Why trendy diets aren't good for your cycle?

Your body, your diet -
Why trendy diets aren't good for your cycle?

By Hanne

In this post, I dive a little deeper into the secrets of cyclic eating, and how it affects your body and circulation. You will also get an answer to why aren’t trendy diets good for your cycle.

Your body, your diet -
Why trendy diets aren't good for your cycle?

Your body is not the same every day, nor should your diet be. Regular eating is essential, of course, but it is also vital to understand that the ovaries and uterus are involved in different functions each week of your cycle. Your body’s needs vary; the need for micronutrients vary.

Your cycle does not consist of separate parts, but it is linked from one stage to another, and each phase affects the others. Eating the right kind of food in one phase will immediately serve you its rewards mentally, physically, or unconsciously. However, that is not all.

Eating the right food at each phase will help create a foundation that will affect the phase of your cycle that is just going on and the phases that are just coming. It not only eliminates the problems but gives you the extra strength your body needs to change and support your hormonal activity. And that’s how you become the best version of yourself. I have written in my blog post: A month as a woman – how to balance hormonal functions? what you should eat at each phase of the cycle.

The primary purpose of cyclical eating is to eat foods that will help you support your hormonal activity, eliminate PMS symptoms, protect your fertility, achieve and maintain a healthy weight. You will get brighter skin, experience easier menstruation, your mood lifts, and energy increases. But, what exactly does food do to every biological system?

1. The brain

Estrogen has a significant effect on memory, learning, and mood. During the ovulation phase, high estrogen levels improve your verbal and social skills. However, when talking about hormones, it is good to remember that too much is too much. It can lead to anxiety and feeling foggy. Too little is also a challenge as it makes you irritable. So just the right amount is needed. Easy, right? 😉

Kale smoothie may seem like a good idea, right? Leafy green and healthy, how could it be bad. Well, it is not, during the ovulation phase, when estrogen levels are high. However, as your cycle progresses to menstruation, it works against you as estrogen levels plummet. Your diet also affects the production of neurotransmitters that affect mood, such as serotonin. When serotonin levels drop during the luteal phase, you may be tempted to go and eat chocolate or other sugary treats. Poor food choices cause mood swings and other disturbances such as depression, and one of the reasons behind this may be low serotonin levels.

Unfavorable food choices can affect your thinking, impulsivity, and mood, especially in the second half of your cycle. While syncing your food with your cycle will help optimize your brain chemistry.

2. The immune system

Food plays a significant role in the immune system and its ability to keep you healthy. Studies have shown that your immune system works at full capacity in the first half of the cycle, helping you fight viruses. However, for the second half of the cycle, the capability decreases.
Deficiencies of micronutrients – especially zinc, selenium, iron, copper, vitamins A, C, E, B6, and folic acid – may be the reasons behind lower immunity.

Cyclical eating helps your body get the nutrients it needs to boost your immune system. It is crucial towards the end of the luteal phase when your immune system needs the most support.

3. Metabolism

Your body’s ability to burn calories depends on what phase of your cycle you are at. In the first half, as estrogen levels rise, appetite decreases, and metabolism slows. In the second half of the cycle, as estrogen levels fall and progesterone increases, your body burns more calories, which you can also note as an increase in appetite.

Diets that eliminate the essential food groups, such as carbohydrates or fats, inhibit the body’s production of hormones, specifically for hormones that keep your body working optimally.

4. Microbiome

Your microbiome balance can be upset if your diet does not support the different phases of your cycle. It can, in turn, lead to a wide range of problems such as estrogen dominance, menstrual disorders, digestive issues. It also increases sensitivity to, e.g., diseases, anxiety, and depression.

Maintaining your blood sugar balanced with the right foods protects against the development of harmful gut bacteria and keeps the microbiome functioning. Balancing the microbiome leads to better hormonal health and a reduced risk of estrogen dominance. It helps eliminate PMS problems, and you will enjoy clearer thinking, a better mood, and good energy levels.

5. Stress response

Scientific studies have found that certain foods and nutrients play a key role in stress management. Vitamin C, vitamin B, magnesium, and selenium, among others, play an essential role in lowering cortisol and adrenal levels, reducing stress.

If the fluctuations caused by the cycle are not taken into account, it may be that you won’t get the right amount of these micronutrients at the right time. It can affect your stress levels, especially during the second half of the cycle, when your body naturally releases more cortisol. Cortisol spikes without the right kind of food when it is evening out blood sugar fluctuations when insulin can no longer keep up. In some cases, when estrogen metabolism is ineffective, anxiety may occur during ovulation, as hormone levels are at their highest. When estrogen levels decrease significantly at the end of the cycle / during menstruation, you may feel depressed.

Eating according to the cycle ensures that you give your body the necessary micronutrients to control stress – even during the days before menstruation. When you feel frazzled, seafood, avocado, and dark chocolate will soothe your body.

Why trendy diets aren't good for your cycle?

What can go wrong (I am not saying that something will go wrong, but there is a chance) with those who follow trendy diets?
First, losing weight can be tricky, trickier than to men, for many reasons, and it has nothing to do with willpower. It doesn’t make you a failed individual either.

Popular trendy diets do not take into account hormonal fluctuations. These diets assume and suggest that you eat the same way every day. And many modern diets – low-carb, intermittent fasting, keto – were not created to take into account women’s biochemistry and hormonal circulation. If we look at studies of intermittent fasting, we find that most of them have been done on men or postmenopausal women. Some of these trendy diets can disrupt your cycle, your biological system and thus cause you to fail eventually. Let’s then look at a few of the pros and cons of different diets.

Trendy diets: pros and cons

Ketogenic diet
Pros: Proteins and fats keep you full, and when you focus on fresh, natural foods, it automatically reduces the amount of processed food in your diet.
Cons, i.e., Hormonal Dysfunctions: High levels of animal proteins can lead to liver congestion and estrogen dominance, which is the leading cause of hormonal dysfunction.

Intermittent fasting
Pros: Helps lose weight, reduces body fat, increases insulin sensitivity. It improves cognitive function, reduces the risk of various diseases, and improves the growth of new cells.
Cons: Intermittent fasting strains your hormonal and biological systems in many ways. Fasting causes blood sugar to drop, and the eating phase causes a spike in it. Blood sugar imbalance is harmful to hormonal health.

Studies on the effects of fasting have been done mainly on men. It does improve insulin sensitivity in men, but it makes it worse in women. Studies have also shown that intermittent fasting may cause the size of ovaries to reduct, stop ovulation, and disturb sleep. A safe and effective fast for women could be to avoid food for 12 hours daily, from 7 pm to 7 am.

Gluten-free / grain-free diet
According to Alisa Vitti, it is not generally known that gluten harms hormonal health.
Pros: Removing gluten or all grains often relieves stomach pain, bloating, and even brain fog. It can also be helpful for weight loss, leaky gut syndrome, or allergies. For me, a gluten-free diet has completely cured pollen allergy, among other things.
Cons: For some women, a grainless diet can increase food cravings and even lead to binge eating. The reason can be irregular insulin levels, which can interfere with ovulation, metabolism and inhibit fat burning. Problems can arise, especially in the second half of the cycle, due to the lower blood sugar levels.

How about raw vegan diet?

Raw vegan
Pros: It is always helpful to eat lots of natural and high-fiber foods, fruits, and vegetables. Plant-based foods offer many health benefits, such as improving heart health.
Cons: It can disrupt your cycle and, at worst, cause missing periods. If the gut microbiome is out of whack, it is more difficult for the body to absorb nutrients from raw food. Over time, this difficulty can lead to a lack of micronutrients. Lack of nutrients for hormonal balance can affect your cycle. It can cause your periods to disappear and increase the symptoms of PMS. Also, vegan raw diets typically do not have enough amino acids needed to produce sufficient hormone levels.

Calorie restriction
You should only eat less than you consume and in that way, you lose weight. Does it sound familiar? Well, with women, it is not that simple.
Pros: Reduces the risk of severe illness and prolongs life.
Cons: Your weight lowers in the first half of the cycle, and you gain it back during the second half. If the body mass index falls below specific figures, your cycle can be disrupted entirely – your ovulation does not occur, and your period is eliminated.

What the heck should you do with your diet?

I return to the argument of your body, your diet. If you want to feel better, I think the first thing you should do is listen to your body and its reactions to the foods you eat.

My diet is a gluten-free, dairy-free (cow) plant-based diet whose foods are primarily organic. In addition, I try to eat within a 12-hour time frame, the reasons for this are not in fasting, but mainly this “scheduling” is basing on Ayurveda. I have gotten good results with cyclical eating. You can check the foods for each phase here. My own experience is that tiny alterations have been empowering my body and mind throughout the cycle. And therefore, I can recommend that you try cyclical eating.

Be bold and test things out, be brave to listen to the messages from your body. You know best what works and what doesn’t. It doesn’t matter what someone else is saying you should do. What works for one may not work for the other. Cyclical eating is created for women and to support hormonal functions. Contrary to popular belief, your mood should be stable throughout your cycle, and your period should not cause any pain. Cyclical eating enables this quite easily.

PS. Have you already the post about five myths about womanhood? I think you will like it, you can read it here.

Sources:

lisa Vitti: Woman Code
Alisa Vitti: In the Flo