How Do I Match My Eating Patterns to My Menstrual Cycle?

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How do I match my Eating patterns for my Menstrual cycle? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Lisa Marie from Instagram asks, how do I set up my eating patterns to my menstrual cycle? All right, Lisa Marie, I have the perfect expert here to answer this question. I got Dr. Stephanie Estelle in the house. She's an expert in female physiology, metabolism and body composition. She uses the science of your cycle. Now, whether you have a period or not to reclaim your energy and feel great in your skin. She actually decides on how she's going to work based on her cycle and the phases of the moon. She's a total science nerd and she's wrapped up in a glam package. And when she gets dressed up, she looks like she should be walking the red carpet. And she plays a great Wonder Woman at costume parties. She'll be right back with the answer. Stay with us.

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Well, this is kind of the big question, right? And this is what I talk about in the Betty Body, which is my book baby. And it's really the crux of my work. And as a woman, one of the things that makes us distinct for those of us that are still in our reproductive years is that we have this reproductive cycle, this cadence that happens every single month. So understanding the ebbs and flows of your hormonal milieu, when you can push yourself, when you need to be gentle with yourself, this is incredibly powerful information. And you can be more. There are certain times of the month that you can be more aggressive, for example, with carbohydrate restriction. And that would be the first two weeks of your cycle, called the follicular phase, versus the second two weeks of your cycle. And that's just an example. I'll go through each week in succession to explain this out a little further. But for a lot of women, the hormonal environment in the second two weeks of their cycle, you know, whether you're in your 30s or 40s, we tend to be more inflamed, right? We tend to have more digestive issues, more joints that are kind of achy and creaky, sleep issues. So the way that I like to structure this, there's a sort of a two part answer here. The first is, before starting to cycle your eating. I would love it. In an ideal world, I want to make sure that you have already gone through one or more cycles of becoming fat adapted. So what that means is that you spend at least 28 days in ketosis. So 28 days, this is a therapeutic intervention. And I am of the opinion that women do not and should not and must not and cannot stay in ketosis forever. It is absolutely not the right thing for our female physiology. But we can, we can introduce one or two of these 28 day cycles to become fat adapted. And once that happens, then we can move into changing our eating patterns to match up with our menstrual cycle. So in. Once you've done that first piece, the first week of your menstrual cycle should be your bleed week. This is a great week for continuing that ketogenic protocol. So I love to. Whenever I'm doing keto, I love to split it up like 70% fat, 20% protein, and then 10% of that is carbohydrates. And those carbohydrates are green leafy vegetables. It's the bok choy. It's the, you know, it's the cruciferous vegetables, like your broccoli, your arugula, your spinach, all of those things. So that's week one, week two, we have. In terms of the hormonal environment, testosterone and estrogen peak in the second week of your cycle, meaning that your testosterone is at its peak over the whole course of your cycle over those 28 days. Testosterone is highest this week, and so is estrogen. So I love to pair with this particular hormonal profile this week. I love to pair that with an increase in. In protein. And the reason for that is we can drive something called muscle protein synthesis by increasing our protein intake. And that's exactly like. It's a fancy word. That's exactly what it sounds like. Just creating new muscle. So we do more of a. So we might bring down that 70% down to 40, bump up the protein from 20% in week one, we'll bump it up to 40% in week two, and then the remainder, about 20% or so, is your carbohydrates. Week three and week four, now we're moving into the luteal cycle. So as I mentioned, this is when we tend to be a little bit more inflamed. The sleep, the digestive stuff. So this first week, in week three of the luteal cycle, I like to return to keto, but I also like to start amping up resistant starches. That's gonna help with your cravings, it's gonna help with your gut lining, like leaky gut, and it's gonna help with your sleep. And week four, we come back to that higher protein like we did in week two. But I also want you to bump up your total caloric intake, and I want you to increase it by about 10%. So I promise not to worry. I know we've been conditioned to be scared of calories, but I promise, as you bump up your total calories, it's because you need it. It's because the reason why you have cravings and the reason why so many women fall off their diet is because we are trying to calorically restrict ourselves all month long and this is a week to really relax that and to bump up your calories. So that is why and how to set up your eating patterns in accordance with your menstrual cycle.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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