REBUILD: WEEK 4 MENSTRUAL PHASE

REST.

Intermittent fasting is NOT recommended in the menstrual phase, but it IS shown to be effective in the follicular phase.

I only added the topic of fasting here because we are talking about autophagy this week. Studies show that fasting can actually backfire for women in their reproductive years since it hormonally stresses your body. If you choose to fast, then the follicular phase of your cycle is the recommended time to try it out, as this is the best time in your cycle for this type of mombody stress. However, if you have issues with your blood sugar balancing and feel light-headed without eating, then your mombody is definitely telling you to skip fasting and eat some breakfast.

Fasting is great for giving your mombody’s digestive system a “rest”. Fasting is also the fastest way to burn fat, reset your hormones, boost your metabolism, improve brain power, suppress hunger, activate autophagy, increase immunity, rebalance your gut microbiome, and get your skin glowing.

Fasting should be something your body responds to right away - you should feel less foggy and more energized.  If you do not feel these benefits right away, then you will need more time to build up your fasting “muscle” so to speak.  This just means you might need to start eating a little earlier than the guidelines below so your fasting window will be shorter.  But as you progress, try to stretch this window to lunchtime to reap the most benefit from your fasting. This video covers a few tricks to help extend your fasting window when you first start out. (Please ignore the things I say about SLIM days, this was info for another program).  

If you choose to fast, then it’s great to stop eating at 7:00 PM and then don’t eat again until the next day around 12:00 PM. Essentially you are skipping breakfast. Then if you really want to get aggressive with it, you can do a 24 hour fast on any day of the follicular week. You would stop eating at 7:00 PM and then not eat again until the next night around 7:00PM.

A word about the video: If you decide to fast then please note that adding a good fat to your hot beverage is technically not fasting (nor is it considered fasting when you add collagen powder to your drink either). However, you can drink hot beverages during your fasting window as long as there are no add-ons. Again, fasting is best used during your follicular phase - not so much here in the menstrual phase.