Wellness, Weight loss & Your Cycle.
When it comes to planning your nutrition and fitness regime it's really helpful to plan around your menstrual cycle.
Working with your body and not against it is key.
If you track or roughly know your dates then modifying your exercise and understanding your moods, energy levels, sleep patterns, appetite and cravings can make a big difference.
If your goal is weightloss chances are the week leading up to your period you may feel more tired than usual, cravings might be out of control, energy levels all over the place and you may be retaining water.
Tweak your fitness & exercise.
You could switch up your exercises and change things for a few days. If you don’t feel like jumping around doing HIIT, or running, then focus on strength training do a conditioning workout, power walk on the treadmill or cross trainer which will take the impact if you have backache and your joints feel sore.
Mindset
When you feel foggy, moody, tearful and just can't be bothered, exercise will help immensely. It will elevate your mood and make you feel brighter and positive. You may have to push yourself but it is 100% worth it, even for 10 minutes. Use exercise to aid mental cognition and mood enhancement.
Nutrition
It's so easy to eat anything and everything and not be mindful around your nutrition especially if your cravings are strong. BUT sugar, booze and highly palatable foods do make you feel worse in the long run.
Keep your nutrition simple for the days coming up to your period, shoot for 3 balanced meals, spaced out evenly through the day, eat protein with each meal and tons of veg and up your water intake, it will really help with the water retention.
Sleep.
Get as much of it as you can!
Scales
It's also NOT a great idea to jump on scales or measure yourself at this time, it will leave you feeling demotivated and possibly upset. Scale weight could easily go up 3kgs. It's NOT BODY FAT it will be down to water retention and will start to disperse as you get into your cycle.
Your nutrition and fitness plan should be personalised and individual to you. Learning to work with your body and not against it during the monthly ebbs and flows and adapting your food and fitness is so helpful and a much kinder and gentle way of looking after yourself.
Practising Mindfulness.
Taking 5 minutes out of your day to calm the mind and give your brain some space can be helpful. Especially if you are feeling stressed or anxious.
