Luteal phase

Like, your body will naturally normalize when it comes to all of the reasons I said.

Like, maybe, you know, you were traveling, you have some water retention, or you're, you're in your luteal phase.

When I'm in my luteal phase, there's times where I'm like, "I know I'm five pounds up," because it's just like my...

I feel that puffy layer, you know? So I think it's really important to just zoom out.

Like, when you see the number on the scale go up a few pounds, zoom out.

So now that I don't, I think that's helped my physique, and I really only take, uh...

Right now honestly...

Okay, when I'm in the luteal phase, you guys know I supplement very strategically, and I'll link my luteal phase episode down below 'cause I get really granular in that episode about all the supplements that I take.

Y'all, I am in the hell and depths of my luteal phase.

And you might be thinking, why am I starting out an autism podcast sharing about my own personal cycle? And I'm going to tell you why on this episode.

I think you need to be cycle tracking.

Well, welcome back to another episode and you might have noticed, you probably haven't because the reality is, is I am probably more hypervigilant to this than anyone listening to the podcast, but I have been struggling to get these episodes out.

Life has been lifing.

I also have been in my luteal phase and yeah, I, it's been a lot.

for sure.

Some disclaimer is I've shared on a previous episode all about hormonal health.

[upbeat music] So there's been a lot in the media recently about the so-called luteal uglies, which really, uh, frustrates me and also excites me as well.

So the frustration is that why are we called ugly? Why is it that women are defined by how they look? There's so much to unpick here, but actually what does this term really mean? What it really is talking to is the changes that occur in the luteal phase of our cycle, and I want to talk about this today because there's a lot of misunderstanding and a lot of mislabeling of women when actually we need to just take it back to the basics and think about our hormones and how they change throughout our menstrual cycle.

As hopefully many of you know, hormones are chemical messengers that are secreted by different organs in our body.

They go into the bloodstream, and then they work on every cell, every tissue, every organ in the body, and they have defined and unique properties.

There's a peak in ovulation.

And then the second half of our cycle there's an increase in estradiol and an increase in progesterone.

But those graphs really are not to scale, and that's really confusing because actually, if you look at the levels of progesterone in the luteal phase relative to estrogen, this is what happens.

The progesterone is really high and then falls off a cliff very quickly.

And so then you're like, okay, cool.

So then if I'm on, you 17 of my cycle, just bam, like magic, I'm in my luteal phase, but that's not how it works.

And so today I just want to talk about how to actually understand where you are in your cycle for you specifically, for this, whatever cycle you are in specifically, because every month is going to be different.

Every woman is going to be different.

Because the follicular phase, that's a phase.

It is this period of time where estrogen is slowly rising and your body is preparing the uterus for ovulation.

And then our luteal phase, same thing.

It's this phase.

Sorry, luteal face.

Coming up.

Luteal, luteal.

You can't

say it.

Luteal.

Luteal.

Overthinkers.

This is when you wanna go out, shake hands, you know, start marketing, like all the things that you wanna be seen, do it on this week.

So next is our luteal phase.

Now this is our fall slash our autumn.

So again, fall, we think of like, cooking and harvesting and making sure that we're setting up for the winter this is the time we kind of like reset we start planning we start organizing we know the week after we're going to be resting we're going to be off so let's prep to do things for our follicular phase for when we get back to reality because you don't want to be feeling like you're neglecting your business or you're not feeling your best self on your cycle.

But at the end of the day, you have to listen to your body.

And I was tired of listening to all these people telling me what to do on week one to three and week five to eight and blah, blah, blah, because my body isn't like that.

So now every week I do write how I'm feeling and I'm like, I think I'm on my luteal phase.

I think my follicular phase is like two weeks.

Once we slowed everything down and started looking at our cycles as a whole, instead of treating every monthly period like proof that everything in the middle had gone perfectly fine, another part of her cycle started sticking out.

The time between her suspected ovulation and her next actual period was consistently shorter than what she realized, and her luteal phase was coming in at about 8 days.

Over the next 90 days, we kept watching the cycle markers that were specific to her.

And that pattern changed.

Her luteal phase moved from about 8 days to 12 days.

And later in our time working together, she got the pregnancy test that she had been hoping for.

Now, I already know how the internet works, so before someone pulls that little section out of this episode and starts running through the fertility street saying, Tiana said that a 12-day luteal phase equals pregnancy.

Baby, please come back in the house.