Leah Higl:
Welcome to The Ideal Nutrition Podcast. I’m Leah Higl, and I’m here with my co-host, Aidan Muir, and today we’ll be talking about performance nutrition around the menstrual cycle. So, this is definitely a topic I’ve become a little more interested as of late. I was kind of like almost forced into researching it to do a certain event, but I actually found that it was really interesting, and I wish I’d probably looked into it a little bit sooner. So, it’s become a pretty popular discussion just in the world of sport which I think is pretty cool considering that women in sport often get looked over, and generally people with a menstrual cycle, that’s not often considered.
Leah Higl:
The issue with this topic and discussing it is there does seem to be a lack of research just in female athletes, female sports nutrition. It’s just not something that is researched that often. It is more based on male populations, and a lot of the reasoning behind that is that the menstrual cycle is really complex. So, it’s taking this already complex thing that researchers are trying to investigate and then adding a whole other layer of complexity on it that is the menstrual cycle, which I have to say just generally, we probably don’t know enough about outside of sports. So, then to add it in to sports nutrition and sports performance is a whole other ball game. So, the question we’re going to try to answer today is can we provide general recommendations around the menstrual cycle for sports nutrition with the current data that we have.
Aidan Muir:
Yeah. So, I’m going to start with something that’s quite boring. So, if you skip ahead a few minutes, if this bores you and you skip ahead, I’m okay with that. That’s fair, but I’m going to start with something a little less boring, then get to the more boring part.
Aidan Muir:
So, the slightly less boring part is what is a typical menstrual cycle. So, the “typical” or the idealized menstrual cycle is 28 days, but it’s obviously not 28 days. It’s 24 to 32 days is a standard, typical menstrual cycle. But then we’ve got the issue of abnormal menstrual cycles. What if it’s longer? What if it’s shorter? What if there is no cycle? And there’s differences between women, but there’s also differences in the same woman as in somebody 10 months of the year might have like a 24 to 32 kind of day cycle and then two months they might not.
Aidan Muir:
That’s why it’s so complex, and this is also why it’s so hard for people to study, let alone understand, and I’ve read a lot about this topic, and every time I feel like I know stuff, I get humbled because it’s like everybody talks about it based on this idealized cycle to make it simpler to understand, but the more variables you chuck in, the more you’re like, “Oh, I could dedicate my career to this and I still wouldn’t know that much.” And the same thing is all the hormones and everything like that which is why as we talk about this, it’s going to be a simplified version of it, but there’s also individual variation, everything like that. So, that’s the preface. The boring bit is basically going to me pretty much reading from a textbook, but you kind of need to know this as the foundation for everything else we’re going to talk about.
Aidan Muir:
So, there are three phases of the menstrual cycle, although you could even define those differently which adds a layer of complexity. But if we’re going to go with those three phases, we’re going to go with the follicular phase, the ovulatory phase, and the luteal phase, even though technically there’s overlap. So, the follicular phase occurs at the start of menstruation. So, basically start of your period, start of follicular phase, and that lasts up until ovulation. And during this phase, estrogen and progesterone levels are low, and this lasts for about half the menstrual cycle. So, based on that idealized cycle, around 14 days.
Aidan Muir:
The middle phase is the ovulatory phase, and this is where the egg is released from the ovary, and during this time, estrogen levels are higher, but progesterone remains low. Ovulation is just one day of the whole menstrual cycle, but it’s associated hormonal changes that last around three days.
Aidan Muir:
And then the third phase is the luteal phase. Technically this could be split up into early, mid, late luteal phase, but we’re just going to call it one phase, and here estrogen remains relatively high, but progesterone also increases until both levels fall off leading back to the start of menstruation once again. If you laid this out on a chart, it gets even more complex because there’s crisscrossing between the two hormones, and why I talk about this whole thing being quite a humbling experience is even that just thing that I just talked about, that took me so long to be able to nail and even though I did quite literally just kind of read that from a textbook, I can verbalize that without that, but it took me so long to get to the point that I could verbalize that. That’s just two hormone that I’m really focusing on, estrogen and progesterone.
Leah Higl:
That it simplified.
Aidan Muir:
Yeah, and I don’t think I’m dumb. It takes a bit of time, and then what about follicle stimulating hormones, what about all these other ones? We’re not even going to really touch on that because it’s such a complex thing, and this is actually a factor in that whole research thing we just talked about, being like if you wanted to do research on the menstrual cycle, you would have to know about this, and part of the issue we’re really coming across is that it’s like we want to know about the menstrual cycle and sports performance. So, the people who are researching this need to know sports performance and they need to know the menstrual cycle.
Leah Higl:
Yeah, how many people have that crossover?
Aidan Muir:
Yes, exactly. So, it’s like every study on women with a menstrual cycle, we can’t expect everybody to know the ins and outs on every single detail. That’s part of why there’s a bit of a gap as well.
Leah Higl:
Yeah. So, an important question to frame this discussion moving forward is does performance even change around the menstrual cycle? So, is there a general change in athletic performance? Because if performance actually doesn’t change around the menstrual cycle, is there really a need to formulate different nutrition approaches around it? Probably not. But if there is a change, is there a way then we can go about mitigating those changes or drops in performance through nutrition? It’s kind of the question we’re trying to answer.
Leah Higl:
So, there’s two blocks of research I kind of want to talk about, and the first one is perceived change. So, when athletes are asked about their performance and their cycle, many believe their performance does fluctuate throughout the cycle. So, in one study, there was a large proportion of the participants that felt that this was the case. So, 50 and 71% of participants reported feeling their performance in training and competition respectively was impaired in certain menstrual cycle phases. So, athletes most commonly perceived performance to be negatively affected in the early follicular phase and late luteal phases. So, going back to what we were talking about, this is kind of leading up to and during menstruation which I think if you’re an athlete with a menstrual cycle, you can totally relate to this. Just before you get your period and during your period, yeah, most people don’t feel at optimal performance because it’s just quite an uncomfortable time.
Leah Higl:
But then when we look at objective changes, so when we’re actually measuring performance around the menstrual cycle, it does say something pretty similar, but it does differ a little bit. So, there’s one systematic review that was really quite interesting, and they looked at 35 different research articles that looked at sports performance over the menstrual cycle and how things changed, and 20 out of the 35 studies actually found that there wasn’t any change across the menstrual cycle in actual athletic performance. So, no significant difference which is pretty interesting because I think that’s a majority of the studies found that there was nothing there, but that does leave that 15 of those studies that did find a difference. Absolutely worth talking about.
Leah Higl:
So, there are a few different things that came up in these different studies. So, the key takeaways for me was, one, so for anaerobic performance, one study found that sprint performance was better in the mid-luteal phase. So, after ovulation, like a week after ovulation, about a week prior to the menses or the period, that’s when performance seemed to be at its optimal peak. For aerobic performance, intermittent endurance performance appeared to be more affected by the menstrual cycle than continuous endurance work. But generally, looking at the studies, there were all different kinds of effects at different kinds, different parts of the menstrual cycle. There was no one clear effect it had at a certain time. So I found that quite interesting that there was quite a mix of results.
Leah Higl:
Something that I guess matters to me is talking about muscular strength and how that might change. So, it does appear that muscular strength is the most affected by the menstrual cycle, and the review found that trends suggest that strength was lower in the early follicular phase. So, during menstruation, compared to the late luteal phase which is before menstruation, and generally increased during ovulation, and I actually have clients that do site this. Yeah, I know they track their cycle and they know when they’re ovulating, and prior to their menstrual cycle, like a week out, that’s actually when they feel their best, and then they’ve got the lead into their menstrual cycle and feel all those PMS-like symptoms and then maybe don’t feel so great.
Leah Higl:
So, it is something that I tend to see in practice. So, it’s really interesting to see that me working with power lifters and having that experience is kind of reflected in the research. There is a relationship kind of generally between muscular strength and estrogen. So, it does make sense when estrogen is higher that potentially there’s more muscular strength being shown during that part of the menstrual cycle. There are objective changes that potentially do happen across the menstrual cycle when we’re talking about sports performance, but let’s get into how nutrition can actually kind of be part of this discussion.
Aidan Muir:
Yeah, I actually, I do want to stick with the performance bit for a second.
Leah Higl:
Okay.
Aidan Muir:
Because I do find that research really interesting because it’s like we can hear really smart people talk about mechanisms and then also use case studies as well and be like, “This is what I see,” or whatever, and it’s interesting seeing, research is not perfect, but it’s cool seeing that mix if that makes sense, and then also the thing you talked about there because I’ve heard a lot of people make some claims that oh, that makes sense, but for example, with the lifting thing, I’ve heard there’s other countries with Olympic weightlifting who program based on the menstrual cycle as in their deload week lines up with the week where they’re likely to be less coordinated or less strong or less whatever, and their heaviest week lines up with that.
Yeah, that, what was it, the late luteal phase.
Aidan Muir:
Yeah. And then there’s the other thing in women’s sport which is a massive, massive complication, but four times more ACL tears happening during one week of the cycle than other weeks.
Leah Higl:
That’s interesting.
Aidan Muir:
That’s fascinating as related to how estrogen fits in. That’s another complex topic, but it’s to do with structures made of collagen potentially being weaker during certain times and then also factoring in changes in coordination, everything like that. There’s so many areas where this can make a massive difference, but it’s interesting seeing how can we research this, how can we study this, how has it been done. It’s a complex topic.
Leah Higl:
Super complex. Totally see why researchers are like, “How do we even approach this?” because it’s even looking at the research, I was like, “Oh my gosh, what a mess.”
Aidan Muir:
Yeah, a hundred percent, and yeah, it’s so clear that when you hear smart people talk. There’s some things that seem quite obvious, but then it’s like how did 20 out of 35 not notice any of these things.
Leah Higl:
Not show anything.
Aidan Muir:
And then that leads to the question being like is that the thing that the mechanism was proposed doesn’t really matter that much or the thing that people shown to doesn’t matter that much, or is the study overlooking this or is there gaps.
Leah Higl:
Something that was criticized is that a lot of these studies were comparing a very specific part of the menstrual cycle to another specific part. Were they comparing the right parts of the menstrual cycle to understand a performance change? And obviously, we haven’t investigated it to its full extent. So, there’s just so much we don’t know.
Aidan Muir:
Yeah. So, so complex. And now going to the nutrition thing, probably the topic that I think is my biggest place of value to add to a certain degree is the question of do you need more calories at certain parts of the cycle. This is the question I’ve thought the most around because it’s probably the most thing I talk about in practice, and there’s a few ways of looking at it. So, one thing is people know that there’s probably a certain time of their cycle that they may or may not be hungrier. Some people experience this more than others. One of the pieces of research that’s interesting or even just a theoretical thing that’s interesting as well is that resting energy expenditure seems to be increased during the luteal phase. So, that’s that last phase, or you could say it’s as much as 14 days leading up to menstruation. It’s the last half of the cycle based on that idealized cycle, and there’s a pretty big range that people talk about or that studies show or whatever.
Aidan Muir:
One study estimated the change in resting energy expenditure to be an 8 to 16% increase in resting energy expenditure. I’ve seen other smart people talk about anywhere from 90 to a 500 calorie increase in energy expenditure. I personally use the number 100 to 300, but it’s like there’s a big range that people talk about, and there was a study that you actually added into our show notes, the 2020 meta analysis on this topic showing us a bit of a mixed bag, 50/50 split, some showing a small increase, others not showing a small increase, and this is why we talk about mechanisms being or you hear somebody talk and they say that 100, 300, sounds clear-cut. You look at the research. How much does this matter? It’s hard to tell, but I like to chuck that out there being like that could be a factor.
Aidan Muir:
But another factor is on average, most people seem to eat more than that during that phase, the 100 to 300 calorie number I just talked about. Once again, it’s hard to measure. The number that I go with is most people on average seem to increase their intake by 300 to 500. So, it’s like, do you actually need to game plan for this? Do you need to adjust things based on that? That’s a complex topic which I’ll talk about as well. But then there’s the individual nature which is I guess what I’ll get into where it’s like, I have met people who report eating about a thousand calories extra for a certain phase of the cycle, others who do not notice any difference.
Leah Higl:
It’s a thousand calories per day extra.
Aidan Muir:
Almost like, not quite, bingeing eating wouldn’t fit necessarily to category, but it’s like they just love chocolate.
Leah Higl:
Sure. It’s like cravings and stuff.
Aidan Muir:
Yeah, really strong cravings. And then there’s the aspect of how long does this go for. Is it the entire luteal phase? If I had to go based off of my experience, what I am seeing is it’s typically like a, I don’t know, a five-day period or something like that, but that’s individual. Some people it’s longer. Some people it’s shorter, and everything like that. And my proposed solution that I have for people is potentially just adding an extra 300 calories for one week or five days or whatever it is, working with that person, being like, “How long should we add it?” adding an extra 300 calories to their diet in the form of even more carbs, maybe in chocolate, maybe in whatever.
Aidan Muir:
There’s so many ways we can go about it, and then seeing if that helps them because this problem or this proposed problem raises even more questions being like what if people do struggle with overeating in relation to their goals during a five-day period leading up to menstruation, for example. What if they do struggle with that? Does adding 300 calories actually solve that? Does it actually help them? And when you hear some people talk about it, it makes it seem like it’s so logical and it makes so much sense.
Aidan Muir:
From my experience, what I have found, keeping in mind that I obviously guide people, some people are just going to agree with what I say or whatever, that’s obviously a factor that I do not want to overlook, but I probably try it with like 50% of my female clients who notice this problem, maybe a little bit less than that I’ll try it with, and 10 to 20% seems like the best decision they have ever made, and then there’s probably like 80% who just do not… It just didn’t change anything. It just didn’t do anything. I know these numbers don’t add up perfectly, but it doesn’t matter. 10% or whatever, it made things worse. It was like it gave them “permission” to go crazy or whatever.
Leah Higl:
Sure.
Aidan Muir:
So, it’s like say I put chocolate in their meal plan or whatever, then putting the chocolate in the meal plan made them eat more than they would’ve.
Leah Higl:
Is a gateway to just eating more and more, yeah.
Aidan Muir:
Yeah, it’s a gateway. That’s a very long way of saying this is individual, but I don’t think, I don’t want it to be taken as this thing being like, “Oh, you can just do whatever.” I’m just like, “It’s just an idea. It’s an idea that could help.”
Leah Higl:
Yeah, and in my experience working with people, I found that for some athletes, adding extra calories in at a certain point makes sense. It makes them feel better. They’re hungrier so it’s just matching those hunger cues. They’re a bit more maybe fatigued in that time. Sometimes it just makes sense. We don’t need a mechanism all the time. If it makes the athlete feel better, they’re performing better, probably worth doing.
Aidan Muir:
Yeah, and I suppose adding one more layer of complexity, but the whole concept of what if somebody feels better at certain phases of their cycle. We just talked about the energy expenditure or I just talked about energy expenditure in relation to these processes, but what if somebody feels better when they do more movement during a time that they feel better, or what if there’s a phase where, yeah, like that adds another thing into it being like we can’t just be like, “Oh, it’s 100, 300 calories or whatever, more energy expenditure here,” because-
Leah Higl:
It’s not as clear-cut as that.
Aidan Muir:
Yeah, yeah. We’re just talking averages.
Leah Higl:
Yeah, a hundred percent. So, another thing that gets thrown all around a lot is changing your intake of fats, carbs, and protein around your menstrual cycle. So, we’re just going to talk about like, is there any merit to that, should we do that, what’s the research behind it. So, I do find this, this point’s probably one of the most often raised outside of the caloric intake, but generally, we know that at certain points in your cycle, your body oxidizes or burns less of certain fuel sources and more of others. So, during the follicular phase, the start of your menstrual cycle, your period, and the week or so after, we know that fat and protein oxidation are reduced, and carbohydrate oxidation is actually increased, and then it’s vice versa in the luteal phase after ovulation.
Leah Higl:
It’s not really clear how those changes in fuel oxidation and what source your body prefers to use actually changes performance. We talked about performance a lot at the start, but it’s not really clear how they line up, and I spent hours trying to make some kind of connections and connect the dots between this stuff and the findings in the performance stuff, and I just, I couldn’t do it. There’s just no clear links. I really struggled to find something.
Aidan Muir:
Not naming names here, but there is a TED Talk on this topic where somebody does a N equals one case study. They just talked about themselves and their own experience where they did a test, a two-hour run, and they measure their fat and oxidation kind of levels. And the first time they did it, they got great results in terms of both their speed, but then it was just they were burning a lot more fat. And then a week later they did the test, and it was really, really, really hard for the last hour and a half, and their body was not as efficiently burning fat. And that was the kind of thing being like, well, yeah, we oxidize at different rates and everything like that during different parts of the cycle. But that’s the interesting thing where it’s like that N equals one kind of thing where it’s like, wouldn’t it make sense that stuff would show up in the larger scale research more easily.
Aidan Muir:
You can hear certain stuff like that, and you’re like, “Oh, that makes so much sense.”
Aidan Muir:
But yeah, and if that did actually happen on a large scale, that would have huge implications for people in terms of what if they want to run a marathon or something like that on a certain day.
Leah Higl:
Hundred percent.
Aidan Muir:
Do they want to pick a date that lines up with their cycle?
Leah Higl:
I mean, obviously, that’s not usually, you’re not picking the date for when you’re running a marathon. So, a lot of the times it’s like you can’t do much about where your events fall anyway, but I just think that there is often even this mismatch between this research and utilization of different sources and the performance stuff, and it’s just such a mixed bag, but we’ll go over the two recommendations that people often make. This is actually pulled from the research as well. So, this is researchers saying, “Based on what we found, we think this.”
Leah Higl:
So, one of them is you should have more carbs in the mid-luteal phase. So, the reasoning behind this is because estrogen is high in this phase, it can inhibit the utilization of your glycogen stores. So, the carbohydrates you store in your muscle and your liver, and then maybe consuming more carbs during this time could be beneficial for high-intensity activity where you are really wanting to have access to those glycogen stores and carbohydrates as the most efficient fuel source. But it’s just a theory. We’ve not had any research showing that this makes a big difference or a difference at all. It’s just a theory, and I mean, you could try it if you want to see if it works for you individually, not against that, but nothing set in stone for that one.
Leah Higl:
The second is we should increase protein in the luteal phase. So, that’s after ovulation, and the reasoning behind this is that progesterone increases protein catabolism, so protein breakdown, which may be a factor to consider in this phase. And then some researchers just suggest that there is a potential need for increased protein intake because there is more protein breakdown. I generally think that looking at the recommendations for protein intake in sport, I think we have it fairly well covered.
Leah Higl:
I wouldn’t say that… Maybe there’s an argument for going on the mid to high end of that range or something rather than the lower end at this time. But I’d just say the guidelines we currently have probably cover this to enough of a degree.
Aidan Muir:
Yeah, I think that claim’s murky because I think it’s accurate and it’s true, but it is also just if you’re above say that 1.6 gram per kilogram per body weight Kind of target you’re meeting the amount needed all cycle, and you could just make an argument that maybe you need less at other times to the cycle.
Aidan Muir:
But then that’s adding a layer of complexity, and it could just be simple and just have do this amount all cycle, covers all needs. Maybe it matters more if you have a lower protein intake habitually at other times in the cycle.
Leah Higl:
Yeah, I think changing your protein intake, it just doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m just like, “Have enough that meets recommendations for your sport and what your goals are, and then just stick to that all cycle, and that will be covered.” But I think there’s maybe some merit to kind of potentially changing fat and carbs and how that makes up your calorie intake, but I would say that it’s more like follow the sports nutrition guidelines for carbs, fats, and protein intake and then adjust based on how you feel and that individual athlete. So, once again, we come back to the there’s all this kind of research and these mechanisms and theories, but it all comes down to individualization for each athlete.
Aidan Muir:
Yeah. So, the next thing I want to talk about, I’m to be really brief because I want to hear the next thing you’re going to talk about, I think it’s more interesting than this and we don’t have that much time, but the next thing is fluid retention/weight across the menstrual cycle. I’m just going to start with the obvious. Obviously, it changes. A lot of people, their weight changes over the course of cycle. Estrogen equals increased fluid retention, progesterone decreases fluid retention. You can see how this is going to change stuff, but very simply, things change over the course of the cycle. The part you might be or you’re going to be talking about is how could this play a role for weight-making athletes because that’s a complex topic.
Aidan Muir:
General population, keeping super simple, I think if you’re going for a fat loss phase or whatever, taking monthly averages is really important because if you don’t do that, say you just compare week on week or day on day, it’s going to be very skewed by these water changes that are going to happen every cycle and don’t influence your fat loss in any way, shape, or form.
Leah Higl:
So, there is an excellent review article that came out in 2021 that is called Nutritional Considerations for Female Athletes in Weight Category Sports, and this kind of grabbed my attention right away as something that I would be interested in. So, I found it a very interesting read. So, the authors, one of them was The Fight Dietician. So, he is… Where’s he based? Brisbane?
Aidan Muir:
It is Brisbane, yeah.
Leah Higl:
Yeah. So, he was one of the authors amongst a few other people. They did discuss the fluid retention and weight component of all this, but a couple of things they did touch on that I found super interesting. It’s not going to be interesting to everybody or applicable to everybody, but they brought up the fact that in terms of water retention at certain points of the cycle, when water attention is really high, can be up to an extra two liters, is water loading actually going to be unsafe for these female athletes in this part of the cycle. Is there a greater chance of them to suffer from hyponatremia which is basically when blood sodium levels get too low, and I thought from a mechanistic point of view, that kind of makes sense to me, but then I’m like, “Oh, we do water loading with so many female athletes that are probably at this point in their cycle and it doesn’t seem to be an issue,” but I’m like, “Something to consider.” Very interesting.
Leah Higl:
Something else they also brought up in terms of weight cutting and weight-making sports is that your core temperature at certain parts of your menstrual cycle is increased by about 0.3 to 0.7 degrees Celsius. So, that’s in the luteal phase where progesterone is high in comparison to the follicular phase where it’s low, and they asserted that there’s a potential increase in hypothermia risk when it comes to using active or passive sweating methods. So, this is things like using saunas and hot baths and things like that to make weight. So, this idea of overheating the body and causing it a lot of stress and particularly being more dangerous at that point in the cycle.
Leah Higl:
Again, they didn’t, there’s no research on this and no kind of case studies that they cited, but they work a lot in this weight making space and kind of pioneers in this space so I think it’s really interesting that they’d mention that and something to look into, I guess, something to consider.
Leah Higl:
And something that I kind of thought of from a sports nutrition perspective is the water retention that we see in the late luteal phase. Could this be a natural form of hyperhydration? If you are going into event, we do hyperhydration with some athletes in events where they’re endurance events and they won’t have access to fluids, or potentially they just can’t take in enough fluids and kind of stomach that to remain hydrated. So, we’ll start them at the very, the start of the event, overhydrated, whether that’s using something like glycerol or just a lot of sodium and fluids and water them up. Is potentially kind of being in this part of your cycle, is it a natural way of being extra hydrated and having two more liters like you’re some kind of camel?
Leah Higl:
So, I think that’s kind of an interesting point, although I think maybe some athletes would feel like this weighs them down more so than anything. So, they’re just kind of a bucket of other considerations that could be made around the menstrual cycle and sports nutrition, although probably not interesting to everyone. I’m not going to go into a lot about the final consideration, but it’s hormonal contraception. Thee only thing I can say about that is if the other stuff is a mess and confusing, this is way worse, a thousand times worse. We have no idea how hormonal contraception really plays a role in any of this. We’re scratching the surface of studying sports performance with an unaffected menstrual cycle, let alone one that’s affected by hormonal contraception.
Aidan Muir:
Yeah, that’s part of the humbling aspect for me that I was kind of referring to. Every time I think I know something, then I’m like, “Oh, well what about this?” In terms of then with hormonal contraception, it’s not just one thing. It’s so many things, and I’m like, “I’ve put so many hours into learning about an idealized menstrual cycle, let alone all these other variables.” Yeah, there’s so many factors, and then that goes into that research perspective of it’s almost like you’ve got to do all these studies on men. That’s the simple one, so to speak. Then you’ve got to study women separately, but then you also have to study them during different phases of their menstrual cycle to see what happens there, and compare those phases to each other, and then you’ve got to study each form of hormonal contraception individually-
Leah Higl:
Which there is many.
Aidan Muir:
… which there is many, and you can see why when you say we’re barely scratching the surface, it’s like, well, we actually are. A lot of times, I don’t want to underplay what we know, we know a lot of stuff, but I’m like, “Oh, there are so many more levels to this and what we could potentially know down the line.”
Yeah. And so, one of the things that is a bit of a no-brainer is that nutrition should be individualized. That’s a very clear thing. That goes without saying, and that plays a big role in this thing. I’m a bit of a proponent for tracking your period and getting familiar with how you feel. I often question my thoughts on that in terms of the whole placebo nocebo effect. If you use an app like Flo or something like that, and I don’t use Flo obviously, so I don’t know what it says, but I want to know as much as I can, and my understanding is that sometimes it tells you stuff like you may feel bloated today, or you may feel tired today, or you might… Does that then feed into you feeling less… That’s one downside I can potentially see, but I also see the potential upside as huge in terms of getting familiar with these kind of things, getting familiar with how you feel, how you perform, how hungry you are, what is your mood like. I think it can be very, very beneficial.
Aidan Muir:
And the last kind of summary point, I guess, is we can’t really give generalized recommendations across the board in terms of this is what you should do at this phase of the menstrual cycle or anything like that, partly because everybody’s different, partly because of that lack of research, partly because of that kind of mechanism thing being it’s obviously not that simple, and then another additional layer of it being, well, what if we had the perfect recommendations, does that still align with what people want to do at an individual level. Do they want to actually do that individual recommendation or is that another barrier as well in terms of just personal preference as well?
Leah Higl:
Yeah. Are you going to be changing your nutrition three times a month based on your eventual cycle? That seems like a lot. Yeah.
Leah Higl:
So, obviously a huge topic, but hopefully we’ve covered it enough for you to feel somewhat informed, and yeah, we’ll wrap up. This has been episode 58 of The Ideal Nutrition Podcast. If you could leave a rating and review, that would be greatly appreciated, but otherwise, thanks for tuning in.