How do intuitive eating and periods go together? 🍫
Intuitive Eating and menstrual cycle awareness can absolutely go hand in hand. In fact, learning to understand our cyclic nature can support our journey to becoming an Intuitive Eater!
“How’s that?” you might ask.
Intuitive Eating provides a beautiful framework for shifting away from external cues for eating and moving our body and shifting toward internal cues. For example, shifting AWAY from numbers on scales, food rules and “the more the better” messaging about exercise and shifting TOWARD developing body respect, appetite awareness and re-discovering joy in movement.
Here’s the clincher: Learning more about our cyclic nature also helps us to understand and honour our internal cues.
Picture this: you’re in the process of reconnecting with your hunger , you’re noticing patterns (yay!), feeding yourself regularly (double yay!!), and feeling less out of control, but then all of a sudden your intense cravings come back, you don’t know why, so you judge yourself and find yourself feeling out of control again.
Or you’re finding joy in moving your body. It’s feeling easier and more joyful (omg!). But then a week later it feels harder and harder and you begin to move slower and your flexibility wanes. And you start beating yourself up again.
Well, did you know that it’s totally normal to feel more hungry or get more “cravings” before our period due to the action of progesterone? Did you know that moving our body usually feels harder at the end of the second phase of our cycle?
Understanding our menstrual cycle can help us to walk ALONGSIDE our bodies rather than jumping to judgement or guilt.
How do I use menstrual cycle awareness to support my Intuitive Eating journey?
First step is always awareness. Menstrual cycle tracking is how we build awareness and the good news is that there’s no wrong way to do it! The best way for you is the one that you’ll actually do. App, paper, chart. Whichever works best. Apps such as Clue and Flo have great prompts to help you tune into your symptoms. It should only take a couple of months of tracking daily symptoms for you to notice patterns. You could start by tracking appetite, ease of movement and mood. Or just choose one and go from there. Although they’re commonly known as period tracking apps, ovulation is actually the main event in the cycle, so this is what we want to look out for.
What are common things I might notice?
Your appetite is lower leading up to ovulation .
Your appetite ramps up in the 4-6 days prior to your period. This may show up as cravings for sweet foods (for many people this is chocolate).
Moving your body is easier in the 7-10 days after your period in the lead up to ovulation.
Moving your body might start to feel harder in the week or two leading up to your period.
Your body image may feel better leading up to ovulation (fun fact: our faces are more symmetrical in our fertile time of the month which naturally makes us more attractive to potential mates!).
Your body image may worsen in the 4-6 days leading up to your period which often goes alongside common PMS symptoms, such as bloating, mood changes and breakouts.
Understanding why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling can help you to be kinder to yourself. This kindness and understanding can support our journey toward Intuitive Eating.
Nadia x