It’s Not You, It’s Your Hormones

Kelly: Welcome, everybody, to the February virtual master class. Lori, happy new year — this is our first virtual master class of the year, since your schedule was so crazy last month as always, so we missed you, but we’re happy to be with you this month. That actually brings me to a happy/sad topic I want to share with everybody. Virtual master class was created by my predecessor, Felicia Gaston, back in 2020 when COVID came and we were asking, as an organization, how could we still reach our members? Felicia and the mentorship team came up with this great idea to do virtual master classes, and since then we’ve had around 60 of them, with probably close to 5,000 members registering across those 60 classes.

Kelly: We’ve had presenters such as Tasha, and Joyce Fustel, who talked about LinkedIn a couple of times, which was amazing. Sue Page was here just last month and shared her journey with menopause and taught us a lot. One of our founding board members, Anne Simmons Nicholson, talked about building connections, and Lauren Westerfield spoke a couple of times on empowerment, finding your true north, and mentorship. Lori, you’ve presented some VMCs as well a few times, which has been fantastic. So with that, I’ll share that this is going to wrap up our virtual master class series — Tasha, we’re glad to have you as part of that. For our GGW members, it means we’re moving into some new programming. We’ve already got our podcast, Fair Game; if you haven’t listened, please catch up on season one, and we’re getting ready to start season two next month. I can’t believe it’s going to be March already. We’ve also got so many education conferences on the schedule, and we hope to have new programming as well, so be on the lookout via email, social media, and our calendar.

Lori: Thank you, Kelly — this has been great. I got involved with the virtual master class series two years ago; they just said, “Hey, can you help us find some speakers?” One of the things I love about our community is that I could send out an all-call saying, “Our members need this programming, this is the feedback we’ve received, would you help us out?” and people stepped up all the time: “I’ll speak on this topic,” “Can someone speak on confidence?” My job was easy because of the leaders and members of this group. I’m going to share a link in the chat — sign on with your Global Gaming Women membership and it will take you to the Members Only section and the Member Resource Center, where you’ll find all 60 of the virtual master classes we’ve presented over the last four years. It started out of COVID despair — “Oh my gosh, I need to connect with my gaming women” — and evolved into something really special that provided a lot of good material for our members. It will always be there, but it’s time to move on to the other exciting programs coming up. Kelly, thank you for all your work on this; you made it super easy for me to facilitate, and I’ve loved every bit of it. Our journey is not over, and of course we’ll continue to work together.

Kelly: Thank you, Lori, we appreciate you and all you’ve done. I’m in Columbus, Ohio, where it’s 16 degrees and we’re getting ready to host our leadership conference, so this native Las Vegan is trying to figure out the cold weather. I’d love to take a play from Tasha’s playbook and end up in Florida, but she mentioned there was snow there too, so I don’t know. With that, I’ll turn it over to Lori and Tasha, and I’ll be watching the recording. Tasha, thank you again.

Lori: Thanks, Kelly. All right, you know the usual song and dance — I’m going to introduce Tasha Stevens for our presentation this evening. The chat is open, so don’t be shy; if you have questions while Tasha is presenting, speak up and I’ll help watch for those. Tasha’s topic is “It’s Not You, It’s Your Hormones: Understanding the Root Cause of Your Symptoms.” Tasha is an integrative clinical nutritionist, a Pilates instructor, and founder of Happy Hormone Health. She brings a holistic approach to women’s wellness, drawing from her personal battle with six autoimmune conditions, and offers invaluable insights into symptom management and support. Having coached nearly 2,000 women, she specializes in uncovering the root causes of health challenges through targeted hormone balancing, nutrition, and strength coaching, and I’m sure she’ll share her assessment with the group. I thought this would be a great topic because no matter our age or where we are in our career journey, we sometimes feel exhausted, overwhelmed, bloated, and uncomfortable and wonder if that’s normal. Those symptoms aren’t normal, and they could be signs of a disruption — which is what Tasha’s going to share with us tonight. So I’ll turn it over to Tasha.

Tasha: Thank you, Lori, and thank you so much for having me. I feel very honored to be helping wrap it up, and I’m so excited to be here. What I really want to dive into today is helping every single woman here understand that your symptoms do have meaning. Especially when you’re living in the thick of it — work, family life, being a mother, being married, all the hats we wear — symptoms can feel daunting and like they’re holding you back from stepping into the version of yourself you know you’re capable of being. But I hope you leave today not just with knowledge and tools so symptoms don’t control you, but with a renewed sense of confidence in knowing that your symptoms don’t have to be your Achilles heel. They’re truly your opportunity to understand what your body is trying to tell you and to take control of your health. So my favorite slogan is, “It’s not you, it’s your hormones.” Society has blamed women’s hormones for years, and we’re going to debunk that today.

Have you ever felt like one week you were absolutely crushing it, and then the next you’re barely making it through — bloated after every meal, exhausted, work piling up, wondering, “Why am I no longer productive?” It can feel like you’re running on two completely different operating systems, and you wonder, “Why am I like this? What’s the root cause?” And it’s not you, it’s your hormones. Every woman has been told since the dawn of time that we’re “just hormonal,” or that we should get used to our PMS and struggle through it. But that’s not the truth. The reason we’ve essentially been gaslit for so many years is that our whole society is based on the male 24-hour hormone cycle. We’ve been told to perform at the same rate every single day, eat the same amount of food every day, and crush every workout with the same intensity. That’s not normal for women. It’s not normal to feel you have to go at 100% all the time, or to struggle with symptoms of menopause and PMS. And often we’re told everything is fine because our blood work is normal. Please don’t accept that as your fate; please don’t accept feeling less than your best as your fate.

We are not the same as men. Men operate on a 24-hour hormone cycle, and when you map that onto society it suddenly makes sense. Basically the clock strikes midnight and men’s hormones reset. They wake up, their productivity peaks right around the time we normally start work at 8:00 or 9:00 a.m., and around 4:00 p.m. their testosterone peaks and they feel the desire to be social — cue the development of happy hour. Then they ramp down toward the end of the day, reset, and do it all over. Women have been told to fit into that mold, but we just don’t work that way. We have a unique 28-day hormone cycle that influences everything — your mood, your energy levels, how and with whom you want to communicate, your metabolism, your work performance. If you’ve ever walked into your job and crushed your to-do list one day and then couldn’t get your brain to focus the next, that can be a direct effect of how your hormones are shifting. That’s not a detriment or an Achilles heel. The gap in society is that women haven’t been taught how to harness that or live in alignment with it.

We’ve been conditioned to think that PMS, exhaustion, and bloating are just part of our experience — that we pop the Midol or ibuprofen, suffer for a few days, feel better for two weeks, and repeat. But these aren’t normal; they’re signals from your body. Symptoms are your body’s mirror into your health — immediate biofeedback telling you that something needs support. How I describe it to my clients is that symptoms are literally your body saying, “Hey, sound the alarm, I’m not getting something.” Symptoms happen because hormones are disrupted, and hormones are disrupted because a system is missing something it needs to operate. Our bodies are advanced biochemical machines — really the coolest thing in the world — with over 500 enzymatic and biochemical processes happening every minute, and hormones are produced within those processes. If your body doesn’t have the tool it needs to produce a hormone correctly, that leads to a little miscommunication, which affects another system, and it cascades. So rather than taking the Advil and grinning and bearing it, we need to teach you to tap into understanding exactly what that means for your body. When you do, the light bulb goes off — instead of feeling like a victim, you think, “Oh, I have cramps, this is what it means, let me go support that,” and the next cycle it typically doesn’t happen, because you’re empowering your health journey every step of the way.

So today we’ll cover how your hormone cycle affects everything from your mood to your metabolism to your work performance, the real reason behind symptoms and the most common ones I see with clients, and then a crash course on how to work in alignment with your hormones using targeted nutrition, productivity, social, and workout strategies. Let’s dive in.

When hormones are disrupted, your systems are disrupted, and that’s where symptoms come in. This is always hard for me to say, but I say it all the time: until we balance your hormones, your body cannot do what it’s designed to do. That’s often why you’ve gotten to a space where you’ve tried different diet or workout programs that haven’t helped you feel your best — they don’t account for your unique hormonal imbalances.

How do I know this? Let me share my origin story, because I’ve lived it and have now supported over 2,000 women and counting. (I actually got connected with this organization through one of my amazing clients, who said, “This is life-changing, I need my community to see this too.”) By the time I was 23, I had gained 30 pounds in a single month. I was paralyzed by anxiety, bloated, sick, and exhausted. I had just graduated with my degree in clinical nutrition and felt like a fraud, and I’d just been diagnosed with five autoimmune conditions. They told me, “You have no options,” and I thought, “You mean to tell me that at 23 I’m going to feel like this forever?” And they said, “Yep, pretty much.” I was desperate — even being someone in this realm — and I did anything possible: cutting out anything “unhealthy,” working out seven days a week, trying every diet under the sun. Cabbage diet, cookie diet, pills, fat burners — I tried it all, and nothing worked. Every time I went to the doctor, they said this was normal for women as they get older and my blood work was fine, and I refused to accept that. You mean to tell me that just because we’re women, we have to accept a lower quality of life? Absolutely not.

Fast-forward nine years: I’ve dropped over 50 pounds. I do have a sixth autoimmune condition now because I had a baby, but I’ve put all of them into remission without medication. I had my daughter without IVF, even though they told me it would be physically impossible, and I came off my anxiety medication. And more importantly, I’ve supported all these women. So if you’re feeling stuck in the rut of it, let’s get you that breakthrough.

So, crash course — and please ask questions as I dig in, because I want you to feel aware, connected, and able to implement this tomorrow. First, before we can talk about balancing hormones, we need to know what they are and what our cycle means — the things they should have taught you in middle school health class but didn’t. As long as you are menstruating, women go through four distinct hormonal phases. You have your menstrual phase, which is day one through five, when you have your bleed. Then your follicular phase, days six through ten. Then your ovulatory phase, a five-day window when you’re both fertile and actively ovulating. And then your luteal phase. This is so different from what we’ve been told, because women have often heard, “You either have your follicular phase or your luteal phase, that’s it.” That’s a disservice, because as your hormones fluctuate across the cycle, it truly impacts your energy and what that means for you.

It’s easiest to start tracking your cycle with your menstrual phase, because it’s a pretty apparent biomarker. In your menstrual phase — which I think of as your winter, correlating to Eastern medicine — your body recognizes, “I only have a menstrual phase because I didn’t get pregnant,” so it’s resetting. Your hormones are at their lowest and your energy is lower because your body is trying to rest and replenish. My favorite analogy (and you’ll learn over the next 30 minutes that I’m an analogy junkie) is a bear hibernating: in winter it rests, conserves, and preps its energy so that when spring comes it’s out and about. During this time a hormone called follicle-stimulating hormone starts to rise. Because of your low hormone levels, you’ll naturally feel reserved — you might want to take a nap, stay home and do nothing, or not even be near your family because you just need a break. From a nutrition standpoint, this is when we focus on healthy fats rich in omega-3, because those are the building blocks for your hormones, and how you nourish your body here sets up a good cycle. From a workout perspective, your body wants rest and conservation — a bear doesn’t work out while hibernating — so when you feel pressure to push, this is when you really need to tune in and slow down. Don’t worry, I’ll get into specific foods and workout types later; this is just the introduction.

The next phase is your follicular phase, your body’s spring, roughly days six through ten. Your estrogen starts to rise, and I associate this phase with brain power, confidence, and metabolic peak, because everything is on the rise and you feel inspired, creative, and energized. Hormonally, estrogen rises to get ready for ovulation, follicle-stimulating hormone is preparing the follicle to turn into an egg, and the estrogen spike fuels creativity, energy, and confidence. You’ll feel motivated to plan new projects, take on new things, and try new workout courses. From a nutrition perspective, your body craves raw foods and foods rich in probiotics to prepare for estrogen metabolism — since estrogen is rising, your body has to help filter a lot of it out — so fiber-rich and probiotic-rich foods plus vitamin C. From a workout perspective, you feel energized, so if you track your trends you might notice this is when you start a lot of new workout programs, and metabolically this is when your body wants to and can burn fat.

Now, your ovulatory phase. Ovulation doesn’t get the street cred it deserves, because without ovulation you don’t have a period, and biologically ovulation is what your body cares about — if it feels good, safe, and well, it’ll ovulate and take on that risk and burden. This is days 14 through 17, your superwoman phase: highest energy, best workouts, best social skills. Your estrogen and testosterone peak, boosting strength and confidence. You feel inspired, communicative, confident, sexy — all is good. You’re craving lean protein to support everything you’re doing, and from a workout perspective this is when you’re literally your strongest, when every workout feels amazing.

And then the fourth phase is your luteal phase, where a lot of problems happen for women, because if we’re not properly supporting our hormones leading up to it, this is where it’s make-or-break and PMS can really creep in. Your body has two goals during this phase: in the first half, to potentially get pregnant whether you’re trying or not, and then to recognize it might need to prep for resetting. Progesterone is on the rise, which increases productivity and organization — you’ve heard the analogy of a pregnant woman nesting right before she delivers, and progesterone gives you that same energy in your cycle. You’re probably crushing your to-do list, feeling focused and determined, and as you get closer to your period you want to complete tasks, finish things, and neatly package them off. From a nutrition standpoint, your body craves nutrient-dense foods, roots, vegetables, and complex carbs to stabilize energy, plus things like dark chocolate to replenish magnesium stores. In the gym, the first half you’re still pretty strong, but as your energy declines so does your willingness to work out, so you might feel “Ugh, I’m no longer motivated, I want to stay home,” then push yourself, fight it, and feel guilt. We need to break that.

The key takeaway is that your body is not broken — we’re just not tapping into this. You’ve probably lived thinking, “However I perform today, I’d better copy and paste it tomorrow,” but it doesn’t work that way. Every hormonal stage sets up the next, so how we show up in each phase and what we lean into influences the next phase and the next, and that’s when hormones get disrupted and you feel blindsided. Instead, we want to tap in and optimize.

Now that you understand the basics — and we could talk for hours — I want to dig into why your symptoms aren’t normal and what they mean, because this is an extremely empowering part of your health journey. I used to feel frustrated and disheartened when I’d have a symptom and try everything under the sun and it would only get worse, to the point where literally two weeks out of the month I felt awful. But symptoms are your biofeedback. When you have a symptom, we connect it back to which system is disrupted: symptoms happen because hormones are disrupted, and hormones are disrupted because systems are disrupted. (It’s 7:00 p.m. where I am, so bear with my brain.)

So, common patterns. If you’re struggling with exhaustion and brain fog, trouble concentrating, waking up tired, going to bed tired, or feeling wired-but-tired and unable to fall asleep, those correlate with high stress and blood sugar disruption. Cortisol isn’t a key sex hormone, but it’s a key hormone for everyone. When your body is extremely stressed, cortisol creates a biological halt on all hormone production. For most women — especially drivers who are working and deeply committed to every aspect of life — we can usually trace it back to stress as a root cause. To combat exhaustion, address the common root causes of cortisol and blood sugar imbalance: a simple habit is eating every three hours, even if you’re not hungry, to stabilize blood sugar and reduce the famine response, and prioritizing protein so your body has the right fuel. I know for my clients it’s always, “Eat more? But I’m trying to lose weight.” Your body will perform aesthetically for you when it feels safe to do so, and the number one cause of chronic stress for most women is unintentional undereating. So if you’re always tired and living off the caffeine drip, eat every three hours and prioritize protein — two great habits to implement today.

If you struggle with PMS or mood swings, that’s often correlated with estrogen dominance and nutrient deficiencies. Remember, in your follicular phase your body needs probiotics and liver support to metabolize estrogen. A lot of women struggle with estrogen dominance from gut and liver disruption, hormonal birth control, or HRT. To support this, take a quality probiotic daily or eat probiotic-rich fermented foods like kombucha (GT’s or Better Booch are my favorites), sauerkraut, kimchi, or kefir, and prioritize foods rich in indole-3-carbinol, or DIM — cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and artichoke hearts. Just a serving of cruciferous vegetables and some fermented foods a day can support gut health and estrogen metabolism.

If you struggle with post-meal bloating or acne, those are telltale signs of gut disruption or poor hormone detox. Simple habits: for gut health, take a probiotic or drink about eight fluid ounces of bone broth daily to help rebuild your gut lining, and start your day with warm lemon water with salt to stimulate liver function and aid digestion. These habits are so simple that you wonder if they really add up — they do, I promise.

Anxiety and depression are often linked to low progesterone, low serotonin, and gut health disruption. Prioritize foods rich in magnesium — dark chocolate (yes, I’m telling you to eat dark chocolate, 70% or higher) and dark leafy greens — as well as a quality probiotic, to give your body what it needs to boost progesterone and serotonin. Getting 10 minutes of unfiltered sunshine first thing in the morning also helps regulate vitamin D and boost dopamine and serotonin.

If you’re struggling with weight challenges — inability to lose weight, stubborn belly fat, rapid weight gain — that’s often correlated with high cortisol and thyroid disruption. The number one thing here is to move through a reverse diet, gradually reintroducing the total amount of nutrients you consume so your body recognizes it’s safe and can return to proper hormone production and function.

I know you talked about menopause last month, but I love to make the connection that menopause symptoms aren’t normal either. It’s extremely normal to go through menopause — it’s an important marker of our hormonal journey, just like postpartum, pregnancy, first puberty, and second puberty — but going through those symptoms is not just aging. It’s your body’s way of communicating something’s wrong. When you go through menopause, the brunt of your estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone production moves away from ovarian function to the adrenals and the hypothalamus, the HPA axis. Because of that huge hormone shift, if the body is chronically stressed heading into menopause, it can make symptoms tenfold worse. So we focus on reducing overall stress and adding foods that mimic active estrogen and progesterone — edamame, soy, sweet potatoes, yams — to help fill the gaps so your body can optimally produce the amounts it needs.

So why are women more prone to hormone imbalances? The number one cause I see is chronic stress. You’re working hard and giving it all to your career, and I know you give that same intention to every other aspect of your life, so you have a pretty full cup. Couple that with poor diet — most women have been told their whole life to be on some kind of diet, and even “nutrition” for women is still centered on elimination, reduction, and deprivation, which isn’t nutrition. Then, because we’re stressed and not eating enough, our sleep is disrupted, and we may be exposed to environmental toxins. All of that impacts your body’s ability to function, and most of the time we don’t even recognize that we’re under-fueling. Making sure your body has the nutrients to support hormone production and system function is how we reduce a lot of this burden. Nutrition is a science to nourish your body and sustain life — it’s not a diet, and we shouldn’t be on a diet 24/7. Often the simplest answer is right: eat more. Eat every three hours, eat more foods, don’t eliminate foods, and allow yourself to nourish your body so it can sustain hormone and system function.

Here’s the solution, and we’ll dive into exactly how to put it into practice. This applies even if you’re going through perimenopause or menopause, if you’re postpartum and haven’t gotten your cycle back, or if you don’t currently have a cycle and don’t know why. The reason is that since puberty, your body has lived this cyclical, four-phase nature day in and day out for 15, 20, even 30 years — it’s your biological clock and natural rhythm. Living in alignment with it lets your body move in a rhythm it knows and trusts. Using these cycle-syncing principles — aligning your work, social life, nutrition, workouts, and self-care — acts like a snowplow clearing the road. Even in a really disrupted or imbalanced system, no matter where you’re starting, your body can then say, “Okay, the road’s clear, I see where I need to go, and I can align with this.” It’s the coolest thing to watch.

So how do we work with our cycle? We lean into the energies, intentions, and nutrient needs I alluded to earlier — and I promised I’d get into specifics, and I am. As Lori mentioned, you’ll have access to this forever in the resource collection, and I believe she sends out the slides; you can also screenshot them for notes. My cycle-syncing basics, which I encourage you to build up to: habit-stack toward eating three to four servings of phase-specific foods daily to match your cycle, aim for one to two cyclical workouts per week (a workout aligned with your phase), and try for one cycle-synced work activity a day and one cycle-synced social activity a week. I wish the whole world could revolve around each of our hormone cycles, but unless we all synced up, that would be pretty crazy — so these expectations honor your body’s natural rhythm while honoring that you have a real human life with obligations. Small habits add up to big things, and even when you’re doing things that don’t align with your hormones, adding in something that does helps buffer against the stress.

Starting with your spring, the follicular phase, when energy and estrogen are rising and you feel excited, creative, and confident: for foods, incorporate lemon, grapefruit, and oranges, which are rich in vitamin C and improve liver function and digestion; kombucha for probiotics; and eggs, which are high in B vitamins and vitamin A and help with ovarian function. For workouts, your endurance is good, so hiking, biking, or a new workout class — your body will love it — and since I believe in strength training across the whole cycle, this is a good time for moderate-rep strength training, around 10 to 12 reps. For work, lean into creativity: plan new projects, do your social media or marketing planning, goal-set, and have those big brain dumps. If your day-to-day requires new ideas, carry your phone or notepad and write all those ideas down — don’t act on them yet, just capture them. Socially, get out and try new things: new restaurants, a new workout class, a spontaneous weekend getaway. Foster that out-and-about energy.

When you enter your ovulatory phase, lean into the communicative, confident, best-connection version of yourself. You feel inspired to have big conversations and connect with peers and colleagues, so — hint, hint — this is a wonderful time to network. For foods, some of my favorites are strawberry and guava (rich in vitamin C to support liver function and estrogen metabolism), chicken (great lean protein, high in B vitamins, for the energy you’re burning), and artichoke, broccoli, and cauliflower (cruciferous vegetables that help with estrogen filtration so we don’t struggle with estrogen dominance heading into the menstrual phase). For workouts, you feel strong, so this is when you have your best workouts — lift heavy, do the HIIT or spin class, lean into that energy. For work, this is when you want to communicate and connect: attend networking events, schedule a speaking engagement, or hold your staff meetings, whether one-on-ones with your team or larger meetings, to foster communication. Socially, host a party, have a girls’ night, do a date night with deep conversations, or go to a concert and get that energy out around people.

Once your luteal phase hits, your body switches from an energized, connection state to a rest, completion, productivity, and relaxation state. Progesterone is high, and your body believes it’s trying to get pregnant, so it wants to conserve energy, protect you, and get things done. For food, have more sweet potatoes, which mimic active progesterone and help boost it (or mitigate the effects of low progesterone — anxiety, PMS, breast swelling); peaches, pears, and apricots, which are high in fiber and complex carbs (apricots also mimic active estrogen and replenish stores); and cauliflower and kale (kale is rich in magnesium, and cauliflower helps metabolize estrogen to avoid estrogen dominance and PMS). For workouts, you’ll feel strong in the first half, but as you near your period your body says, “Slow down, I need rest,” so instead of forcing the gym, do lower-intensity cardio, a Pilates class, or lighter strength training around 15 reps. For work, take all the ideas you wrote down in your follicular phase and get them done — you’ll feel productive and task-oriented, so handle admin, organize, project-manage, write grants, and manifest the dreams you thought of earlier. Socially, you might want more movie nights in, one-on-one date nights at home, or to Netflix and chill by yourself, so lean into slowing down. And if you have to do something demanding, like a speaking event during your luteal phase, add in activities afterward to rest and reset and reconnect to your actual energetic needs.

Finally, your menstrual phase, when your body is resting, reflecting, and resetting. For food, focus on nourishing your body, replenishing iron stores, and mimicking active estrogen: mushrooms and edamame are phytoestrogen-rich and help fill the estrogen gap and reduce those “bleh” period feelings; tuna and steak are high in iron to replenish stores; and red grapes are high in polyphenols and resveratrol (I always say it wrong), which is good for anti-inflammatory properties. For workouts, focus on rest — if you don’t feel like working out, don’t; if you want a nap, take it. This isn’t the time your body wants to make gains; it wants to rest and reset, so give yourself permission. For work, you’re naturally reflective and introspective, so reflect on projects and initiatives, run evaluations of your systems, yourself, and your team, and set intentions for the next month — then carry those into your follicular phase when you’re ready to brainstorm the projects to get there. Socially, you might not want to be with anyone, and that’s okay — those are great Netflix nights; read a book, take a nap. If you have to do something outside that, replenish on the way in. For example, I’m on my period right now doing this speaking event and loving it, but I know I’ll be tired after, so I plan to go read a book and take time to center myself and fill my cup in the way that works for me.

When it comes to implementing this, my golden rule is to aim for three to four phase-specific foods a day, counting half a cup as one serving — so in your ovulatory phase, a half cup of strawberries, a half cup of guava juice, and a half cup of Brussels sprouts means you killed it for the day. Then one cyclical workout a week, one social activity a week, and one work activity a day. My non-negotiables: always eat every three hours to stabilize blood sugar, reduce cortisol burden, and protect hormone production. Stress management is key, so carve out space for that cycle-synced work and social activity, because it helps you manage stress. It’s not about being perfect with everything aligned — it’s about how you replenish on the back end when you do things outside your body’s rhythm. And then sleep and recovery: if you don’t rest and reset at night, it’s hard to show up for yourself the rest of the day, so prioritize quality sleep, let your brain shut down, aim for six to eight hours, and take naps if you need them, because it makes following these principles day in and day out that much easier.

My big takeaway: even if you leave today and just focus on those three or four phase foods, all of these small, strategic shifts — even one habit at a time — make huge impacts on your hormone health. I’ve coached nearly 2,500 women now, and my jaw still drops when a client says, “All I did was implement my phase foods, and all my bloating was gone,” or, “My period pain was entirely gone in just four weeks.” These little shifts add up to huge change. You now have the roadmap, so allow yourself to implement them slowly, and you’ll be amazed at the potential you can tap into when you’re working with your unique hormonal strengths. Your hormones are not out to get you — they’re your superpower, just waiting for the right support. It’s so relieving, from a stress-addiction-and-guilt perspective, to know, “I feel tired and unproductive today because my period’s about to start, and that’s okay,” or, “I’m crushing this workout, so I’m going to lean into that energy.” You are empowered when you understand what your hormones mean.

Now I wanted to save time for questions — I threw a lot at you. While they come into the chat, here’s all my information. I forgot to delete the line Lori read, but I do have a free hormone assessment, with a QR code here or on my website. It lets you take an in-depth assessment to plug in the symptoms you’re struggling with, and then we give you a customized blueprint of which hormones are the priority to support, plus the exact nutrition, strength training, and lifestyle recommendations to implement alongside cycle syncing. So with that, I’m here to answer questions.

Lori: I don’t know if you can see those, Tasha. They keep going in and out. Sarah asked, “How do you track your hormone cycle when you don’t have a regular period?” She’s on a hormonal IUD and has infrequent menstruation.

Tasha: Such a great question. Let me break down some myths. Hormonal birth control prevents ovulation to prevent pregnancy, so whether you’re on an IUD with no bleed or a pill with a week-off bleed, those aren’t your actual periods, because you’re not ovulating — no ovulation, no period. But you still have hormonal shifts going in and out. So I recommend just starting in your menstrual phase: as in my slides, follow the allocated days for each phase, and you’ll find your energy starts to shift in alignment — “Oh yeah, I do feel that productivity in my luteal phase while eating my luteal foods,” or “I’m seeing that energy spike in my ovulatory phase.” It acts as a roadmap. And if you have no period at all, not from birth control but from irregular menses, it’s the same concept: follow that rhythm and use the cycle-syncing principles. Most of my clients’ cycles return on the exact dates of our programming within about six weeks, and my jaw still drops at how cool it is to see the human body work. Also, with hormonal birth control, know you’re likely at higher risk of estrogen dominance because of the synthetic estrogen and progesterone, so lean into probiotics, fermented foods, and a fiber-rich diet to support estrogen filtration and mitigate the impact.

Tasha: Oh, they’re coming in fast. Jamie asked, “How can one incorporate intermittent fasting during the different phases?” Great question, because it’s a hot topic right now — there’s a book, I can’t remember the author, called “Fast Like a Woman,” and it’s creating a lot of confusion. Fasting is a beneficial tool: it can reset gut health, it’s incorporated in a lot of religions, and there’s evidence it can help reduce carcinogens and free radicals. However, for women, your body doesn’t like intermittent fasting at particular times of your cycle. In your luteal and menstrual phases, your metabolic demand is highest — your body needs more fuel to support potential conception or hormonal reset — and your circulating cortisol is highest, so your body will reject intermittent fasting then, and I don’t encourage it. In your follicular and ovulatory phases, your metabolic demand is lower, insulin function is higher, and cortisol is lower, so your body is more accepting of it. But know that stress can diminish ovulation, so I recommend avoiding fasting until you’ve done the cycle-syncing principles for a few months; then, if you want to fast in those phases, see how your body responds. Often, if your body isn’t in a safe space beforehand, the stress burden does more damage than the benefit.

Tasha: Eden asked, “How does taking birth control and estrogen impact these steps?” I alluded to this with Sarah’s question, but hormonal birth control and hormone replacement therapy are synthetic hormones that mimic natural ones but don’t communicate the same message — they bind to those receptors and may send a similar message, but often not the same one, and there’s a ripple effect. Synthetic estrogen is known to disrupt the gut biome and break down the gut lining, and it’s been shown to diminish iron, selenium, magnesium, and vitamin D stores. So if you’re taking those, one, still follow the cycle-syncing principles, and two, really hone in on a probiotic, support your liver with bitter herbs like dandelion root, licorice root, and milk thistle, and add lots of fiber to rebuild your gut lining so you can filter out the synthetic estrogen and avoid damage. Then replenish those selenium, magnesium, vitamin D, and iron stores — a multivitamin is great for this, and you can also use food sources.

Lori: Dawn asked, “Where’s the link for the past webinars?” I re-shared it — just go to the Members Only content area, then Member Resource Center, and you’ll see all 60 right there by year. And then, Tasha, real quick, I know we’re running out of time, but someone in the Q&A pointed out there’s been an increase in PCOS over the last 20 years as more women are being diagnosed. From a nutritional and hormonal standpoint, is there anything that can help? And how do you overcome guilt for not training during your menstrual phase?

Tasha: Great questions. With PCOS, there are actually three different root causes, and all three are still correlated to chronic stress: adrenal overload, insulin dysfunction, and over-androgen production, all of which tie back to high cortisol. In the integrative nutrition realm, we focus on the stressors we can control — how we nourish our body, how we move it, and how we re-regulate our nervous system. When I dig into clients with PCOS, we often find they’re unintentionally not eating enough and that chronic stress has led to insulin disruption, so we rebuild their ability to process carbohydrates — which doesn’t mean eliminate them, it means strategically adding them — and add cyclical strength training to boost insulin function and re-regulate testosterone production and conversion. It’s very reversible, so I want to give hope there. Most women are chronically stressed because we live in hustle culture, and we can’t always change our work or life demands, but we can make sure our bodies are better prepared to withstand them.

Tasha: And the second question was about guilt. As someone who loves to work out, I really encourage shifting that mindset. Feeling guilty about not doing something can stem from an underlying stress addiction that keeps us stuck in the stress cycle, so the guilt is your body chasing a dopamine hit. Remember: gains are made in the gym, but change is created in our rest. We need workouts to force physiological adaptation, but we need rest to reset. So take that time to mobilize, go on a gentle walk, or connect with a loved one. When you live in alignment with your hormones and honor that, you find, “I needed that rest, and it lets me perform better in the rest of my workouts.” I used to work out seven times a week; now I do it twice, which is crazy because I love to work out. Lean into asking, “What is my body trying to do, and how can I serve that?” — and that shifts the narrative from “you’re not doing enough.”

Tasha: I know I’m two minutes over, but I wanted to answer Jamie’s second question about the 36- to 48-hour fast. Jamie, yes, you can absolutely do a 36- or 48-hour fast in your follicular and ovulatory phases — I do it about quarterly. I’d encourage you to take a few months of cycle syncing first, make sure you’re eating enough that your body doesn’t have a lot of hormonal disruption cycle to cycle, and then it’s your green light to do this for those limited benefits.

Lori: I think we caught all the questions. If not, Tasha’s information is there on the screen, and this will be posted pretty quickly in the Member Resource section on Global Gaming Women. Tasha, this was great — very helpful and interesting. We appreciate your time. And thank you, ladies, for engaging with the virtual master class; we’re glad it’s been a great platform for us to gather and share information. So with that, Tasha, thank you so much. Everyone, have a great evening.

Tasha: Thank you again. Bye-bye.