5 Reasons to Start Tracking your Menstrual Cycle
As a woman, your menstrual cycle impacts you every day of your reproductive life. From your physical body to your mood, emotions, career, and more. Unfortunately, most women have not been taught much about their cycles let alone its impacts or how to live in tune with it. Simply by starting to track your cycle, you can gain insight into yourself and well-being, live in tune with it and even manage your fertility! In this post I will share my top 5 reasons to start tracking your cycle today!
1. Understanding Your Body
Tracking your menstrual cycle can help you better understand your body's natural rhythms and fluctuations. By keeping track of your menstrual cycle over several months, you can identify patterns and trends that can help you predict when your period is coming, how long it will last, and how heavy or light it will be. This information can be invaluable when planning for important events or activities, such as vacations, weddings, or athletic competitions.
2. Detecting Health Issues
Tracking your menstrual cycle can also help you detect potential health issues early on. Changes in your menstrual cycle can indicate health problems such as thyroid issues, polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), or endometriosis. By tracking your cycle and noting any changes, you can alert your healthcare provider to potential issues, receive treatment sooner and be an active participant in your healthcare.
3. Managing Fertility
Tracking your cycle using the Symptothermal Method is a highly effective way of managing your fertility. By understanding your biomarkers and tracking each cycle, you can know the best times to achieve pregnancy. Conversely, this method also allows you to effectively avoid pregnancy without the need for hormonal contraception! The Symptothermal method is different from the rhythm method which is simply tracking the days of your cycle to predict your fertile window.
Symptothermal method uses the signs your body gives you to help you truly identify your fertile window and can be 99.6% effective at avoiding pregnancy naturally. There are three main biomarkers used in the symptothermal method to identify ovulation (and thus a true menstrual cycle) which are cervical mucus, basal body temperature and cervical position. Using this method is much more accurate and provides you with more insight into your hormonal activity and fertility than simply tracking the days of your cycle. - If you want to learn how to effectively use the Symptothermal Method, enroll in my Fundamentals of Fam Workshop here!
4. Improving Mood, Relationships and Career
So many women feel like they are on a rollercoaster in the dark when it comes to the hormonal changes during their menstrual cycle. One week it feels like you’re on top of the world, the next it can feel like you're spiraling out of control. This can have a massive impact on your mood, relationships and even your career. By tracking your cycle you can predict and prepare for how you may feel. When you have this deep understanding of yourself you can give yourself grace and strategically plan for when you may feel certain ways. For example, if you know that around ovulation you love to socialize and feel amazing, this is a great time to schedule presentations at work, go to networking events or build intimacy in your relationships. While when you’re in your luteal phase you may feel irritable, unmotivated and have mood swings. This would be the time to focus on administrative things, take extra time for self care, and communicate how you feel to avoid conflict.
5. Support Hormone Balance
During each phase of your cycle, your body requires different nutrients, attention, and exercise. When you live in tune with your cycle while supporting it through phase synced nutrition and exercise you will be tending to the hormones that need to be supported when they need to be supported. This can help you improve your overall hormonal balance, reproductive health and general well being so that you don’t have to experience massive fluctuations in mood or energy and can reduce PMS symptoms and period pain!
There are a few ways to track your cycle. You can start by using a period tracking app. This will help you understand your cycle length, menstruation and give you an idea of what phase you’re in. While doing this, start to connect with yourself and journal. Tracking this for several cycles can help you determine your patterns so you can start planning accordingly. While period tracking apps can be a helpful tool, they are limited as your cycle can change from month to month. If you want a more comprehensive way to track your cycle you should consider learning the Symptothermal Method of FAM. This method uses the biomarkers (signs) that your body gives you in response to fluctuating hormones so you can identify when you’re fertile and be sure of what phase you’re in. Your cervical mucus, basal body temperature and cervical position can be tracked as indicators of hormonal activity. This is the most effective way to avoid pregnancy naturally, increase your chance of conception and gather health insights even if you have an irregular period!
If you want to learn how to effectively use the Symptothermal Method, join my Fundamentals of FAM workshop here!
