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Summary
In this episode, Victoria L discusses the importance of tracking your menstrual cycle and understanding the changes and needs of your body. She shares a personal story about how tracking her cycle helped her avoid negative self-talk and push herself too hard during a physically demanding day. Victoria emphasizes the four main pillars of the 28-day strategy: movement, mindset, nutrition, and stress management. She also introduces her group coaching course that focuses on tracking your cycle and finding strategies that work for you.
Takeaways
Tracking your menstrual cycle can help you understand and meet the changing needs of your body.
Knowing where you are in your cycle can prevent negative self-talk and pushing yourself too hard.
The four main pillars of the 28-day strategy are movement, mindset, nutrition, and stress management.
Joining a group coaching course can provide support and help you find strategies that align with your cycle.
TRANSCRIPT
Victoria L (00:00.637)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Victoria L Women's Health Strategist. Thank you so much for being here today and for pressing play on this podcast. I really enjoy being able to bring you guys some really good conversations and I appreciate you being here. So today I am going to share with you why it is really important to track your cycle.
to know where you are in your cycle and to allow yourself the ease and grace that comes along with the changes of life, with perimetopause, with so many of the things that we as women go through in conjunction with our cycles, the pain, the discomfort, all that kind of stuff. So we are gonna dig right into it today, okay? So today we're talking about tracking our cycles and learning,
how and when our bodies need certain things and how learning and knowing this can really help us make sense of so many of the things that are going on both around you and inside you at the same time. Honestly, it is why I've really been using the 28 day strategy protocols and they have been so helpful for me over the last two years.
and the others that have started to implement them are saying the same thing. It's really been helpful for them to use this strategy. And I wanna give you kind of a real life story of why knowing where I am in my cycle and what my body needs, how it's really helped me to not sink back into that negative narrative of, you know, that I'm not good enough crap and that there's something wrong with me, all that stuff.
that plague so many of us. So for me, Thursdays are one of my work days that are a super long work day. It's a very physical and demanding day. And by the end of it, I'm usually pretty sore and I'm really tired. And then by Friday, you know, it's like that.
Victoria L (02:14.685)
post -workout delayed onset soreness hits in and I am even more sore and I am even more tired. And I am always, I am always grateful when my Friday ends up being a day where I can sit and record or an office day or something like that where I just get to kind of vegetate. And honestly, this week, this week the past was no exception. Friday was a recording day.
It was a gentle day. I didn't really have to push to do much physical things. A little bit of raking, but that was about it. Right. So by 2 PM in the day though, on Friday, I was pretty much done. Like brain wasn't, nothing was working. I was so exhausted by 2 PM on Friday that I decided that I'm going to take a rest. So I decided to sit down and watch the season finale of The Love Is...
The love is blind and side note. So Suki, my friend, she's the one who actually got me into this. She kept posting about it on social media and I was like, what is this? So I was watching it and oh my God, it's such a guilty pleasure. It really is. It's super addicting if you haven't watched it yet. It is so addicting. But now I'm done it. So I don't know what I'm going to watch. So I'll have to connect with Suki and ask her. She's actually on the podcast.
in a couple weeks so maybe I'll have to bring it up then. But anyways, I digress. So after resting, watching this last episode, I had committed that after the episode I was going to head out. I was going to do my two kilometer walk in the bush. The one that I've been talking to you guys about on my Instagram story, sharing how I'm habit stacking using that walk and it's been really beneficial for me to get out of my head.
to lift my emotions, it's all the good things, right? Nature is such good medicine. So normally, normally for me, this is a super simple walk. There's just a couple of little hills, mostly very sure -footed, like the path is very flat. And like I said, usually this is a really simple walk for me, you know, just put on my running shoes, head to the bush, it's all good. That Friday, however,
Victoria L (04:36.029)
It was a completely different story. By the time I got to the first little hill, my legs felt like lead. Like I was, I felt like I was dragging my legs behind me. And then halfway up this little hill, I'm here like huffing and puffing and I was huffing and puffing so hard that I thought, oh my God, I'm gonna have to stop and have like a forest dirt nap or something. Which by the way, I was reminded when I got home to tell my kids,
that a forced or a dirt nap in general is not what I thought it was. It means like that you're dead, right? You're having a dirt nap. So that's not what I meant, but apparently that's what it means. Anyways, so I was so pooped out halfway up this hill.
that I actually had to take a stop and catch my breath. And I'm like, this is not like me at all. What is going on? And then I just kept walking, you know, take it really slow. And then halfway through the walk, I was so tired that I actually took the side trail that cuts the time in half, takes about a kilometer off of about half a kilometer off of my walk. And I just knew that my body,
was not going to be able to do the hill that if I normally went through the whole thing, there's a big bigger hill. Honestly, if I couldn't make it up the tiny wheel, how did I expect that I was going to make it up the big hill, right? So I just knew that I wasn't going to be able to. So I took the shortcut. It avoids the hill. It takes about half a kilometer off and I headed back home. So here's where tracking my cycle actually came in as a good thing for me.
Had I not known where I was in my cycle when I headed out for this walk, I probably would have gone to that space in my head where I start to beat myself up about just, you know, those negative thoughts about how I couldn't do, how can I not do this simple walk? Like I literally have been doing this the last five days in a row with no problems whatsoever. This exact walk is the walk I've been taking for years, actually. And I used to really get.
Victoria L (06:55.773)
into this feeling of being defeated or even lazy when it would come to the week where my body is starting to power down for menstruation. And I could not do the intensity of movements that I was literally just doing the day before. So when you really get into tracking your cycle, you can feel the difference day to day. It was literally night and day from the day before. The day before I did the two kilometer walk the fastest I've ever done it.
And then Friday came and I could barely lift my legs, right? So before I had really dug into using the 20 80 strategy, I would not only be like this emotional, exhausted mess with PMS during this week, I would also find myself getting angry for being that way, like angry at myself for being exhausted, for being emotional, for being over the top. And I would often.
push back even harder, trying to force myself into accomplishing during that week, into productivity during that week. And then doing all of this pushback, this extra one, really, I probably just need a five minute nap, but doing all these extra things would end up making the PMS symptoms worse, would make me even more exhausted and the exhaustion would become unbearable. And then often I would find I would
be pushed into, I'd be pushing so hard, I'd end up with these migraines that would leave me needing to sit in the dark for days on end. Like sometimes these would hit and it would be three, four days that I couldn't, I just couldn't, excuse me, I couldn't get the brain to calm down, right? So as I started to really dig into my cycle, I started to learn about,
about this power down week that is the luteal phase, I started to see that if I went with the flow, pun intended, I was actually more productive in the long run. So not being completely taken out by a three -day migraine meant that I was still awake to do little things here and there as I listened to my body and my fatigue. And as I was...
Victoria L (09:17.115)
Allowing myself to move slowly, rest as needed, that this meant that in the long run, like you're more productive, right? Because I was actually awake. I wasn't comatose for three days with a migraine. So I really leaned into tracking my cycle because I wanted to see what was going on and to be aware. And I was seeing these correlations and tracking my cycle meant that being able.
I was able to find ease and grace for my hormones and my body as it moved in its natural rhythms. Like this is just natural. This is what happens. It's just natural phases of life. It has also allowed my body the opportunity to heal because I was pushing it so hard, but it's allowed me to really heal from many of the serious perimetoposal symptoms that hit me two years ago that I've shared about.
And you know, two years ago, I would have just kept going on that walk. I would have pushed. I would have completely exhausted myself staring at my Fitbit thinking I've got to hit my 10 ,000 step goal, which by the way, I don't have anymore. I've changed it. I now have a 75 ,000, 75 ,000, no, 7500, 7500. Whoa. 7500 step goal. And I'm actually going to be talking about that in the newsletter.
So please make sure you're subscribed to the newsletter as well. As I knock over the microphone, my hands are going a million miles a minute here. So yes, make sure that you are subscribed to the newsletter so we can talk about this insane 10 ,000 step goal, which I mean, if you can, anyways, I'm not gonna go there right now. It is in the newsletter, trust me. You're gonna wanna check in on that one. So.
I would have done that two years ago. I would have kept pushing and I would have come home from that walk, probably walked in the door and ended up shoving like a whole loaf of peanut butter sandwiches into my mouth. Because in that phase, when you're overdoing it in your luteal phase and your menstruation phase, it actually triggers your body to feel unsatiated. So you are like starving extra more so.
Victoria L (11:42.493)
There's some science behind that. Some really interesting reads. So I would feel like I would be starving. So I would shove all this food in my face. And then I would be so exhausted that I would not even really be functioning well, right? And again, this would lead to more negative self -talk about how, one, you don't need to eat a whole loaf of bread in one sitting. That's just ridiculous. And all the how I should.
be doing things and that should monster that that is a huge factor that we talk a lot about in the mindset module of the new group coaching course through the 28 day strategy for a good reason. A lot of this shift had to come from reframing how my thought cycles, my shoulda, coulda, woulda's were about my cycle in order.
To be able to do that, I really had to learn what was actually happening in my cycle. It just goes hand in hand, guys. You can't have one without the other. You just can't. There's just no way. Like I was saying, in the 20 -day strategy, we talk about these four main pillars.
that I've really come to identify when we are moving through our cycle. You know, we talk about the movement, the mindset, the nutrition, and the stress management. These four pillars are the keystones for building this strategy up and finding what works for you. So taking...
all the pillars into consideration and learning to listen to your natural hormone changes because it is natural, it happens, it's what your body is doing, it's supposed to be doing, how your body needs to be cared for, what nourishes and when will shift health in ways that you just you can't even imagine, right? Working in the group coaching space, I've also found
Victoria L (13:47.767)
allows us to bounce these ideas around, you know, to feel less alone. And I personally find that it allows the opportunity to open to what is actually working and what isn't, right? Because you have these other people to kind of navigate this with. And as we work through each of the pillars, they have their own module, you know, I am there to coach and
to help you find ways that will incorporate healthy habits that actually work for you, right? So that's why I like to call it strategies because we don't just, I don't just hand you a list and say, this is what you have to do today. That is not helpful at all, right? I want to help you find the strategy that aligns with you.
in your cycle. Yes, your guidebook is 300 pages of like recipes, meal plans, workout plans, gratitude prompts, so much more. There's so much stuff in that guidebook, but it's a guide, right? And that's why we talk about that right off the hop. In the very first, very first live class, we talk about how to use it so that it works in conjunction with what you need to do for your body, right?
I find that talking it out with others who are also in this super, super similar situation allows you to open the doors for you to really feel into what your body is telling you, right? Because it normalizes it. If you're if you're alone sitting by yourself and the symptom pops up and you think nobody else on the planet has it. It makes you it doesn't allow you the opportunity to bounce questions.
And when you have a group of people that are like, yo, I'm experiencing this. What do you think? How are you experiencing things? You get to ask questions and really become more connected to yourself in the long run. But then you also become connected with this collective of women who are in a similar situation as you as well. So when you're joining the group coaching course, I really feel that this will be
Victoria L (16:09.429)
transformative on many levels for so many of us. You know, the cart opens today, this Monday, as of today, Monday. And the link is going to be in the show notes for you so you can grab it there. But the best part is that when you join for this revised version, it's like the inaugural offering of this course after I have done the revisions and created the.
the guidebook that's really a lot more in depth. The original guidebook was only like 35 pages. This one's over 300 pages, right? So when you join in this revised inaugural offering, you actually are gonna receive over $500 in savings. So that is something I'm really excited about. And I really feel that doing this, we're able to make it a lot more accessible. So you are getting,
a beautiful welcome package that includes that 300 page guidebook. You don't have to buy it separately. It also includes your, the brand new, not even out to public yet, three month gratitude journal that aligns with the strategies and your cycle. So this is something that I've been working on quietly in the background and I am so excited about because,
what I have done in this gratitude journal is, you know, that week when everybody around you is a complete moron and you hate them all. Well, that prompt, those prompts that week are going to help you to reflect and remember why you love the people around you. Right. So these prompts are in line with your cycles and the emotions that come up during the
that part of the cycle. So I'm so excited about this. It really is a labor of love for me. And on top of that, you actually are also going to get the opportunity to book a one -to -one virtual coaching session with me where we sit down and we talk in depth about what you're going through and perhaps the best strategies that will work.
Victoria L (18:26.973)
for you as we move in and through the seven week course, right? So that's a huge offering. There's a lot more that's coming with that offering. And all the information is going to be, is already posted in the group, in our group page. So you can find it there. And so I want you to just head there, get the information. And I'm really, really excited.
in case you haven't noticed, I'm really excited to be able to bring this course, bring this offering, help you find ways to track and to find connection with your cycle, right? Because like I said, had I not known where I was in my cycle, I would have been angry with the fact that I could not complete the walk the way that I wanted to. But instead, I was able to.
recognize where my body is, what my body needed, and to find ease and grace as I moved through my walk the other day and just was able to be compassionate for what my body needed. So, okay, so that is all for me today. I am so grateful that you guys have joined me on this little talk here today.
If you can, I would greatly appreciate, could you please like and share the podcast, leave me a review, letting me know what you're taking away from this or leaving reviews really helps me to get the podcast out there to share with more women. And I really feel like this conversation is one that we really need to open up and to continue to talk about. Thank you so much and we will be back next week.
with another great episode.
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