mention that to you, that you could potentially suffer with migraine.
So I started talking to friends of mine who had done in vitro and oh my gosh, the headaches so bad. And I thought, oh my gosh, I can’t go back to that place. And so luckily my husband and I, we were, like I mentioned before, we were high school sweethearts. And we had talked from a very young age, like before we were even engaged about how we wanted to both adopt children and also potentially conceive children.
Um, and so luckily I looked at him one day after we left the doctor’s office and he’s like, we’re done. He’s like, we’re just, we’re not doing this. We’re just going to adoption as for us. And so we just that’s when that story started. So we, we went that direction and, and I, I remember breathing this sigh of relief, like, oh yeah, I don’t have to go through this.
You know what I mean? Like, so it was a very short-lived journey, but a very intense and emotional one, for sure. Yeah. I have so much respect for that though, because I think there’s an element where, you know, so for people listening and watching, we’re also adopting or adopting our fourth child. So it’s been quite an incredible journey.
And I resonate with what you’re saying, because I’ve heard so many stories where I think too quickly, there is a grieving process, but there’s also this sense of, um, it’s your child either way, you know what I mean? Whether it becomes, it comes to you biologically from your own room or it comes to from another woman’s womb.
Like it’s, it’s not, it’s not a second option. Like it will be your child and I have so much respect for you and your story because, um, You know, it’s, it’s a grieving process, but I respect how quickly you came to that decision. Not that there’s a right or wrong. Um, but what would you say to somebody who is in that position right now, who is struggling with feeling like, like, this is like the second best option and that they have to try in vitro because it needs maybe they do for their own mental and emotional.
What would you say to that person? Like how did you come to the place where you just felt like my child will be from another woman’s womb? Yeah. So, I mean, I was adopted at birth, so I’ll lead with that. So I was adopted at birth and, um, I’ve always just had this feeling. Like I know that my parents loved me as much as they would have if I would have come from my mom’s belly.
Right. And so that was something ingrained in me from a very young age. And so as throughout my lifetime of, even with my husband who, you know, his, his, his mother is his birth mother is his mother. Um, We had, you know, I remember the very first time we ever had the conversation about just me being adopted and, and potentially wanting to adopt leader.
And I just said to him, like, I can love any baby, like hand me the baby and I’m going to have. Right. And so I always joke around with my, with, with people. And I say, give me all the babies, like any color, any, any, you know, anything like any color, any size, like I will love the baby. And so, um, we have an interesting story and I don’t want to take us totally down a rabbit hole here, but with, with our adoption story, I just have to mention, you know, you, with the question you asked, you asked, uh, what about, what if people are thinking it’s a second best option.
Yeah. And I think we have to really get to the root of what that mindset is. Yes. Because I think what people are actually struggling, struggling with is the question. Can I love a baby as much as I would love my own. And my answer to that is. Absolutely like my five-year-old and my one-year-old are both adopted and I could not love them more.
I sometimes my husband and I laugh because we’ll say, I actually think I do love them more. I love them more than maybe what I would have loved to had it come from me. Right. And so, um, I just want to encourage you. I think a lot of people, I mean, I talked to a lot of couples and a lot of women who are going through the adoption process or they’re thinking about starting the adoption process.
And I think it is so important to really just understand that like, you should not let your lack of confidence in that deter you from moving forward. Like just keep taking the next step. I think as women in particular, we want to see the whole staircase, right? Like we want to see like, well, what’s this gonna look like?
How’s this going to go down? What if I’m disappointed? What if, what if, what if, what if, and we worry, worry, worry, and it’s like, just take the next step, right? Like just start the home study or. As, you know, TA ask to talk to your local agency or your local attorney or whatever the case is, like, just take the next step.
Because at any point you can say, you know what, it’s not for me. And some people it’s not, it’s not for them. And it’s totally fine, but I do think, and this is sort of a personal mission that I’m on, um, to really just educate people about. What it looks like to adopt. I mean, what, what does it really look like?
Because it’s just, it’s, it’s not as scary as you think. And it’s actually, I think the most beautiful thing, um, that I, I ever will experience, for sure. Like to, I mean, so anyways, without, without going down a super big rabbit hole, I just, I do just have to mention this because it’s the next step of my story.
Um, and I don’t, I don’t know if we want to necessarily go the adoption route, but we can, but basically when, and have you on here again, and we will really dive into adoption, that might be, that might be on the docket because I agree with you that can be fleshed out so much more, especially with your own story.
So we’ll have Jenny back here and we will definitely dive in more to adoption. Cause it’s something I’m passionate about too. And we’ll for sure. Dive in more, but keep going. Yeah. I just wanted to say. Uh, when we decided that we were like, okay, you know, we’re not going to pursue this in vitro. We, pretty soon after that, we made an appointment with a local adoption attorney and it was actually the same attorney that had handled my brother’s adoptions.
My brother is also adopted. And so we felt confident. We’re like, okay, you know, we have a little history here, like, so we sat down to their office and my husband and I, it was like a 30 minute appointment. And we came out of that. Like literally scared to death. Like we literally, we sat down with them and they, they get, you know, typical attorney.
They gave us like all the things that were going to go wrong. Like all these things are possibly going to go wrong. And so if you want to move forward, it’s going to be, you know, your, your savings account. And, um, you can give us that, that check and here’s the paperwork. And we walked out like, no way, like what on earth?
Like, this is not what we thought. Right. And so, um, they gave us a stack of paperwork to complete, and they said, you know, if you want to move forward, just give us his paperwork and your down payment and we’ll go forward. And that paperwork sat on my desk for, I think it was around five months and it just sat there.
And it was just like, we both just looked at each other. Like we, at this point we owned a gym, like things were going well. Like I was excelling in my bit in my home business. It was just like, ah, maybe we’re just going to travel the world. Like maybe we just won’t do the kid thing and we kind of went back and forth.
And so, um, what’s funny is I have a social media presence because of my fitness business. And so I bade just a, a random post on my Facebook business page, a picture of my brother and I on national adoption day. And I said, um, I said, Hey, happy national adoption day. We’re so grateful for our parents and for the fact that adoption exists and blah, blah, blah.
And I got a message on my Facebook page from a girl who went to high school with my brother. Who had a friend, a coworker who was expecting and was looking to give up the child for adoption. And, um, that trial became my, my daughter Ellery. So that was really one of those moments where we were like, uh, well, so we didn’t fill out the paperwork, but like God just intervened.
And now a child is in our lap, so what do we do? And so we called that agency back and we were like, so here’s the thing. Like we have your paperwork and everything, but we actually, you know, we have someone already, um, a birth mother who’s interested in that we already have that connection. And so we, we feel like it was the universe’s way of being like, if you’re not going to do it, we’re going to do it for you.
We’re going to start this for you. And then of course, with my second child, we pursued adoption, but it was a totally, we had a totally different mindset. Like we might say like, yeah, we’re doing it right. I mean, it was just a totally different level of confidence. And so I think what holds a lot of people back.
That confidence of the unknowns. And can I love it as child, as much as I love my own. And the answer is I assure you. Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. We’re going to take a quick break, but we come back, stay tuned for a speed round of this or that with Jenny, we’re going to get to know her a little bit better.
And her expert advice on how to sync your fitness nutrition with your hormone cycle to maximize results. Right? When we come back, you have tried it all. We’re 80. We’ll never lose the extra weight or reclaim the energy you once enjoyed, want to achieve that loss without spending hours in a gym or eliminating entire food groups from your diet.
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You don’t have to think real hard about it. You can pick what first comes to mind burger or hot dog burger Ellen or Oprah Ellen cardio or weights weights all day. Really? Okay. What’s your favorite? What’s your favorite? A strength training exercise. What’s one body part. You love lifting. I love training legs as much as I hate it.
I love it. Yeah. Camping or the beach? The beach. I’ve never camped. You’ve never camped. I’ve never once camps. My husband says he won’t be the one that take me either. So I need a shower. I need no, I need like, yeah. I don’t think I could camp. Well, that’s hilarious. Okay. You need to let me know when you first go camping.
Um, I will say it becomes nostalgic. Your girls would love it. I know my girls would definitely love it. Yeah. It’s it’s uh, I get it though. It’s it’s not for everybody. I grew up doing both, so I’m like a huge fan of both, but I mean, I would still probably take the beach. Uh, do you first notice smile or hair?
Smile and candy or baked goods? Uh, baked goods. Not a big TV person. Yeah. What’s your favorite baked? Good. Hmm. Um, I just made these, my favorite is, uh, this sort of like my own recipe for doughnuts, like homemade doughnuts that are gluten free, dairy free refined sugar-free. Yeah. You might have to send me that recipe.
I’ll give all the credit for it. That sounds their chocolate lays too, which is the best. I just had a doughnut Sunday for the first time in my life. I was in Sarasota, Florida a week ago. It was life-changing the first time you’ve ever had a donut. No, no, no, no. Donut Sunday Dennis’ Sunday got donut Sunday, Wednesday, to be very clear.
It was not sugar-free refined. Sugar-free dairy-free gluten-free it. Wasn’t at all of everything. And it was this sounds amazing. Oh my gosh. They were like mini hot cinnamon sugar donuts on the bottom. Fresh-made with soft serve vanilla ice cream on top. It was sorry. Got my mouth is what I know. Okay. On that note, let’s talk nutrition.
Um, so you, you make such a great point. I love this about your teaching and your philosophy in your, with your clients. You talk about how most exercise programs and fad diets are created with male physiology in mind. And you mentioned that women are not small men, women are not small. Men, women have, you know, natural ebbs and flows of hormones, and that do play a greater role in our overall physiology.
Then for men, men have hormones too, to be clear for anyone listening, men also have hormones, but they do not play quite a strong role in their overall function and physiology. And for women, there are times hormones are low there’s times that they are high. We’ve talked a little bit about, um, hormones specifically.
You have learned to coach your clients as well as the way that you live, that there are times that your body is primed for fat burner muscle gain, and there’s times when it needs rest based on your hormonal cycle. So my first question is let’s just start with nutrition because I believe that nutrition is really 90% of the wellness pie chart, not to mention the fat loss pie chart.
How do you encourage your clients to eat based on their hormonal cycle? How would you correlate the nutrition and hormones? What, what difference does it make? Yeah, this is a great question. So, yes. So when it comes to nutrition on your cycle, it’s going to be dependent on each individual woman. So the first thing that I walk women through my course is to really get to the root cause of what could be going on for them specifically.
So step one is let’s look at, let’s try to find an integrative practitioner. Um, same as it was for me. That was my first step, right? Like that’s fine, an integrative practitioner and let’s get the right testing done to see what’s going on for you. And so I, I give women, you know, the testing to ask for, I tell them how to find an integrated practitioner.
I teach them what questions to ask their doctor so that we start from the get-go knowing what their primary issue is. Um, one of the things that I teach. Uh, a good visual is I teach the four legs of the endocrine chair. So we talk about the blood sugar, the cortisol, you know, your sex hormones and your thyroid and how each of those is really an equal leg of your chair, your chair, and what it sits on, which is your foundation, which is your gut, right?
Like if it’s sitting on sand, it’s very Rocky. So you have a very, uh, imbalanced gut. If it’s sitting on hard floor, it’s got a good foundation. And so what happens if I cut off one leg of the. The whole chair starts to wobble, right? So your blood sugar especially plays a direct role into everything else happening in that, in that, uh, hormone chair that for like a chair.
So we want to see for each individual woman, what is her struggle? Right? Because that’s going to cater to what nutrition is best for her. If she’s somebody who is fluctuating blood sugar, um, she starts, she sees a lot of highs and lows with her blood sugar. We really want to look at is she consuming enough protein and fat to satiate her?
Or is she living on current? Because that’s going to be step one. Right? So you’re especially talking like your diabetics and prediabetics, they’re you seeing this drastic fluctuation, even in women who are not pre-diabetic I love this. Yeah. This is a great question. Yeah. So this happens very frequently where women will come back and say, well, my A1C and my, all my blood sugar tests were normal.
And I said, okay, but tell me about your day. And they’ll explain their day to me. And they’re like, well, for some reason, at 10:00 AM, I just, I get this sort of like crash and I’m just, I have to have another cup of coffee or whatever, or like this late afternoon, cup of coffee thing keeps coming up and I’m like, well, you know, most likely your adrenals are crashing.
Maybe your blood sugar is crashing. Like, are you having a snack? Are you having, what kind of breakfast are you having too many women? I’m telling you too many women are not eating enough. And they’re not eating enough protein and fat. And so, you know, you know this obviously, but just for the sake of the listeners, like all of your, all of your hormones come from from cholesterol.
And so if we’re not giving our body a too many women are eating low fat diets, um, and that low fat is, is contributing to a hormonal imbalance. And so don’t be afraid to have like the scrambled eggs with veggies in the morning with an, in some olive oil, right? Like that’s, I, I, if, if I had a dollar for every woman that says like, oh gosh, I don’t usually eat that much for breakfast.
Like, I’ll have a granola bar. And I’m like, well, that granola bar is not serving you. Like, it is a very high sugar you’re, you’re getting that initial energy from it and then you’re crashing. So again, so it just depends on what the woman’s sort of emo is. Right? What’s the blood sugar. Um, aspect of the chair.
So you said thyroid sex, hormones and cortisol and cortisol and adrenals is something we can, we can talk about too. But for me particular, like my adrenals come into play as well. Like I kind of have what are considered fragile or weak adrenals. So I have to really pay attention to my sleep. Um, believe it or not the amount of sleep and the quality of sleep that you’re getting can affect the blood sugar, which obviously that all kind of interconnects.
So, uh, the dots for people she’s also, this is also cortisol that she’s talking about here. Yes, yes, yes, that’s right. So if you get a cortisol test, especially like through a saliva test, that’s gonna be the most accurate to see what your cortisol is doing on a 24 hour basis. So, but the one thing that I would say is, regardless of we’re talking specifically that we’re talking about cycling, we’re talking about your sex hormones, right?
We’re talking about what’s happening with the progesterone, estrogen and testosterone over the course of your potentially 28 day cycle. Sometimes it’s upwards of 30, 35 days or so. Um, and again, it just depends on the woman, right? If the, if a woman listening says, oh my gosh, I have 35 day cycles. I’m going to give you a guide in a moment about what it would look like for a 28 day cycle, like a standard 20, but that almost never happens, right?
Like most women are dealing with shorter cycles or longer cycles. So, um, for a standard 28 day cycle, you know, we, what we start to see is during the bleed, when you’re actually menstruating those first three days, day 1, 2, 3, et cetera, however long you bleed that tends to be when your hormones are at rock bottom, right?
Your, your hormones are completely rock bottom. It’s triggered your uterine lining to shed, which is why you’re having the period. So a lot of women will start to feel. They’re really low energy. Right. I know for me, that’s the time of the month where I just want my favorite comfy sweats. I want my Netflix, I just want to sort of introvert.
And too often we put pressure on ourselves like, oh, I’m supposed to work out today. Like, oh, this is, this is my, I, this is day six on my workout calendar. Or this is my orange theory class or whatever. And it’s like, guess what girl? You’re like, you should listen to your body. And if your body is telling you to rest, rest, right.
So, and that we can talk about fitness too, but for nutrition, you know, what I see is too many women take those first three days of the month when they’re feeling that sort of introverted, bloated, maybe crampy feeling, and they want to have all the chocolate or they want to have all the popcorn or they want to have all the salty carbs.
So the key there is just to keep it really simple, right? Like if you’re, if you’re, if you stay on track and you’re still fueling yourself the way you are the rest of the month, as far as making sure you’re getting enough healthy, healthy fats and healthy proteins, then you’re, you’re not going to most likely crave those things as much.
Believe it or not. Um, some women will say that they get you, you mentioned nausea, right? Like you’ll get nauseous around your cycle. Believe it or not eating protein can actually help that nausea. So even though it sounds like the last thing you want to eat, like you’d rather have that donut, you know, that having that chicken breast or the hard-boiled egg is actually going to help you, um, feel better.
So as we start to see estrogen rise at the end of that week of that first week, right, we start to enter what’s called follicular phase. So this is where your body’s preparing for ovulation. The follicle is in production, so to speak in an ideal cycle, And our energy levels start to come up. So when the estrogen starts to rise, we as women start to feel more social, right?
We want to put on our makeup. We want to go out. We want to maybe have that date night. Our libido starts to come up and that’s really a great time of the month that you can be socializing that women like to go out to eat and all that kind of stuff. But it’s also as that estrogen rises, we’re more prone to what I mentioned before was my problem, which is estrogen dominance.
So as the estrogen starts to rise, there’s no progesterone really occurring yet until we get to ovulation. This is when a lot of women can actually see headaches happen in their cycle, leading up toggling between days seven to 14. Is that correct? Yes. Correct. So leading up to ovulation day seven to 14, and we can start to see.
It can for some women, not for everybody, but we can start to see this sort of estrogen dominance happen. And so I like to encourage women, especially in that week of their cycle to eat a lot of cruciferous vegetables, right? Like lots of broccoli, cauliflower, um, leafy greens, dark leafy greens, things that’ll really help, help flush out the liver, like flush out the liver, help detoxify that excess estrogen, um, so that you can feel your best and not be in that state of potential migraine or, or some people, some women even get kind of bloated around population.
So all of that will kind of help there as well and pain pain. I actually got like a mild, I know exactly which side women look at me like that does not happen. I’m like I’m telling you, it goes back and forth. I know exactly where. Over his obviating right at day 13. 14. Yeah. It’s yeah. I’m like literally textbook.
It’s that’s all. I can’t complain. I can’t complain. I got it’s awesome. Babies biologically. So that’s all I can complain, but yeah. So I get, I understand what you’re saying for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So the mullets we hit once we hit, um, oblation, right? The population is kind of a quick thing, right? Usually like 24 to 72 hours.
Uh, but women can expect to it depending on what imbalance they might be dealing with. If they’re dealing with one, they can, they can kind of start to feel sluggish during that middle of the cycle. So workouts workouts tend to be very strenuous for a woman who’s right at ovulation. And that’s because if you think about it, you know, from a personal training perspective, we tell people you don’t want to eat a big meal and then go work out right.
Because your body can only really do one thing. Well, so it can either digest your food or it can help you crush that workout. Right. The same thing for ambulation. I tell women for that 24 to 72 hours, um, especially like for you, you’re very in tune with your body. So, you know, when you’re ovulating, if your workout is a struggle, if you start to notice, like I’m working out on those days and I really feel like I’m just like short of breath, I don’t have the same energy that’s because your, your hormones are at a high, they’re actually surging to have that, to have that oscillation happen, your estrogen, all of them.
So for people listening right at round like day, you know, 13, 14, 15, you’re you’re saying the estrogen progesterone, maybe testosterone, but especially estrogen and progesterone is high is high. Yeah. For everyone listening for when you have your period is absolutely. Yep. Yep. And so, um, after that happens, we actually entered the luteal phase, which is my favorite phase because that’s where your progesterone comes into play.
And that’s where you start to just relax and you start to feel this calming effect. Progesterone is a very relaxing hormone, helps with sleep. Um, helps just helps you calm down. Right. So I like to treat the second half of my month is when I’ll do a lot of my business planning. I’ll do a lot of just strategy because my brain is in a good calm place.
And I’m very kind of into that mode, right? I’m not, I’m not high strong. Like I feel like I am with high estrogen. So in the luteal phase though, uh, women actually require more. So we require more calories because if you think about it, the progesterone is surging to support that potential pregnancy, whether you are or aren’t pregnant.
And so because of that, our body starts to feel hungrier. And so if you start paying attention to your cycles more, after listening to this podcast, you might notice like, gosh, like I’m, you know, a few days after ovulation or I’m in that, around that day, 20, 21. Aspect of my cycle and I’m really hungry. It could be that you’re not eating enough for that luteal phase.
You can boost up your calories, usually at least 300 calories in that luteal phase to really help satiate you. Um, so that’s something that I like to mention. If you feel hungrier, it’s probably because you are hungrier. So, uh, and then of course we get to my favorite, which is like that every woman’s favorite, which is like the PMs, right.
Still luteal phase, but it’s, before you start to bleed again and all the feelings come back, you can feel it coming. All the cravings, come back, all the energy starts to dip and we start all over again. So there’s one other thing that I like to mention for nutrition, and that is seed cycling seed cycling is something that has.
Newer science and the best way since we are audible here, the best way to direct people is if you just simply go to Google and you search seed cycling for the female psycho or seed seed sunflower. Yes, E V seed cycling, seed cycling. So like sunflower seeds, flax seeds, there are different types of seeds that will help, um, boost progesterone that will help boost estrogen or detoxify estrogen.
So there are certain times of your cycle that you can consume different types of seeds to really naturally help that process. There’s actually a couple of companies out there right now, working on, um, seed cycling supplementation. Try to say that five times fast seed cycling supplementation, where you simply just take some for.
Capsule or, or seed concoction at different times of your cycle to really boost those hormones when they are need to help support the hormones that should naturally be occurring at different point. Right? Yeah. So that’s something that you guys can check out. I mean, you could just do it with a simple Google search and click on images, and there’s a ton of stuff out there about what, what hormones are good or what seeds are good for, what hormones.
Hm. Interesting. Love that. So we just talked, I mean, I hope people listening here, if you want to re listen and get out a notepad, I feel like there’s a lot of things here. You could be writing down to start doing some research. So that was with nutrition in terms of fitness, what, you know, just to like a basic concept of how do you encourage clients to best exercise in tandem with their say.
Yeah. So if we think about those phases, right, we think about, um, menstruation. I talked about how it’s usually like your sweat pants and Netflix time of month. For most women. It’s a Netflix that I’m like Netflix the whole month. So I’m not sure. Well, I agree, but you know, there’s just that extra urge when you’re, when you’re on your site.
So when you’re in that, you know, if, especially if you’re someone who’s dealing with an imbalance, which a lot of women are, whether they know it or not. So if you’re dealing with it, if you’re, if you’re listening to me right now and you’re thinking, you know, I have crampy crampy periods, or I’m really pretty miserable, I’m pretty bloated.
I’m nauseous, whatever. Then the last thing you want to do is push your body through a workout. So my first tip would be when you’re bleeding, especially if you don’t feel it, don’t. Just rest. If you are in the percentage of women who feel fine and you don’t have a lot of cramping and your period is just another day, um, that’s what that’s going to be a really good time of month for you to lift weights.
And I’ll try not to hate you forever. Yeah, exactly. Secretly hating you. But yeah, the first, the first week, so days one through seven, you know, like I said, rest, if you need to, during the bleed, if not, then that first week of the month is really going to be good for strength training. And the reason is because if we look at a man’s hormones, he right, he’s constant, he’s in a state of constant, right?
So he there’s no ebbs and flows. There’s no rises and falls. So you are actually most like a man, as far as your hormones, when you’re in that first week of your cycle before your estrogen starts to come up, So that is what we know from science. Since most science has been done on men, we know that strength training and strength gains can happen more effectively in that first week of your cycle.
And as estrogen starts to rise. So strength training and the first half of your cycle is usually a good guideline. I would say at least four days a week of strength training, a couple days of mild to light cardio. Um, in that first half of your cycle, like we talked about earlier, when you get to ovulation, which is that really brief mid cycle day, 13, 14, 24 hour to 72 hour period.
You’re going to have to start to just track your cycle individually and see how you’re feeling for some women. They don’t see a difference. They don’t really notice a difference in energy for some women like myself, sometimes I’ll even be in the middle of a workout. And then I looked down and I’m like, how was that workout so bad?
And then I realized, oh my gosh, it’s because I’m ovulating. Like I have to be ovulating. Cause I was just so sluggish. So if you feel sluggish, treat those two days or so with active recovery, yoga, walking, cycling, something like that. If you don’t feel any difference, of course, then it’s up to you. If you wanted to just continue with the strength training.
The second half of the cycle, which is when our progesterone comes into, into play is really the best time for you guys to hit it hard with high intensity interval training. So that’s when we want to get into the fat burning zone. So you’re going to kind of swap, right? Like the first half of your cycle, you’re doing dominantly strength training with a little bit of cardio.
And then the second half of your cycle, we’re going to do a little bit more high intensity intervals and still going to incorporate the strength training. But it’s going to only maybe be two to three days a week. The the dominant half of the week. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. And so then, um, as we get closer to the, the period, especially again, speaking to those women who might be dealing with imbalance, if you’re somebody who says, yes, I definitely experienced PMs.
I get moody, I get grouchy. I get tired. I don’t sleep very well. I get bloated like those types of things right before your period, I’m talking about probably days 25, 26, 27. Again, let’s scale it back to some active recovery, right? Like you’ve pushed hard all month. You’ve been training hard. It’s okay to take the rest.
It’s okay to back off and listen to your body and prepare for that uterine lining to shed and start all over again, knowing that, Hey, in another week I’m going to feel really good and I’m going to be able to push harder because I listened and I rested. So that’s what I would say. You know, if we’re talking typical, that would be a typical look at cycles, thinking your fitness.
I love that. I, you know, I think. Again, for so many women listening and watching there’s, there’s a million fitness programs out there, right? I mean, this is coming from somebody who has her own fitness nutrition program. And what I love is that it’s not a one size fits all. You know, you have to find a program that fits your needs and what I love Jenny, about your program and what you do.
I think there’s a lot of women out there who just feel like there is no hope. They’ve tried everything. And you know, I, I can actually think of two women right now who have gone through my program, who absolutely saw results, but I have a feeling in order for them to move further in anything they would need to do your program.
You know, I have women who I have sent to other programs after mine because they want to book my program is not a bulking program. It is a learn how to live in a healthy body, fat percentage for life program. So, yeah. As a fitness and nutrition coach myself. I highly encourage you to check out Jenny’s program because I think there are so many of you who probably need to do a more holistic look at what is involved in terms of maximizing and understanding your hormone cycle in order to leverage your results.
Because at the end of the day, we all just want you to live well, right? And to fulfill your God-given purpose with more confidence and energy freedom, and, and Jenny can definitely help you do that in a very unique way. Her course is called sync S Y N C. And certainly the link is going to be on the show notes on my blog@hammersandhugs.com.
Jenny is also a podcast host herself, and her podcast is called, is it sync, right? It’s called a sync, your life sync your life, your life. Where else can people find you? Jenny? What else would you want to say for people who want to learn more about what. Uh, my website is probably the best way to get a full picture of what I do that is Jenny swisher.com.
You can also follow me on social media and Jenny Swisher for all my handles. And if you’re interested in taking just a simple imbalanced free hormone imbalance clues to see if maybe hormone imbalance is possibly at play for you. I have a free quiz@syncdotjennyswisher.com. That’s a great place. Perfect.
Okay. And we will make sure that that link is there. So that sync dot Jenny swisher.com. Jenny, it has been an honor. I can’t wait to have you back. We want to, I want to talk adoption so much that we can unpack there. I am looking forward to that, but I really appreciate your insight. And just the difference that you were making in so many women’s lives.
We, we need more of you. Good. Well, thank you. I’m so grateful that you had me on I’m so happy that our paths have crossed. I’m looking forward to interviewing you here in the near future as well. So I love, I love when women can come together and empower each other, because I think it’s just such a, you know, there’s, there’s so much of a need for that.
Um, so I’m so grateful that you had me here. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thanks, Jenny. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the imperfectly empowered podcast. It is my honor to be here with you. I am so grateful for each and every one of you. If you were watching on YouTube, be sure to click the subscribe button below.
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