She issssss back.
I know this last existential spiral felt longer than usual. Normally I write one of these about once a month, when I’m deep in my luteal phase, my amygdala is on fire, and spiraling is basically my part-time job.
These days I usually only stay in that pit a few hours at a time.
So blessed to have found the tools to pull myself back out!!!
But I can’t forget how dark those luteal days used to be.
Back when I had no tools or knowledge about the female body, I didn’t even connect the darkness to my cycle. I had no idea it was just a phase I didn’t yet know how to take care of. It felt so random, it came out of nowhere.
Now, at least, those days come with a warning.
I know exactly when they’ll hit.
And I kind of already know how hard they’ll hit, based on what my life looked like the month before.
My foundational habits are solid (lymphatics, nutrition, exercise, recovery), so those stay constant.
The thing that varies a lot is my SELF EXPRESSION.
I realised that the way I feel in my luteal phase comes down to how much I expressed my inner world, and how much I suppressed.
That’s the biggest thing that decides how I experience each luteal phase. (Tell me in the comments if you want me to go deeper on this topic in a next article)
Anyway… I got my period.
And it feels like I climbed out of the pit and there’s light again… gosh, it was dark down there.
I’ve got a heating pad on my belly, hot tea next to my laptop.
It’s early morning.
I usually write these articles later in the evening, but today I woke up like a new woman and I wanted you to feel this energy!!!!
I just finished my morning workout and I felt so strong, so good in my body.
And I had a flashback.
Back to the time I was doing the whole cycle syncing thing.
I’ll give myself grace here…
Some things you only learn in time.
I remembered preordering Alisa Vitti’s book and falling completely in love with it. It opened up a whole new world. It was the first time I heard the idea that my cycle had phases, and that my body responded to each one differently.
It felt like someone finally put language to what I’d been living.
And in that book, she teaches this method: cycle syncing. You align your diet, your workouts and your lifestyle to the 4 phases of your cycle. So basically, 4 rotating food lists, 4 workout plans, 4 lifestyle adjustments.
I did everything it said.
I redesigned my diet: 4 food lists, one for each phase. I changed my whole workout plan to match my cycle.
Here’s the thing you need to know about me to get the full picture.
At that point, I’d already spent a year building real discipline around the gym: waking up at 6am, riding to the gym. I had become the woman who showed up.
That identity was something I had worked really hard for.
And then cycle syncing told me to change it all.
More rest days in luteal, ease off before my period, don’t lift heavy on certain days, swap it for something gentler. Go lighter the whole week I was bleeding.
So I gave in.
I did what it said.
And within months, I’d lost SO MUCH of that progress.
But it wasn’t just the muscle.
I lost the habit.
I lost the identity.
Because here’s my truth.
I’m lazy.
I’m not someone who naturally wants to go for a run or throw around heavy weights. I had to build that discipline from scratch, and it took me about a year.
And cycle syncing handed me a “scientifically-justified” reason to skip.
It became a permission slip for my worst default mode.
I was breaking the promise I’d made to myself, except now I had a framework telling me that skipping was actually good for my hormones.
And it’s not just me.
Hundreds of women have told me the exact same story. They tried cycle syncing. Month one felt like finally understanding their body. Then by month 2-3, the 4 meal plans, the 4 workout rotations, the 4 schedules… it became exhausting. And they quit.
Because the system was too complex to maintain.
Let’s look at the science of habits for a second.
James Clear talks about this in his book Atomic Habits.
The mistake most people make is optimising before standardising. A habit has to be established before it can be improved. You make something the standard in your life first, then you refine it.
And the research backs it.
A new behaviour takes an average of 66 days of consistent repetition to become automatic. Same cue, same routine, repeated until your brain stops deliberating and just does it.
Now look at what cycle syncing asks.
It asks you to change the routine every single week.
4 different behaviours, rotating.
Your brain NEVER gets to automate any of them. You’re making new decisions constantly.
By the end of a hard day, you don’t have the mental budget left to work out which phase you’re in and what that means for dinner, when every food is supposed to be different in every phase.
It’s just really hard to build the habit of rotating that many things at once.
But here’s what I want to be clear about.
The idea of adjusting your life to your cycle has REAL POWER in it.
If you do it as an intentional layer on top of routines that are already solid.
Things like: easing intensity in luteal and adding more recovery. More iron-rich food around your period. Noticing you need an earlier bedtime a certain week. That kind of awareness is sustainable, because the foundation underneath it is already automatic. You’re not rebuilding every week. You’re making small adjustments to something stable.
That’s the whole difference.
Cycle syncing as your entire strategy, versus cycle syncing as a layer on top of a stable foundation.
In my view, cycle syncing can take you from a 9 to a 10 on a health scale.
But you have to be at 9 already.
If your body is at a 4 or a 5, meaning your routines aren’t in place yet, you’re not eating in a way to support stable blood sugar levels, you’re not lifting weights 3 to 4 times a week, you’re sedentary, you spend your day indoors in front of a laptop, on your phone all day… then cycle syncing is just adding COMPLEXITY to a system that first needs stability.
Because when you’re at a 4, it really means: more decisions, more rules, more ways to feel like you’re failing.
And that’s exactly what I don’t want for you.
Quick pause, because this part matters more than anything coming up next.
If you’re at a 4 or a 5, the answer isn’t more cycle syncing rules. It’s building the foundation first. And I’ll actually help you do that, for free.
I run a free 7-day Clear challenge inside my community, where we rebuild that foundation together. Drainage, lymph, the non-negotiables, all of it. Live calls, access to me, the full practice library.
Doors close August 21, then I’m closing it for the summer while I travel, and I honestly don’t know when it reopens.
It’s completely free. Do the 7 days, then decide if you want to stay for the rest. Zero risk.
Day 1: assess your baseline
Day 2: drainage & hormones science
Day 3: non-negotiables to anchor yourself
Day 4: the 6 lymphatic nodes
Day 5: the 7 lymphatic moves
Day 6: breathe to regulate
Day 7: practice & reflect
It includes live calls, access to me, full practice library (drainage, nutrition, lymphatics, muscle, cycle)
So if you want to start in the right place to support your body, this is the place. Don’t take my word for it, see what women inside say;
Everything below is where it gets spicy, and where I stop holding back. I read the full study everyone’s citing to prove cycle syncing works, and I’ll show you the line they leave out. Plus the 2 things about your cycle that break the whole method, and the exact order I’d build this if I were you. This part is for paid subscribers, it’s for you if you want the real depth, not the surface.
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