Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Astrid Naranjo on Eating and Training According to Your Menstrual Cycle

Episode Date: June 15, 2022

If you’ve ever wondered what effects the menstrual cycle has on fitness, and how you can take advantage of your monthly cycle when it comes to body composition and training, you’ve come to the right place. Whether you’ve wondered for yourself, for your significant other, or even just a friend or client, this is something many people have asked about. How can you work around your menstrual cycle, and is there a way to optimize your diet and training around the different phases of your cycle? You’re going to learn the answers to these questions and more in this interview with Astrid Naranjo. There’s no doubt women have to deal some unique challenges compared to men, and one of those is their monthly period and its effects on body weight, mood, energy levels, hunger, cravings, and more. As someone who’s never experienced menstruation firsthand or the hormonal changes in my own body, I thought it would be good to bring someone on the podcast who has. Specifically, I wanted to chat with Astrid, who’s not only coached tons of women and helped them navigate the trials and tribulations of eating and training during their menstrual cycles, but also specializes in sports nutrition, creating healthier relationships with food, and PCOS. Astrid is a Clinician Dietitian and Nutritionist and has a Master’s Degree in Nutrition and Dietetics Practice from Bond University, along with a Bachelor’s Degree in Nutrition and Dietetics from the Central University of Venezuela. She’s one of the most well-known Accredited Practicing Dietitians (APD) on social media. In our chat, Astrid and I talk about . . . What the menstrual cycle is and how it can affect your body weight, energy, and more during the different phases Whether you should adjust your macros and overall calorie intake during different phases of your cycle How to respond to weight fluctuations, energy levels, and dietary struggles What drives cravings and how you can incorporate emotional eating into your meal plan Periodizing your training during your cycle and different types of deloads (not just lowering the volume or weight on the bar) Facts and myths about PCOS How oral contraceptives (birth control) affect your hormones and cycle And more . . . So if you want to learn how your menstrual cycle affects your fitness and how you can customize your eating and training to work with your cycle (or if you even need to), listen to this podcast! Timestamps: 0:00 - Try Pulse Mojito risk-free! Go to buylegion.com/pulse and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points! 7:48 - What is the menstrual cycle? 16:38 - What are your thoughts on not weighing yourself on the final week of your menstrual cycle? 21:40 - is it necessary to change your macro breakdown based on where you are with your cycle? 26:14 - is it helpful to eat less carbohydrates and more fat as you get further along in your cycle? 29:12 - Does metabolic rate change during a menstrual cycle? 33:30 - What is your approach to fat loss phase during a menstrual cycle? 39:55 - What are menstrual cravings driven by? 43:35 - Should women periodize their training around their menstrual cycle? 58:25 - What is PCOS and what are the best ways to deal with it? 1:06:16 - What are your thoughts on oral contraceptives? 1:09:52 - Is there anything else you would like to share? 1:13:43 - Where can we find you? Mentioned on the show: Try our new Pulse flavor Mojito risk-free! Go to buylegion.com/pulse and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points! Astrid’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/antidiet_dietitian/

Well, hello there. This is Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for an interview I did on how to eat and train according to where you are at in your menstrual cycle. And I was excited to record this episode because I don't have too much content that is specifically for women. And this is a topic that I have been asked about fairly often throughout the years, and I have written and spoken a little bit on it. But in this interview, I have a woman who understands the subject better than I do theoretically, and of course, has firsthand experience with her own body. Also has a lot of experience training women working with clients. And so if you have ever

wondered what effects the menstrual cycle has on fitness and how you can take advantage of your monthly cycle, or if you're a dude and you have a woman in your life who might want to know how she can take advantage of her monthly cycle when it comes to body composition and training, then this episode is for you. Because in it, you are going to learn what the menstrual cycle is and how it can affect your body weight, your energy, and your recovery and more during the different phases. You are going to learn whether you should adjust your macros or your calories during different phases of your cycle. Many people claim that. You're going to hear about how to respond to weight fluctuations and energy level fluctuations

and hunger fluctuations, craving fluctuations. You're going to learn about periodizing your training during your cycle and different types of deloads that you can use, not just lowering the volume or the weight on the bar and more. And in case you are not familiar with my guest today, Astrid Naranjo, she is a clinician, dietitian and nutritionist, and she has a master's degree in nutrition and dietetics practice from Bond University, along with a bachelor's degree in nutrition and dietetics practice from Bond University, along with a bachelor's degree in nutrition and dietetics from the Central University of Venezuela. And she is one of the most well-known accredited practicing dietitians on social media. Before we begin, do you sometimes lack the energy and the motivation to get into the gym? Do you sometimes want to hit

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No forms, no return even is necessary. So you can't lose. Go to buylegion.com slash pulse. Order now. Use the coupon code muscle. Save 20%. Try Pulse risk-free and see what you think. Hello, Astrid. What time is it there by the way you said it's

very early but uh 7 45 a.m okay all right well thanks for uh making this the first thing you do in the day or maybe it's not the first thing that you're doing actually but one of the first things things I do I'm such a late owl like you will just see me going to bed at 1 30 2 a.m just because half of my life is in the United States so generally I do work until a little bit later that someone would normally used to work and then then I wake up, I try to sleep at least seven hours. I kind of that's my minimum. And then when I wake up, obviously, I try to do the first thing I need to do. So this is the first thing I have to do today. I'm honored. I'm honored. First top priority. No, I appreciate you coming on the show to talk about menstruation is what I thought it would be fun to talk about because I fairly frequently I'll get women asking questions about

sometimes it's body comp related. Like let's say they're working on losing fat and they want to know what should they do with their weigh-ins, for example, during the week or so when it goes kind of wonky. I'll get asked about that, if they should make any dietary changes or training changes at different points in their cycle and why. and why. And so that's what I wanted to have you on, because this is something I'd mentioned offline that I've written a little bit about it and spoken a little bit, but it was really just sharing what is in some research on the matter. But I can't speak to it firsthand, despite what some people would say. And so that's why i wanted to get someone like you to share helpful information absolutely i'm pleasure to be here uh today and honored to share everything i can about females menstrual cycle and everything we endure and experience throughout these periods

experienced throughout these periods throughout pretty much half of our lives yeah yeah yeah so so we can start wherever uh i think wherever you would like to start with this um again uh the the the questions i think if we can just answer a few big questions that women have about how they should respond to the major weight changes, the fluctuations that occur, and also the differences in energy levels and how that can affect training and some of the dietary struggles that are driven by what's happening inside the body? Well, absolutely. Well, the first thing, we need to sort of lay the concept of what menstrual cycle is. Yeah, I agree. Obviously, the term of menstrual cycle is just simply referring to the changes that

occur naturally in a woman to prepare for pregnancy obviously it is not going to happen every single time or every single month but we know that it is a process for your body to get ready and get prepared physiologically and like the environment around your your uterus your womb to get ready for that baby to stay there and grow if that happens if it doesn't happen then the cycle just resets again every single month so that's basically what the menstrual cycle is. And obviously, it begins at menarche, which is the first period that might come probably when you're around 12 or 13 years. I had it my first my first period was around the 12 year old mark. But many girls will have their first period a little bit later, a little bit earlier. It just depends.

And then it goes all the way through your menopause. So menopause starts probably around the 50s. Some women experience or start getting symptoms of perimenopause around the 45 mark, sometimes a little bit earlier. And some women get very lucky to not experience that menopausal symptoms until they are around their 50s or sometimes later. So it just changes from women to women, to be honest. from women to women, to be honest. But basically that is a normal, natural, monthly cycle that will happen. And generally will last between 22 days all the way to 28 or 35 days.

So each woman will experience again these cycles that you might see differently happening in the first place. Does that all make sense until so far? Makes sense to me. Okay. One thing that is important to also know about the menstrual cycle is that we will find that there are like phases within the actual cycle. We do have, we could break it down in two big cycles. So your follicular phase, which is the first 14 days, then we have the other 14 days, which would be the luteal phase. Now each phase on its own will have, you could break it

down in early and late phases, where early phases for the first half of the cycle would be early follicular phase and late follicular phase. And then this half, the second half will have early luteal phase and late luteal phase so four weeks four different phases and most of them will just have specific differences just according to progesterone and estrogen ratio so different estrogen levels will determine how certain characteristics you'll find in each cycle and in each phase. But most of the times you'll see that the first half of the cycle is dominated by estrogen and the second half of the cycle is dominated by progesterone. So that is a big, big difference between these two.

this too however the changes when it comes to everything related to your psychology your mood energy all of these things may vary from women to women and it's kind of fun because you will see that the literature has researched this a lot in terms of how women respond. Should we cycle and should we be concerned about trying to sync performance with your cycle? And the literature seems to be sort of pointing that it kind of leaves it open because not every woman will respond necessarily to specific rises or drops of estrogen and progesterone throughout the menstrual cycle. And that may or may not affect as much strength performance or your mood or your energy, your cravings. And sometimes just the fact that we expect certain things to happen is that leads us to

believe that we are affected by certain aspects of the menstrual cycle. For example, the last week of your menstrual cycle, which we would call it late luteal phase, or some women say I'm PMSing or PMS, that week, generally, if they are aware of the cycle and there is something going on, we put the blame on the PMS and the cycle. And sometimes it may, but sometimes it may not necessarily be the case as there are lots of different things and a lot of different factors that will affect how you feel during a certain period of time, but can definitely contribute to how you feel, how you perform, what's your mood like, what's your appetite and cravings like, and the specific time of your

period. Same happens with your weight. Your weight is tending to fluctuate and increase in two periods of your cycle. So we have, as I said, we divide it in four weeks or four little cycles, sorry, so four little phases that we can say week two leading to ovulation and then week four leading to first day of the cycle again, you'll see increases of weight, dramatic changes. Sometimes you see up to 10 pounds up and suddenly you see a drop the next day or two. So that's why I find that it is so important to, if you're going to check your weight and monitor it, try to be very aware of where you are at in your cycle and try to compare the same weeks. Like let's say every month you have four weeks. So if you're going to make comparisons of progress or weight, try to make the same comparisons week two with week two, week three with week three. Don't try to compare week one with week four because you'll see huge differences in changes in your weight.

So again, it could be just a meaningful difference up to 10 pounds just between one week and the other and has nothing to do with that you overate or that it's fat or you're not responding to the program you're in if you're following a specific dietary program or a training program that has nothing to do with it but we tend to feel like something is not working or something is bad and on top of that if we are PMSing, our mood is down. We are just so fragile and susceptible to feel super anxious, super stressed. And on top of that, we have these mood swings. And on top of that, the cravings.

So everything can happen in that fourth week of that PMS. So it can be very tricky. So the more you learn about it, the more you're aware of these different fluctuations in your weight, the more you're aware of how you can manage and navigate the cravings and the emotional eating and how you respond to certain stressors, the better you will be and the more successful you will be navigating this difficult period of the cycle. Does that make sense at all?

Yeah, yeah. What are your thoughts on not even weighing yourself maybe in that final week? I know some women have reached out to me and that's something that they have found helpful where they understand that average weights matter. Daily fluctuations don't matter. So they're tracking averages and some of them have just said, you know, I just exclude that final week. I don't even bother weighing myself because I know that I'm going to go way up and I'm going to go way down. So who cares? I absolutely feel like if you're interested in understanding what is going on and having an understanding and an insight of what happens with your weight throughout your cycle,

it's good to weigh yourself. Now, if your relationship with the scale is not great, or like it produces anxiety or low mood, or just the fact that knowing that your weight is going to be up is going to set up your day for like a terrible failure, I would say, get an idea first. At least understand, well, why is the weight probably going up? And also understand that if you're going to not weigh, there's nothing wrong with it because the scale is not the only way to measure progress anyways, but I would utilize the scale maybe just to get the understanding of what is happening to know what to expect and just understand how your body, personal and individual body responds to your cycle. And not necessarily will be just for the fact of tracking your weight, but more for personal self-awareness. So you don't necessarily need to do it all the time, but I would encourage your client or anyone who asks you about weighing or not weighing,

I would say it is great awareness for you to know what is happening. Same when we're talking about tracking calories and macros, you don't need to track calories and macros every single time for the rest of your life. But initially, when you're trying to get an understanding and an awareness of what is going on, what are you eating, what are your choices, where are your calories coming from and the quality of those, tracking is a really good tool to gain that awareness. So that same happens when you're utilizing the scale for the same purpose of tracking your weight on a regular basis, because you're not going to be looking at specific ways, but more so your averages and like trends.

It's like a stock market. You will see that the stock market goes up and down. Sometimes you have huge increases and sometimes huge drops. But at the end of the day, when you zoom out and look at the big picture, you see trends over specific days that will go up and down. Same what happens with your weight. Your weight is going to fluctuate on a regular basis. Even within the same day, your weight can fluctuate up to five pounds or even more, depending

on what you do, what you eat, what you drink, fiber. If you did go to the toilet that day or not, all of these things will impact your weight. And same goes by when you zoom out and look at the week and then you zoom out even more and you look at the month, you'll see more smaller points going up and down. But when you're zooming out, you see a specific trend. Is it going down? Is it stable? Is it going up? That's why I find that even if it's just a period of time that you do it, try to dissociate emotions and see it more as data. You're collecting the data. I do see it sometimes. I am not a very fond of the scale because my day fluctuates so much and because I sleep late

I know that that can affect how you wait is the next day stress levels on all of these things but I understand I've done my experiment in the past and I know how my body can change in terms of weight and respond to weight fluctuations in each stage of my menstrual cycle. So I understand that if I am going to weigh myself today and I'm in my fourth week of my cycle, my weight probably can be up and I should be more aware and understanding of maybe what can be happening. So if it's up, I'm not as alarmed if it wasn't that weak. Does that make sense? It's just more tool for awareness and understanding how to navigate better those fluctuations. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Can you talk to us about macros? I know there's advice out there about changing your macro

breakdowns based on where you're at in your cycle, more or less carbohydrate or fat, for example. What are your thoughts on that? Again, I believe it is mostly important to understand that it is just a tiny component for periodizing nutrition around your cycle. We know that estrogen is going to be a predominant hormone the first half of the cycle, whereas progesterone will be more dominant in the second half of the cycle. And estrogen and progesterone have somehow a specific effect on how your insulin sensitivity is in each period of time of the cycle. So estrogen will increase that insulin sensitivity the first half of the cycle. And the second half of the cycle, when progesterone is high, you'll have a slightly less insulin sensitivity. So it's been proposed that if you cycled your calories and your macros, specifically carbohydrate to fat ratio,

within these two sides of the cycle, you will probably be more likely to respond better, but might not necessarily be the case. If you're someone who is like, if you're an athlete or if you're resistance training, if you're quite lean, it is probably unlikely that you have these specific meaningful differences between these two periods. If we do see other factors, let's say you have a metabolic condition, you are already struggling with your weight, or you have PCOS or any other thing that might affect how your menstrual cycle and how your hormones respond along the cycle, and how your hormones respond along the cycle probably may be a little bit more interesting to dig deeper in how your body responds in each phase of your cycle but for the most part you could potentially align it with how your how your week looks like and how your training looks

like if you're looking into periodizing your training for your mesocycle and making higher volume, higher intensity, more intense parts of your training program in the first, let's say, two to three weeks of your cycle, probably you're better off having more carbohydrates and you will make more of it especially because your insulin sensitivity is higher so you might be able to get more out of carbohydrates in this phase whereas when you're getting closer to that last week of your cycle you will be noticing that maybe because cravings start going up, you generally tend to move slightly less if you're having PMS symptoms, pain, cramping, your mood is low. Generally, you just tend to move less and exercise tends to decrease. So it makes sense to perhaps cycle slightly more your calories towards fats and protein if that was the case.

If that doesn't really happen and you continue to live your life and continue your training as normal, it is very unlikely to be necessarily an effect or something that you need to be doing when it comes to carb to fat ratio. It just depends on how you feel best with. I probably, in my personal experience, I never go up as much in fat. I am very steady with my choices when it comes to carbohydrate and fat ratio. I am probably more someone who loves eating more protein, but that's my personal preference. But some other people will prefer to have slightly more fats in certain times of the week or the menstrual cycle.

So it is very individual. And the effect on your physiology doesn't seem to be huge or that meaningful. That's in line with what I've heard from a lot of women over the years. they just have an easier time sticking to their diet and controlling hunger, controlling cravings by eating just basically what you were mentioning, where it's a bit higher carb maybe in the first half or so. And then when, depending on what they crave, like, you know, if my wife has cravings, it's usually chocolate. She just likes to eat chocolate. So for her, she doesn't track calories or macros and she's pretty active and she's always just kind of naturally been a small

kind of petite person, but her diet does just naturally kind of shift to where she's eating maybe a little bit more chocolate than she normally would eat. And then so she naturally eats a little bit less of something, which is usually some sort of carb. But I've heard from many women who are more into fitness like we are are and they'll do that deliberately where they know that they're just going to feel a bit better um with a bit less carbohydrate and a bit more fat as they get further along in their cycle does that make sense to you I think that is absolutely true for many women. And again, it's looking at the big picture and what is happening, not just with their diet or training, but also what tends to happen with their NEAT or their non-exercise activity thermogenesis,

what happens normally with their mood, their cravings, their sleep. So all of these things will pan out in how the cravings will be showing up, how is she going to be feeling throughout the week. And on top of that, we know that generally life gets in the way. And sometimes this may be a very good week in terms of how things go at work, with life, with your family. And some weeks may coincide with your PMS and like a very bad week or a stressful week. So those things need to be taken into consideration when it comes to hunger, appetite, craving management, because obviously stress can have an impact on how you eat and what are your choices like. If you're someone who emotionally eats or tends to use food as comfort, probably is going to be a more challenging week.

And if on top of that that you are in your fourth or even the second week of your cycle when you're about to ovulate there are similarities in how you tend to use food as a coping mechanism or even just because your body tends to crave for more higher salts, high carb, high sugar foods, just because they taste good and they just feel better. Yeah, that makes sense. What about metabolic rate? Does anything change meaningfully throughout? You mentioned non-exercise activity, which that would be part of energy expenditure but i know that some people will say that that

even even basal or resting metabolic rate will change meaningfully and then you have to also factor in changes in other activity levels as well well between the third and the fourth week or when we look at the phases the second the third and the fourth phase of your cycle when we look at early and late luteal phase your body temperature tends to rise slightly it's not like a huge amount which pounds out to be about 100 to 200 calories higher in your basal metabolic rate, which some papers and some scientists sort of allot the fact that you're hungrier and your appetite increases because your metabolic rate is higher and you're unconsciously spending slightly more calories. And that's why you tend to be hungrier. So that is one reason. Although if everything happens, respecting the activity levels and like if you're feeling some symptoms of PMS that are affecting how you feel throughout the day, and that naturally tends to decrease your energy expenditure, your intentional energy expenditure,

let's say physical activity or exercise, it sort of levels out. So it just depends, again, how you feel throughout that week, how your body responds, and whether your other things that you would normally do change or not. If they don't change, generally you'll see that I am an advocate to even allocate a flexible range to allocate for that person to have either 100 to 200 calories on top of what they would normally eat on that week just because things might go better and adherence might be even better if they know that if they are craving something or if the appetite is higher, they can have that extra flexibility from carbohydrates or for whatever they want. Just having that extra 100 to 200 calorie range extra will just allow them to feel more flexible. And there is research suggesting that knowing that you have that extra calorie allotment for your total calories will reduce the binge episodes, especially if you have like a challenging

relationship with food or some background of binge eating or an unhealthy relationship with food in the past or that yo-yo dieting that tends to be a response from looking at the scale going up and down or changing one day to the other or just feel super hungry suddenly from from the nowhere and not being able to have anything because you have to restrict yourself to a specific calorie allotment if you're trying to lose body fat. So it's very tricky, but at the same time, I find that when you play with ranges of calories and macros, especially around that week, I do it for any week, but specifically for that particular week with women, you'll see much better adherence

by the end of that full cycle. Hey there, if you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general, and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one even who might want to learn something new? Word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone who might like this episode

or another one, please do tell them about it. You mentioned losing body fat. And can you talk a little bit about your approach with, I mean, you can speak to your own experience with your body and also many women that you've worked with. how do you like to approach a fat loss phase and particularly setting up the calorie deficit? Do you intentionally cycle the deficit just based on how the woman's body is responding as she moves throughout her cycle? Or do you just go with a more standard approach of this is the deficit that we would like to maintain every day? Some days we're going to do it. Some days we're not. Don't worry about it. If you just have to get it mostly right most of the time, we don't have to be perfect. be perfect you know i consider a lot the the client and how they generally tend to respond so i kind of get a very good idea by asking how do you generally respond to your pms or

each phase of your cycle do you feel like is there anything that changes when it comes to your appetite, cravings? And if there is like a certain pattern that you start noticing, even from weekly check-ins, and that's a question that you always ask in your check-ins is, where are you at in your cycle? Are you week one, week two, week three? And most of the times when you teach them how to track their cycle, many women already do that. You can understand and sort of try to align what is happening with the cycle and what is happening with their energy, cravings, mood, and all of these things. And try to synchronize your approach better to what they generally do and how better they respond.

Me particularly, I am very open to adjust things as we go each cycle and each week. Like I do weekly adjustments because I do see my clients on a weekly check-in. because I do see my clients on weekly check-ins. So when I talk to them, I navigate everything from energy, mood, cravings, sleep, hunger, adherence, what is going on with their life and whether an adjustment is necessary, if they're responding well or not to that nutrition prescription at that point in time. You may want to change it, adjust it slightly. As I said initially, one of my things that I generally tend to defer or do is my personal approach with clients that I've seen that work really well is rather than telling you a specific

target, I either give you like your total calorie for the week and you can just play with it however you want with two non-negotiables. You want to make sure you're eating an adequate amount of fiber and your protein targets don't change. The only thing that may change if you want to play with your calories on a regular basis is your carbs and fats you can just change it or use them use them as dimmers you can you want to use more carbs use more carbs try to just be more consistent with that selection if you want to do that mostly because your your weight might respond to these changes. Like if you have more carbohydrates, you probably will have more glycogen.

So that will increase potentially the water retention in the muscle, and you probably will see your weight increase. However, if you do go lower carb, higher fat, you will have less glycogen and probably your weight might drop slightly more. So understanding these things and being aware of the big picture allows you to be much more synced with your client and just always advocating for their adherence and how they feel and how they respond. So things may change, things may not change. And the other thing I like doing is giving them ranges. So I'll sort of give you, well, you probably could adhere to the lower range of these calories if you want to find a

faster fat loss rate. But if you're hungry or if you're finding that low range is quite challenging, you can just always be within the range, in the middle. You have a top range that you could probably or you don't want to probably go over if you still want to lose or see some weight loss. It might not be as fast, but you're still progressing regardless. So I really like ranges or calorie cycling, depending on each women. Some women might find that I just want to stick with the same number flat every single day. And some other will do better with a more flexible approach. Yeah, I like the combination of daily ranges and weekly totals. It takes somebody who is informed and maybe a little bit more sophisticated

than your average dieter, so to speak. But if they just understand how those two elements interact. I mean, that's what I like to do with my dieting personally is just because the flexibility is nice where if I'm a little bit, let's say I'm cutting and I'm just a little bit more hungry that day and particularly at night, I don't sleep well if I'm hungry. So I need to make sure I'm not hungry when I go to bed. And so it's just good to know that this is the range that I'm shooting for, and I do it exactly that way. If I'm just not very hungry and for whatever reason can get away food, so long as it's within reason, I don't view that as a quote unquote failure because I didn't hit this exact target. Absolutely. What are those driven by and how do you like to account for that in planning your diet or at least managing your diet when you know that it's in this final week, like you're going to be dealing with this or maybe you don't so much but uh many women they they they know it it's probably not just them tricking themselves into i get there's there is a physiological basis to that i'm assuming or or is or not i mean i i'm asking you it's very common to see that when you see drops in estrogen and an increase in progesterone, there is going to be that

nutrient partitioning and that insulin sensitivity changes in your physiology that may trigger somehow a slightly higher preference for carbohydrates and just higher fats, higher calorie foods. Now, because as I mentioned before, there is also a change in your neurochemistry in your brain when all of these changes are happening, your serotonin and your GABA and all of these neurotransmitters that affect your mood also are affected. That tends to lead to, for some women, to look for comfort, to look for something that makes them feel good. Many people will just rely on food to do that. Many people will just rely on food to do that. So that's when we look at higher and increasing cravings for foods that are comforting.

It might not necessarily be carbohydrates or chocolate. Like I personally prefer to eat more bread for some reason. That is my typical desire or something that has more carbohydrates. I understand. I love good bread. I understand you. I love it. So that could probably be my personal tendency, but some of the women will prefer just have a piece of chocolate or whatever comes from their roots or what they grew up with. from their roots or when they what they grew up with something that is just very comforting and feels good and tastes good sometimes i will just want to eat arepas arepas is like a venezuelan dish that you have pretty much every day when you're growing up uh your moms make it for you so is is that family connection is that memories from your childhood

I don't know whatever it makes you remember or brings good memories a lot of different things are connected to food so food is not just eat food and and just nourish your body that is a big component but there is a big component as well around emotional eating. And emotional eating is fine as long as you're doing it consciously, mindfully, and you're making it worthwhile. So it is important for us to understand that this happens for some women, and it's totally fine if you respond to your cravings. And it's totally fine if you respond to your cravings. But again, as long as you're giving yourself that unconditional permission to have it mindfully and make sure it is aligned with your goals. Makes sense. Let's switch gears and talk training now.

And should women periodize their training? Should women periodize their training in – I mean, when we talk about training periodization, we're normally talking about manipulating rep ranges, you know, volume load. And should women – or is there a benefit in periodizing training around the menstrual cycle? training around the menstrual cycle? You had mentioned earlier, like maybe starting with a higher volume, just harder on the body phase of training for the first few weeks. Is that something that you think women generally should think with doing or it just doesn't make that much of a difference? Do it if you like it. Don't do it if you don't. I think it is very relative to each women and how they respond. Initially, as I've mentioned, same with diet, it will happen with training as well. There has been research suggesting that there is generally a trend in some women that their performance will be much better the first two weeks of the cycle,

whereas the second two weeks of the cycle are probably likely to produce or you're likely to see more fatigue, harder to recover. And on top of that, you see that there is less tolerance to high volume, high intensity, and your body is kind of craving for more rest, more needing for longer periods of recovery time, lower volume, or even like switching gears in terms of endurance and resistance training. So my particular experience, my personal experience, is that I tend to see a good strength increase and a better performance when it comes to resistance training, probably the first week and the third week of my cycle.

But that's personal that's personally me whereas the the fourth week or like that PMS week I generally tend to not have that great amount of strength but I also don't tolerate as much huge volumes I tend to feel more fatigue much huge volumes. I tend to feel more fatigue and struggle to recover much more. And sometimes I even sore after a training session. However, I can handle a decent amount of intensity or load, but not so much a lot of volume. And I seem to be better doing more longer walks, doing more longer walks, more cardiovascular exercises, which aligns better with perhaps my mood and just the fact that I am probably not as excited to do a huge amount of training at that particular week. So that is probably how I respond. However, not many women might respond the same. I will see that some females will respond really, really well, just periodizing, higher volume, higher resistance training, more hitting PRs the first two weeks of the cycle,

And probably adding either a deload the last week of their cycle, or maybe just adding a little bit less intensity or less amount of sets in that last week of the cycle, just to sort of reduce that intensity or switch gears a little bit more walking, more cardiovascular exercises, which also aligns with better time for breathing and mental health and just getting that piece of recovery in a good place. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And something that just pops into mind is for women listening, I think, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this, Astrid. It probably depends also where you're at in your fitness journey, so to speak. How fit are you and how much volume are you doing? How hard are you working when you're working hard? If you had a woman, let's say she's relatively new to strength training. I can think of women who I've heard from over the years who were relatively new and they don't need to do maybe more than 10 hard sets per major, maybe 12 per major muscle group per week to basically maximize muscle and strength gain. And so in many of those

women that I've heard from, they didn't notice much of a, yeah, they didn't feel so great as they got, you know, in the last week, but they didn't notice that big of a, yeah, they didn't feel so great as they got, you know, in the last week. But they didn't notice that big of a difference, like what you're talking about. They didn't notice that big of a difference in their strength or performance of their recovery. But then where I've heard from women who have or women who are more experienced and they are doing more volume than that. So let's say they're shooting for somewhere 15, 16 ish hard sets per major muscle group per week, maybe even a bit more than that for their lower body. And they've been lifting weights for a while. So they're pretty strong. Now the loads are heavier,

which is more stressful on the body. And with, with those women, I've heard more in line with what you were just, uh, describing. And in fact, some women I've heard from, they work very hard for those three weeks, which is, this is what I personally do in my training right now. It's hard training for three weeks. And then the fourth week is a deload. I just cut the volume down. I keep the weights heavy. And some people might think that I'm deloading too often. I would say maybe I'm erring on the side of caution, but I will say that it's less wear and tear on my body. I noticed a difference compared to even when I was younger. So I had more physiological things going for me 10 years ago and I was stubborn and I didn't like deloading. I still don't really like it. I think it's boring. I was stubborn and I didn't like deloading. I still don't really like it. I think it's boring. So I would go basically as long as I could with, I would wait until something is like hurting basically, or I would get sick or something and that would turn into my deload.

So now I'm more disciplined about taking my deloads and I've noticed fewer joint pains and less sickness. Although there are other factors involved. I just noticed that, huh, I don't really get sick that much. I didn't get sick frequently in the past, but I can remember that would sometimes turn into my deload. That was kind of a thing. Every so often, I'd finally get a cold and that would force me to deload. That doesn't really happen anymore. Does that make sense to you in terms of with women and, you know, depending how hard they're working and then that might dictate whether they need to make big changes or not? and how you decide what is going to be your approach to begin with. Obviously, when you're starting, you don't need a deload.

You're just getting started. You're just moving. You're getting your body adapted to a specific amount of volume, a specific amount of resistance training. You're very likely to not need a deload whatsoever, you can still obviously program for rest days and for lower volume, lower intensity days, just to maintain an adequate stimulus to fatigue ratio adequate throughout your programming and throughout your mesocycle. But you want to still want to allocate some amount of volume and some amount of intensity within your programming, even if you feel like you need to add some deloads or some rest periods.

So I definitely believe that the more advanced you are and the more experience and years of training you have, you will probably need, and depending on also even like the leaner you are, you might need some additional rest periods or like depending on how intense you train. rest periods, or like depending on how intense you train, like people who train super heavy and try to hit a huge heavy PRs, they tend to see they need more deloads more often just because the wear and tear in their joints is much higher than someone who is probably consistent, but they're not lifting heavy weights. Like I have many, many clients that they just like training, but the training per se is not huge heavy. So their recovery and the impacts on their joints is much lower.

So they can endure more weeks without having or needing requiring a deload per se. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. In my case, I would say I'm probably somewhere in the middle. I'm doing probably about 15 to maybe 16 hard sets per major muscle group. And I'm squatting every week and deadlifting and bench pressing and overhead pressing. And I'm doing, I'm squatting every week and deadlifting and bench pressing and overhead pressing. And I'm progressing in a macro cycle from, you know, on the big exercises doing tens with, I believe it's 70, 75%.

So sets of 10, I'm doing four sets of an exercise in that fourth set on a big exercise. I like to have probably one good rep left on that fourth set to give an idea of intensity. And then I'm working though into heavier over the course of four months. So at the end of the four months, I'm doing twos with, you know, 90, 95% on those exercises. And so over the course of that four months, um, you know, the weight, the weight, um, is, is going up and the rep volume is going down. Um, but, but given the, the intensity of the program, just given what it is, I've had good success with, uh, a deload every four weeks. Again, even if maybe it could be every six weeks, the upside of deloading maybe a little bit before it's needed. If I'm going to, cause this is also a program that I put in, it's in a book of mine called beyond bigger,

leaner, stronger. So, you know, if I'm not customizing the training to a person, if I'm giving, I wouldn't say it's not a cookie cutter. I try to give people information so they can personalize it to them, to themselves themselves but i like to err on the side of maybe being more cautious yeah a little bit more cautious and less aggressive with because i know and and i'm one of those people i know that there are quite a few people who are going to be more aggressive than i than i recommend anyway whether if i say deload every six weeks they're going to make it every eight or every ten and But I myself have actually come to enjoy the results of that. Again, I don't like deloading.

I have to force myself to go in the gym and do it. And I will say, though, that I'm pleasantly surprised that that approach has yielded better results all around than my previous approach, which was to train hard and heavy, doing a lot of fours, a lot of sixes, some eights and tens here and there, but heavyweight, a fair amount of volume and going for eight, 10, 12 weeks before deloading or before life forcing me to deload. So for what it's worth, that's been my experience. life forcing me to deload. So for what it's worth, that's been my experience. And in my experience, I would add that deload doesn't have to necessarily look the same for every person. And when it comes to deloading, some people might like to just

lower the volume and keep the same exercises as they are and just do them in a lower intensity lower volume lower sets i like personally to switch it up sometimes and depending on how how the program is and what the goals are it's likely to for you to benefit more from just switching to more doing more mobility, more rehab work, more stretching, and just doing more sort of walking and perhaps touching on certain exercises that you want to improve your technique. So you work more form, more technique, more sort of mind-muscle connection, more awareness in the position of your food. Maybe you want in that week to sort of try a new exercise that you might want to include in your next mesocycle.

There is opportunity to use that deload week in different ways that might be beneficial just for the fact that you could even add or have a massage or have something that just takes you from the go, go, go, that sympathetic system to be stimulated all the time, just to more that parasympathetic, you're just more calm you allow yourself to do better when it comes to recovery and I can and I can tell you you come better stronger and sometimes you see a way like a drop in weight just because you let your body recover properly your stress levels went down, your sleep improved again, and even your appetite and hunger gets better regulated. If you have been overdoing it way too much in the gym and you are already feeling it, you will probably feel like these slight and small changes may do wonders. I like that. That's a creative idea. It's something that I've been too

unimaginative, I guess, with my deloading. I just go in. I think I'm sensationalizing a little bit. I don't hate the deloads, but I find the intense training a lot more interesting than the deloads. But I generally will do the same exercises. I'll keep the weights heavy, my normal working weights, but I will reduce the volume. I'll drop a set or two off of each exercise. I'll drop a few reps off of each exercise, but still use the weights that I normally use. So I'm still kind of in the groove for when I get back to hard training. Uh, but you mentioned, you mentioned PCOS. I wanted to, I wanted to follow up with you on that because there's a lot of, uh, information advice out there about, uh, particularly with, with diet and how you can just manipulate your diet and, um, and make, uh, make a, make a meaningful difference in the symptoms or maybe even resolve it altogether.

What are your thoughts on this condition? And maybe just first quickly, if you want to just let people listening know, if they don't know what it is, what it is, and then what its most common causes are. And for people who are having this issue issue what are the best ways to deal with it yeah well we know that pcos is something that nowadays is more there is more awareness around this condition before you would have no idea what pcos was and even doctors would have a very challenging time to understand or have an awareness and diagnose women with PCOS. PCOS stands for polycystic ovary syndrome or polycystic ovarian syndrome, which basically you can find that one in 10 women nowadays is diagnosed with this PCOS during their

life. And more than 20% of women between 12 and 45 years old can be affected by this endocrine disorder. And I like to call it more endocrine disorder just because it could be very heterogenic when it comes to understanding certain symptoms. You can find that some women will experience metabolic syndrome, will have insulin resistance, and some other women will just have issues more with their androgens. other women will just have issues more with their androgens and they'll see they have cystics or cysts in their ovaries but they don't have that expression of metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance. So there are different types of PCOS and the one that seems to be more interesting and more concerning for women is the one that comes with hyperinsulinemia, insulin resistance, and weight gain and managing that particular aspect of their metabolism pretty much so that is kind of what PCOS or obviously if we want to define it or understand how is it diagnosed there there is you could say that there are good tools that can or like a criteria to diagnose PCOS that you need at least two or three positive signs of this criteria to say that this is PCOS. So this is the Rotterdam,

I don't know if I pronounced it right, but it's the Rotterdam criteria, which basically asks you to have either rare ovulations or lack of the ovulations to begin with, obviously signs and symptoms of hyperandrogenism or high androgen production, testosterone compared to progesterone and estrogen, and then actually finding cysts in your ovaries. So that will just give you the three criteria and you need two of these three things in order to diagnose PCOS. And in a case of a diagnosis, what are effective strategies for mitigating it or even resolving it? Again, it's going to be so wide in terms of how each woman has these different signs and symptoms of PCOS. Yeah, what's their combination, right? Yeah, and depending on the type of PCOS, you'll find that some women will reduce their symptoms.

It's not like a curable syndrome. You won't be able to cure it, but you can definitely manage symptoms the best possible ways. There are obviously medical treatments that might target specifically the androgens. If you have high androgen production or if you have issues with like actual insulin sensitivity or insulin resistance, then some medications that are going to be prescribed by your doctor, but also some supplements have been shown to be quite effective when it comes to managing that reproductive health and insulin sensitivity. myoinositol or myoinositol, which seems to have a really good body of research supporting their effectiveness in improving insulin sensitivity, improving reproduction and reproductive health overall, and reducing a huge amount of symptoms of PCOS. So that is kind of the one that I would say is the most researched and the most popular supplement when it comes to managing symptoms like that. Obviously, if you have

insulin resistance, there has been suggestions of metformin if you needed to use it. And again, the most powerful... Berberine as well, I've heard that. Yeah, berberine as well. But the most powerful in this game is going to be the lifestyle strategies and the management of exercise, diet, stress management, and sleep. And body composition as well, right?

Meaning if somebody is very overweight, they're going to benefit from bringing their body weight and their body composition into a healthier range, right? And it's going to benefit them in many ways, but also here, right? Absolutely. There is a good body of research suggesting that between 5% to 10% of weight loss from their body weight reduction is going to provoke huge benefits. But even as little as 5% through dietary restriction and increased physical activity will be key to manage women with PCOS if they are overweight or obese. If they have or if they are in a healthy weight range, it is not necessarily that beneficial to get them to lose more weight, but rather utilizing strategies to better improve their nutrition quality, their exercise,

their nutrition quality, their exercise, their body composition. Obviously, you want to see in all these women, and fortunately, women with PCOS have a tendency and an easier way to gain muscle than women that probably don't have PCOS. And that is, even though it sounds strange, that is a good thing of having PCOS. Like you are actually going to gain muscle. If you want to get really jacked. Exactly. Great.

And then one other question that I wanted to ask you about is oral contraceptives and if there are anything that women should expect with certain kinds versus others and how they can affect body weight, how they can affect performance, if you have any general recommendations to share regarding this. Yeah, generally, to be honest, it doesn't make much difference or effects because when you're taking artificial contraceptive, obviously those fluctuations in terms of your estrogen and progesterone are no longer going to happen. So you see this line flat like a man

is is completely flat and you don't see these fluctuations in estrogen in the first phase of the cycle and then progesterone higher in that second phase of the cycle so you're probably less likely to experience these huge wave fluctuations or these huge mood swings. However, depending on the pill and depending on the nature of it, some women tend to retain more fluid than others. And appetite and cravings may change as well. Some pills that I think currently has been modified and upgraded to a degree that they have less secondary effects in terms of weight, appetite, cravings and weight management, but there are certain pills that may have that effect. And I particularly don't and have taken any contraceptive in my life, but I do work with many women that they take it and their weight seems to not be affected as much by each week.

You'll see that when you're tracking the cycle they have no issues they probably have this artificial bleeding after the day after like this fourth week that they should be seeing air and normal natural cycle and no normal menstruation but because that is the effect of that 21 day peel then you are meant to bleed on the day 21 to the first time the next cycle you will see that happens but there is no real hormonal fluctuation that is going to affect your brain neurochemistry, your appetite, cravings, and things like that. So generally, you'll see that you don't need to worry so much about programming or strategizing nutrition for women that are taking cycles. You can treat them more as like men. You probably just need to be more aware

of what are the preferences, what they need, what they want, and just respond on a weekly basis depending on their level of adherence. Women still love eating carbohydrates and have cravings. So you can still be kind and understand that that could happen anyways.

That makes sense. This all makes a lot of sense. And that's everything that I wanted to ask you about. Is there anything that you have maybe still bouncing around in your head or you had noted that we didn't cover that you wanted to say or you wanted to share? Well, I think a good point to discuss that we may have touched briefly, but we didn't really dig deeper into is all these myths around dietary approaches for PCOS and like all of these myths that you see in terms of in order to for you to improve your PCOS and achieve a better body composition that is you have to follow these all of these restrictions from yeah studying going vegan or avoiding carbohydrates total carbohydrates or going keto or just eating

a specific not eating dairy whatsoever or soy or sugar i know that that's another one sugar is another one or like you have to go total organic gluten-free like i know this is very common in just the dieting world and like it is very common to find that everywhere if you want to lose weight even if you you don't have PCOS or you have PCOS, you hear this common myth coming up in order to be or do your perfect diet. not necessarily just from the social media, that you have to go low carb, that you have to eat gluten-free, that dairy is bad for you, and that you have to avoid a large number of foods because they are completely bad for your symptom management or for your PCOS. So I just like to say that there is quite a good amount of evidence saying that even for PCOS, this is not necessarily true. And at the end of the day, what matters the most is obviously understanding each person's, each female's physiology and how each female responds to each food. and cautious of your food choices, especially high FODMAP foods. But it doesn't mean that FODMAP foods or carbohydrates are bad for you or like you have to stop eating foods with gluten because that is part of the problem. So it is not the case.

And same goes with dairy and same goes with carbohydrates and other things like that. So that was kind of something I wanted to just have a little touch on, but that's all I think, unless you have any other questions. No, that's a good point because yeah, there are a lot of dietary prescriptions that are made or even sometimes they're kind of sold as quick fixes that if you just follow this diet, then you won't have this problem anymore. And that's simply not true, right? Absolutely. Well, hey, this was great. I really enjoyed this discussion. Very informative. Thank you for taking

the time to do it again. And let's wrap up with where people can find you and find your work. And if there's anything in particular you want people to know about, let's let them know. Well, you can find me in my social media where I'm the most active in is anti-diet underscore dietitian. And pretty much is where you will find me the most. and pretty much is where you will find me the most. I work with Lane Norton and the team BioLane, so I'm a coach with them. So if you're interested in any dietitian coach for improving your relationship with food

or even just changing your body composition or getting to the best version of yourself, you can hit me up in Instagram or at astrid at biolink.com. And I'm here for you guys. So thank you so much for the opportunity, Mike. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks again for doing it. We'll have to come up with another topic that we can talk about sometime. Absolutely. Always a pleasure. helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or

suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.