Ep. #920: Astrid Naranjo on Eating and Training According to Your Menstrual Cycle

Mike: 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 time. 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.

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 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 the snooze button instead of the squat rack? And are you sometimes just not able to give 100 percent in your workouts?

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Hello, Astrid. What time is it there? By the way, you said it’s very early, but 

Astrid: 7 45. 

Mike: Okay. All right. Thanks for 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. 

Astrid: I do. I’m such a late owl. 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. Generally, I do work in the morning. Until a little bit later than someone would normally used to work. And then I wake up, I try to sleep at least seven hours. I 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. 

Mike: 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.

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 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 so that’s what I wanted to have you on because this is something I had mentioned offline that I’ve written a little bit about it and spoken a little bit, but it re was really just sharing what is interesting. In some research on the matter, but I can’t speak to it firsthand, despite what some people would say.

And that’s why I wanted to get someone like you to share helpful information. 

Astrid: Absolutely. I’m pleasure to be here today and honored to share everything I can about females, menstrual cycle and everything we endure and experience throughout these periods. Throughout pretty much Half of our lives.

Mike: Yeah. 

Astrid: Yeah. 

Mike: Yeah. So we can start wherever I think wherever you would like to start with this. Again the questions, I think if we can just answer a few big questions that women have about how they should. 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, that are driven by what’s happening inside the body.

Astrid: Absolutely. The first thing we need to lay. The concept of what menstrual cycle is 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 uterus, your womb to get ready for that.

baby to stay there and grow. If that happens, if 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 period was around the 12.

year old mark. 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 experienced or start getting symptoms of perimenopause around the 45 mark, sometimes a little bit earlier.

And some women get very lucky to not experience menopausal symptoms until they are around their 50s or sometimes later. So it just. Changes 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 women will experience again these cycles that you might see differently happening in the first place. Does that all make sense until so far? 

Mike: Makes sense to me. 

Astrid: Okay. One thing that is important to also know about the menstrual cycle is that we will find that there are Like faces 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 do we have the other 14 days, which would be the little face now, each phase. On its own, we’ll 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 difference between these two. 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 fun because you will see that the literature has researched this a lot in terms of how women respond to If should we cycle and should we be concerned about trying to sync performance with your cycle and the literature seems to be pointing that it leaves it open because not every women will respond necessarily to a 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 actors 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 then, is tending to fluctuate and increase in two periods of time. 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 a 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’re over eight or that is 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, we are, 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 it’s 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 these difficult period of the cycle. Does that make sense at all? 

Mike: 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, I just exclude that, that final week. I don’t even bother the weighing myself because I know that I’m going to go way up and I’m going to go way down. So who cares? 

Astrid: I absolutely feel like if you’re interested in understanding What is going on and have 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 and or like it produces anxiety or low mood Or just the fact that knowing that your way is going to be up is going to set up your day for a terrible failure, I would say, get an idea first, at least understand why is the way probably going up and also understand that if you’re going to Not wait, there’s nothing wrong with it because you’re 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 is personal and individual body response 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, what is, where are your calories coming from and the quality of those tracking is a really good tool to get 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, 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 an 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 fan of the scale. because my day fluctuates so much and because I sleep late, I know that can affect how you wait is the next day, stress levels on all of these things.

But I understand I’ve done my experiments 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 week. Does that make sense? It’s just more tool for awareness and understanding how to navigate better those fluctuations. 

Mike: 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?

Astrid: 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.

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. It’s been proposed that if you cycled your calories and your macros, specifically carbohydrate to fat ratio, these two sides of the cycle, you will probably be more likely to respond better, but not might not necessarily be the case.

If you’re someone who is if you’re an athlete or if you’re resistance training, if you’re quite lean, it is probably unlikely that you have these a 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 you’re menstrual 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.

For the most part, You could potentially align it with how your week looks like and how you’re training looks if you’re looking into periodizing your training for your message cycle and making higher volume, higher intensity, more intense parts of your training program in the first week.

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’ll 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, what How do you feel best with? I pro 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 cycle, your physiology doesn’t seem to be huge or that meaningful. 

Mike: That that’s in line with what I’ve heard from a lot of women over the years.

What I wanted to ask you about is what some women have reported is that 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 if my wife has cravings, it’s usually chocolate, she just likes to eat chocolate. So for her she doesn’t really crave it. She doesn’t track calories or macros and she’s pretty active and she’s always just naturally been a small kind of petite person, but her diet does just naturally 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, and they’ll do that deliberately where they know that they’re just going to feel a bit better with a bit less carbohydrate and a bit more fat as they get further along in their cycle.

Does that make sense to you? 

Astrid: I think that is absolutely true for many women. And again, it’s looking at the big picture on what is happening, not just with their diet or training, but also what tends to happen with their needs or their non exercise activities, thermogenesis. What happens normally with their mood.

their cravings, their sleep, so all of these things will pan out in how it’s going, how the cravings will be showing up, how is she going to be feeling throughout the week, and on top of that we have, 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 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 salt, high carb, high sugar foods.

Just because they taste good and they just feel better. 

Mike: Yep. Yep. That makes sense. What about metabolic rate? Does anything change meaningfully throughout the, you mentioned non exercise activity, which that would be part of energy expenditure, but I know that some people will say that, that even basal or resting metabolic rate will change meaningfully.

And then you have to also factor in changes in other activity levels as well. 

Astrid: 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 pans out to be about 100 to 200 calories higher in your basal metabolic rate, which some papers and some scientists 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 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 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 their appetite is higher, they can have that extra flexibility from carbohydrates or for whatever they want. Just having that extra a hundred 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 a challenging relationship with food or some background of binge eating or an unhealthy relationship with food in the past or that joy of 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 the nowhere and not being able to have anything because you’re, 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. Specifically for that particular week with women you’ll see much better adherence by the end of that full cycle. 

Mike: 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? I’d 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 it 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 in 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. 

Astrid: I consider a lot the. the client and how they generally tend to respond. So I 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 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.

My, 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 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. Just a 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 using use them as dimmers. You can you want to use more carbs, try to just be more consistent with that selection.

If you want to do that, mostly because. 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 these things, 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 give you 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 hungrier 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.

Mike: 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 diet or so to speak, but if they just understand how those two elements interact. 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 just not very hungry and for whatever reason can get away with maybe eating a bit less. All right, I’ll do that. And then on the flip side, if I end up wanting more food or just eating more 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.

Astrid: Absolutely. 

Mike: You mentioned cravings quite a few times. What, 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 many women 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 is, or not. I’m asking you. 

Astrid: 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, in your physiology that may trigger somehow a slightly preference, 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 affects 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. 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, I understand.

I 

Mike: love good bread. I understand you. 

Astrid: 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 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. Your moms make it for you. So it’s a family connection. It’s 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 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 these happens for some women 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. 

Mike: Makes sense. Let’s let’s switch gears and talk training now.

And should women periodize their training in, I, when we talk about training periodization, we’re normally talking about manipulating rep ranges volume load and. Should women or is there a benefit in periodizing training around the menstrual cycle? You had mentioned earlier, like maybe starting with a higher 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? Training 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. 

Astrid: I think it is very relative to each women and how they respond initially, as I’ve mentioned with same with diet, it will happen with training as well.

There has been research suggesting that there is generally a. Train in some women that they’ll 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, that there is less tolerance to high volume, high intensity, and your body’s 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 the 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 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 and a struggle to recover much more. And sometimes I even soar. 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, more cardiovascular exercises, and which aligns with better with perhaps my mood. And just the fact that I am probably not as Excited to do a huge amount of training and 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 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 PR. intensity or less amount of sets in that last week of the cycle just to reduce that intensity or switch gears a little bit more.

Maybe just have them doing a little bit more walking, more cardiovascular exercises, which also aligns with better time for breathing and mental health just getting that. Piece of recovery in a good place. 

Mike: 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 have. 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, 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 the 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. Some are 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 those women, I’ve heard more in line with what you were just talking Describing 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. It’s, 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 in 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. So I would go basically as long as I could without 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 a thing. Every so often I’d finally get a cold and that would force me to deal. That doesn’t really happen anymore. Does that make sense to you in terms of with women and, depending how hard they’re working. And then that might dictate whether they need to make big changes or not.

Astrid: Absolutely. I totally agree that depending on the stage of the journey that will dictate a lot of how you program and how you decide what is going to be your approach to begin with, obviously, when you’re starting, you don’t need a deal load. 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 still, 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 for 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 depending on it also, even like the leaner you are, you might need some additional rest periods or 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 clients that They just like training, but their, the training as per se is not huge heavy, so their recovery and the impacts in their joints is much lower, so they can endure more weeks without having or needing requiring a deload per se.

Does that make sense? 

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. In my case I would say I’m probably somewhere in the middle. It’s I’m doing probably about 15 to maybe 16 hard sets per major muscle group. And I’m doing I’m squatting every week and deadlifting and bench pressing and overhead pressing. And I’m progressing in a, in a.

in a macro cycle from, on the big exercises doing tens with, I believe it’s 70, 75%. Sets of 10 four, 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, 90, 95 percent on those exercises. And so over the course of that four months the weight is going up and the rep volume is going down. But given the intensity of the program, just given what it is, I’ve had good success with 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, because this is also a program that I put in, it’s in a book of mine called beyond bigger, leaner, stronger.

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. But I like to err on the side of maybe being 

Astrid: more cautious. 

Mike: Yeah. A little bit more cautious and less aggressive with, because I know, 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 recommend anyway, whether if I say deload every six weeks, they’re going to make it every eight or every 10.

And but I myself have actually come to enjoy the results of that again. I don’t like deloading. It’s I have to force myself to go in the gym and do it. And I will say, though, that I’m pleasantly surprised 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 heavy weight, a fair amount of volume and going for eight, 10, 12 weeks before deloading or, before life forcing me to, to deal out.

So for what it’s worth, that’s been my experience. 

Astrid: And I, in my experience, I would add that deload doesn’t have to necessarily look the same for every person. 

Mike: And 

Astrid: 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 sex.

I like personally to switch it up sometimes. 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 walking and perhaps Talking on certain exercises that you want to improve your technique so you work more form, more technique, more mind muscle connection, more awareness in the position of your food.

Maybe you want in that week to 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, 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 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 make May do wonders. 

Mike: I like that. That’s a creative idea. It’s something that I’ve been too unimaginative, 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. the weights that I normally use. So I’m still in the groove for when I get back to hard training. But you mentioned PCOS. I wanted to follow up with you on that because there’s a lot of information advice out there about particularly with diet and how you can just manipulate your diet and and make 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, and then what its most common causes are. And for people who are having this issue, what are the best ways to deal with it? 

Astrid: Yeah we know that PCOS is something that nowadays.

It’s more, there is more awareness around this condition before you would have no idea what PCOS was. And even doctors would have 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 percent 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. 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, and they’ll see they have cystic 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 most More interesting, more concerning for women is the one that had, that comes with hyperinsulinemia, insulin resistance and weight gain and managing that particular aspect of the, of their metabolic of their metabolism, pretty much.

That is what PCOS, obviously, if we want to define it or understand how is it diagnosed, that is, you could say that 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 but it’s the Rotterdam criteria, which basically asks you to have rare or 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. 

Mike: And in, in a case of a diagnosis, what are effective strategies for mitigating it or even resolving it? 

Astrid: Again, it’s going to be so wide in terms of like how each women had like these different signs of symptoms.

Yeah. What’s their combination, right? 

Mike: Yeah. 

Astrid: Yeah. And depending on the type of PCOS you’ll find that some women will reduce their symptoms. You it’s a, it’s not a. 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. It’s called Myo-Inositol or myo-Inositol, 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 huge, a huge amount of symptoms of PCOS. That is a kind of the one that I would say is the most research 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 again, the most Burberry 

Mike: as well. I’ve heard that. 

Astrid: Yeah. Membrane 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 

Mike: and body composition as well.

Meaning if somebody is very overweight, they’re going to benefit from bringing their body weight into a, in their body composition, into a healthier range. And it’s going to benefit them in many ways, but also here. 

Astrid: Absolutely. There is. Thanks. A good body of research suggesting that between 5 to 10 percent of weight loss from their body weight reduction is going to provoke huge benefits but even as little as 5 percent 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’re in a healthy weight range, it is not necessarily that beneficial to get them lose more weight, but rather utilizing strategies to better improve their nutrition quality. the exercise, the body composition. Obviously you want to see the, in the, in, in all these women. And fortunately women with PCOS have a tendency and an easier way to gain muscle than a women that would 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. If you want to get really jacked. Exactly. 

Mike: Great. And then one other question that I wanted to ask you about is oral contraceptives. And if if there are any, anything that, 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, 

Astrid: yeah, generally, to be honest. It doesn’t make much of a 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, it’s 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 appeal 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 like 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 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 cycle that you can treat them more as like men, like you’re 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 could happen anyways. 

Mike: That 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? 

Astrid: I think and a good point to discuss that we may have touched briefly, but we didn’t.

Really dig deeper into is all this myth around dietary approaches for PCOS and like all of this myth 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 starting going vegan or avoiding carbohydrates, total carbohydrates, or going keto, or just eating a specific, not eating dairy whatsoever, or soy, or.

Mike: Sugar. I know that’s another one. 

Astrid: Sugar is another one. Or you have to go total organic, gluten free. I know this is very common in just the dieting world and it is very common to find that everywhere, if you want to lose weight, even if you don’t have PCOS or you have PCOS, you hear this common myth coming up to, in order to be, or do your perfect diet, but this is even more prevalent.

And you will see and you’ll hear this from a doctor, 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.

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 respond to each food. If you have obviously IBS, and you have PCOS, you want to be a little bit more aware 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 something I wanted to just little, have a little touch on, but that’s all I think, unless you have any other questions.

Mike: No, that, that’s a good point because yeah, there are a lot of dietary prescriptions that are made or even sometimes they’re 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. So 

Astrid: absolutely.

Mike: 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. 

Astrid: You can find me in my social media where I’m the most active in is anti diet underscore dietician 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. A street at violin.

com and I’m here for you guys. So thank you so much for the opportunity, Mike. 

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks again for doing it. We’ll have to come up with a, another topic that we can talk about sometime. 

Astrid: Absolutely. Always a pleasure. 

Mike: I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don’t miss new episodes and it also 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 muscle for life. com muscle F O R life. 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.

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