Lifestyle Hacks To Naturally Balance Hormones – With Dr. Stephanie Estima

Dr. Mindy
So I, here’s where I want to start this conversation, I feel like you and I have very similar philosophical messages to women. And I have been interviewing so many women on this platform that aren’t looking at their lifestyle mantras or their lifestyle approaches, and mapping that to her hormonal cycles. So I really want to start this conversation off with a thank you to start with, like, I just am grateful to be having this conversation with you and that more of us are trying to help women map, exercise and food and all the things that we do in our life to keep us healthy, how we can map it to our cycle. But my first question to you is, why do you think we have this huge gapping hole in women’s health? As far as advice on lifestyle choices mapped to a menstrual cycle?

Dr. Stephanie
This is a good place to start, man. All right. So I’ll say that, you know, first of all, I think that, with the work that you’re doing the work that I’m doing, I think if you, you know, hopefully, it’s just a few short years that you won’t even find any practitioner, who is not willing to say, okay, we’re going to create a plan for you. But first, we need to understand what your menstrual cycle looks like. And I think that, you know, for too long it’s been, we derive our protocols from evidence based literature, right, which is great. That’s what we want, we don’t want to be just pulling out numbers and things from the air. There’s, there’s a couple of problems. So first, most of the research traditionally, that we find in PubMed, and the literature at large as it relates to metabolism, as it relates to reducing obesity type, you know, type two diabetes, you know, cerebrovascular cardiovascular disease, all of these things, a body composition, most of the test subjects, historically, have been men. And it’s not that the I don’t think that there’s been malicious intent here, I don’t think that it’s been like, you know, what, these women, they’re just two extra, but what has happened is that we have been excluded, because our menstrual cycle presents a confounding variable to these very strict rigors that if you’re doing for example, a randomized control trial, all that you’re doing is you’re trying to manipulate one variable and see how that one manip one, that one manipulation is going to alter the two cohorts. So if you have a woman who is cycling, one of the things, you know, any, you know, any woman under 55, really, or, you know, whenever you transition into menopause, and your early 50s, you’ll find that she’s different, every single day of the month, right, she’s got a different hormone, and over the course of a month, of course, she that’s how she runs through her entire hormonal milieu, so that in and of itself, from a research perspective, when you’re just trying to change one thing is changing. You know, it’s changing daily. So, you know, you can understand it from a, you know, in the strictest sense of, we really just want to see what happens when we fast, you know, obese subjects, and we just want to look at what the outcome is going to be. And there is some literature on obese, like when we, when we manipulate fasting as a variable, for example, or ketogenic diet or, you know, whatever, whatever, you know, thing you’re looking at, we do see a lot more abundant literature with obese subjects. But for someone with a body composition, like you or me, or maybe, you know, maybe has five or 10 pounds to lose, you know, something like that, though, that population isn’t really studied. So if you’re looking to look into longevity, how I can increase my lifespan, how can I increase not only the the years that I live, but the years that are spent healthy? There’s actually not a lot. So as it pertains to females? So that’s part of the reason why I wrote my book, The Body Body, which I’m sure we’ll talk about a little bit today. Yep. But I think that that’s, you know, maybe a long winded answer. But generally, I think we’ve generally been ignored, or the protocols that we derive have been for men by men. And what we’re finding now is that when women apply these things over time, we have very different results.

Dr. Mindy
We do. Yeah, we do. So okay. It’s interesting, because in just listening to you, I’m thinking, well, then it’s near impossible for women to be studied because there’s too many variables. And if it’s near impossible for us to do research studies that are women, only then Will we struggle to be able to get the attention of just let’s say, the medical community that is really driven by research articles to determine best practices and treatments?

Dr. Stephanie
Well, this is this raises a really, this is an excellent question. And I think when we’re looking at evidence based protocols, if we just look at the definition of evidence based medicine, it is taking what’s available from the literature, which, you know, to your point, we need more work, we need more studies that are looking at not only the menstrual cycle, but how you know you what the mitochondria, what are some of the changes in the mitochondria over the course of the what are the sleep pattern would be amazing, right? So that so that we can control for those things? You can in your statistical analyses, you can you can you can, you can look at the mathematics and you can you can regulate for that. But that’s not the only piece of evidence based medicine. And I think that a lot of people really get stuck on like, Is it a double blind RCT? And where’s the meta analysis for the you know, Where’s the mandiant? You know, but what you the other pieces to evidence based medicine is a you have the literature, what’s available in the lit. The other piece is the clinicians expertise, which is often not considered so is the clinician familiar? For example, with female physiology? Does she or he have female patients? Has she in the clinical application of some of these protocols? Has she observed patterns or things that are common? And can she control for them or he control for them? And then the other piece of evidence based medicine, which is almost never discussed, is the patient’s goals. So when you start when you think of these three things, now you have an overlapping Venn diagram of literature, clinician experience and pattern recognition, and the goals and dreams of the patient. It’s not just what’s available on PubMed. So yeah, that would be my answer to that. And then the other the other piece of it, of course, is I would just love to see more clinicians, more doctors, listening to women and not dismissing them, like lack of evidence, amen. Not evidence of lack, right? Because there’s not a double randomized control. That doesn’t mean that this isn’t true for this woman. So yeah, that’s, again, that’s sort of my views on that, like, there’s a lot more to evidence based than just what’s available on PubMed.

Dr. Mindy
I could not agree with you more, I have heard and I’m sure you get the same thing. I have heard so many women who are frustrated, feeling unheard, and it’s in it starts in her doctor’s office. And what unheard looks like is take this pill for the rest of your life. Or you, you know, we see it with the menopausal women, you now are gaining weight just because you’re going through menopause, or maybe your problems all will be solved with an anti depressant. And that this has to stop. This is not okay. And for me, what I feel like we’ve got to do is we have to empower each woman to be able to ask really good questions to her doctor or whoever is is coming up with a health plan for her. So help my listeners understand what would that look like if I walk into my doctor’s office? And I let’s say get a thyroid, bunch of thyroid tests done on me. And the doctor comes back and says, okay, you just have to take thyroid medication that’ll solve your problems. What kind of questions Can I ask my doctor to get him or her thinking at a deeper level about my hormonal needs?

Dr. Stephanie
Oh, this is good. This can be a fun podcast.

Unknown Speaker
Yes, you are you are.

Dr. Stephanie
So I think even before we get to that, it’s necessary to go Just one more step up. And that is to understand when you are going to any type of practitioner whether it’s a medical doctor, a naturopath, a chiropractor, an osteopath, whatever, whatever regulated health professional, you are going to, you have to understand what their philosophy around health is because that is going to be a big predictor of the types of interventions that are going to be recommended to you. So and this is changing, but generally, we see more allopathic physicians, more conventional physicians who have been sort of, you know, born and raised in the medical establishment. What I would probably call more consensus there’s there’s consensus medicine, which is maybe an entirely different topic, but they are very likely going to give as you mentioned, you know, a woman who’s perimenopausal and menopausal she can be put on the pill she’s going to put on the stand is gonna be putting on all these like the pill when you’re perimenopause. It’s like are you kidding me? Right, right.

Dr. Mindy
Well, any time or what about when you’re 15? And we’ll solve all your problems. You’re right. No problems.

Dr. Stephanie
All right problem. That’s a whole. I mean, that’s a whole other beast. But

Dr. Mindy
yeah, exactly. So you

Dr. Stephanie
have to be you have to understand what type of response you’re most likely to get from, for example, an allopathic physician versus more of, you know, what’s called cam, right. So Complementary and Alternative Medicine. So that might fall, you might see chiropractic on their their natural apathy and their osteopathy, sort of, you know, kind of as a switch hitter, sometimes depending on where you go. So, you know, you’ll you, you sort of have to understand generally the philosophical underpinnings and premise of that practitioner, and that’s really going to help you predict what kind of question What kind of outcomes you’re likely or what kind of answers you’re likely to get from that practitioner. Now, if you are going in, let’s say, to your conventional GP, your primary health care provider who happens to be a medical doctor, and there is a script that’s, that’s written for you. So maybe it’s the birth control pill, maybe it’s a status, maybe it’s, you know, whatever it is, I would really want to try and get an understanding of, of the risks as well as the benefits, because one of the things that I see that and this is not, you know, if if you understand the risks, and you still make the decision that this is a good intervention for you, then do it. But I think more often than not, and this is what I think you were referring to earlier, when women feel that they’re unheard, that they have been rushed through these appointments, is that the medical doctor has not adequately explained the risks. And I think as a very fast paced modern society in general, you know, you can’t just blame the medical doctor for this, like, the patient will go in saying, like, I want something fixed, and I want it now, like, I need you to do something for me like this is unbearable. So it’s sort of a dance between the willingness of the patient to say, okay, am I have I mastered some of these foundational lifestyle interventions? And if I have, and I’m still in need, then maybe there is an intervention there from your GP. And I would also, you know, as a, you know, as a doctor who spent 16 years in private practice, you know, give your doctor the heads up that you want to have this bigger conversation, because I would have, you know, I would have I sort of the way that I used to structure my day was I would have a certain allocation in the day for a new patient, or report a findings like these are longer appointments, and then I would have shorter appointments for bodywork. You know, bodywork doesn’t know, once you’ve mastered adjusting and rehab, like, it’s not as big of a time, you know, intervention. So if you have someone who’s coming in for a 15 minute appointment, or you’re like, Hey, I have seven questions, I need to ask them to you right now. Like, the doctor is gonna be like, I feel like I have 30 people in the waiting room, like, I can’t do this. So I would call the office ahead of time and say, Hey, you know what, I have some questions that I would like to ask my GP, can she? Or can he set aside some extra time for me when I come in on Thursday? Or if that’s not possible? next week? Yeah. And so when you are, when you do have that appointment, where the the doctor is expecting you to have some of these more elaborate questions, you really want to understand what some of the long term consequences of taking medication might be. And, you know, within PubMed, now, it’s relatively accessible to most people, like you can kind of do some of your own due diligence, like it’s not, it’s your health, right? Like, you have to help come to that decision with the coach with the guidance of your medical doctor or your primary whoever you’re speaking to, but really understand what the what the risks are. Because I think, you know, as a society, we attach ourselves like we get married to the allure, right of the promise, right? It’s like, are they gonna have no symptoms I’m going to have to have I can have sex, condoms, I can. And then I but then we divorce ourselves from the risks, right? And I’m when I, when I talk about sex without condoms, I’m referring to the pill. But we don’t talk about, you know, upping inflammatory pathways. We don’t talk about, you know, killing libido about vaginal atrophy. We don’t talk about any of those things. So really understand, you know, what you’re playing with, and then when you understand those risks, and Okay, am I am I good with that? Like, am I okay with that? Right? If it’s a yes, then go ahead. You’ve made an informed decision.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, I love that. The block that I see happening for a lot of women who would go with that approach might be where the doctor dismisses the downside. There’s a lot of that where the doctor is like, there’s not a lot of risks at all. And so then do you ask to see like, Can you point me towards some research? Do you have to go look at the medication you’re taking? What do you do if

Dr. Stephanie
you’re like, Can we read the insert together? And can you explain what some of these things mean? And do you think that this is applicable to me, given that Maybe, you know, my labs, you know, my history, maybe I have a, you know, long standing rapport and relationship with this doctor, like, you know, and maybe it is very low risk for that patient right now. Maybe it’s, it’s the doctor is absolutely on point with that. But the it’s not just the doctors responsibility to make that decision. It’s also as I was talking about with evidence based medicine, it’s the clinicians experience, but it’s also the goals and the dreams of the patient.

Unknown Speaker
Yes, I love that.

Dr. Stephanie
Yeah. So I would, I would say, you know, if the doctor is very dismissive, it might be that they’re right, maybe that isn’t that big of a deal for you, given your history, given your familial, you know, if you have no history of familial hypercholesterolemia, or you know, and if we’re talking about statens, or whatever, you know, maybe, maybe it’s completely fine for you. But maybe when you do your own research on PubMed, you might come to a different conclusion, and you should feel comfortable enough to speak to your primary and say, Well, what about this, like, This concerns me? And I think generally, you know, in, in sort of Western society, we say, you know, the customer’s always right, and I think that the patient is usually right, like heal thyself, Doctor, like your intuition is always going to be better, right than mine, I can use data to cut to conclude and to come to a to a logical inductive, inductive reasoning or deductive reasoning. But if the patient’s worried about something, it’s our obligation to address that with them. Yeah, get a new doctor,

Dr. Mindy
a grade. And what I what I always tell my patients is what you’re doing in the act of what you just explained, is you’re actually training your doctor to start to think at a deeper level. So if that doctor starts getting multiple women coming in and saying, Tell me the risks, hat is this something, I have to be a medication I have to be on for the rest of my life. When that when we start those conversations over and over and over again, you’re there becomes this, this opening that starts to get the doctors, the good doctors, hopefully to think a little deeper, and see what the needs of the patients are. But when we go in, we dump our symptoms out, we’re given a prescription we walk out, and we just accept that then we haven’t helped the doctor see what we’re needing. So I’m all about creating collaborative conversations, how do we bring all these amazing doctors and healthcare professionals together to benefit women, which is why I love books like yours and discussions you’re having, and I’m having about, okay, women, we have to do this different. And I love that we’ve started this with it starts with how you communicate with your doctor, that was what doing this different looks like. And I hope the women listening to this are grabbing that, before I dive into things like I want to talk about exercise around your menstrual cycle and some of the fun things that you and I will enjoy geeking out on, let’s help women understand why does a woman need to think differently about her health than a man? Like, let’s go to the basics, because I’m sure you’re finding this. So many women are have no idea about her hormonal cycle are so out of touch. We have no idea we’re supposed to be doing things differently than men.

Dr. Stephanie
Yeah, yeah, that’s actually one of the big reasons why I decided to write the book. So I was doing a presentation to these like seven and eight figure female entrepreneurs I was invited to speak. And the the topic of the presentation I was giving was how to use your menstrual cycle to make a million bucks. So that was like the title, right? So these are very successful women, right? These are entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, like CEOs of companies and, and whatnot. And these women have gone through every, you know, business growth, you know, like any type of training that you can imagine to sort of get a competitive edge like these women have, you know, been exposed to in some capacity. And so I gave this presentation was supposed to only be 90 minutes. And I was the last part of me is supposed to be like 45 minutes. And I was the last speaker of the evening. And then what ended up happening was is like to our q&a that followed, like, what about this? And what about like these women had not been exposed to a what is a normal menstrual cycle, first of all, versus what is a common, you know, common symptoms that we experienced? I know that you talk a lot about this the difference between normal, which is, you know, physiologically normal supposed to happen with predictability and repeatability versus commonly occurring in the population, which people often conflate we often don’t mix up quite well I get common headaches, I get common pain I get you know we’ve we’ve especially around our menstruation, you know menstrual cycle pain. has really been normalized. And you see this in advertising, right? It’s like just take some Mitel. Just take something, take a little take a day off. And, you know, there while there should be some cramping, right, like your uterus is contracting, or shredding an endometrial lining, it shouldn’t take you out, like, you should still be able to do absolutely everything that you would do any other day of the month. So. So that was one of the that was one of the big like, okay, these women don’t know, that means that, like, there’s a vast majority of women that haven’t seen a graph, or even explained what their menstrual cycle has been since high school, right? And even then we were probably like, putting our hands over our ears going, Oh, my God, make it stop. So right. I think that for women, when I when I train about how women are different than men, I often will give the parallel that men are like the sun, and women are like the moon. So when we think about men, they will go through their entire hormonal mildew in about a 24 hour period, they will cycle through their testosterone and estrogen patterns in about a day. And for women, we will cycle through our testosterone and estrogen and progesterone and lsoh nfsa, like all of our patterns, not an not an A 24 hour period, but in about a 28 or 29 day period. So and that’s what we refer to as your menstrual cycle, right? So it’s all very similar to the lunar cycle, right? So the lunar cycle, the moon cycles, about 20 to 29 days. And so it’s important for us to really distinguish ourselves from men in terms of our daily rhythms, because we are different every single day, versus men who are different at different times of every day. But generally, they are the same every day of the month. So the first thing that we really need most women in the reproductive years to be understanding is that distinct physiological difference of our reproductive cycle. And for them to really start tracking like to start tracking and getting amalgamating data on what it is that happens for you particularly like getting data on, what’s the length of your cycle? How long is your bleed week? What happens in your blood week? What’s the color of your blood, the flow the, you know, do you get cramping? Are there clots? Like, what’s the color change over the you know, there’s so many things that you can start aggregating when you start tracking your cycle. And then you can start overlaying that with nutrition, and exercise and sleep and stress reduction and supplementation. But it really only, you know, it’s it’s really kind of use useless to think about sit, you know, being cyclical when you don’t have any data on your cycle.

Dr. Mindy
So, so Well said, What, and I feel like this is a concept that we need to teach every 13 year old girl. Oh, yeah. Like, why are we learning that when our hormones are a hot mess? Why don’t we learn it in the beginning so that our hormones never become a hot mess? What Tell me what tracking device you like, because there’s a lot of good ones out there. And I’m, you know, we a lot of our listeners are menopausal women, a lot of them are postmenopausal saying I should have done this years ago. But they also have an influence on the the teenagers growing up and the 20 year olds. And so one of my mission cries has been as you learn it, as a woman, you need to turn around and teach it not only to other women, but we need to go down and teach what you just said this concept of us I love the moon analogy of our hormonal swings happening in a let’s just use 30 day cycle. We need to know that from the beginning. And I love this idea of tracking. So what do you have a tracker you recommend? Or how do women go about doing others?

Dr. Stephanie
There’s so many I use clue. CLU IE super easy. I have the free version. And it’s just you know, when your period starts, you enter is it light? Is it medium? Is it heavy? You know, what’s your skin look like? What’s your sleep look like? What’s your energy look like? And then you can go back as you’re tracking, you can go back in the data and say, Okay, so my sleep tends to be disrupted around day 25. You know, I have a really heavy periods the first couple of days, you know, my energy levels look like this during the month. So there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s so many of them. I have. Gosh, like there’s I there’s, you just have to go into the App Store. Like

Dr. Mindy
my favorite two. It’s the easiest. When I first started using clue the clue app in my early 40s. I was like, Oh my gosh, it has such a cool visual. Yeah, I was like, I should probably send this to my husband, so that he knows where I am. And maybe even my staff so they know like where because it it has that little fuzzy PMS period time. And I was like, Oh, this would be really helpful. If you understood where a woman was in her cycle. You may be able to relate to her different you may be able to understand her different you would definitely know when her libido is at its peak. It’s a really cool visual that they give and even just from a business perspective, I

Dr. Stephanie
Love that you’re you know, I wish I could share this with my, you know, my team members because there’s times of the month where you are much more articulate, right, there’s times of the month, where you have estrogen just like bathing your verbal, you know, our, you know, your verbal centers in your brain around speech. So there’s times where you should be, you know, recording a podcast like this, for example, you know, like speaking, you know, publicly giving a presentation asking for a raise, like, there’s so many great little hacks in terms of how you, you know, interact with your cycle and your career, like, that’s another layer that you can really play with as well.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, but why are we taught this? It’s like, I’m 51. And I’m like, why am I just starting to put this into place as I went through menopause? I that’s how I started to discover it, because I wanted to understand what the missing hormones Why were they Why were they making me feel so weird? And oh, my gosh, well, what was it supposed to do, and it’s just, it was a whole awakening for me in my 40s that I want women to have in when they’re 13. So I that’s why I again, I love concepts, like let’s just start teaching them to track.

Dr. Stephanie
And for the 13 year old girls, like any moms that are listening now for their 13 year old, 1517 year old daughters. Also, this is a real like 16 1718 you know, shout out to my colleague, Nat Korean Buddhists in Australia, she talks a lot about, you know, this time, 15 1617 years old, where your cycle becomes irregular, it is actually part of your maturation, where you kind of start to look a little pcse, like, you know, polycystic ovary syndrome esque, you know, you mean fertile, maybe you miss a period. And then, you know, the mom is concerned, the daughter is concerned, they go to the doctor, and they usually get a script for a birth control pill at that time. So, you know, if we knew that, hey, just expect that, you know, in your early menstruating years, just like when you learn a new skill, you’re not going to do it right, you know, right, you’re not going to just ride a bike when you’re, you know, a newborn, you got to learn, you got to learn a couple of like, preliminary skills before you can walk and run and get on the bike and have balance and all that. So it’s the same with our early menstruating years, there’s gonna be like little rough patches and just know that those are normal. That’s not there’s some there’s not something abnormal with you. That’s just you know, the maturity of your reproductive system.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, I love that. So walk us through, let’s just say I always say 30 days, I get, you know, it’s 28 for Psalm 34, for others, but let’s just say walk us through the hormonal changes that are happening in a 30 day cycle so we can pull the listeners up to speed. And then I would love to take that conversation and talk about, okay, how can we match exercise to that? How can we match match the keto cycling that you talk about in your book? How can we match some of the everyday things that we’re already doing? How do we match that to this cycle? Amazing. Alright, so

Dr. Stephanie
this is gonna be like a, you know, quick back of the envelope menstruation. 101. Right? Exactly. Alright, so

Unknown Speaker
a couple

Dr. Stephanie
there’s four main parts, right? There’s four main areas of your entire menstrual cycle. So we have, and I typically divide them into four weeks just for ease, you know, 28 days, as you said, 3032, you know, but just for ease, we’re dividing these into seven day chunks. If yours is a little longer, you’re going to shorten these. If it’s a little shorter, then you’ll no longer get them. So the first week, you know, everyone knows popular girl, the bleed week, right? This is like when you can see what’s happening. There’s blood, right? This is the endometrial lining that has become ischemic meaning that there’s been no oxygen that’s that’s, that’s been derived because the week prior, we had a dip and progesterone and estrogen. And now there’s no pregnancy, your body’s like, Alright, we gotta we gotta scrap this lining. We’re gonna do it again this month, see if there’s another see if we’re going to have a potential for a fertilized egg. So the bleed week is, I categorize that as seven days most people don’t bleed for seven days, you’ll often find the average is somewhere between four and six. But what you want to be paying attention to here from a hormonal perspective, is you’ll see estrogen is relatively low this week, progesterone, she’s gone. She’s not really involved in the first half of the first two weeks of the cycle. The only hormone that really is around is something called FSH or follicular stimulating hormone and she’s kind of holding down the fort. And what she’s doing is she’s as her name suggests, you know, she’s a she’s a she in my world. I know I love it. I

Unknown Speaker
love her. She it shouldn’t be that I love it.

Dr. Stephanie
So FSH is developing the follicle right? So the follicle is the pristine inside is the you know, is the pearl right? It’s like the egg that we’re trying to mature. That’s your release around ovulation. So as I was saying before, a lot of things that you can be looking at this week, you can be looking at Your, you know the quality of your blood. So what’s the color from start to finish, most people will start off with like a deep red. And then towards the end of the bleed, it’s more oxidized blood, we start to see it looking Brown. But there are other variations, I talk about some of the depth variations in the book and what that means. You might want to look at the flow, like how heavy your flow is. And of course, you’ve only ever lived in your body. So you don’t necessarily know what heavy is versus light. So I put some parameters again, in the body body for you to look at, but some general things to be looking at is, are you changing your pad or your cup or your tampon, you know, whatever, more than two to three hours in the first two days, more than 70 milliliters. If you’re measuring it through a menstrual cup, is there clotting, right? Some clotting is normal, the size of the clots, right? So you should be less than a dime, you know, over like if it’s like kind of a size of a quarter that’s too big, maybe some signs of estrogen dominance, which we’ll get to today. So that’s kind of week one. And you see finish the bleed and then what’s happening hormonally as we move into the week before ovulation. So week two, is all about now we’re driving up it’s all about developing that egg we want the egg to be mature so that we can release it the follicle and the egg that that’s housed within the follicle. So hormonally what’s happening is we see estrogen peak, she makes her biggest and quickest Apex in this week, so she’ll go from you know, in week one we said estrogens relatively low I’ve seen labs that have been like five six pika grams per deciliter all the way up to you know, moving into week two, it can call it can climax from like five or six to like 500 or 600 pika grams per deciliter. So there’s a huge ski hill, if you will, when you look at it on a graph, in terms of estrogen concentration. And we also see in this week before ovulation, we’ll see testosterone as well. So testosterone, this is where we call week two, like flirty, sexy, you know, you’re like you should be more interested in sex like yeah, you know, a crude measurement without, you know, looking at your testosterone levels is are you wanting to have more sex? Are you wanting to orgasm more? And that’s Mother Nature’s you know, insurance policy to try and get you to have sex so that their sperm potentially around a couple of days before the egg is released. And then there can be fertilization whether or not you want a baby. So just right now, this is a time if you want to get pregnant, lots of penetrative sex. If you do not want to baby then you know other things, right? Play with other other modalities other things. Well, so we, so we come to about ovulation is about you know, call it 14 day 14 ish, it can be a 12 day 16. But for most people, it’s right around day 1314 the follicle releases the egg. And then the egg sort of waits around like the Queen for the sperm to find her. Okay. So

Unknown Speaker
I’d love to get your descriptive. It’s like you could almost read a children’s book on this.

Unknown Speaker
You know, maybe that’ll

Unknown Speaker
be my next book actually.

Dr. Stephanie
So funny. I was on a podcast several months ago, and I was describing luteinizing hormone. You know, I didn’t I didn’t mention it. But Lh is, you know, it also increases a lot in concentration and week two, and it sort of comes up and then out, right? And I always likened it to like, you know, whenever you go to like a family gathering, we all have that one, you know, uncle or aunt who sort of barges in like, middle of the dinner comes in is like, Hey, what’s up, you know, like, hits you on the back and you’re like, oh, kind of what Lh does, right? It comes in, like a whirlwind, you know, causes the egg to be released. But these are the ways that I remember them. So I teach. Yeah, I love it. So after so this is these two weeks in general are the follicular phase. So you’re talking about, you know, how do we layer in nutrition and, and, you know, exercise. So generally, these two weeks, you’re much more attuned to restricting your carbohydrates. These are great things for keto, right, great weeks for, for doing a restrict, like restricting the carbohydrates, maybe even the protein a little bit as well. I’ll talk about some nuance when we get to it with week two. But then when we move into the next two weeks, this is the what we would call the secretary or the luteal phase of the cycle. So now the follicle has turned into the corpus luteum. Right. So now there’s secretion of progesterone. We see estrogen drop and then she comes back up again, sort of mid week of mid week three. And then towards the end of week three, and the beginning of week four, you’ll see estrogen pardon me progesterone reach her peak. And this is a distinguishing factor of the luteal phase is that progesterone is present So when we think about progesterone, she is, you know, she stimulates our appetite. She helps us. You know, she has potent effects on the brain in terms of GABA neurotransmitters. So she helps us feel cool and chill and calm. But she also slows everything else down too. So you may find that you’re bloated, that you’re not having as many bowel movements as you usually do. And you’re generally bit more distended, right. So you know, if you’re eating a meal, you kind of just feel a little bit more gassy, distended, bloating. So that hap so we have, you know, progesterone reaches her peak somewhere around the end of week three, beginning of week four. And then if there’s no fertilization, at that point, what we see is the corpus luteum is, you know, over the course of this luteal cycles is degenerating, and then there’s not then the the progesterone secretion stops, and the estrogen stops. And you see this like nosedive of both of these hormones, they come down together, crashing often together within within a day or so. And then this is often the time where PMS, you know, if you if you have a tendency to feel more inflamed, if you have a bit more of metabolic dysregulation and dysfunction, you know, you’re going to look a little bit more like you have that metabolic dysregulation during this time, you’re a bit more insulin insensitive. Yep. And the PMS, the moodiness, the sleep disturbances, all of that happens here. And then eventually you bleed, right. So eventually the endometrial lining is not receiving that progesterone anymore becomes ischemic, as we started off in the beginning, and then the cycle starts again.

Dr. Mindy
So beautiful, I swear, there needs to be a kids book that are like a teenage book that you know, we a lot of conversations I’ve had with functional medicine doctors recently has been about our own personal experience of health education that we got in our sex ed that we got when you you know, we were in the seventh grade. And it was a it was

Dr. Stephanie
a banana and a condom. And we were, oh God, get me out of here.

Dr. Mindy
And it was you can You’re bleeding. Now you can get pregnant, here’s how you manage your blood. And like that explanation you just gave like should be in some kind of pamphlet or book that every girl gets so that she understands that and the two of the points that I really started to tap into in my own cycle, as again, I went through menopause is where it started to rear its ugly head. One is this thought that testosterone for women only kicks in at one part of that 30 day cycle. For a man it’s surging every couple of hours. So you know, in our relationships, now we’re just assuming in a heterosexual relationship that you are, you could be an easy mismatch. And there may be an X, you may need an A to explain to your partner, when your testosterone is supposed to kick in and have a discussion about how he’s getting it every couple hours. And yours is coming once a month. That sort of was my first interesting Aha, now if you’re in a same sex relationship, you can also be mismatched and have testosterone coming at different times. But this mismatch of libido I feel like based off a hormone hormones coming in, could be a marriage saver could be. It could save so much heartache if we understood our partner’s pattern of libido based off of the testosterone rushes.

Dr. Stephanie
Yeah, and I think for a lot of women, you know, as you just said, there’s like this puzzle towel component to testosterone and men. So they’re kind of ready all the time, right? They’re just like, hey, like, we can go right now. But for women, you know, and I think that this is, you know, digressing a little bit from just the physiological hormonal pattern. But for women for plays all day long, you know, it’s like, it’s like the dishes are done. Or it’s like the little sexy cast,

Dr. Mindy
like the little center. You listening. But yeah, it’s like being done is. That was cool that there, I hope every man heard that.

Dr. Stephanie
Or, you know what, honey, I thought you might be hungry. So I ordered you some, you know, like, if you can feed you can predict when your woman is hungry, you are going to be getting so much sex, but I’m just

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, and a foot rub would probably work

Dr. Stephanie
too. Exactly. So foreplay for women, I think happens all day long. It’s not just at the end of the day or the beginning of the day, or whatever. It’s, it’s, it’s the interactions that we have with our partner. So I like that, you know, having an understanding of the differences in our testosterone and our estrogen patterns, because men and women have both just in different concentrations and different patterns, as you mentioned, but also, you know, when we think about the what, you know, what turns on a woman it’s like, with the dishes being done, or like, you know what, Honey, don’t I got this. I’m gonna put the kids to bed like you Go and you know, you do your you know, your oral kit like I, you know, for I’m just referring to my own husband cuz I love to do this like really elaborate oil pulling and like thing that I’d like to do. So if he puts my kids if he’s putting the kids to bed and I have time to do like my brushing my teeth, and then the flossing with the essential oils and the oil pulling, and then I get to put oils on my butt like that is how I actually, you know, in many ways, like, you know, get into the mood for the boys are like in their bed and he comes in and I’m like, I’m all like oiled up and feeling good. And

Dr. Mindy
yeah, oh my god, this is like golden. Again, I hope men are listening. So okay, and then my other like, aha, and understanding hormones that I think women should grasp is this week before our period. Yeah, this progesterone. I have a chapter in my book called dear progesterone. I’m sorry, I took you for granted. Because I feel like I had no clue what progesterone was doing for me until I moved through my 40s. And it went away her as to your point, she went away. And as she went away, I was like, Why can’t my body relax? Why am I not able to sleep? What there were so many things that I realized, why do I all of a sudden have anxiety and I don’t really understand this. So when we are feeling like slowing down the week before period when we’re feeling like we want more carbs, when we are in more of an introspective mood. I want every woman to know that’s okay. That’s your there’s a physiological explanation for that.

Dr. Stephanie
And that’s a really important time in your cycle. So I will often talk about this idea that when we see progesterone and estrogen taking that nosedive, right, so that there’s no fertilization there, you know, the endometrial lining is about to become ischemic, and we’re gonna shut it. This is when we as women tend to move into, you know, what I would call the negativity bias. So, you know, everything annoys you, right? Like your kids annoy you, your husband annoys you, your job annoys you. You can’t pick the right nail polish, all your clothes are the tip like the worst, you know, and but that is such an important part of your cycle not to be disregarded, because that is your body, asking you to look at the parts of your life, or the people and the relationships that you have that are not working right now. How is the parenting relationship not working right now? How is your relationship with your partner? Not working right now? How is this career? How is your boss or the career that you’ve chosen? not serving your soul this this time this like three or four days where you’re weepy and you’re like, everything is wrong? That is your soul saying these are the things I need? These are the things I need. And I think we generally want to ignore it. We want to push through it. Yep. And I’ve seen memes on the internet, where it’s like, you know, last week didn’t make sense. And then I got my period. And I was like, Oh, yeah, right. You know, but if you say, Okay, I know, like, if you track your cycle, you know, when that’s happening, first of all, and so what’s coming up for you emotionally pay attention to that these are the whispers from your soul, that’s like, here’s how this is what I need you to do. For me girl, like, this is what we need to be focusing on.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, and I it’s kind of like fasting, you know, we do a ton of fasting with our, our group, our resetter group. And I always say when you get that agitation, or that thought that pops in your head, when you’re 17 hours into a fast, it’s an opportunity to understand your belief around food, and how you use food. And it I had never thought about that with that week before your cycle. So that was incredibly well said. And again, I hope everybody’s taking notes and listening to that. So map now that we’ve done a basic understanding map exercise, you already talked a little bit about keto exercise is a huge one. And, you know, as a former competitive athlete, I also had to learn that as I moved through my 40s, yoga was going to benefit me a lot better than trying to run a marathon. And I love how you map exercise to the sight to your menstrual cycle. So talk a little bit about that.

Dr. Stephanie
Well, first, let me say that the type A personality in me honors and loves you if you are a competitive athlete, you are competitive with yourself, you’re hard on yourself. And what tends to happen is you tend to put like, put your head down and punch out the workout even though you don’t feel like it. And yeah, and what what often happens is I’ll have women come to me and say, you know, I don’t know I’ve been doing like five of these like hit training workouts, you know, this week and I’ve been doing it for like four or five months and the weight keeps creeping up and my belly fat is going up and I can’t seem to get rid of this belly fat. And really, this is this is a cry from your body because if you were doing that much high intensity like I love I love HIIT training right there’s a time place for it. And we’ll talk about how there’s times in your cycle that you should not be. You should not be training hate, we’ll talk about that in just a moment. But if you are constantly working out as if you are about to die, like if you need to, if your heart rate needs to get to like 170, every time, that’s not appropriate, you’re sending the stress signal like, hey, every day, I got to run away from a tiger to save my life, like, I got to hold on to some fat, like a bit of an insurance policy here, because this is not a safe situation for me. So with that said, I think that when we I’m a really big fan of resistance training, I think that it trains your resistance. So it makes you harder to kill. So whatever pandemic and whatever virus and whatever mutant and variant and you know, the the better and more muscle mass that you have, the more you know, generally speaking, your immune system is going to be healthier, your metabolism is going to be healthier, your mood, your energy, all these things are going to be ameliorated. But I would say that, the way that you resistance train, and the way that you apply your cardio should change through through your menstrual cycle. So for example, training with heavy weights, I think, or moderate weights, I think, can generally happen all through the month, but you’re best suited for moderate. And when I say moderate, I’m saying somewhere between, call it eight to 12 to 15 reps, okay. So whatever that number, whatever that weight classes for you is going to be different for everyone. But generally, you should be able to punch out three or four sets of eight to 12 repetitions, that is really well suited for your bleed week. So obviously, the first day or two a lot of people feel quite lethargic. So if that’s you, you take like go for a walk, Pilates, yoga, as you said, spend some time in nature, a lot of cross crawl stuff. So the walking is really good for the corpus callosum. Really, really love that for day one, day two of your of your bleed week. But then once you kind of get into the rhythm of your period, I think it’s appropriate for you to start lifting moderate weights, as we move into week two, so you stop the bleed. Now you’re in that preovulatory phase, you’re, as we said, testosterone peaks here, and so does estrogen. So these are two anabolic hormones, meaning that they are growth hormones. So this is a wonderful time to profit. This is the one time that testosterone is going to have this big

Unknown Speaker
Yes, you want

Dr. Stephanie
to profit from that by lifting heavy weights. And when I say heavy five to eight, five to eight reps. So that means that the weight class is going to jump you’re going to you may need a spotter. But you should be you know, the last three repetitions should be incredibly difficult. And you should only be able to do somewhere between five and eight. This is also a time for you to stay away from high intensity interval training for the exact reason why you should be doing heavy weights. So as estrogen comes really high in this pre ovulatory phase. What we know about estrogen in terms of its effects on the musculoskeletal system is that it makes our ligaments more lacs. So more when we say ligamentous laxity that’s just like a fancy word for loosey goosey right like your ligaments are loosey goosey and it makes your tendons stiffer. So stiffer tendons I mean obviously there’s a continuum we don’t want them so stiff, but when they are stiffer, then you can lift heavier weights because now let’s say if you’re doing a bicep curl, the as you are contracting the bicep muscle, the bicep muscle is going to be pulling on a stiffer tendon which can pull on the bone so you can actually take your weight up this week. But with burst movement with explosive movement with high intensity stuff, you are setting yourself up for injury if you’re doing hit training here because of those loosey goosey ligaments when you do any type of burst movement so if you think about like a burpee or a sprint or you know even if you’re doing like a bike ride and then you know the instructor says okay, like every everything you got for 30 seconds or you know, an all out balls to the wall like 45 minutes sprint or 45 seconds sprint. You are the tense the tension that you are putting through these ligaments, particularly I’m talking about the knee and the shoulder. And these are two very joints that are very susceptible to injury. You will injure them this week. Like you will tear the

Dr. Mindy
second week. We’re in the second week, second week. Okay, so

Dr. Stephanie
you’ll tear the labor in the shoulder. You’ll you’ll rupture the ACL. And we actually see this in the data when we look at the propensity of where we see the most injuries in women when they are not menopausal. So when they are in their, you know, reproductive years, it tends to be ligamentous injuries. And then when we transition into menopause, we actually start to look more like the guys in terms of our injuries now are not ligamentous in nature as much but they move more now towards muscle strains because we don’t have the ligament. We don’t have the estrogen making our ligaments loosey goosey anymore at least that that that high fluctuation. Yeah. So stay we have that week. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy
yeah. Okay, so then what about when you move into the week before and progesterone is high? Is that a time we want to change like hardcore marathon running or, you know progesterone so susceptible to any increases in cortisol? Is there something we should do different that week?

Dr. Stephanie
Yeah. So when we’re thinking about the luteal phase, so week three and four. So now if you look at estrogen, we see a bit more of a sustained release of estrogen. So high intensity interval training is completely appropriate in week three and four. But a lot of times in week four, we don’t feel like it, right, like we were like, kind of like achy and inflamed. So in terms of the resistance training, I like to actually bring down the, the, the weight, but increase the repetition, so you’re still bringing the muscle to fatigue, but you’re doing it in a slightly gentler way. So you bring the weight down in terms of the weight, the amount, the absolute amount of weight that you’re pressing, or pulling, and then you are maybe now doing 15 or 20, or 25 reps. So you’re still working the muscle, but now it’s really more of like a flush, like you’re kind of flushing trying to flush out you’re getting the Maya kinds that are being released. And now you’re you’re gonna be reducing inflammation. And if you’re someone who is very stressed, so this is all women until proven otherwise, right? If you are someone who has had long term chronic stress, that includes pregnancy and child rearing, sleep disturbances, which we know happens when we’re mothering our young children who don’t yet have a circadian rhythm that’s established, you know, you’re taking care of aging patients or parents rather, and there’s, you know, all the things that happen with life. It’s important for you to be gentle with yourself. I think so many women were like, no, I set out today, and I’m going to do this thing, and I’m going to do it and like, these are my type A Betty’s these are like the Betty’s that are like, No, I’m going to do it no matter what. And this is when you hurt yourself. So first of all, you’re pushing your body, some, your body’s always smarter than you like your body. If you just listened to her. She’s always smarter than you if you need to modify your workout, or you know, your eating patterns, particularly in that week for right I actually love as you said, increasing the total amount of calories increase in the total amount of carbohydrates, you need it, you’re building an organ. But if you don’t have that flexibility of thought, you’re like, no, I need to stick to this one diet. I wouldn’t do it all the time. You know, it’s Yeah, you know, Vegas or bust, then you’re going to bust you know, it’s like it’s with this all or nothing thinking, we usually choose nothing. So I’d rather you just modify it a little bit so that it’s easier. It like health doesn’t need to hurt, you know, like being being gentle with yourself and having the grace and the wisdom. I mean, you’re, you know, if you’re 40 or 50, like you’re smart woman you’ve you’ve had you’ve had to get through stuff, right? You’ve had there’s been a lot of trials and tribulations. So being able to just, you know, go in a little bit and say, okay, girl, like, what do we need today? We need, we need to walk, okay, let’s do a walk. You know, we’re not we had planned for the 10 mile, you know, whatever. But today, we’re gonna do a walk, we’re gonna listen to a podcast I’m gonna listen to I’m going to go to the woods where I can get some of the, you know, the trees. And that’s what I’m going to do today. And I’m good with that.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah. Which is really hard for the type a woman I mean, I will it I will say that that was my huge lesson in my 40s was giving myself grace to say, I planned this workout. And my body is telling me I need a different, I need a different thing to do I need to get out into nature, I need to sit on the clock on the couch, I need to do yoga, because the way that my brain had always thought of that is I was being lazy. And it when I got into patriarchal

Dr. Stephanie
construct that is a patriarchal construct that our to do list is our worth. So I every type a person that’s listening to me, trust me, I have been there, I am still there in many, like my day No, like that drive to achieve is very much baked into my DNA. But it is the it is the wisdom of aging. In some ways where we have the not like knowledge is useless if it’s not integrated into wisdom. And you can you can know all that like most of us know all the things right? We know fasting helps with our hormones, we know that we need to prioritize protein and Whole Foods we need we know that we need to move more. But it’s the gap between knowing and doing and that’s the wisdom.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, he’s so well said.

Dr. Stephanie
Yes. So it’s the wisdom of saying okay, like I know that you know, doing a really heavy leg workout was on the schedule today, but I don’t have it. I had a bad sleep. Last night, I’m really stressed at work, something’s happened to my kid, like, I’m just going to be gentle on myself. This is where we can move. That’s actually how you’ll get way more results. Because you know, this Doc, you know that like all your workout, all of your results, it doesn’t happen in the gym and happens when you recover. So you’re talking, we’re talking about muscle gains a lot today, your muscle gains don’t happen in the gym. They happen when you take a couple of days off, and you allow for the metabolic and the mechanical stress that you put on those muscles to heal. And that’s when the hypertrophy and the strength gains and the power and the explosion gains happen.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, so Well said, Okay, what is the perimenopause and menopause a woman need to know about if your cycle is hard to predict, or you don’t have a cycle. You know, the postmenopausal women, you know, our hormones are really going low. How What do we need to know about diet and exercise for that time of life

Dr. Stephanie
and love this? So I included this as well in the book. And I think that for women who are menopausal or postmenopausal so you’re not, you haven’t had a cycle for at least a year. Instead of following you know, the cues from your bleed week and ovulation and test, we don’t have that anymore, right. So as I was saying before, men are like the sun, women are like the moon, I still think that menopausal women just by being just by nature of being a woman, we are cyclical creatures. So I like to follow more of a lunar cycle. So the lunar cycles, venum 2029 30 days, depending on the month. And generally, you know, the New Moon is where we let things go, this would be equivalent to the bleed week and are in our menstruating women. So the bleed week is where we can do moderate weights, we can do the keto, you know the waxing moon, which is you know, sort of the moon, the new moon, you can’t see the moon in the sky. The waxing moon is sort of the crescent moon. And this would be akin to you know, the preovulatory. So you can lift heavier weights during this time. You can you can you can still do hit training as a menopausal woman because you don’t have that really high fluctuation if you if there’s like a peloton class that you love, you know, go for it Have at it. But the heavier weights is really called for here and then you’re kind of cycling rights, you’re doing moderate weights, New Moon week, you know, the waxing moon, you’re doing heavy weights in the waning moon, which would be week three in your menstrual cycle, you come back to those moderate weights again. And then the week for which would be pardon me, the full moon would be your Avi latorre. Right, yeah, Moon are sorry, your middle of your cycle. So this is again, like the same thing. The waxing moon to the full moon is when we do those heavy, heavy weights. And then the waning moon is week three, back to those moderate weights again. And then week four is the Dark of the Moon. So again, this is where we see the weight, that crescent moon kind of disappearing. And then you know you’re doing lighter weights that week, you’re taking some recovery days, right, you’re going for the walks, you’re doing the yoga, you’re doing the Pilates, you’re doing the you know, the I love to put some, you know podcasts in my ear and I go for like an hour two hour walk. And that’s how I would structure it for her I would still I still like to cycle the keto. So I would do week one and three, where she’s doing more of a ketogenic specific diet, we know with menopausal women, generally they tend to be more insulin resistant. So as we age, it’s just a sort of a natural progression, as we start to see estrogen dipping, we also see our insulin resistance increasing. So one in three for week one and three. So that would be your new moon and just after the full moon. And I like a higher protein like weeks two and four, I like higher protein in those weeks. And we’re doing that for a menopausal ladies. Also, and this was this is also true in our menstruating women to profit to to create more muscle, you know, one of the things we want as menopausal women is we want our bone density, we want to be concerned about bone density and our non lean muscle mass. So the more you lift weights, the more you are creating and preserving the muscle tissue that you have, but you’re also it directly influencing your bones. So your bones and your muscles, they’re sisters, when one is you know dense, you have a lot of it you have a lot of the other and as you lose muscle you will also lose bone density. And you probably know this, you know more even more than I but women who are osteopenic and then even move into osteoporosis. The one thing that tends to take them out is like a silly little fall right or a little trip or they you know, they fall on these like we call them like fouche injuries right like fall on outstretched hand injuries and then you get this like fracture along a long bone. Like you fracture the hip, you fracture the humerus, you fracture the femur, and then you can’t do anything right then you’re out of commission for 369 months, which then has knock on effects on your cognition and your brain health. It has knock on effects on you Obviously your body composition, your mood, your energy, all things.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah. And I really hope that people listening are like, Whoa, I’ve never thought of my workout plan in accordance with my hormones like that. I mean, when I was in college, I played competitive tennis, and I had a bunch of injuries that I was struggled to heal from. And now I look back and I go, oh my gosh, if I had just been thinking about my workouts, according to where my the ebbs and flows of my hormones, I may have never even had those injuries, injuries that led me to surgeries. And then when you go into perimenopause and menopause, it’s like a you’re fighting for the motivation to workout and you’re and you’re losing muscle. And you never think, oh, gosh, in a 30 day period, I should probably time and change the way that I work out. This, I hope it becomes a common language. But I I, I’m sure a lot of people listening to this are like, Whoa, I never thought of it this way. And I hope I hope people are having that aha moment. Do you find Are you getting a lot of that from your book? Because a lot of it. Yeah. Great concept.

Dr. Stephanie
Thank you. Yeah, a lot. It’s been really well received by the public as well as my peers, which is always really important. So but a lot of people like I’ve never I never thought of it like that before. I was always scared of doing keto or I tried keto. And it didn’t work for me and probably didn’t do it like a girl, you know, like, right, that you got to do keto, like a woman, you know, in order for it to be sustainable for you. So we talk about what keto is for, you know, woman versus like the bacon butter burgers and repeat, which is often sort of like this dirty type of keto, that we see propagated in sort of, you know, with keto experts, and as long as It Fits Your Macros, it’s like, right, no more or the

Dr. Mindy
keto experts say no women shouldn’t do it. We actually came up with something called a fasting circle that does a 30 day cycle and looks at I teach six different fasts. And it shows when you can use each one of these fasts according to the cycle. So I’m actually geeking out listening to you. I’m like, yep, yeah, yeah, that’s, so I’m thinking as you’re talking exercise, I’m thinking yeah, that’s when you can do this fast. And that fact, is when you shouldn’t fast, because we saw so on my YouTube channel, I got so many women who came from the hardcore fasting world, and was like, my hair’s falling out. I’m losing my cycle. And it was like last diet. Yeah. Can’t do it this way. So I love that.

Dr. Stephanie
I love I love that you have different I talked about this in the book as well. There’s different I sort of talked about, like, there’s three levers you can pull with fasting. One is like the frequency, the the type of fast? And then the and then the sort of the severity? Like is it a water fast? Are you doing caloric liquid fat? Like, is it a bone broth? fast? Are you doing fasting mimetics. So I love that you talk about that, because I think that most people assume that fasting is just either a dry or a water fast, when there’s so much nuance, in terms of how you can apply fasting as a woman, not only to your cycle, but you know, to whatever your goals are, like some people say, Well, does a coffee break a fast? And does this break? I mean, that’s I don’t know, if you I find that’s like the most what breaks?

Unknown Speaker
I answered that question like 10 times a week? Yeah, I should have it tattooed on my arm.

Dr. Stephanie
Yeah. Like the short answer is, well, what’s your goal? Exactly? Like digestive? Is it a digestive goal? Are you trying to heal the gut? Are you trying to lose weight? You’re trying to do it for clarity of thought, like, what’s the goal? And then you can answer the question based on what your goal is. So

Dr. Mindy
yeah, yeah, exactly. We do I do a YouTube live every Thursday, and I get every Thursday, I’m on there for an hour for my community. And I get questions all the time of like, what should I what fast should I do for this? And for that? And my, my, always, my response is, Well, it depends what you’re trying to do. What are you trying to do? And I think a lot of the problem that we have is the one size fits all, mentality that more conventional healthcare has taught us, we try to bring that to more alternative strategies, and there is no one size fits all. And then from there, we have to look at the fact that we’re a woman, and that we need to match it to our hormonal cycle, which is why I just love what you’re talking about. Because I’m over here talking about it. You’re talking about it, we I’ve seen a couple other women talking about it, and we need to amplify our voices so that women hear this and start to implement life differently and stop the suffering it is it is time we are we are no longer in a place where we need to do this like men. We need to do it like women. And we need to understand what that means. So I just I love this.

Unknown Speaker
Can I get an amen?

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, amen. Okay, last couple things and then I’ve got some questions, rapid fire questions for you. There was something that you put in your book That you I was on Amazon was reading some of the things that I was like, Well, what does she mean by that? And it was you say that your that our morning routines are sexist?

Unknown Speaker
Yes, yes.

Unknown Speaker
What does that mean?

Dr. Stephanie
All right, I’m so excited. We’re talking about this. Alright. So yes, I proposed in the book that the way that we know morning routines are, they’re pretty sexist. So if you think about some of the, you know, morning routine expert gurus, they wake up at some ungodly hour, like three o’clock, four o’clock, five o’clock, and then they have like a tea ceremony. And then they have like, you know, ideation and they write, and then they’ll read, like, half of, you know, like, 30 to 50 pages, and then they’ll go and workout for an hour. And then from there, they’ll meditate. And then they’ll do all these things. And it’s like, Okay, if you’re able to do that, like, God bless, right, like, amazing. But if I were to wake up that early, first of all, as a woman, my sleep cycle is longer than a man’s by at least 15 minutes, but in some cases, up to 45 minutes. So cutting your your sleep cycles short, is probably probably probably one of the most deleterious things that you could do to your metabolism, mood, energy, body composition. So no break up with the 4am Club. Not good for you. But also, where are your kids, like,

Unknown Speaker
if I woke up, and

Dr. Stephanie
I was like, you know, making tea downstairs, then it was working out for now, my kids, like they need, you know, they need to be dressed and brush their teeth and get dressed for school. And like, you know, so a lot of times when you hear these men talking about these elaborate morning routines, they usually have a wife or you know, if it’s a woman, there’s some help, right, that’s, that’s doing some of the child rearing. So for women, and for me, personally, I used to feel like a huge failure, because I would see these guys and it’s I can’t I write for an hour, and then I work out for an hour Well said, and it’s like, What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I do that, in fact, because I have toddlers, because my morning routine with my kids, like kind of, you know, coming into my room like me, you know, that was my routine, like they’re waking me up. And of course, it’s changed. Now my kids are a little older, you know, I have a tenant an eight year old so they sleep in generally on their own, sometimes we get an odd nightmare or this they’re sick overnight, like I’m up with them. But in for women with young children, you know, you’re already going to be sleep deprived by nature of because they don’t have circadian regularity. Yet, they don’t have a circadian rhythm that tells them to go to sleep, you know, every night at eight o’clock or seven o’clock, like you that has to be trained over several years. And of course, they also wake up multiple times overnight because of that. So you already have the sleep deprived women that are trying and we put so much pressure on our women to get like get back to the pre baby body weight and get back you know, get back look at this Yes, look a certain way nine months up, nine months down. It’s like, if you like I am breastfeeding, like I you know, I breastfed my kids. My first child, I breastfed him for 18 months, which I thought was long. And then my second child that breastfed him for three freakin years, like he, oh my gosh, give up the boob. And I was like, Okay, I just have to go, this is what my baby needs. And this is what I need to do right now for my children. So I had no morning routine for like, close to five years. And I started off as I think most women do feeling like we’re failures. And why can’t we do this, like everybody else? And why? Like, these are what the experts are saying until you realize that the experts are men, and they have no idea like most when in the book, I talk about consensus surveys. And I took data from Canada, the US the UK, like, you know, the Commonwealth and the and the Americas. And typically, it’s the woman who does the majority of the non paid work. So she goes to her job gets you know, gets paid for that. But then she comes home and she does cleaning she does laundry, she does homework with her kids, you know, she stays up overnight, you know, puts them to bed all these different things. So she’s working around the clock, but she’s only getting paid for the time that she’s you know, at her job. So it’s completely sexist to to expect that women are going to be able to cut their longer sleep cycles short and then also do all of these things without having their children interrupt them because their little kiddies need the have, you know, needs that need to be attended to. So I talked about Okay, what are some gems? What are things that you can spread out? You know, over the morning, right cold showers. One thing I propose, like whenever you take the shower, last 30 seconds, you know, even 10 seconds if you’re not used to it, like cold shower helps with reducing inflammation, helping with brain fog and increasing mitochondrial biogenesis. That’s one thing we talk about journaling or even just doing some type of gratitude. So it could just be that your toddlers come into your room, they wake you up, and then you open your eyes. You’re like so grateful that I even had the ability to get pregnant and have these kids you know, because that’s a that’s a present. That’s not happening. Everybody, yeah. And then some movement. So I used to the way that I used to get my movement with my kids is that we would put on what are they used to Thomas the Train, okay, so like, you know, they used to be obsessed with Thomas. So we will put on that that show tunes like the the songs that they had on that show and we dance, you know, we danced in the morning and that was my workout, I would just take them and we’d be like, pick them up and we’d be spinning around. And it’s like 510 minutes, maybe before they got bored to do something else. But that was my workout. You know, that used to be how I got my movement in.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah. So I’m thinking actually, maybe men should do the parent teen in the morning. That’s what I’m actually thinking should happen. But I love your creativity. So I wish my kids are 21 and 18. So I wish I had known that I had thought of that. When that because I was also the woman who was you know, going to work all day, taking care of the kids in the morning taking care of the kids at night. And there was that moment of just like, wow, this is two jobs. And it is a lot. And it is a hormonal distraction that can happen that is happening to so many women. So okay, well, this is amazing. I could talk to you for hours. But I’m gonna sum this up with five of questions that just, you know, looking doing some review on you and looking at your book, which I really want encourage everybody to get your book and we’ll talk about how they get that in a moment. But here is my hair. My five questions for you. So obviously you love the exercise. If there was only one exercise you could do for the rest of your life to keep yourself fit. There was only one you couldn’t vary it to your cycle. But it’s this what exercise would that be Sumo squats?

Dr. Stephanie
Sumo squats easy, that would be the number one. It does everything right.

Unknown Speaker
It’s just so we know what is a sumo squat?

Unknown Speaker
So a sumo squat is when you

Dr. Mindy
squat with it? Yep,

Dr. Stephanie
sorry. I think you were just cutting out a minute there. So it’s a it’s a squat where your legs are a little further apart feeder turned out to about 45 degrees.

Dr. Mindy
I might Yeah, I’m might have for a moment.

Dr. Stephanie
Yeah. And then you come down. And then you can either hold a bar, you can either put weights on your shoulder or you can also hold a bar as well. So you could do this with barbells kettlebells dumbbells and you’re getting your back. You’re getting shoulders, you’re getting abs, you’re getting your entire lower legs. So Sumo squats are my favorite.

Dr. Mindy
Okay, awesome. I don’t know why I’m getting delayed all of a sudden. So we’re coming down the homestretch here. I don’t just if you have any options on that.

Unknown Speaker
Okay, okay.

Dr. Mindy
Okay. Okay. So Second thing, if you could go back to your 13 year old self and give her some advice. What would you tell her?

Dr. Stephanie
Oh, that’s a good question. I you know, I just give that girl a big old hug. And just, you know, say you know what, girl, you’re doing the best that you can given, you know, the life circumstances and the cards that you’ve been dealt right now. And, you know, Everything about you is beautiful. You’re fine. You’re not broken, and just keep going.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, that’s how I feel about my 13 year old self till like, gosh, I wish I could go back and give her some advice. Okay, what book has had the greatest impact on your life?

Dr. Stephanie
Oh, my goodness. What a question. Biggest, okay, so there’s a couple of them that I’ve read several times. The Alchemist

Unknown Speaker
Paulo Coelho, I’ve

Dr. Stephanie
read his quite a few times. The Art of War, blanking on his name, the art the 50 rules of power and the the 50 rules of war. Robert Greene is the is the author. Do I only choose one?

Unknown Speaker
This is just one book.

Dr. Mindy
Now you can no because this is you’re creating a book list for people right now.

Dr. Stephanie
Okay, um, the women who run with Wolves. That was phenomenal book, and then the heroines journey. What’s her name Margaret Murdoch, I believe is her the author’s name heroines journey. We always talk about the hero’s journey, right? The Joseph can billion like you know, the separation initiation return. But the hero’s journey is written. She was a study. She was a student of Campbell, but she wrote it specifically for women. So I love that was I’ve read that book. I don’t know how many times like, Ah,

Dr. Mindy
good. Yeah, those are good recommendations. Okay, if you could spend the day with anybody alive right now. Who would you want to spend the day with

Dr. Stephanie
anybody alive. God, this is a hard question. Can I come back to it? Can I let my con? Yeah.

Dr. Mindy
Yep. Think about that. Yeah, that my last question is, if you had one message you could get in every woman’s brain that in the whole planet, it was like a one line one to two line message that you could help her see life differently or help her address her health differently. What would that be?

Dr. Stephanie
I would say that it’s just like the Wizard of Oz, everything you need to go home, you already have everything within you is already all there. So you know, it’s really just about unhitching. You know, yourself from the patriarchal sort of toxic society that we live in where we think that achievement is related to your worth. But your worth is actually inside you. So you just got to, you know, click your heels twice to go home. It’s, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s a little simple, a little more complicated than that, but it’s the same principle, but you’re already who you are. You’re already everything you need.

Dr. Mindy
I love that. I love that. Okay, who are you going to spend the day with? Oh, my goodness, oh, my

Unknown Speaker
goodness. Um,

Dr. Stephanie
I would say you know, who I would spend the day with actually, Diane Von Furstenberg. So she is the, you know, the rap dress, she’s really well known for that. But she is, you know, when we think about big when she sort of came up in like the 60s in the 70s. With this rap dress, it was very is you know, fashion and fashion houses were all very male, right? When we look at the difference between fashion houses that are men, we would see these like really, you know, like very constructive, you know, the models sort of not not unrealistic, but kind of unrealistic for like, what the morphology of the typical woman is. And I think that Von Furstenberg DVDs dresses were kind of the first that were like, we’re gonna use some fabric that is an everyday fabric like a jersey, that most women like you’re wearing jersey, I’m wearing jersey right now that we would we feel the most comfortable in. And it would it was something that every body type could, you know, could wear and I think that her I’ve listened to her talk on business, and how she views the world and how she’s, she pushes when she needs to push, but she breaks when she needs to break. And she’s an achiever, but she loves herself. And it’s like, I would just love to have lunch with her.

Dr. Mindy
Amazing when that be it’s just fun to dream about for a while, right? Yeah. So many wise women out there just to have a moment to sit and pick their pick her brain and it’s just incredible. And we’re so good as women have the gift of gab and connecting with each other. And it would be really cool to tap into some of those incredible women so and I just want to tell you, this has been so much fun for me. So I really appreciate you coming on and I have sat with that hormonal cycle for hours and hours and hours looking at the science on the on fasting keto, and really trying to understand how to map this for women and then coming out of that discovery and realizing everything we do needs to be mapped to this. And there were moments when I first felt that that I felt alone like why aren’t we talking about this? And then books like yours appear and people like you a pair and we have the we just elevate the conversation and we’re able to help women see this differently. So thank you so much for your book. And please tell my audience how do they find you How can they connect with you? Well, thank you and

Dr. Stephanie
let me just reflect back to you that it’s been wonderful chatting with you. We are like you know soul sisters, very very similar philosophy so it’s been a joy for me as well. So you can find the book is called the Betty body. It has a bright pink it has a bright pink Cover me and a purple dress. You can find this on Amazon you know worldwide in the States. You can also find it in Barnes and Noble if you’re in Canada chapters Indigo also has it and when you do buy the book, I would invite you if you felt so inclined, we’ve also created some bonuses for you because I like to treat my Betty’s so we’ve done nutrition fasting rehab and fitness programs. So if you head over to Betty body book.com b e tt YBODYVO. Okay, calm. Yeah, they’re free there for you to download. So I would love to have you have the programming as well as an accompaniment to the book.

Dr. Mindy
Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. Well, thank you for writing the book. And let’s just keep screaming this because women if you’re hearing this, please share this episode out, get Dr. Stephanie’s book, start the conversation with other women. Like we just have to bring this to the attention of of women all over the world. So thank you Dr. Stephanie, just keep shouting, but be sure you take some breaks too.

Unknown Speaker
I will thank you. Thank you sage advice.