Today’s episode chats with Megan Rempel, a registered nurse that specialized in women’s hormonal health, as she shares with us about the four phases of the female cycle and what that has to do with optimizing our month for success. We talk about our workflow and productivity in relation to our cycle, how you can approach your body and work in harmony and what you can do to get started today. Find Megan HERE.

Using The Four Phases of the Female Cycle To Optimize Your Work Week with Megan Rempel

Megan Rempel is a Registered Nurse with a certificate in Women’s Hormonal Health, a health coach, and a cycle syncing expert. Her mission is to help other women discover that life can actually be easier, IF they tap into the magic that we’ve had inside us all along – our monthly cycle. Her own journey from overwhelmed and exhausted mom of 4 to gaining back control of her life through simple and effective habits and rhythms like cycle syncing is what fuels her passion to help women get out of survival mode and find ease and joy in their lives. She does this through her Instagram content, her paid program Syncing with the Flow, and inside her health coaching community.

LISTEN HERE:

TUNE IN + SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR FAVORITE PLATFORM:

Apple Podcast | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Play

Show Notes:

  • What does “hustle like a mother” mean to you?
    • If I were to have answered this question a couple of years ago, I think I would’ve had a totally different answer and I probably would’ve said it means “go, go, go. Do all the things. Our time is precious. Like we’re being pulled in a million directions and you know, it just is like sleep is for the week and just do all of the things.” Now, knowing what I know, when I think of “hustle like a mother,” I really think of the feminine energy that comes with being a mother. And for me, that means slowness and calmness and having boundaries and being super productive, but also doing it from a place of like ease and flow and rest.
  • Tell us a little bit about how you got started and what cycle syncing is.
    • So I’ll kind of take you back to a few years ago because you know, the version of me a few years ago was completely different and I was doing all the things all day long for everyone else. And I was exhausted. I was overwhelmed. I was sleep deprived, but I also wore that like it was a badge of honor. I was proud of myself for being able to do all the things. And I thought the more exhausted I felt, the more overwhelmed I felt, the more I must be on the right path and that made me a good mother, that was gonna make me a successful business owner, that made me a good wife. I really put those things on a pedestal and thought, wow, this is just what being a business owner and an adult and a mother is like, so I must be on the right track. 
    • But I also got to this place of like frustration with myself and also because I was just on this hamster wheel of going and doing all the things I felt so disconnected to who I actually was and what was actually happening in my body. And I was really frustrated because some weeks it felt like everything was easy and you know, I had confidence and I was creative and I could do all the things and I had energy and I was social and I loved my husband. I loved my children. And then it was like all of a sudden, a different version of myself was here. And I felt like I was in a funk and I felt like, ugh, like really, this is like, this is what I’m doing today.
    • I felt disconnected and nothing was easy. I questioned everything. I didn’t wanna be around people. And I was really hard on myself. I would beat myself up. I would tell myself I was a failure. It was such a toxic mindset. But I didn’t really know what was going on within my own body, until I discovered a book called “Do Less” by Kate Northrop. I really wanted to be doing less. I really wanted to, but I didn’t know how cuz no one was talking about it. And that book just changed everything for me because it introduced me to the idea that our cycle as females is a roadmap for us to be living a more calm and easy and energetic and productive life if we just learned how to work with it.
  • So what are the four phases? Take us through what that looks like of the female cycle and how we can connect this to work.
    • So I think it’s important to realize that there are actually four phases that we go through every single month as women. The really cool thing about these four phases is that they’re very much in alignment with the seasons of mother nature.
    • We’ll start with when your bleed ends. So as soon as your period is over, you are in, what’s called your follicular phase. This is the same as spring. So don’t worry about knowing the actual names of the phases, cuz that gets confusing. Just remember spring and think about what spring means. It’s new, it’s exciting. You’re creative. You’re kind of coming out of your cocoon and things feel good and you feel light and airy and like ready to take on the world. Spring is about seven to 10 days long.
    • Then we head into the ovulatory phase, which is about three to five days long. This is our inner summer. So we feel really energetic. We are on our game, we’re attractive. We’re confident. We’re sexual, we’re social. We feel so good. This is when women feel like their most normal selves, right? Because we can do all the things, we have all the energy, we’re fun. We just feel really, really good. But that phase is short. Unfortunately, it’s only about three to five days. We’re not meant to be in this big, “doing” energy all month long. 
    • After summer, of course, we go into our fall phase, which is referred to as the Lal phase. This is the longest phase of the month and lasts anywhere from about seven to 10 days. We’re tying up loose ends, we’re wrapping up projects. We’re kind of like grounding ourselves and going within a little bit, life gets a little slower, a little quieter. We’re still super productive, but we’re doing more of those behind-the-scenes type tasks instead of being like outward and social.
    • Then of course we head into winter, which is our menstrual phase and in our menstrual phase, our energy levels are at their absolute lowest. And this is when you wanna take as much off your plate as possible. And yes, it is possible to take things off your plate. I know we are all ambitious and we’re go-getters and that is like scary to think about taking things off of our plate and essentially like doing less and taking a break. But I can assure you when you take advantage of the energies of all of your other phases, you’ll get to your menstrual phase and you’ll realize like, oh, I actually have some space.
  • Is this accurate still, even if somebody were to have like a non-predictable cycle?
    • As far as any regular cycle, it is for sure. And I think that if somebody does have an irregular cycle by aligning yourself as much as possible to these four phases, so, you know, you, you might not fully know if you’re in your follicular or if you’re in your ovulatory phase, but by tracking and really listening to your body and, and like understanding like, okay, how am I really feeling today? Like not how I feel I’m supposed to feel, but like, how am I actually feeling? And if you start to chart that and document that you will actually be able to like, intuitively know, oh, I think I’m heading into my, fall phase right now. 
    • The really great thing is once you start to live in alignment with your cycle and you make some very simple tweaks with, you know, your daily movement, your nutrition, your cycle will start to become regular. Assuming you don’t have like a really big hormonal imbalance, you can balance your hormones naturally just through movement and, and nutrition. And that will then get you back into more of a regular cycle.
  • Can you share what some of that movement and nutrition could look like?
    • So again, if we think of the four seasons of mother nature, it all makes sense. So when you’re in that spring phase, so when your bleed ends you head into spring or your follicular phase and, and your ovulatory phase, I’ll kind of combine both of those. This is when we are energetic. We can do the cardio, we wanna sweat. We wanna get a good workout in. Our energy levels are, are ready for it. And we’re gonna get in like a really good calorie burn.
    • Too many women are trying to do the same type of workout all month long thinking, well, this is how I’m gonna get to my goals. I need to do cardio five days a week. And that’s absolutely not the truth. So when you’re in the Lal phase, this is such a great time for you to do low-impact workouts, but like pick up those heavy weights, do some resistance training as you get closer to your bleed.
  • So is there some kind of roadmap that exist to say, “Hey, here are the cycles. Here are the tasks that are best suited for these” so that somebody who is just starting out feeling like this is overwhelming, can take a look and be like, okay, this is where I could start?
    • I actually have a freebie and it will show you exactly how to get started with cycle syncing. It breaks it down really easily. 
    • I think that business-wise, there’s so much magic with aligning your cycle. So I’m gonna start with the menstrual phase because I think that the menstrual phase is so powerful because when we’re in our menstrual phase, so this is our inner winter, this is when we’re bleeding and we have our period. This is when you can do some really powerful brainstorming. Take some time to really just reflect and evaluate what went well this past month. What didn’t go so well, is there anything in my life that maybe feels out of alignment? What do I need to change? And then start to kind of think ahead. So the menstrual phase is when I brain dump out so much, like what do I want, what are my business goals?
    • So when you’re in your follicular phase, which is your spring, so once your bleed has ended, that’s when you can really start to create and initiate things. So look at what came out during the menstrual phase. And this is when you can really start to write your content, it’s gonna feel so easy. Like if you’ve got a blog dive into your blog, you are very, very creative and it’s going to flow really well.
    • And then when you head into your ovulatory phase, this is when your communication skills are amazing. You’re energetic. So if you’re gonna be launching something in the month, launch it during your ovulatory phase, because you are magnetic. People are just gonna be automatically drawn to your energy.
    • And then in the Lal phase, this is when, of course, we start to slow down a little bit and we go into this like organization and completion phase of our business. So this is not the time to be launching something. This is the time to like tie up loose ends, start to kind of evaluate things, maybe edit your content, edit your blog, edit your podcast, like whatever you’ve got going on. 
    • And then, of course, we go back into our menstrual phase and this is where we just go, okay, what worked well, what didn’t work? What do I wanna change up? What do I wanna keep doing the same? And then we go back into spring and we’re like, ready to go again.
  • What do you think the best thing that you have found from starting this in your life in your business has been?
    • The way that I was speaking to myself internally has shifted. I was so hard on myself. it was that internal dialogue that was affecting every other area of my life. It was affecting how I was treating my kids and how I was showing up for my partner. Like it really, it was so all these like highs and lows that I, I don’t have anymore. I know this is why I’m feeling this way. And I know what I need to shift and, and do to kind of avoid feeling like this next month.
  • Tell us where we can find you, what is your Instagram handle? What’s your website? How can we hang out with you on the internet?

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *