 Our next caller is Abby from Wisconsin. Abby, how's it going? How can we help you? Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to say that I love all the content that you guys put out, and I share it with my clients and everybody that I love. So my question today is one thing that I've noticed when I start to, when I'm on the first couple of days of my menstrual cycle, I feel like my lifts are definitely not, I don't feel as strong in those first couple of days that I usually do when I go through any of my programs. I just started, I'm actually in the third phase of mass aesthetic, and one way that I've kind of noticed that I'm not feeling as strong is I, with watching my numbers, the numbers will kind of dip on those first couple of days. Kind of towards the end of the week there, I noticed I start to gain some of that strength back. I guess what I was looking for was maybe some suggestion on either anything to change in my diet or anything for supplementation. I do track my periods, so I know that's, it's pretty accurate. So I know if I change anything, I can really kind of tweak any of the days that I need to. I'm also not on any birth control, so I don't know if that makes a difference. So yeah, just wondering what you guys had for any suggestions for that. Super, super good question, also very common. So the first thing I want to say is this, and this, it trumps everything else, okay? And this is for men, for women, people who menstruate people on birth control, doesn't matter. At the end of the day, the thing that trumps everything is to listen to your body. So if you feel more fatigued or less strength or your recovery is reduced, and this could be the result of, I mean, a million factors, right? It could be lack of sleep. It could be stress. It could be diet. And then in your case, you seem to be tracking very closely. It could be hormonal changes. Always listen to your body. All right, now let's get a little more general. Let's talk a little bit more generally in terms of the cycle that a woman goes through. And hormones change quite dramatically through the month. And so with that, I would say the best advice I've ever gotten, I talked to Dr. Jolene Brighton at Depth with this. We've actually had her on the podcast a couple times and I talked to her off air on this because at one point I had an idea to create a program based around this. So I actually asked her quite a bit of questions. And Dr. Jolene Brighton, as you know, is an expert on this particular subject. And she said, you know, one of the best things you could do is go with the feelings that you have during your cycle. So a lot of women will notice their appetite will increase and will have more energy during ovulation. In the beginning phases, they may notice that their energy is lower. They may notice their appetite drop. And so basically what she's saying is exactly what we say, which is listen to your body. So in those phases where you feel stronger, you feel more energy, go ahead and push yourself a little bit harder. In those phases where you feel like your appetite is higher, like, oh, I've got stronger cravings, eat more good food. That's okay to bump your calories on those days. On the times when you feel like you're just not as hungry, it's okay to reduce your calories. And then when your energy is lower, reduce your intensity, reduce the weight that you're lifting. At the end of the day, this is going to it's not going to impact your gains or your progress in any, you know, negative way of fact, if you follow your body, you'll get better results and better progress than if you try to counter it. You know, if you say to yourself, gosh, I feel like I'm not as energetic today. I feel like I'm, you know, my, my strength is a little low, but I'm supposed to push the intensity. So I'm just going to push the intensity anyway. That's the wrong approach. So follow what your hormones are telling you because there's a lot of good information there. So you just have to listen to it. I definitely would make sure you are following Dr. Brighton. So Jolene Brighton, Dr. Becky Campbell, and then Laurie Christie King, I think. Those three, I think are some of my three favorite ladies that speak to this topic. Gabrielle Lyon, too. Oh yeah. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, too. I'd add her in there. So those are four friends of ours that are really experts in this field and arena. They speak to it a lot on their social media. So if you're not following them, I do recommend that. Now, so I had a question for you that I use, I can't remember where I read this, but I did read that it, it's not a bad idea to try and replenish like iron at these times because the red, the red blood cells that you're losing. And so I would have clients do like a spinach salad with like raisins and stuff in it. Do you see value in that or have you heard that? Well, so it's obviously women tend to be anemic far higher rates than men because they lose blood on a regular basis. In fact, for men, they actually recommend men give blood sometimes because we build up too much iron. But you would need to get a blood test for this because it wouldn't make a difference if your iron levels are fine. This is not all women. But yes, iron, B vitamins can also make a big difference for some women. But it depends. It depends on the person. And something you can do is if you have a pretty good physician, a pretty progressive doctor, you can ask to have these things tested. And then I would test them, make sure you test these nutrients at the heaviest part of your cycle because it doesn't make any sense to test it when you're feeling great or whatever. So time it, time it for when your flow is heaviest, when you're probably at the highest risk for nutrient deficiency. And then in which case, if you do see like, oh, your borderline anemic during these periods of time during the month, in which case supplementing with iron, even just cooking with a cast iron skillet, you know, a lot of people don't know that. Well, that's the advice I would. So obviously, I'm not a doctor and I would never recommend something like supplementing for something without finding out details. But I always felt that, okay, it wouldn't hurt to tell a client, like trying to have a salad that consider it. Yeah, yeah, spinach and raisins. Like, I'm not going to probably do any damage to somebody by doing that, even if I don't see blood work. So I thought that was always like a decent advice. But you're right, I would definitely, before you go take an iron supplement, definitely go see. Yeah, because, because the thing here, Abby, that I'm always cautious of is I could tell you, okay, during the luteal phase of your period, you should do this and during that whatever, the problem with that is individual, there's an individual variance, you know, there's always, so, you know, there's definitely this general truth with it. But I don't care if the book says you're supposed to feel a particular way. If you don't, I'm not going to train you that particular way. So at the end of the day, the advice is always I've had female clients that feel like superwoman during this time. And then I've had the complete opposite. Women feel like I don't even want to get out of bed. Yeah. So there's that much of a spectrum here that listening to your body always trumps everything. Totally. I hope that helps, Abby. Yeah, definitely. That's definitely helpful. All right. Well, perfect. Thanks for calling. Awesome. Thanks for taking my call. No problem. Boy, you want to talk about the differences between biological men and women. Just look at the hormone changes, the swings that a woman will go through every month. We're like the same all the time. And we are, you know, it's like, this doesn't matter what day it is, whatever. It's like always the same. But their hormone profile changes radically throughout the month. And it, you know, even more important to listen to your body. It's like you're trying to be hardheaded about what you're doing, but you're not listening to the fact that, I mean, imagine if as a man, some days your testosterone was through the roof, some days it was super low and growth hormone was different and insulin was there. Like, you know, you would have to listen to that, right? See what your body feels like. What are you about to say? No, I'm not going to say shit. I know you're, he's resisting. There's a joke there for sure. I'm holding back, dude. I'm trying to be professional. I know you are. I can see it on your face. You're going, you're talking about how much the hormones fluctuate for women, how inconsistent it is. Justin's about to say some shit right now. I don't know how I'm going to hold out. That's three teenage guys. No, I don't know. I can just see it on his face. I definitely think you should follow those four ladies though. I think they're all very, very smart. And they center a lot of their content around questions like this. I think they're much, much smarter than I am in experience in this area. Yeah. Like you brought up. There's, there's just factors like that, even with like heart rate variability. Yes. You just see these things that it fluctuates all over the place for people. And if you're just trying to, to go do this general type of programming and be consistent with it, you have to adjust and you have to adjust on the fly based on what your body signals. I'm telling you. And what I love so much about Dr. Jolene Brighton is she talks to this because people are so un, girls are totally uninformed. In fact, they'll go to the doctor and tell them, Oh, I'm feeling really tired or I'm feeling a little bit more emotional or my, and the doctor will be like, we can fix that by putting you on birth control or antidepressants or whatever. This is oftentimes very natural cycle. And so it's good to be educated. So you think, you don't think to yourself, what's wrong with me, but rather this is normal. I'm supposed to feel as well. Wasn't that the motivation behind beyond the pill, which was Jolene's book? Yes, it was. I mean, that was the motivation behind it. Absolutely.