Jonathan Steedman (00:01.048)
Hey food groupies, just wanted to jump on and talk quickly about how to adjust your diet, adjust your food to support different phases of your menstrual cycle. Okay. It's a topic that's out there a lot on social media at the moment. I think all this advice for like, eat more carbs at this phase and eat more fats at this phase and don't do this sort of training at this phase. you probably, well, you may have heard these sorts of recommendations. So I wanted to address them quickly. Before I address those, I want to address the elephant in the room. Yes, I am a man.

I don't have a menstrual cycle and I'm going to be talking to you about the menstrual cycle. And I know for some people that can be kind of triggering. I get that because historically the medical establishment and like fitness and nutrition, we have not done a very good job of supporting people with menstrual cycles at all. Whether that is representation in the studies or whether that's, you know, listening to their lived experience and things like that. I just wanted to say, I get it.

I think unfortunately though that discontent, know, the frustration with the medical establishment, not taking your body seriously or not listening to your lived experience. I think unfortunately that frustration now is being capitalized upon by certain people in social media who are taking it too far the other way, right? And making out like you have to do, I don't know, you're like a magical unicorn that's during certain phases of your menstrual cycle, you're...

biology is almost no longer human and you need to do like that and that's not it either. Okay. So I'm gonna give you the actual, the science says about eating and training around your cycle. Are you ready? There are no blanket recommendations that I or anyone can make about diet and training around your menstrual cycle. Now that is not to say that you shouldn't

make adjustments, because I think for almost everybody who menstruates, you should, but the thing is your experience and your menstrual cycle is going to be different to someone else's cycle. And so these claims of don't do heavy lifting during this phase, during this phase, you're more carb sensitive, so eat more carbs, and in this phase, you're more fat sensitive, so eat more, all of that is garbage, okay? We cannot make blanket recommendations like that.

Jonathan Steedman (02:24.907)
What I would strongly encourage you to do is keep a bit of a diary, keep a bit of an eye on how you feel at different stages in your menstrual cycle, whether that be physically, mentally, whether that be hunger and cravings, whether that be performance in the gym, and you will start to notice your own rhythms and patterns, and then you can start to adjust accordingly. From a training perspective, we do need to be a little bit careful. I mean, I've...

obviously outside of menstrual cycle, but I literally went for a run last week. I almost bailed one minute in because I just felt like trash. I was dreading it the whole time. I felt terrible. I had bad sleep. Like psychologically and on paper, that should have been a crap run. I actually, weird flex, I actually PB'd. That was the fastest 10K I've ever run. Whereas on paper, I should have not done that session. And I think it's very easy to do the same thing with your training and your menstrual cycle.

If you have told yourself or if someone has told you that during this phase you're a bit weaker, you're gonna make that true if you're not careful. So just be careful, it's called noceboing yourself, it's like the opposite of a placebo. It's very easy to go, I'm gonna be weaker in this phase because I've heard that I'm gonna be weaker in this phase. And then because you psychologically have approached your gym session with that point of view, you are weaker in that phase. So just be careful of going too far down that way.

From a nutrition perspective, some of the broad adjustments that I've largely recommended to clients is just around how much they're eating. And so I would strongly encourage you to look at, there periods of time during your menstrual cycle where you are hungrier or have more cravings or have lower energy or all of the above or some combination of the above. And if you do experience that during that block of time,

I strongly encourage you to eat more. Inside the group, inside Weighed Off, which is the weight loss program I run, we literally have something called the period plan, which is basically taking people through how to intentionally increase their food. Because there are definitely times for some people, there's times during the menstrual cycle where focusing on fat loss is a dumb idea. You're too hungry, you're too, you you've got too much other stuff that you're managing and you'd be better off intentionally pausing that fat loss rather than trying to continue that fat loss and falling apart because you've just got too much to manage.

Jonathan Steedman (04:46.188)
Okay, so that is largely an increase in carbohydrates. So I intentionally get people to increase their regular serves of carbohydrates, maybe add a bit more fruit and also to intentionally increase kind of joy based foods, right? You probably feel more like chocolate or whatever your comfort food is. And I would still encourage you to increase the portions at your meals and your snacks and things first to make sure that you're not hungry, but then adding a few extra comfort foods during a time where you need a bit more comfort is also totally fine. And again,

doing that intentionally is so much better than doing it unintentionally and kind of letting your body call the shots. that would be the, in terms of blanket recommendations for managing nutrition in your menstrual cycle, I would say be on the lookout for times when you are hungrier, grumpier, in more discomfort, experiencing more cravings. And if you have that feeling, you'll probably notice that you have a fairly similar feeling at a fairly similar time in your cycle.

each cycle. Don't let it creep up on you. Forewarned is forearmed. If you're noticing a pattern, let's do something about it. Let's intentionally get on the front foot and increase specific foods during that specific time. From a training perspective, a bit outside my wheelhouse, so I won't give again specific recommendations, but like I said, I think the best thing you can do is keep a little bit of a diary. If you notice that your menstrual cycle doesn't impact your training at all, great.

Don't change anything. If you are noticing changes, maybe you do wanna take that into account and pull back on certain phases and push harder on certain phases and do all of that. But just once again, if you're seeing someone in the social media space make a recommendation that is very specific and is based around in this phase you should, you should ignore them forever. Cool, I'll chat to you next time.