Your Cycle Isn't a Curse: How to Work WITH Your Cycle in Every Phase with Flo Moynihan | Ep. 150

0:00When you like listen to the body whisper, it doesn't have to scream. And when you learn how to speak the language of the body, you stop being so confused all the time because so many women just steamroll past their body signs and symptoms all month long, or they were never taught. Your body isn't a curse. It's not a burden and you're not just a problem to be fixed. So now what we do is we help women transform their hormones and their relationship with food so that they can really live the life they've been dreaming of and not be so bogged

0:26Flo Moynihan:down thinking that they're just cursed because they're not. Hello, mom friend. Welcome back to the Learning to Mom podcast. I'm Layla, your official mom friend. And fair warning, we lean a little crunchy around here. We love screen-free play, barefoot adventures outside, intentional family time, and questioning the status quo. We are always asking ourselves if something is really the best thing for our family or just today's cultural norm. Zero judgment if that's not you, but if it is your vibe, you are going to feel so at home here. So let's get into it. Each expert guest brings their own experience and perspective, so please note the content in this podcast is designed for general educational purposes only and not a substitute for personalized professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

1:10Flo, welcome to the Learning to Mom podcast. Layla, I feel so at home. I feel so ready to party. I just watched your trailer. Actually, you posted a trailer for season three, like literally this past week, and I was like, well, it's time. I know.

1:26Flo Moynihan:So essentially everyone who's listening, I am a mad woman and I batch record all 52 episodes for the year within like three months. And then Flo has done another episode. She's on twice this season. So I don't know if this is going to come first or second. But both episodes I know are going to be gems because Flo is a gem. And let me just say, you know, a weird time before we hit record. The devil works hard, but we work harder. this is reschedule like number three basically yeah so which just tells me that someone out there is going to listen to this and have no idea that this is how their cycle worked and they're going to stop feeling like their cycle is a curse that's my prayer that's my hope so good i'm really pumped for this episode because this is a thing that i do yeah and i'm obsessed about it like i talk to my girlfriends about i'm like do you cycle sync you need to cycle sync.

2:23Flo Moynihan:This is what, so basically I'm just, I'm so excited. Well, I was going to say before you interview me, can I interview you and you tell us a little bit about what made you start cycle syncing and why you're so passionate about it? And then I'll get into the nitty gritties of it. Okay. Well, yes. And I love that idea, but I, can we start off with you just introducing yourselves and sharing what the Catholic nutritionist does? That's very smart. That's a smart catch in case someone, we don't know each other. Okay. I'm Flo. I'm the Catholic nutritionist. Isn't that funny that the Lord would let me be named Flo Florencia and then I would help teach women about their cycles.

2:54It's so fun. But basically as someone who struggled her whole life with debilitating periods and a really disordered relationship with food and really bad gut issues, I always felt like my body was working against me and like I was never getting answers as to why. And it really wasn't until the Lord was like, hey, first of all, we need to start from the belief that you were made good. Like I made you good. I made your body good. And there is a rhyme and reason to how it works. But then I was like, wait, every woman ever needs to know this. Like your body isn't a curse. It's not a burden and you're not just a problem to be fixed.

3:30So now what we do is we help women transform their hormones and their relationship with food so that they can really live the life they've been dreaming of and not be so bogged down or or irate thinking that they're just cursed because they're not. I love it. Don't you love her? Oh my gosh, I do.

3:50Flo Moynihan:To answer your question. Yeah. Since that was such a, that was a good little leeway here. But to answer your question, what you shared, what you asked me before you showed your intro. I got into cycle seeking, cycle sinking because I read the book In the Flow by Alyssa Vini. And it changed my life. it didn't when I say it changed my life I will I will say that there are a few books that have like changed my like did it really change my life like no but it had an insane impact and I am one that have I've struggled with just really heavy periods like praise the lord it's not been like super painful um sometimes like I'll have cramping sometimes I don't but it's not like I'm in the bed crying where I know many women have that experience.

4:39Mine are just like insanely heavy,

4:43Flo Moynihan:like ultra tampon in two hours. Like, so read that book, was obsessed. And now I cycle sync, but I will say that I read it in postpartum after number one. And so I only did it for like, you or five months whatever sorry and then at the time of this recording i just had my second period after baby number two how was it so it was it was just heavy but i but then that's hard because that's like kind of common you know when it comes back it like takes vengeance um and but so i'm back into cycle syncing and it is so fun. And I was planning on making a reel even about how I am, I'm loving that my cycle is back and I never would have thought that it's, and it's because I know the brain power.

5:39That's why I literally, well, yeah, literally I have forgotten to charge my aura ring for like probably two or three weeks, which is like one of the main ways that I pay attention to my cycle and I still use my FemM app. I teach FemM, whatever. But literally, I felt the switch in my brain this week because I've been talking about the sub-rider turn pretty a lot. And then I felt myself get serious again. And I was like, it's time to go in. It's time to change the world. It's time to map out the next six months of my life. Like I could, I get so like so intense in my luteal phase and, but I'm in my follicular phase.

6:21So I was joking about that on stories the other day that I was like, last month, I was like, I'm talking about why the lockdowns in 2020 were like so wrong and people need to remember it. But I was like, but stay tuned in two-ish weeks. I'll probably be talking about like makeup or something. And then no joke, two weeks later was when I was like, well, let's talk about the summer I turned pretty. And that's like all I want to talk about. And now I feel the shift again where I'm like,

6:44Flo Moynihan:what does God want for me? Like, so, so intense. It's so fun to like be able to feel those shifts. I think it's probably cool after when you haven't for a while. And no, that was what was so cool where I wasn't just like in the mundane. It was like all of a sudden I had all these ideas and my creativity was off the freaking charts. And then all of a sudden I was doing all these tasks, you know, then skip forward a week. And I was doing all these tasks that I've been putting off for two years. Yes. Yes. Like it was. And I was like, gosh, I love being a woman. And who knew? Who knew? because prior to knowing this information, despise my cycle.

7:24Flo Moynihan:Like despise it. So let's get into all of that. It's wild how becoming a mom flips this switch in you because before kids, I did not care about ingredients even a little. But the second that you are responsible for a tiny person, you start realizing the choices you make don't just land on you anymore. They land on them. For me, it really hit home when my daughter had an allergy as a baby and I went into full detective mode trying to figure out what her little body was reacting to. And once I started paying that kind of attention, I could not unsee it. I started looking at everything that touched her.

7:59Flo Moynihan:Her food, sure, but also her clothes, her sheets, the high chair tray she would lick, the floor she crawls on, the spray I was wiping it all down with. And so many of the clean and green products I grabbed either didn't hold up ingredient wise, like they were still really toxic or they just didn't work. The one that did hold up though is truly free. So now my kids can crawl all over the floor, lick the high chair tray if that's what they want to do, sleep in freshly washed non-toxic sheets, live in their clothes all day. And I don't have that nagging worry in the back of my mind about what's on their skin or in the air that we're all breathing.

8:42Flo Moynihan:I'm not decoding labels in the store. I'm not Googling at midnight and I'm not choosing between something safe and something that actually works. It's just handled. That is one last thing on the giant invisible to-do list that we're all carrying around. Their stuff is also refillable. So I keep one jug and I just reorder the concentrated refills, which means less clutter and no last minute store runs. So if you've been wanting to swap to cleaner stuff, but had no idea where to start. Let me save you the trial and error because I already did it. Start with the laundry detergent. Even my husband's impressed and that man is picky.

9:16Flo Moynihan:Use my code learning to mom all caps, one word for 30 % off anything on their site. Let's stop leaving everybody in the dark of, okay, like what even is this? So let's start there. What is cycle thinking? Okay. First of all, let's define what your cycle is. Sometimes people say that their cycle is their period. Your cycle is not your period. That is a part of your cycle. It is not the whole cycle. So what you need to know is that your period is like the most dramatic attention grabbing, like little sister week of the month. But the truth is throughout the whole rest of the month, let's say you have like a typical month long between each period, that cycle is the hormonal ebbs and flows, the shifts specifically, mostly in the estrogen and progesterone.

10:03Those are like the two big dogs that are kind of running your cycle throughout the entire month because your body, every single cycle, what it's trying to do is to gear up to potentially get pregnant. The whole point of your cycle is for your body to potentially get pregnant by releasing an egg, which we call ovulation. So that's the most important part that you need to know that like, yes, there's the drama of your period, but there's all of this other hormonal activity that's happening throughout the entire month. That is why you feel like a million bucks. You're the most beautiful you've ever been at a certain point in the month.

10:35That's also why you might get kind of bloated or feel really sluggish. Or if you have ADHD, the end of your cycle is where your dopamine already drops even more. You feel like you're even your medications aren't helping it. You can't focus at all. Like you get into a pit, you're doom scrolling more than ever. There's just so many shifts because hormonally speaking, you're not the same person day one of the month compared to day 17. And that's the point of cycle syncing is knowing that there are hormonal shifts that are happening and that you can support that hormonal activity better in certain ways, specifically through food and exercise are like the main ways that people do it.

11:09But you can also cycle sync like your calendar and the way that you live. Like I'm probably not going to go out of my way to write or to record a bunch of talking podcasts at the end of my cycle, because I find that like I'm a little more tired and I'm kind of boring to listen to where if I like start recording and if I want to do like a girly pop shitty chatty episode I'm going to do that in my ovulatory window because I sound more charismatic and I sound more excited so that's like the

11:38Flo Moynihan:general breakdown or like when you're asking for a raise you don't want to do that at the end of your cycle when you're like like you want to go in and your strengths are communication and energy and all of that stuff. Exactly. I know this is, and I think again, why I'm obsessed with cycle syncing too is because I'm a bit of a feminist and this is something that it's just like, it is so cool to be a woman. We have this power that we have been sleeping on. We have been told is a curse or whatever. And we've also, can we get into, this was not one of the questions that I have for you, But I think that it is extremely relevant for people to be aware of.

12:23What I think is really, really critical is that so much of your relationship with your cycle, your understanding of your cycle, how you live it, and how it affects your view of your own body and how it affects your health journey comes from your mom. So like your mom's experience of her cycle is like what taught you, right? Maybe you grew up in a house that it was like, yeah, everyone in our family has really bad cramps. and that just became the lens that you started to view out of that you were like oh yeah i guess this is just normal everyone lives this or everyone just gets on birth control like don't even worry about it honey as soon as you're 14 we'll get you on it and that's just like the most that you've ever known and i talked to so many women that they're like man like this was all that was offered to me because it was what their mom's experience was and moms always do their best but what's really cool is like now in 2025 like we have so much more information about cycles and birth controls and what's good and what your options are, that I think this next generation of moms is going to raise girls that know what is possible for them and what their options are and be the most cycle educated than maybe they have been ever.

13:29Flo Moynihan:Absolutely. And that's exactly what we want to do today is we want to empower women with information that they might not have known was even a thing. So before we talk about how to cycle sync, can you share about the benefits or the results of cycle syncing. Yeah. You know what's funny? There's actually not a ton of accepted scientific data on cycle syncing. But there's so much anecdotal. I mean, and I can talk about, like, I have my own anecdote, you know? Exactly. So anecdotally, what women notice is, one, that some women really like having that kind of structure or insight into what they're eating and how they're moving.

14:12Flo Moynihan:Other women are really perfectionistic and have really struggled with doing the same thing every single day. And so when they hear that their cycle ebbs and flows, and so the way that they eat and that they work out can ebb and flow, it becomes a huge relief. But they're like, man, I've always struggled to be consistent the way that my husband or my dad is. But to know that I actually don't need to be doing four days a week of HIIT classes for the whole month long, and that I'm not a failure if I want to stop at a certain point is like a really big relief. And it kind of is like helping you learn to tune back in, which is my biggest priority.

14:44Because when you like listen to the body whisper, it doesn't have to scream. And when you learn how to speak the language of the body, you stop being so confused all the time. Because like so many women just steamroll past their body signs and symptoms all month long, or they were never taught. When you know what to look for, your brain becomes primed and it becomes more obvious, which what we really want is for your body's signs and signals to become more obvious to you so that then you know how to respond. The same way that when your toddler, like when some other toddler is like babbling at you, you're like, I don't freaking know, but your toddler, you're like, he said he wants a sandwich with the edges cut off.

15:21Like, how did you not get that? So it's like really learning how to read your own body's signs and symptoms. And then you can respond before the toddler freaks out and is like melting down in the middle of the grocery store, right? The same way with your body, you want to be able to respond so that you can actually help your body, give it what it needs before it starts to freak out in terms of crazy PMS or really bad acne or whatever it may be, those symptoms that it speaks through. Does that make sense?

15:47Flo Moynihan:Yes. How many decisions have you made already today about food and sleep and screens and what's normal and whether that thing your kid just did is a phase or going to stick around a while and needs to be addressed ASAP. And underneath every single one is this quiet little voice going, am I getting this right? Carrying all of that by yourself is so heavy. And it's even heavier when you feel like you're just guessing. The mom club is where you stop guessing alone. It's a whole room full of like-minded moms thinking through the exact same things you are, plus the deeper conversations that help you actually feel sure of your choices instead of second guessing them at 2 a.m.

16:29Flo Moynihan:If you've been craving that, come join us at learningtomompodcast.com slash join. That's below in the show notes for you in case you forget. I cannot wait to meet you inside. So talking about like the anecdotal results or benefits that women have shared because they've cycle synced, what would you say some of those are? I think you just mentioned clear skin. Yeah. Or some women actually notice their weight improve, their body composition improve because they're working out in a way that is more sustainable and they can have better results from, or they stop burning themselves out on only doing like excessive cardio and they start to like incorporate a little bit more forms of movement.

17:10Some women notice that their digestion improves or that their energy improves because they're eating certain ways that support things. It also, I think, is bringing in more variety to the week and a little bit more flexibility so that you can ebb and flow a little bit more easily too. What were some of the, you always say it changed your life. I saw your post about this the other day on Instagram. I feel like I'm just nicer. Your mood.

17:37Flo Moynihan:Mood change. and I feel that way throughout the whole cycle not just typical PMS I think I have yeah better energy I'm and I'm nicer when I and the really the only thing that I do when it comes to cycle thinking is diet cool I mean and you can I mean you could do it as hard or as little as you want when it comes to diet or when it comes to the other aspects too right so let's get into that Can you just share again, kind of what the purpose is of in the body? And then let's also talk about the biomarkers. Wait, let's just break each phase, what it does, the biomarkers, and how we should be living.

18:18Great. Beautiful. So you have these like four different phases. You can also think of them as four as different seasons within the cycle. So the first, we'll start with your period. The start of every cycle is a new period. This is known as your like hormonal winter. Think about like things are kind of dead and leaves have fallen and we're in this like season of shedding, right? So this is where my biggest pro tip for you and the main biomarker you're going to see is bleeding. The main thing that you want to be keeping track of is are you bleeding enough or are you bleeding too much, right? So there is such thing as too little of bleed or too heavy of a bleed.

18:58So we want to have this Goldilocks three to seven days with at least one day of heavy or medium. I'm a FEM instructor. FEM is a method of cycle tracking, which we would say heavy or medium is at least three pads or tampons on one day. So if we have at least one day... For me, I'm like, that's like ultra heavy. No, I know. I know. That's like,

19:24Flo Moynihan:Yeah, that's just by lunchtime. I used to be like you and I was like, I couldn't wrap my head around that people weren't bleeding that much. So we want to make sure that it's not excessive. It's like all heavy days for seven days. Then there's something that needs some deeper support there. So we want to pay attention to that. How much are you bleeding? So I teach my clients to chart on their paper charts. We look over their charts with them. We make sure that we're doing it correctly. If you're going to do that phase, think, what do you do in winter? You rest and you warm up. So you have, this might be where you like need to take a nap.

20:03There ain't no shame in needing a nap every so often. It's a dilemma if you need a nap every single day of your life. But if on your period, you find yourself a little bit slower, you need to go to bed earlier, or you need to take a nap in the middle of the day, I don't have a big problem with that. So you need to rest. This is probably not the time to do your marathon training. And if you can control things, which I know for moms, they might be listening and be like, you think, you think I can just like change my schedule? Like, no, no, no, I know. But it might be the times where you go like, Hey babe, can you like take over for the kids?

20:32Or like my period's coming in two days. I know that I'm going to need a little bit of a break. So think about the rest and then think about warmth. This is not the time for salads. This is not the time for ice cold drinks. What we want is to have warmth. Think about this blood flow, this circulation that's happening. And we want things to flow easily and well. This is a game changer for cramps. If you're someone that cramps really, really badly, I want you to switch to, and even if you're like, I love ice water, you'll pry it out of my cold dead hands. Like I totally get it. But for one period, go ahead and try having either just room temperature water, get it out of your like, I have a Berkey.

21:09So you get it off the counter or doing warm drinks like tease and see how your body responds. Another little pro tip is if you have really bad cramps, try out a couple cycles, maybe one or two cycles where you don't use tampons. Yeah. For me, I know it will mess me up pretty much instantly. I have a lot of clients that were coming to us with level eight, nine, 10 cramps and they switched to pads and they're like you're joking. That helps that much. Yeah, it does. Even if they're organic. So switching to like period undies or pads. Okay.

21:45Flo Moynihan:Let's talk about the food that we need to be eating. You just said warmth. Yes. So warmth. So I want you to focus on temperature. So having things that are slow cooked, warm, this is not the time for cold sandwiches, salads, or cold drinks. In terms of support, I really like for you to add in ginger tea. This is one of like my biggest life hacks is always have an organic ginger root in your freezer. Because when you think about a root, it's pretty big. You probably don't use the whole thing in the one time. But if you always keep it in your freezer, you have it ready for the next period and you can grate it or cut off a few chunks, boil it to make tea because it's a root.

22:20It's really, really sturdy. So it needs time to break down so that you get the best effects out of it. But there is a study that found that it was as effective as painkillers. And that's what I have my clients use. And they literally will go from taking like 12 ibuprofen a day to like maybe three, if at all, because it's so effective. Dang. Yeah. It's also great for inflammation support. Or if you have like some kind of GI or stomach discomfort that kicks up on your period, it's like another good way to support your gut in that season. So ginger is a big one. Then because you're bleeding, you want to think about iron.

22:54So red meat is really important. If you still think that you should be staying away from red meat because so-and-so told you that it's bad for you, that's just not true. Red meat is a nutrient powerhouse. So really making sure that you're consuming red meat, slow cooked meats. Those are some of my favorite things there. And increasing your magnesium. So if you already take a magnesium supplement, you might need to increase like another 200 milligrams. Magnesium glycinate is my favorite form. Don't increase magnesium citrate. You're going to get diarrhea. But having a little bit more magnesium.

23:26Flo Moynihan:What are the brain powers that we have? Oh, this is your reflective zone. So this is where you should look back on the past month and think about, okay, how is my life looking? What's going well? What do I need to be focusing on? This is like journal time. And it's a really great physical signal of a new season that's about to start. Which if you're like a go, go, go woman that like life just feels like it goes really quickly. It's a great way to be like, okay, this is my signal that it's time to tune in and kind of reflect on the past month. What's going on in my life? How are things looking?