Is your exercise routine hurting your hormone health?
If you’re tried different fitness routines to help solve your period problems, you know on some level that they don’t work for women. Maybe you made progress for a while, but then it stalled. Maybe you never made progress or, worse, your symptoms got more severe when you started a new health and fitness routine. This phenomenon is all too common. I've experienced it myself. Working out harder and longer to get physical results outside, but doing a lot of damage inside and feeling worse when my period rolled around.
Why do most fitness routines fail women? Why do many exercise programs make a woman’s period symptoms worse?
One-size-fits-all exercise plans don’t work for women because women are biochemically different than men. Women need to adopt health-promoting strategies that are designed to work for our unique female biochemistry — which is to say, we need to understand how our metabolism, cortisol, and calorie needs change throughout our 28-day hormone cycle.To achieve the results we’re looking for — to improve body composition, lose weight, improve our energy and mood, and erase period problems — we need to understand and support the hormone changes we experience throughout our cycle.
Understanding this was a huge game changer for me and all of the women that I work with.
If you do not track your cycle, I highly reccomend you start. It is going to help you know when to exercise the right way to heal your hormones.
First, research suggests that women in the luteal phase (the second half of the 28-day cycle) fatigue faster during workouts and need more time to recover. This is one reason to do higher intensity workouts during your follicular phase (the first half of your cycle) and save gentler movement practices, like yoga, for the luteal phase.
We know from another study that a woman’s resting metabolic rate (also known as our basal metabolic rate) decreases during the follicular phase, hitting its lowest point one week before ovulation. So doing high intensity workouts during this phase serves as a counterbalance to a slower metabolism.
What does this mean for scheduling your workouts? Do high intensity exercise during the first half of your cycle. Your metabolism is naturally slower during the first half of your cycle and HIIT training will speed it up. This will help you lose weight and gain muscle.
As estrogen and testosterone drop during the luteal phase, your energy for doing high intensity workouts will wane, too. And while a woman’s calorie needs go up during the luteal phase, her resting metabolic rate also rises. In other words, you will eat more in the last half of your cycle, but you will burn more, too.
As your energy slows in the luteal phase (the second half of your cycle), allow your workouts to slow down, too. Shift from high intensity bouts of exercise to activities like yoga, walking, and easy bike rides. Not only will these types of movements match your energy level (and you won’t be fighting your natural hormonal rhythms, which is counterproductive and unhealthy), but you will get better results, too. If you experience estrogen dominance (and almost every woman with period problems does), exercising hard all the time can backfire.
In the end, the biggest takeaway is that a woman can’t exercise the same way every day and expect to see results. When you align your exercise with your menstrual cycle, you can finally look and feel your best.
I have really only scratched the surface on this topic, and we go very in depth on the topic in the Healthy Hormone Mastery Program.
If this has been an eye opener for you, I promise the entire program the Healthy Hormone Mastery is going to make you feel the same way. It is full of amazing information that works for your hormone health. Information that has helped many women just like you achieve a regular, pain free cycle.
Let's jump on a call together to see if the Healthy Hormone Mastery Program would be a good fit for you. The call is absolutely free and you can book your call with me here.
I can't wait to talk to you and help you live the life you deserve to live!
Hannah Greig
