How To Track Your Cycle!
Your cycle is not just about getting pregnant and your fertility. Your cycle is your superpower!! We, as women, have these amazing hormones that fluctuation and change throughout our cycle making us the wonderful people that we are! So many common symptoms like brain fog, low energy, mood swings, poor sleep, bloating and more are all from hormone imbalances. When your hormones are balanced you are going to be feeling amazing! We need to stop dreading our periods and hating that we are cycling humans. We dread our periods because we experience such awful symptoms but these are common not normal! When your hormones are balanced you will feel happy, confident and healthy and who doesn't want that?
Your cycle is your monthly report card for our health. It tells you how much stress you’ve been under and how well you have been able to manage it that month. It also tells you about the foods that you are eating and if they are healthy for you and your body. Our monthly cycle is a great indication of how much inflammation we have in our bodies. The more inflamed you are the more mental and physical symptoms you will experience; excessive gas, acne, painful bloating, painful cramps, anxiety, mood swings and more! This monthly report card tells us how our hormones are doing and if they are in balance or not. Once you have all of this information, you can then begin to bring your hormones and body back into balance and start feeling vibrant!
Why Track Your Cycle?
Tracking your cycle has so many benefits and is so simple to do! Keeping track will help you identify patterns and notice the good and the bad things about your cycle. It also helps you...
Know How Healthy You Are
This all comes back to our monthly report card! Our period every month and how difficult or easy it is tells us about the status of your health.
Learn About Your Body
Knowledge is power! The more you know about your body the better you can advocate for yourself and the better you will be at making decisions. It is so often that women are not taken seriously when it comes to our health. Having knowledge about our bodies will help you be a better advocate for yourself on your own health journey. Periods are thought of as painful, long, and debilitating. That is common but it is not normal! You should not have to suffer every month if you are experiencing awful periods. Also, if you are on the other side of the spectrum where you are not getting your periods or it's irregular, this is also not okay! It is not normal for you to be missing your period or having irregular cycles. This indicates something is off and you should look further into it. The more you know about your body the better you are able to advocate for yourself and your health!
Avoid Pregnancy
Have you ever been told that the birth control pill, IUD’s, hormonal patches and other hormonal contraceptive methods are not your only options for preventing pregnancy? Tracking and understanding your cycle is an effective and safe method to avoid pregnancy, it's called the FAM method. You are not fertile for 3 weeks and then bleed for 1 week. You can get pregnant for only 5-6 days of your cycle! That's it! I talk all about this in My 90 Day Fertility Plan e-course. You learn everything you need to know about your cycle and how to use it to your advantage!
Get Pregnant
To my surprise, I see this a lot with my clients. They aren’t having sex at the right times to get pregnant. For many couples, getting pregnant is really hard and comes with huge emotional and mental stress. With infertility on the rise for both men and women, this is not surprising but there is so much we can do to get you pregnant naturally! A big misconception is that period tracking apps tell you when you ovulate. This is just a very general guess based on ovulating mid way through a 28 day cycle. Every woman's cycle length is different and ovulate time is different! Not all women ovulate at exactly the halfway mark in their cycles. Knowing the signs of ovulation and confirming you ovulated will help you to better plan sex to get pregnant.
What To Track!
I want to make this simple and easy for you. Tracking your cycle should not be confusing or hard! There are 3 things you need to know before you start tracking.
Let's break them down!
1. Basal Body Temperature (BBT)
Your BBT is a very sensitive temperature reading that can only be taken by specific thermometers. When you ovulate your BBT will rise approximately 0.6oC or more and stay elevated for at least 3 consecutive days which indicates you have ovulated. This slight temperature increase is why you need a specific thermometer that is sensitive enough to accurately detect this change.
Your BBT is really hard to take. I have tried and tested every type of thermometer on the market and to be honest it was a giant pain in my ass. You have to take it first thing in the morning, before you even move in your bed. You can't touch your partner or be awake for too long before taking it. You have to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day to get an accurate reading. Drinking alcohol will cause your BBT to increase and if you wake up in the night or toss and turn then you wont get a reliable reading either. It was difficult to do so I stopped doing it. It felt impossible and my BBT was all over the place. I couldn't get an accurate reading. Once again, my goal is to make it simple and easy for you so an oral or vaginal thermometer is not what you want to use!
It was too difficult to track so I stopped, until I found Temp Drop. This is an incredible BBT thermometer that is in an armband that you wear all night. It is comfortable and soo easy to use. All you do is put it on your arm (as instructed) before you go to bed and sync it to your app when you wake up. It is accurate and you don't have to worry about waking up at the same time, drinking alcohol, tossing and turning, cuddling with your partner or traveling. It uses an algorithm with multiple temperatures to give you an accurate reading in the morning! The only downside is that it is more expensive than the oral or vaginal thermometers. The cost is 100% worth it. It is an investment in your health and is key in confirming ovulation. I reached out to Temp Drop to see if I could get my community a discount since I am a huge fan of their product. They happily agreed and gave me a 10% discount code for you! Use this code at check out: DFK433KHYXFZ5
Picture from www.tempdrop.com
2. Cervical Mucus (CM)
Your CM is also known as vaginal discharge. This one is pretty easy! Throughout your cycle your CM will change. After your period, your CM will be very minimal and you will be dry. It will then become white, creamy and clumpy as you move closer to ovulation. Leading into ovulation your CM will change to be clear and very stretchy. When pinched between your thumb and first finger and stretched, you CM during this phase will stretch more than an inch. This clear, stretchy CM is referred to as egg white cervical mucus and this is when you are your most fertile.
You can check your CM 2 ways. Before going pee, you can insert a finger into your vagina and gentle touch your cervix. Pull your finger out and see what type of mucus is on your finger. This is the most accurate way to check. You can also check in your underwear to see what the appearance of your discharge is and how much there is. Whichever way you are most comfortable with, is the best option for you!
photo from: https://fertilitycharting.com.au/cervical-mucus-gallery/
3. All Symptoms
You want to begin to bring awareness to how you are feeling throughout the day. Think about your mood, energy, cravings, bowel movements, desires and much more. You may begin to see a pattern with your symptoms which can help you cycle sync to optimize your cycle. Cycle syncing is about honing in on the phase of your cycle that you're in and using it to your advantage. Every phase of your cycle you have different energy, mood, desires and wants and this is totally normal and actually indicates a health cycle! Women are cycling humans and therefore you are going to feel different at each stage when your hormones are different. For example, during the ovulatory phase your hormones are at their highest and you should be feeling confident, sexy and outgoing. You can use the cycle syncing method to “hack” your cycle and plan events, work presentations, or friends hang outs around this time since it will feel the most natural. Of course you can't always control everything and that's okay but once again, knowledge is power. By knowing what each phase brings will help you have come compassionate with yourself and set realistic goals and expectations.
How to Confirm Ovulation!
Ovulation is the main event of your cycle!! If you don't ovulate then the cascade of hormones and events that are supposed to follow do not happen. This leaves you feeling awful, with irregular periods, and indicates hormone imbalance! I am not a fan of ovulation test strips. They are expensive and don't confirm that you ovulated. They tell you that you have an increase in a specific hormone that precedes ovulation. This is misleading to women since it sounds like the test strips tell you when you ovulate but it doesn't.. I never recommend them and always recommend getting to know your body and your cycle to determine when you are ovulating!
So how do you confirm that you ovulated?
Easy! With your tracking app, your BBT and your CM.
Your app will graph it and make it super easy for you to see. When you see egg white CM and your BBT increase for 3 consecutive days is confirmation that you have ovulated. The combination of these 2 things at the same time indicates that you ovulated! It is important for them to line up. If they don't line up then it indicates that something is going on and did not confirm that you ovulated. Below is a screenshot of my app and the cycle I actually got pregnant! You can see the green mark circled in red and the increase in my temperature (indicated with an arrow) showing how my egg white CM and BBT increase lined up! My paint skills are not the best, but you get the idea!
A screenshot of the cycle I got pregnant and confirming ovulation through BBT and CM lining up!
Three Easy Steps To Strat Tracking Your Cycle!
Step 1: Purchase Your BBT from Temp Drop.
Use my 10% off discount code at checkout! Like I said above, I have tried all other BBT thermometers and they are unreliable, hard to use and were a waste of my money! If you are going to do this, do it right and let's make it easy!
10% Off Coupon Code: DFK433KHYXFZ5
Step 2: Download a period tracking app that is compatible with your temp drop.
You want to make sure you choose one that is compatible with your temp drop so you can have all of your information in one place. This makes it easier and more manageable! You can find out which app is compatible with Temp Drop here. My favorite one is the OvuView!
Step 3: Record your period, all of your symptoms, CM and BBT daily in your app and look for those specific patterns!
That’s it! Easy as 1, 2, 3! Simply order your Temp Drop, download the app and start recording your BBT, CM and all of your symptoms. Give yourself 3 months before looking for patterns and information from tracking. Within no time you will be an expert of your own cycle!
“BUT WAIT… What do I do if I don’t get my period?”
If you are not missing your period or have irregular periods still track all the things I talked about above! A missing period could be caused by many things. Working with a practitioner to find the root cause is the best approach. You will gain so much from tracking your cycle and it will help you practitioners identify what your root cause is!
Let's continue to educate ourselves! This way we can empower ourselves, our daughters, our mothers, our sisters and our friends! Share this with all of the wonderful women in your life and begin to track your cycles to help you feel your very best!
