46. The #1 Reason Women Feel Drained, Moody, And Stuck In Burnout—no One Talks About This With Them With Alisa Vitti

Never is there mention of how a woman's schedule should change. That's a side topic. But infrared rhythm, can you break it down? Like, what is it? And it's specific to women, obviously, but.

Just like, what is it? So what you need to know about it is circadian rhythms are about, you know, a cycle that takes place over the course of the day. And in frading rhythm is a cycle that takes place over a longer period of time. And in our case, as women, it's our monthly menstrual cycle. If you live only from the circadian day in and day out, Something is missing for you as a woman, which is that flow of shifting energy through your InfraDian experience over your menstrual cycle over the course of a month. As you go through that, having different ratios of these, of hormones, estrogen with then progesterone, you know, comes into the picture in the luteal phase. All of this affects your brain chemistry, your metabolism, your stress response system, your immune system. You are a different creature each week. of the cycle. And by aligning your self-care practices with that ebb and flow of what feels right and good.

Elisa BT, welcome to Rooted in Wellness.

I am so happy to be here. Our chat is just long overdue and it's such a joy to be in your presence. Oh, I know.

When I saw your name pop up, it's Girl Crush vibes, I want to say, because I've been following your work for so long and it's been just such a game changer in my practice also. So we're going to dive into all that goodness. But to kind of warm up, I want to give you a sense of what this podcast is all about. So Rooted in Wellness is all about merging ancient wisdom in our modern world. and really how we can all become more rooted in our health, in our self, in our life, and our happiness. So let's start off the episode by starting about what helps you feel more rooted in who you are and why.

Lately, what's helping me feel more rooted is my exercise practice. I have gotten very into lifting heavy, heavy weight and my morning work session, as I like to call it, at the gym where I am spending like an hour lifting really heavy things. It puts me in my body to such a degree that makes me feel super, not just physically strong, but mentally clear and energetically focused and on mission. So I find that when I do come to my work as a hormone expert and running a FemTech company, that I'm really focused on what matters, what moves the needle. And then the same thing when I get into my mom's own time of the day, I'm just getting things done. And that's really, for me, this whole bigger conversation about how do we as women live in an embodied way in our feminine energy? And the way to do that in all the years I've been studying, living in India, sitting with female Zen masters, trying all sorts of things, it's actually by getting into your body in whatever way you can. If that's dance for me right now, it's lifting heavy weights, whatever it is, when you get into your body as a woman, that's when you're most connected to your feminine energy. And we as women don't do that enough because we spend lots of our time up here in our heads, out, you know, out of our bodies, and we need to come home to our bodies.

I love that. I love that you said lifting heavy things. When I weight lift, well, first of all, growing up with yoga, I remember so many teachers, like, don't lift weights, don't run, like, just do yoga. When I lift yoga, I feel sexy. Like, I feel sexy, I feel strong, I feel in my body. And to that point, I noticed I could get the same sensation from yoga class, but now on the gym floor, which is great, which is embodiment, right? And that's a big topic. Let's really dive into that today. And how old are your kids?

I have I have a ten year old daughter and she is the love of my life. Absolutely. Juicy.

Juicy. My son is ten two. It's the best. I have a daughter that's seven, but it's the best.

Okay.

We mentioned embodying. Let's dive into the opposite side. So I don't know if you've worked with people who today we're making healing and health so complicated. that when people think about these practices to make them feel better, they're treating them like a checklist that they no longer, you know, they're doing the things, whether it's meditation or breath work or working out, but they're not coming to the present moment. It's like they're not even like taking advantage of the magic that it's doing for their bodies. So I call it drifting. Like I find there's times when I just drift off of doing the things that make me feel good. Are there certain things that you know, that uproot you? in your life and your happiness?

Uproot or, you know, I would say if I don't stick to my non-negotiable daily habits, you know, for example, things like taking my supplement stack, getting in my 10,000 steps, doing, you know, if I deviate from that in the practice of caring for my physical body, eating the foods that are correct for my cycle phase, you know, really just taking care of this vessel. If I, if I drift from that, I start to feel it pretty much everywhere. You know, it's the opposite of what I described earlier. You know, I start to feel a little less focused, more foggy, more moody, less optimistic and positive, lower energy. So yeah, those things, I think having a daily checklist that's around empowering habits that, you know, if I can just get these little things done, they really build a foundation from which I can springboard into other things in my life. is so critical. But, you know, don't overdo it with the list. I think in the world of wellness, there's like, you could have a very long list these days. There's, there between social media and the regular media, like your list of things that you should be doing could be very long. But I think, you know, what I try to do and when I, you know, advise my clients is let's figure out what are the essential things that are going to give you the biggest return on investment. for your well-being so that you're not doing it all, but doing things that really move the needle and lift you higher without burning you out at the same time.

I love that you brought that up. So I've been using this word non-negotiables with my clients for a really long time. And then I noticed as my non-negotiable list started to grow, it felt really masculine. And I thought, like, if this is gonna be something that's feminine and embodying for me, Should I not have non-negotiables? But then I realized the more that I adhere to specific simple non-negotiables, sunlight in the morning, a walk before I start my day, moving my body before I get on a screen, simple things like that are the things that allow me to become more present, more productive throughout the day so that I can be more present.

Let me, I just love that you opened that whole, let's go there. Okay. So, When we, so I've been on a journey to reclaim my feminine energy pretty much since I figured out that that was a thing back when I was maybe 23-24. And I have really, you know, it's led me to create the cycle thinking method, certainly, but it's also taken me on many other journeys. One of the things that makes it so easy to really connect with your feminine energy is to understand your biological rhythms. if you understand that you have a circadian rhythm and an infradian rhythm, right? Then it becomes a lot easier to structure and to take away, let's say, arbitrary judgment of what is masculine, what is feminine, right? Because even your thought, like, oh, if I have daily non-negotiable, is that putting me in my masculine? I would argue not at all, because what we are trying to do is live in a balanced or a dynamic flow of our masculine and feminine energy. Let's throw out the word balance. That's so loaded. So you have a circadian clock, which let's say represents more of the masculine energy, if you will, because it's rinse and repeat same day over day has more of a linear format. And it also matches the pattern of male hormonal production throughout the day. So you have this as well, but you need to support these daily practices like getting morning sunlight, protecting your sleep hygiene in the evening, blocking the blue lights, eating your calories at regular intervals, doing things that support that circadian rhythm. Obviously a very important thing. We also have this infrating rhythm, which lets you do what your heart was asking you for there when you were asking that question, which was, am I being too much of my masculine? Yes, if you live only from the circadian day in and day out, something is missing for you as a woman, which is that flow of shifting energy through your Infradian experience over your menstrual cycle over the course of a month. Because you, as you go through that, having different ratios of these, of hormones, estrogen with then progesterone, you know, comes into the picture in the luteal phase, all of this affects your brain chemistry, your metabolism, your stress response system, your immune system, you are a different creature each week of the cycle. And by aligning your self-care practices with that ebb and flow of what feels right and good for your female body as you go through the cycle, gives you the ability to honor your feminine through the month while you express, let's say, your masculine energy throughout the circadian experience. Right? So you, it's a both and, and I think that that is the issue when we as women try to figure out how do we reclaim our feminine is that we think it's an either or. And I'm here to tell you, after 25 years of being on that journey for myself personally, it's a both and you want to do you, you are both. So you want to express both. But having the structure for me of the cycle sinking method has healed that patriarchal wounding. in the most profound way. And it's available to every woman.

Good God, my blood is boiling, like getting excited about this conversation, but also the frustration of why don't we know, why don't we know this? Circadian rhythm. So that based on like Eastern medicine and growing up with the ashram was something that we were aware of. And the schedule at an ashram is the same every single day for this reason. Never is there mention of how a woman's schedule should change. That's a side topic. But infrared rhythm, can you break it down? Like, what is it? And it's specific to women, obviously, but just like, what is it? What do we need to know about infrared rhythm? Let's take a quick break to talk about something that's made a huge difference in my skin health lately. A product called OneSkin. If you're like me, always on the hunt for a wellness solution for optimizing your skin's health and longevity, you need to hear about this one. Most skincare products focus on surface level results, but one skin goes way deeper, working at a cellular level for lasting results. Their amazing all-woman team of skin longevity scientists developed OS1 after testing over 900 peptides. It's the first ingredient scientifically proven to interrupt cellular senescence, a core aging process. As we age and get exposed to UV rays, our skin cells enter senescence, They stop rejuvenating and producing collagen and elastin like they should. And even worse, they release harmful inflammatory chemicals and cause neighboring cells to become dysfunctional too. It's like a domino effect that makes our skin age faster with deeper wrinkles, thinning, and sagging what we all want to avoid. But one skin's OS1 switches off these senescent cells, getting to the root cause of skin aging. It helps our skin stay younger and healthier, and since skin is our body's largest organ, the health of our skin is absolutely critical to our overall health. That's why I personally love OneSkin. I've noticed a real difference in the resilience and youthfulness of my skin since using it regularly. As a Rooted and Wellness listener, you can get 15% off your first order with code MONA at oneskin.co/M-O-N-A. I really believe ONSKIN is something that can benefit all of us on our journey to optimal skin, wellness, longevity, and just aging feeling our best. Definitely check it out and see the difference it can make for you. Remember, go to oneskin.co/Mona. That's O-N-E-S-K-I-N.co/M-O-N-A. Use code MONA for 15% off. Trust me, your skin will thank you.

So the in fraying rhythm was this thing that I stumbled upon in my research because I was asking myself a question maybe, I don't know, 10 years ago now, which was, why is it that so many more women have hormonal problems compared to men? You know, it's 80 of women will have a hormonal problem at some point in her life. That's, that's shocking. And then when we look at the sort of male cohort, it's under 20. It's not the same. And obviously it I said, what, what's the blind spot? What are we, now, now I say, well, obviously, because men are living their cycle sinking as well, but they're just doing it on a circadian clock. So they're organizing their food, their Fitness and their productivity all to support their testosterone and cortisol patterns in a 24-hour period, which is wonderful that the entire world orients itself for, but it makes it so much easier for them to Just biohack even without intentionality, right? They're set up to physiologically thrive because the world is organized around their hormonal pattern. And then when I discovered the infradian rhythm and I said, oh, well, this answers the question why so many more women are suffering because we, A, don't know that we have this rhythm. Right? B, we are actively disrupting it constantly. And C, the world is not orienting around this rhythm. And so even if we were going to try to do it, we would still face challenges that would lead to some disruption. So when I say it's not easy for ovaries out there, which I've said for many years, I really, beyond endocrine disruptive chemicals and Everything that we've, you know, have heard will go through the list. Fundamentally, this infradian rhythm blind spot is causing havoc in terms of women's health. So what you need to know about it is circadian rhythms are about, you know, a cycle that takes place over the course of the day. And infradian rhythm is a cycle that takes place over a longer period of time. And in our case, as women, it's our monthly menstrual cycle. However, I want to draw careful attention to the fact that we used to have a simplistic view or understanding of the circadian clock, which was, oh yeah, it just governs sleep-wake cycles. But we now know it's vastly more complex. It controls the timing of every little function of your body, from when your blood pressure tends to be higher or lower, when your bowels are active, when they're not. Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue without circadian orchestration? Here you are trying to get some deep REM sleep and all of a sudden you have to have a bowel movement at 3 27 in the morning. I mean, chaos, right? So we love the circadian conductor, keeping the time, everything in its place and time. Infradian rhythm is something we experience over that 28 day cycle, but it would be too simplistic to say it just governs when you're ovulating and menstruating because it has profound impacts on key systems of the female body, the brain, metabolism, the immune system, the stress response system. So when we I think, you know, sort of 10, 000 foot view, why are more women suffering with anxiety? Why are more women suffering with autoimmune disorders? Why are more women suffering from all sorts of hormonal problems, weight issues because of this infradian disruption that we don't know that we have, that we don't even know that we're doing. And so when I saw that, it just became very clear, much like we have a routine that supports our circadian health, right? What's that routine? You wake up at a certain time, you eat at certain times, you go to sleep. Basic routine. We needed a basic routine to support this InfreDian clock. And that's how I created the cycle syncing method. So it aligns your food, your fitness, and your productivity with these four phases of the cycle so that we can really reap the benefits of healthy InfreDian function. on not just our menstrual cycle and hormones, but all these other systems of the body as well.

It's fascinating. And I love a concept that you say, which is that women don't have to suffer. A menstrual cycle shouldn't have to make you suffer. And yet it's that, you know, the same story of, oh, but it's so common, so it must be normal. It's not normal. And something that I love, I don't know. Do you know Dr. Mindy Pelts? Yes. Yeah. So something that I love that she says is that women are living at a generational mismatch for our physiology, for our constitution. And I did a bit of a deeper dive on this, just asking, like, my mom and some of my aunties around menopause and perimenopause. And the symptoms that they describe were just very different. Like, even my mom's menstrual cycle was very different than mine. I've never had a regular menstrual cycle. My mom did. But the key things that are disruptive today. So even to your point about our circadian rhythm kind of working inherently. Now science is also catching on to this. We're understanding the impact of blue light and our sleep patterns and stuff like that, which is great. So we have to make infradian rhythm go viral to end suffering for women. So I'm hearing you say then that a woman based on her lifestyle, and let her lifestyle practices. And then you're going to talk about diet also at different times during her cycle. She's able to own and take her power back of what she should be doing during that time. So, yeah. So let's walk, walk through, like, you know, the different phases of a cycle. And I'm also curious, too, for people like me who've never had a regular cycle, what that looks like.

Well, in a regular cycle, you have four phases. You have the follicular phase, the ovulatory phase, the luteal phase, and the bleeding phase, AKA the menstrual phase. Although it is a little dodgy that we have these vocabulary words that can be used kind of ubiquitously, like the menstrual cycle could be the whole month, but it's also the bleeding week. Nowhere in male medicine do we have these, you know, sort of doubling up on the language. So I always just like to call a spade a spade. The whole thing is your menstrual cycle. And when you're bleeding, that's your bleeding. reduces confusion. You know, I like to be very specific and clear. So in these four phases, you have different hormone ratios that are present that, you know, help orchestrate what is happening physiologically in the body. So you have sort of different levels of estrogen in the follicular phase that cause the stimulation of many follicles on the ovary. Then you have a surge of estrogen. and luteinizing hormone and FSH in the ovulatory phase that signal that one egg has, you know, passed muster and this one is going to be the one shipped off to the fallopian tubes. And then we move into the luteal phase where progesterone, my favorite hormone, enters the party and changes everything about how you're thinking and feeling and operating. And then after a 10 to 12 day period when there is no, let's say, moment of conception, then we reach our lowest levels of all hormones, which triggers the release of the endometrial lining, which, by the way, just in case you aren't magically awestruck by your body enough, you 3D print that organ every month from the foods that you eat. You manufacture that. It's not just like uterine lining is such a gaslighting of what it really is. It is the, it's, it's a highly specialized organelle that is, has specialized immune cell receptor. It's super cool. And you manufacture that every month. No big deal.

Yeah.

So you have these different hormonal ratios and, and they make you feel differently as you go through the cycle. I love to start with the impact on metabolism because it's something that a lot of women can relate to, unfortunately, from the negative perspective when it comes to cravings and the luteal phase. But let's start with what is supposed to happen in a healthy cycle. So in the first half of the cycle, the follicular and the ovulatory phases, your metabolism is actually slightly lower, right? It's just slightly slower. to your, let's say, average. And so you can get away with eating lighter, having smoothies and salads and, you know, working out more, and you're gonna feel perfectly energized. Then when you cross over into the luteal phase, your metabolism speeds up. Why would it do that? Right. Well, remember how I said you 3D print that beautiful organ? L, right? So. Now you need to be metabolizing foods more quickly so that you can actually manufacture that endometrial lining and keep your blood sugar stable at the same time. So studies show that you need 279 more calories per day in the luteal phase, which is revelatory for us as women because often we think, what's wrong with me? I need to eat how I was eating last week. Even if you don't recognize that you're saying last week from the luteal phase vantage point, you're saying, I need to eat how I was eating my ovulatory phase. You cannot, and you should not do that, which I'll get into. And if you, if, you know, when you're in that faster metabolic place, you have to eat more. And when you do, your blood sugar is stable, your moods are stable, your energy is good, progesterone is higher, in concentration than estrogen. And you have no PMS whatsoever, no cravings, no bloating, no insomnia, no nothing. You just feel great. And then your hormones shift again and you move into that menstrual phase. So changing our diet is absolutely logical and necessary when you understand this metabolic shift, right? So that's exactly what you'd be doing with cycle syncing. As I've described it in the book and in our app, you really kind of have to modulate not just your calorie intake, but also looking at food from a functional perspective to help you manage all of these different hormonal levels in your body.

Even as a nutritionist, this was never taught to us in school. Had no idea. And here I am in my 40s. Oh, I need to eat more than 279 calories during my Luteal phase. The impact of that, I can imagine for women who tend to keep possibly restrictive diets or adhere to a certain type of hardcore diet. And they wonder why they're still not feeling well. And I think that for women, when we get lost in, oh, but this is a diet that I know should be healthy or should help me lose weight or should help me gain more muscle. And yet it could be the one thing that's just out of alignment with how we want to feel.

It's really fascinating when we deprive ourselves of calories in the second half of the cycle. We trigger all sorts of, you know, neurotransmitter response and cortisol response to compensate for this missing caloric value. So your body is going to win, okay, the game of trying to balance your blood sugar by, you know, any means necessary. So first it'll secrete a lot of cortisol to talk to your fat cells to convert stored glycogen into usable glucose, which is okay in the short term. But if you're someone who's already struggling with PMS, or you're somebody who is feeling like you're having the symptoms of perimenopause too soon, or if you're somebody who's struggling to conceive, what that means is you're already progesterone deficient, right? In that luteal phase, you should have more estrogen, sorry, more progesterone than estrogen. If you're having PMS, it's the inverse. You have more estrogen than progesterone. If you can't conceive, same problem. If you're going through early perimenopause, same problem. Not enough progesterone creates a lot of a lot of symptomology. So when you then force the body to use that cortisol to keep your blood sugar stable, because you're not listening to that in fradian effect and you're not honoring your metabolic shift. Now you have to back into, you know, sort of master hormone regulation. So we're now going to be talking about pregnenolone and it's going to favor making more cortisol for you than progesterone, further exacerbating your progesterone deficiency. So this is not what you want to be doing. You want to nourish yourself during this month, caloric, during this phase of the cycle with your, the right calorie intake. And then from a neurotransmitter point, you know, ghrelin is going to be in full effect, making you have not just food cravings, but I almost liken them to sort of like a food trance, where you are kind of in an altered mental state and you don't snap out of it till you've hit the bottom of a bag of whatever it was you started down, going down into, right? And only after that does some leptin kick in. But it's because you're so calorie deficient that again, by any means necessary, your body will get what it needs to do its job as best as it possibly can, which is suboptimal in this circumstance where you're relying on cortisol, relying on ghrelin. If instead you started your day with a beautiful, robust breakfast with slow burning carbohydrates, proteins and fats, like, you know, in the luteal phase, I love recommending sweet potatoes for breakfast with like any protein you like, from eggs to chicken to sand. I don't care what it is, but some good 30 grams of protein, nice carbohydrates. that are slow burning, some good quality fats, and you do something similar for lunch, and you have a snack, and you have dinner. First of all, by the time you get to dinner, you're going to not have any cravings. You're going to have felt great all day, and you're not burdening your body with this whole, oh, let's make more cortisol and not make enough progesterone, and let's, you know, have this whole ghrelin leptin chaos. You're going to have a completely different experience. Simply by proactively giving your body the right kind of nutrition in that luteal phase. It's a game changer. And when you do it cycle over cycle, that's when the magic happens around reversing slash eliminating PMS and then starting to reap the benefits of protecting your future fertility, slowing down, you know, ovarian aging in terms of perimenopause, and it really pays dividends. So cycle, the, the cycle syncing method is great in real time each cycle. But again, as you cycle through every cycle, it is compounding interest for you in terms of long term health and, you know, from a longevity point of view, from a hormonal perspective.

I think it's fascinating, especially because I would say over the past 15 years, I've worked with women who have, it's this obsession about food, and it's not that they're just constantly eating or that there's an eating disorder, but it's a constant thinking of like either, you know, what am I gonna eat next? What's the next meal going to be?

And I wonder- what's the right thing to eat?

Thing to eat.

I know. The noise in the media, it's very confusing.

And it sounds silly to think perhaps our intuition was just guiding us the whole time, but we try to adhere to the standards that we're seeing in the media. And through that silencing now, here we are looking to incredible people like you who are saying, Hey, there's another way. So if we break down this amazing concept of cycle syncing, Can you give us a glimpse into like, just like, what are some of the meals in phase one and phase two?

What are we? Yeah. So, I mean, in the follicular phase, this is sort of a time where I do, you know, lighter grains, lighter proteins. There's a whole food chart that's gone viral on all social platforms in chapter four of In the Flow, which really breaks down the which specific foods. But I think just to start before you get you know, into the detail of like what will which vegetables and which proteins. Just think about, you know, fewer calories, lighter grains. I might have quinoa, I might have light white fish, I might bake it, I might steam veggies, keeping things lighter and easier to digest. I definitely do a lot of fermented foods in the follicular phase as well. In the ovulatory phase, this is sort of the phase where I will do more raw foods if You know, if, if, when I'm doing raw foods, it'll be smoothies and salads and, you know, light, everything the lightest possible. You can even get away with more vegan sources of protein, if that's something that's interesting to you. In the luteal phase, this is your sort of more, if you have to think of something, think of it like macrobiotic meals, right? Your Buddha bowls, you're going to have your brown rice and your sweet potatoes and your, your cooked leafy greens. You're not going to eat raw foods. here. Why? Progesterone slows down transit time in the gut and raw foods are also cooling according to many ancient practices. And we want to warm up the body as metabolism moves us towards menstruation, but also with progesterone slowing down transit time in the gut, we want lots of fiber and we want to make it as easy to digest as possible so that we don't get lots of constipation, air in the gut, raw foods. And so cook your leafy greens and have your sweet potatoes roasted and whatever.

You'Re going to do.

That is really great in the luteal phase. And then in the menstrual phase, there are actually lots of research, published research on PubMed that talks about how we are depleted in specific micronutrients during the bleeding phase. And so, you know, in the method I really help women to sort of front load foods that are going to give you some of that return on your food investment to get those levels up. So we're eating more, you know, animal protein, more fats, and eat things that are easier to digest as well. So, and all warm, everything warm, cooked, you know, hot, hot, hot, and this.

Yeah.

So that's kind of a high level what it looks like. And you can play within that structure. with, if you're someone who likes to follow macros, you can play with it from a macros perspective and make sure you're getting the right, you know, amounts of, of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats that work for your metabolism as a whole. But it's really just about modulating your calories a little bit differently in the second half of the cycle. The other fun thing, which is a really excellent part of the food chart, is that we want to use food strategically from a functional medicine point of view to help our bodies metabolize estrogen. for example, in the ovulatory phase, you have a peak surge of estrogen. Liver needs a little help, you know? So that's one of the reasons why we do a lot of fruits and veggies at that time, because that really super loads the liver with vitamin C and selenium and zinc and all the things that help it go through its phases of detoxification. In the luteal phase, we want to use these slow burning carbohydrates to keep blood sugar stable. That is priority number one for you. So things that very slow burning, essential. And like I said, in the menstrual phase, using food strategically to both warm the body, but also to replenish lost micronutrients because you are shedding that organ, A, and, you know, B, there's, there's some blood loss.

So you want to make sure that you're finishing. Yeah. Which makes sense that there's a micronutrient deficiency. Right. Like, just. And intuitively. So we shed this organelle naturally. We would probably, as we do, have a little bit more energy. the first two weeks of our cycle. Was there a reason behind the sour cream you were adding in the first two weeks? I guess you're rebuilding right after you shoulder injury.

Yeah, I mean, you can certainly fermented foods are great throughout the month, especially if you're someone who's dealing with gut issues. But if you're someone who's not like a fermented food lover and you wanted to find a way to have that be a flexible experience that you flow in and out of your monthly experience, rebuilding sort of post menstruation can be really helpful as your body starts to warm back up and your digestive fire gets a little bit hotter as you move towards ovulation. So it's just a sort of replenishing thing, but you can certainly add it in whenever it feels right. And that's the thing about the cycle syncing method is it is not a diet at all. It's a methodology and that gives you a lot of flexibility. So you might be having menstrual issues and you might be having SIBO, right? Or you have Crohn's or you have some gut issue. You're going to be needing to do things from a circadian perspective to manage those gut issues every single day of the month. But you can also manipulate some of the caloric intake as you go throughout the cycle to help with the metabolic shift that is taking place because of your menstrual cycle. So, again, harkening back to what we talked about in the beginning, it's both. And, and I think that as women, we have been so conditioned by the media, this is the right diet. Now, this is the right diet. This is the right one. No, no, no. Now this one, that we've become kind of groomed to be very dogmatic with our approach to food. And this method seeks to destroy that habit. by virtue of the practice. It's simply a practice being aware of which phase of the cycle you're in, understanding the biological realities of what is shifting in that phase, and doing all that you can that is reasonable given the complexity of your unique circumstances and health issues to align with that cycle phase, but to not be dogmatic about it at all. And I think that's one of the ways we can heal from toxic diet culture for sure is to be flexible. I call it compassionate listening and responding. Your body's always talking to you, but you're often groomed to ignore it. And I want you to start listening and responding with love and kindness and dynamism. It doesn't have to be the same all the time.

Oh, so good. It makes my heart so happy. Yeah, I think that on a greater level, We all know as women, our bodies are magic, like pure magic. I believe that we all have the ability to heal ourselves, but we have to give our body what it needs. And in hearing about this process, it's almost like you're rebuilding trust within your body to acknowledge the times when you do need a little bit more or a little bit less, when you have a little bit more energy, when you can take that away. It's like you're bringing the trust back into your body. So you're just getting the foundation, right? So if we're pulling back, okay, looking when we speak to the foundations, yeah, taking a look at your circadian rhythm, now understanding on a deeper level, you're infradian rhythm. And then in the flow, I know, like the response to this book from women has been so inspiring to watch and cycle syncing, I think is a method that's gonna give that back to women. Let's just touch base a little bit then. If there's women out there listening who are like me, who don't have a regular cycle, and I use air quotes around that because I did have a regular cycle, but it was just every three months. But doctors put me on birth control when I was really, really young because that wasn't regular to them. So I use that with air quotes because I think that, you know, we can all be different. But can you shed some light on the regular cycle and cycle syncing?

Yeah. So, you know, we want to have a cycle that is regular relative to you. So if that's, you know, every 26 days to every 32 days, there's a range. But we want to be having ovulation happen at a regular interval in cadence because ovulation is the star of the show in as far as so many of the health benefits that are conferred throughout the cycle to you as a woman, ovulation is cardio, neuro, and osteo protective in that current cycle. But every ovulation you have in your 20s, 30s, and 40s protects the same brain, heart, and bone tissue for when you're no longer ovulating post-menopausally. So, you know, there is a lot of conversation, divergent conversation about it's okay not to have a cycle or it's okay to be on medications that suppress the cycle. I would take a very different view of that, which is you want, and I'm someone who did not ovulate or menstruate for 10 years, you know, from the age of 12 to 22, I was in the throes of PCOS, although back then nobody knew what it was. I was 210 pounds. I was covered face, chest and back and cystic acne. I did not get my period. My first bleed was a few months shy of my 16th birthday. Then I only had five more bleeds. until I started figuring all of this out. And those were chemically induced with synthetic progesterone. It was a, it was a crazy. And I, the mental health implications of all of this hormonal disruption were profound and obviously was part of the, the reason why I am someone who loves your period more than anybody on planet Earth. And I've dedicated my career to studying the menstrual cycle. Certainly, because I just didn't get to have one for 10 years, and it really bothered me. And so reclaiming ovulation is so important for women. If you have an irregular cycle, you should seek to make it regular. And that's why I wrote my first book, WomanCode, the flow protocol in that book was really what I used to restore my ovulation, really looking at understanding how does the endocrine system function, what is its order of operations, and then how do we not interfere with that and make sure we're supporting that. And that has been helping helping restore ovulation for women for 20 years plus now. If you have PCOS as a cause of your irregular cycling, you want to get a handle on that. And cycle syncing is not the first place for you to go, but the flow protocol is. So I would have you pick up a woman code if you have an irregular cycle and get it to be regular because you want that ovulatory heart every month. You want to have that and you want to protect and preserve that. And then once you reclaim your cycle regularity, then you can start cycle syncing. Now let's talk about it on the other side of the spectrum, which is perimenopause, right? And let's say you're not getting a cycle on a regular basis. It's pretty simple. First of all, perimenopause begins at 35 for everyone in the brain, just like puberty begins at nine in the brain, but we don't start to really see it until 12. Right? Ideally, you're not having your first period before the age of 12. And that's a whole other conversation. But just like it's hard for women to have hormonal balance, we're now seeing that trickle down to young girls who are having massive exposure to endocrine disruptive chemicals. Their diet is full of non-real food and their the stress levels are high enough that it's triggering early menstruation, which is not healthy long term and should be something that every mother of a young daughter should be really thinking about, you know, as I have been obviously for my own, how do I reverse engineer an optimal pubescent transition? And that starts with, frankly, what you're doing when that child is in utero with you and then every food you feed them until they get their first period and then beyond. And then of course, you're helping them learn how to cycle things you know, once they start menstruating. But from a perimenopausal point of view, you start at 35. You shouldn't really see anything different about your cycle until at well after 45, maybe 47.

Right.

Ideally, you'd start to maybe have some notice little things, which you should. You should. And here's why I say this couple Generations ago. It was so problematic for women in their late 40s from a fertility perspective, problematic meaning they were having their eighth child at 48, at 49, that the advent of a chemical birth control solution was life changing for women, right? That's the, your nature designs all beings to be maximally fertile for the maximum amount of time, right? That's just an elegantly efficient way for nature to replicate itself, right? So you're supposed to be ovulating for as long as possible. And I have talked to many, many women over the years, the ones who get it right, who really understand how to navigate perimenopause, they're ovulating and menstruating well into their early and mid fifties.

Wow.

Which is ideal.

Beautiful.

But we don't even, we don't have a conversation early on enough, which is you've got to protect your ovary and its functionality throughout your life. You've got to take care of your cycle. Your cycle is a fifth vital sign, which a lot of women don't know. Back in 2016, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists decreed that we must now consider our cycle a fifth vital sign. You know, the other four they take in the emergency room, right? Or even one couple, you Take two vital signs at home on a regular basis. You probably have a blood pressure cuff at home, and you probably have a thermometer at home. So here you are taking two vital signs when needed. No one's training us from a young age to take seriously the vital sign of our monthly bleed, right? I made history going on national television back in the day on Dr. Oz in 2013, showing the simulated menstrual blood on national television for the first time in human history, and what those that color means as a way for us to understand, you know, this important vital sign. And you should be looking at that. You should be looking at your symptoms. This is why ultimately I built the MyFlow app so that we could track our symptoms but have a tool that, like a thermometer, lets you know, oh, my period's getting worse this month. My period's getting better. I should make some changes or I'm good right now. We need to be able to respond to this important biomarker so that we can protect our ovarian health in our 20s, our 30s, our 40s, so that when we get to perimenopause, we don't have this falling off of the cliff of what I'm seeing happening now at historic highs of women going into the second stage of perimenopause way earlier than they should, having massive irregularity in the cycle, hot flashes, night sweats, and, you know, just all the things that are really not things you should be experiencing in your forties. And so cycle syncing, the long answer to your question is cycle syncing can really be a way to protect your ovulation and your hormones so that you can slow down that ovarian aging process and have a much better perimenopause transition.

That was so well put together just in terms of telling a story and the evolution. So you took us from, you know, girls going through menstrual cycles far too young. I think now, you know, women are finally feeling open to talking about perimenopause and menopause. And now it's all that we can think about. And, you know, we're accusing our body. And sometimes, like, it really gets me upset when we get angry at the symptoms. instead of moving to the compassion for the body or how we can make that shift. So the distinction in the ages are, are really important. So first of all, let's just go back to the girls, because I know that there's a lot of moms who are going to listen to this. Um, girls are going through, puberty much younger than ever before. I was like you, and thank you for sharing that story. Like, I didn't get my cycle until late, and then it was regular. Um, But when we think about environmental causes, right? And I know you talk a lot about this when it comes to things like phthalates. Like you, when I worked in cosmetics, I had PCOS and I literally was inhaling perfume every day, putting on, oh my gosh, toxic ridden cosmetics and body lotions and creams and perfume directly, like on my organs.

I'm upset for you.

Yeah, that's you. And look at the time, it's no wonder my PCS PCOS was so bad. Doctors said that I would have a hard time having kids if I could. I stopped getting my menstrual cycle and I was just pumped full of like progesterone to induce my cycle, then DHEA to give me some energy, then progesterone. It was like vicious. It was never monitored. And now that we're getting more understanding around hormones, when we think about now Sephora, kids are going into Sephora and you know, you have a daughter. How hard is it for a mom to find A pair of underwear or socks that doesn't have spandex, elastane or plastics in it. It's virtually impossible. And if you need.

I have found some fabulous organic underwear for my daughter on Amazon. It's, it's a, you know, so it can be done. It can be done. Listen, let's, let me take the, there's a balance that I think you have to has to strike as a mom, which is, you know, and this is what I say to my daughter too, because she asked these very intelligent questions. I've been educating her from the beginning. When she was little, we started with body awareness around, you know, hunger cues and fatigue cues. Like, you know, are you feeling hungry? Are you feeling tired? Let's do that. Then we moved up to, let's look at your poop, right? She was five or six. I'd be like, okay, let's look at your poop. 'cause that's, you know, we have some biometric information here. What is your poop telling us about how well your food's working for you right now? Do we need probiotics? Do we need water? Do we need more leafy greens? Right? Just even having her practice at five or six, knowing that this was a stepping stone to what I will need her to practice when she reaches menstrual age of that compassionate listening and responding and being self-aware, proprioceptive starts with simple things. in childhood. And you have to be diligent, I think, as a mom, in training your daughter how to listen to her body, how to befriend her body, how to understand her body from the beginning, right? You have to be even willing to do things whenever you think it's age appropriate to show her your menstrual blood, right? In advance of her period, so that it's not something that comes out of left field and scares her or grosses her out, but it's like this beautiful story that you tell her of what this is, right? This is a special organ that I make every month. And here it is. You know, I gave it a nickname when she was younger. I called it the nest. I was like, this is the nest the baby can grow in. And then when I don't have a pregnancy, the nest comes out every month. Isn't that so amazing that a woman's body can make a nest every month and get rid of the nest if we don't need it? How cool is that? She's like, that's so cool, you know, at age eight and nine. That was the conversation. Now she's 10 and going on 11. The conversation is menstruation is coming soon. And your. And she knows all about her in Freudian clock. And right now she knows she's a circadian only human. She'll be a, you know, dual clock person, pretty dual, dual rhythmic person when she starts her menstruation. And she knows what all of the different things are because she sees me. practicing this method, right? And I constantly loop her into it. I say, oh, I'm now in this phase of my cycle. So these are the kinds of workouts I'm gonna do. And she'll say, why? And I'll tell her why, you know, and I do it in a more simplified way. But I don't dumb down the science for her at all. I want her to rise to understand things about her biology and her hormones. So I'm training her fully in this way before her first period so that when she gets her period, all we're doing is celebrating.

Yes.

All we're doing is totally celebrating this portal that she's walking through, moving from being in a child body and morphing into the beginning of her woman self and woman identity. And I am here as the guide on the side to just help her make that journey. And my privilege is to give her the education and the information that will empower her that we as women have been historically, intentionally deprived us of, which has held us back physically and emotionally, and enough is enough. So where I think you should put your priority is getting educated yourself and then reaching your hand down and educating your daughter. As far as all of the chemical exposure that can lead to precocious puberty, that's the other big thing that you need to do, which is make your home a hormone haven for your daughter. Okay? So, for example, there are no scented candles in my home. There are no air fresheners in my home. I do not wear perfume. I do not use any products in the house that contain the word fragrance from cleaning products to laundry products to bath products to makeup, none of it at all. And that includes my personal products, my husband's products, the family pro like we're vigilant about that. And then we do what we can with organic food. No, 80, 20, 90, you know, whatever. We definitely let, we go out, we eat from time to time to a restaurant. Do I worry about the rest?

No.

Do I bring our own water bottles that are stainless steel or glass versus being reliant on plastic water bottles when we go out a hundred percent? Yeah. So you make trade offs where you can. Are all of her clothes organic?

No.

Am I okay with that? Yep. You know, because, and as I answer my daughter's question, If you give your body enough of the support, you know, 80% of the time, if you're there for your body, you're giving it clean, healthy foods, you're eating the right way. When you go to a friend's birthday party and they're serving, she's going to a friend's birthday party this weekend and there, it was part of the invite, like as if this was an exciting thing. They're like, we're gonna have Chick-fil-A platters for the girls. And I was like, okay, you know, I don't know if Chick-fil-A is healthy or not, but to me, it registers as like, you know, fast food. And I was like, And she goes, you know, what do you think about that? I said, well, what do you think about it? She goes, well, I think we eat so healthy at home that if I go and have that, it's going to be fine, which is exactly what she's heard me tell her over the years. So she's just repeating what she's learned. And I was like, that's exactly right and good for you. So that's what you do. Go and have a good time. Eat the cake, have fun, make good choices. Don't have, you know, 17 pieces of chicken nuggets or whatever it is. be mindful of your hunger and all of those things, but enjoy, indulge, just like you would tell yourself, right? But she needs to learn that skill of discernment and self, you know, what's the word? Being balanced when she's out, taking care of herself and making good choices for herself.

And I really want to own in on something that you're doing and well done, mama, like, wow, is this concept of imprinting. I'm convinced that I am what I am. I eat the way that I eat because of all of the things that were imprinted by my mom. And for a lot of my clients are like, yeah, they won't do it. They won't eat it. Just keep trying, keep trying. You're all of a sudden gonna have a 10 year old. My son will sit on a toilet and be like, oh, I had too much sugar yesterday. Like he is so in tune with his bowel movement. Now just through education and make informed choices. They know that there's a time to go and have all of those things. But like you, I think it's the education piece for them to understand what's happening within their bodies. And I think you and I have the additional benefit that we can share so many clients stories and obviously you with all of your research and your books, but so easy for us, I think, as women to do that. And you brought up a good point. I don't know about you are mom, but there's just, there was more of a stigma growing up with the girls in my classroom getting their period, you know, fear, there was or shame around having their cycle. The thought of touching your own menstrual blood I never even heard of until after I had kids. And now I'm just like, oh my gosh, wow, I created this, right? Like this miracle within me, the resilience of my body to be able to do this. So I love that you brought that up because I think that if the girl can do that when she starts getting her cycle, there is instant ownership of what is happening and what is happening with her biology and how her biology is shifting and what that could lead her through as she becomes a woman. We've lost these rites of passages. Like, we don't celebrate them as women anymore. They almost don't exist. But I think it's up to us to start creating them again, and that's a good one.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think just the implication, the trajectory shift of having a shame based start to your life as a woman versus an empowered start. Just think about the two different tracks that you'll be on and how much ground you have to reclaim later on as an adult to try to come back to yourself as a woman, right? You're going to really need to make a lot of. Make peace with a lot of different things just because you had that sort of shame based start versus if you come at this next era of your life, right, with, like, a good sense of excitement and information. Sorry, I'm getting a lot of. There's, like, scratching or. I don't know. I don't know. Just let. Let your team know that. something is good to know this at this time mark. So if you start at that, you know, empowered place, you know, you're gonna just keep thriving. There isn't anything, you know, that you have to sort of cycle through in terms of your understanding of yourself. You can just kind of go hit the ground running in your life. You know, it is my assertion that if women were given the right information from the beginning, Um, it would be a very different world indeed for all of us.

Couldn't agree more. Let's own in on, you know, that change of an era in perimenopause. So I working through this one and, I'm trying to be lighthearted about it and say that perimenopause is courting me very strongly. And part of me wants to resist it. Like I feel like I'm too young, I'm too healthy, I'm a nutritionist. Why am I going through this? But I can also, you know, go on the other side and feel, I'm having a lot of empathy for my body also right now, you know, getting my cycle later, having to go on birth control to regulate my cycle for so many years, then getting off and undoing the damage of all of those things, like maybe like, again, just trusting this is my body's path.

That's right. You've been through a lot and it wasn't all optimal. And so you do need to factor that in to where you are. And we weren't having a conversation around, you know, well, what do I do for the long haul? And that's my fundamental problem you brought up earlier, how we're now talking a lot more about perimenopause, which is great, and menopause, but we're still taking a top down, symptom down approach. Yeah. And we're just simply talking about, and I think it's great. I mean, listen, it's all part of the cultural narrative shift. We have to say, hey, we as women should not step one of this conversation. is what we're hearing now. We shouldn't tolerate hot flashes. There should be more research. We should have access to more support, you know, but, you know, HRT or BHRT is not the only solution. And we need to be thinking two decades before our perimenopause journey to be reverse engineering what that journey could look like. Because just like we said, you said earlier, how PMS symptoms are common but not normal. What's happening for women with perimenopause right now is common, but it's not necessarily normal, right? So I've again worked with so many women over the years. It really, your perimenopause journey is absolutely completely dictated by the state of your health, going into it and how well or not well you've taken care of your infreating rhythm, your cycle, your micronutrient levels, how much fad dieting, crash dieting, over exercising, non-stress management, lack of sleep, lack of supplementation, all of this ages the ovary much more rapidly and you will start having more symptoms sooner. But we don't talk about that. We're just talking about, okay, well, if hormones are lower, we replace the hormone. with B H R T. And that is a path, a valid path. I'm not arguing that point at all. But we could do so much better by understanding the mechanisms that get us to the place where hormones start to decline in production by starting to support ourselves sooner. Right. So that you can be 48, 49, 50 still with a regular cycle. You may have less progesterone and less estrogen overall compared to your 25 year old self, but you're still cycling, you're still doing it and you're not having symptoms. You don't have to have all of these crazy symptoms, really. And I've just worked with enough women to see it with my own eyes so that it was wonderful now that I'm going through it. I'll be 48 in a few months, still getting my cycle regular. have no symptoms.

So good.

Right? At all. So in fact, I feel better than ever, in fact. And I think that, and I'm not on any hormone replacement, I'm totally open to that when, and if that is needed, but happen to not need it at the moment. And if you do need it, that's okay. But I think it's a gift that I ended up having PCOS at such a young age because it forced me to make critical, massive dietary and lifestyles changes in my early 20s that I have not deviated from for two and a half decades. Things like not having an abundance of sugar in my diet, not being exposed to inflammatory foods for many decades. I stopped drinking all alcohol at 35, not because there was any sort of problem with drinking, but because I was like, oh, I'm about to embark on my fertility journey and there's no room in pregnancy or breastfeeding for alcohol. So, and then I just never picked up the habit because when I came out on the other side of that, I was like, well, that's a lot of calories. It's a lot of inflammatory response. And, you know, knowing what I know about the body, I said, let's skip that. So I'm, I haven't been age inflammaging myself for 25 years and I am reaping the benefits of that now at almost 48 from this biomarker or this vital sign of my cycle. And that's available to all of us. But we have to have a conversation that is very different from the one we're having now, which is what do I take for this symptom? You know, I take the Midol for the cramps. I take the hormone replacement for the perimenopause. It's not broad enough to really address. And that's really the hallmark of my work throughout the books that I've written and all the things that I do is how do the systems of the body work and how do we support those systems? Not how do we get rid of symptoms that the body will do for you when you support body systems.

And to your point, and even both of us sharing about our stories, look at everything that's been happening in your life, in your body, your choices that led you to the moment that you're in today. I've had so many incredible practitioners on this podcast. Some are on the fence of start, you know, HRT earlier than later for prevention and others that say, no, like every woman, it's got to be different for every woman. It has to be a choice. You have to have somebody on the other end who's going to be monitoring you. Like your protocol for HRT should be bio individual. And this is a big topic that I think that we're missing. so for me, the thing that came up was frozen shoulder. And I was in denial. No, it's a shoulder injury from the gym. But leading up to that, I had mold exposure, massive period of stress, living with that mold. My nervous system completely disregulated. So throughout about a year, 18 months, there was a decline in the foundation of the way that my body was functioning. So what I hear that you're saying And when we think about really cycle sinking, it's kind of building the foundation back.

And I think that- and protecting the foundation for the long term. Yeah.

Yeah. And something that you brought up, you know, when we first started talking, the thing that I think that this is doing and why your method is so beautiful is that it's building back resilience in our body. And when we build back resilience in our body, what do we see? We see an increase mitochondria. Mitochondria, in my lens, just taking kind of like more of an eastern view. Yeah, we call them the powerhouses, but I think of them as light in a woman's body. And for many of us growing up, the stresses that we endure, God forbid, miscarriages or sadness or whatever we've been through in life, it's almost like a light that starts to dim, but we can bring that light back. And something that I learned yesterday that I thought was fascinating was outside of your brain and your heart, the highest concentration of mitochondria are on our ovaries. Which makes sense. We're producing life. It takes a lot.

You think?

But if women knew that and like to think about making the right food choices to bring back light to their body, to optimize their mitochondrial function, to be able to set them up for success at the difference stage or whatever they're, they are in their cycle. God, that just feels so much more empowering than the sense of fear or the, the fear that something is coming that it just goes downhill from there.

I, I, that was just beautiful. I, I love that. And I love the analogy of mitochondria and life. That is that break that, that makes a, the nerd and the spiritual seeker in me very, very happy, which is why I can't wait for us to have tea together. God knows what we're going to talk about when we, or in person. But I think that looking at it through the lens of this conversation of light, you know, look at your lifestyle as a whole. You know, are you engaging in daily habits and routines that are really zapping your energy, draining your energy bucket? And if so, what are those things that are doing that? And what can you do to start improving that. And that's another place where the cycle syncing method can help, right, from shifting your exercise routines to be a little bit more in alignment with your energy throughout the month so that you're not, you know, taxing your body too hard at the wrong time of the cycle, or to even just understanding where you have some natural gifts from a work perspective in the month so that you can play to those strengths and reduce stress, all to keep stress low, even understanding your libido cycle as it goes through that infradian effect. so that you can start playing with oxytocin, which helps with ovulatory regulation and, you know, reducing, slowing down aging in all capacities. All of that is available to you. And it's not like you have to buy a supplement or do something, you know, outside of yourself.

You got it.

It's really about just aligning with what's inside of your body, and then your body will do the rest for you, and it It will pay you back tenfold for just a little bit of the correct investment. And so I love that idea of adding more light, more energy to your day so that you don't feel bogged down and where you know that that's really having a stress impact and having some of the, you know, aging you in a way that you don't want to be.

Yeah. Such a great analogy and just description of the process. I think that for people who are listening, yeah, they're gonna go check out in the flow or woman code. Your two incredible books. Actually recommend both of them. But sure about your app. So women are interested in learning more about cycle syncing and how to jump in. Can you share a bit more?

Yeah. So I built this app because women were asking me for it after, after, you know, I was talking about cycle syncing, and they wanted an easy way to, you know, integrate the method into their self care practices. So it's a pretty powerful tool. You can track your cycle. You'll also be able to get a functional sort of root analysis of each symptom that you're having in each month. So why are you having acne? Why are you having cramps from a functional medicine perspective? And it will give you guidance from a food and lifestyle perspective on what to do to address those symptoms in real time. It will give you a whole set of insights on your cycle as a fifth vital sign as a biomarker? How is your cycle performing every month? Is it getting better? Is it about the same? Is it worse? Do you need to take action this month or are you okay? And then from a cycle syncing perspective, that whole feature allows you to meal plan. You can click on ingredients that are in your pantry and say, what should I make for today for my follicular phase? You know, give you recipes. there are workout videos that you can watch directly from the app that are in alignment with your correct cycle phase. And then there's a daily tracker so that you can keep track of your daily cycle syncing habits to make sure you're doing those non-negotiables and understand where you are with work and productivity and help. So it's really the ultimate menstrual health management tool. And because I really think that every woman should be at least giving that a try. I'm always giving it away. So the app is free to download, but the cycle syncing feature, I want you to you, your listeners to have access to it. So if they go and put a code Mona flow into, if you go to flowliving.com/app and you click on the cycle syncing membership and you put in the code Mona flow, you'll be able to get a month free and, and just try what it feels like to be in alignment with your cycle phases, it will, you'll feel differently the first cycle. So, you know, I want you to have that experience because it's game changing.

That's so generous. Thank you so much. Yeah. I think it's so much more than just the empowerment that comes behind it. I think you're taking a lot of stress away. I think that you're connecting so many women with their bodies. I think that you're taking away suffering. And I mean, how many symptoms have we talked about? just in the past hour from our energy to our neurological function, our energy, how we're burning fat, our PMS, our symptoms, like it touches on everything. It's the foundation of who we are. So thank you. And what I love most is that you really, you took into consider Eastern healing methods, whether it's things like traditional Chinese medicine. I know you talk about acupuncture and the power of Ayurveda and how we digest and everything. I think so important because you're incorporating the wisdom of our bodies with the wisdom of our ancestors, the things that work for them when science wasn't even needed. We just trusted.

I think that there is a genius in ancient traditions, and it's very beautiful now to see how science has been able to validate some of these ancient practices that, you know, have been, quote unquote, questionable for so many years. But now we're seeing the studies that show, you know, things from Eastern practices just really being true and valid and useful. And so, you know, and I, I think just as we can draw so much from ancient practices to help inform what healthy living should look like today. We as women need to draw from our own feminine energy and really understand what living in the flow of that feels like to really become whole women and to come home to ourselves. And for me, after all of my searching and seeking this method, this daily practice of being in that whatever cycle phase I'm at, attending to my body's needs through the lens of that phase, that commitment to show up for myself in that way, that practice, like coming to the yoga mat every day, that daily Act of Love, that phase-based loving alignment is the way that I've Built a bridge to my feminine energy in a world that has only sought to divorce me from that. And it's available to all of us through this practice.

-That connection is flow.

That's why I called the book In the Flow, because I was so frustrated. I would go to these events, or we would be talking about peak flow state, and they were always talking about it through the lens of the masculine or the hero's This journey, and it just didn't resonate with my vibration or, or female vibration. And so this was, this was also a way not, and of course, because that's truly when something works, right? There's an elegance to it working both on, let's say, a practical level, but then also on an esoteric level that we can as, as in our bodies also in our minds, our hearts, our energetic selves. If we take care of our feminine cycle, we also restore our feminine energy.

I love that. Speaking more flow state because of our bodies. Thank you. This went by so fast. I can't wait to have you back. I can't wait to have you in person.

Happy. Happy to do it.

Really quick, rapid fire questions. All right, sure. All right. What are the most common mistakes or misconceptions you're seeing women make with their health?

Oh, just eating the same amount of calories day in and day out, you know, throughout the cycle, doing the same workouts day in and day out throughout the cycle, ignoring the cycle, basically. And anytime you're ignoring your cyclical patterns, chaos.

Unnecessary chaos.

Yeah.

What's your favorite ancient healing remedy?

Oh, God, so many things. I love, I would probably say. It's a toss up between herbs and essential oils, but they feel like two sides of the same coin. So I really love the power of adaptogenic herbs, herbal teas. I am a tea drinker. I haven't had caffeine since the age of, I don't know, 19 or 20. So, you know, no caffeine. So herbal teas, I have a whole collection. I think, you know, plant medicine, you know, talk about connection to your feminine, then you can now you can take that greater connection to Mother Earth. And when you start engaging in plant medicine, whether that be through herbal teas or herbal remedies or essential oils, now we're talking about a whole different vibrational alignment. And it's very powerful. It's one of my favorites.

Lava, you brought that up. This is my year of, like, just understanding the power of different herbs. Nature heals. That's, like, my whole thing.

Amen.

Okay, if you had something about modern medicine that excites you, what would it be?

Oh, I am very, so I have a Femtech company, obviously, Flow Living, the app, what we do, and I'm very, very encouraged by what's happening in the world of Femtech and some of the research and the new things that are being developed. We absolutely in the next decade will have A completely different women's healthcare reality, and that is historic, feminist, and totally exciting.

Absolutely. And we're ready to own it. What are three things that women can start doing right now to optimize their health?

Start cycle thinking, start tracking your cycle, start tracking your symptoms. Those simple things will get you really far. If you just download the app and just for the first month, Just track your symptoms, just understand which phase of the cycle is your working well, which one is not working well. That's going to give you so much information to then start your game plan. And then you can start cycle syncing to start really being a citizen scientist, experimenting in your own body and ecosystem and start to really take action around improving your own hormonal reality.

You paint such a beautiful picture for women and women's physiology. Honestly, like listening to you is just affirming our hormones are our superpower. When we learn to sync with them, our energy, our mood, our vitality, everything just kind of comes into being. And imagine just going out into the world with that vibrant energy. Thank you so much for everything that you do. How do you communicate with your audience? You mentioned your website.

Website. I will soon be launching a newsletter, so definitely make sure that you find me on social media@alisa.vd. There's Flow Living. You can sign up for the Flow Living newsletter and you'll certainly get updates about when my personal newsletter is launching and lots to come in 2025 for more communication with you guys directly.

Beautiful. Thank you and thank you so much for the very generous discount code of Mona flow. Well, I'll go check that out and we'll link everything out below. Thank you.

Thank you. This is so delightful.

Delightful.