Podclass Show Notes and Links
Summary:
Overview of the 4 Phases
Why the first and second phase go together
Why the third and fourth phase go together
Phase 1 is the Release Phase. This starts day 1 of your cycle until day 7
Phase 2 is the rise phase. When everything is rising and boosting up. We are building all of our eggs for the dominant molecule to be ovulated. This phase ends after you ovulate.
Phase 3 is plateau phase this is the time when estrogen and progesterone balances out and we are balancing out everything that we have been putting together.
Phase 4 is the Pause Phase. This is the relaxation time, coming full cycle and getting to the start of a new cycle once again. Doing some integration and doing some retrospective work.
What is Day 1 of my cycle?
Day 1 is the first day of your full period (don’t count spotting). This kicks off the Release Phase
The dark-sub phase is the first 3 days of the release phase. This is an important time as women to support us emotionally, this is a time to rest and plan out how the rest of the cycle is going to go. It is a very short phase, but very important
During phase 1 & 2 (Release & Rise phase) we will focus on inflammation
During phase 3 & 4 (Plateau & Pause phase) we will focus on detoxification
We do this to set up the next part of the cycle up to be successful. Then you can see that each cycle has gotten better.
For a woman with an average 28 day cycle:
You will have found 7 day cycles. If you ovulate on day 14, that would be the end of the Rise Phase.
But if you want to pinpoint the exact day that you ovulate, you can get some more details with LH strips.
Otherwise, you can just break your cycle up evenly. For example, if you have a 24 day cycle, each phase will be 6 days. 32 day cycle, 8 days in each phase.
After you end your period you can start testing for ovulation with LH strips.
Alex’s cycle is 26 day usually, she usually ovulates on day 12. She breaks her phase 1 & 2 up into 6 days.
We like to follow the flow of your cycle as a way to minimize overwhelm and as a reminder to add things back into your healthy lifestyle. Instead of feeling like you have to do ALL the things ALL the time, you can rotate them. And you can use your App as a reminder to get back into habits that you have forgotten about.
Important Links:
Zestyginger.com to learn more about the 4 Phase Cycle Approach.
Zestyginger.com/cycle to get our FREE Wild Feminine Cycle Guide to get started with everything you need to know about living in sync with your cycles.
Zestyginger.com/healthyhormones to join our 3 month Healthy Hormones Group Program. This program includes functional lab work with a complete hormone and neurotransmitter panel, with a personalized protocol created for each participant based on their results.
Follow us on Instagram: zesty_ginger
Season 1 Episode 3 Blog Post Notes:
Overview of the 4 Phases
Why the first and second phase go together
Why the third and fourth phase go together
Phase 1 is the Release Phase. This starts day 1 of your cycle until day 7
Phase 2 is the rise phase. When everything is rising and boosting up. We are building all of our eggs for the dominant molecule to be ovulated. This phase ends after you ovulate.
Phase 3 is plateau phase this is the time when estrogen and progesterone balances out and we are balancing out everything that we have been putting together.
Phase 4 is the Pause Phase. This is the relaxation time, coming full cycle and getting to the start of a new cycle once again. Doing some integration and doing some retrospective work.
What is Day 1 of my cycle?
Day 1 is the first day of your full period (don’t count spotting). This kicks off the Release Phase
The dark-sub phase is the first 3 days of the release phase. This is an important time as women to support us emotionally, this is a time to rest and plan out how the rest of the cycle is going to go. It is a very short phase, but very important
During phase 1 & 2 (Release & Rise phase) we will focus on inflammation
During phase 3 & 4 (Plateau & Pause phase) we will focus on detoxification
We do this to set up the next part of the cycle up to be successful. Then you can see that each cycle has gotten better.
For a woman with an average 28 day cycle:
You will have found 7 day cycles. If you ovulate on day 14, that would be the end of the Rise Phase.
But if you want to pinpoint the exact day that you ovulate, you can get some more details with LH strips.
Otherwise, you can just break your cycle up evenly. For example, if you have a 24 day cycle, each phase will be 6 days. 32 day cycle, 8 days in each phase.
After you end your period you can start testing for ovulation with LH strips.
Alex’s cycle is 26 day usually, she usually ovulates on day 12. She breaks her phase 1 & 2 up into 6 days.
We like to follow the flow of your cycle as a way to minimize overwhelm and as a reminder to add things back into your healthy lifestyle. Instead of feeling like you have to do ALL the things ALL the time, you can rotate them. And you can use your App as a reminder to get back into habits that you have forgotten about.
Transcript for This Podcast
Hi there! Welcome back to class three of our podclass. This is Alex your host. Thank you so much for sharing-joining me again. I’m so happy to share this information with you. And just to chat with all this stuff, Megan and I are obsessed. So in this podclass it’s going to be a little bit shorter. I wanted to do a quick class on the overview of the four phases and why we break those down the way that we do. And then why we have, basically, two halves. Why the first and second phase go together, and why phase three and four go together. And what we are focusing on in each of those four halves. So that’s going to be the deal.
The four phases, like we talked about last week, is going to be the first one is the Release Phase, that is day 1 of your cycle- starting day one and going for around 7 days. Then phase two is the Rise Phase, and that is when our hormones are rising, everything is getting boosted up, we’re building all our eggs for the dominant follicle to be ovulated. And that phase ends after we ovulate. And then phase three is the Plateau Phase, that’s when our estrogen and progesterone balance out, and that’s the time we really begin to balance out everything that we’ve been putting together. And then the last phase is the Pause Phase, which is again kind of the relaxation time, the move down coming full circle and getting to the start of the new cycle once again, and doing some of the integration and being retrospective work, all of that comes into play there. So those are the four phases, and I’ll do a recording and a class for every single phase, and we will go through each one in detail. But this one I just wanted to cover how they are and then answer some questions.
We always get asked “what is day one that we are counting?” Day one is your first full blown day of your period. So a lot of you are coming to us with spotting and other abnormalities in your cycle, that’s ok, you don’t count the spotting, you count the first full day of your period as day one. So that will kick off the Release Phase. And there is actually a little sub-phase underneath there that’s called The Dark Sub Phase. And that’s the first three days. We’ve talked about that in the previous two classes where some of that is very important physiologically, but it’s also very very advantageous to us as women mentally because it give us a time to rest and plan out how the rest of the cycle is going to go. So it’s very very important time. But it is pretty short. That Dark Sub Phase is just the first three days.
And then we go on, if you zoom out from the four phases, we actually group the first two phases – The Release Phase and the Rise Phase – and that time, the first half of the cycle, is going to be all about inflammation and optimizing inflammation. And then the third and fourth phases -which are the Plateau and Pause – they are all going to be focusing on detoxing.
So, let’s say you have the average 28 day cycle. These phases then, for all four of them, are going to be four 7 day phases. Each of them has 7 day and then if you ovulate on day 14 that’s where the Rise Phase stops. You can get a little bit more granular on this actually by doing the LH strips. Which we talked about as homework last class. If you want to get more into it, you can actually pinpoint the day that you ovulate. And that will help figure out where the phases fall in for you. If you don’t want to do that and you just want to do the basic plan, you just break up the four phases equally amongst the days you have your cycle. So if you have a 24 day cycle, you’re just going to spend 6 days in each of the phases. If you have a 32 day cycle, you’re just going to spend 8 days in each of the phases. So that is perfectly fine to do, and a great way to get started. If you want to get more serious with figuring out ovulation, then what you are going to do is after you end your period, you are going to start testing for ovulation with the LH strips. After you ovulate, that day is going to mark the very end of the first half of the cycle. I’ll give you an example: My cycle is 26 days generally, and I usually ovulate on day 12. And so for me, the first two phases I split in half. For 12 days, the first phase is 6 days, and the second phase is 6 days. After that though my second half is actually a little bit longer. And so I break up phases three and four equally among that half. So you can see they are not exactly split evenly. I have two more days that I spend in phase three or four, but that’s totally fine. That’s just how my body wants to work. So you can get very clear on what you want to do. Okay?
Phases one and two are going to be all about inflammation, Phases three and four are going to be all about detoxing. And the reason we do it that way is because you want to do the things that will set up the next part of the cycle to be successful. And so the way that we set this up is that you are always setting yourself up for success for the next phase, and the next phase, and the next phase, and the next phase. And then that way it’s basically like a little stepwise ladder approach, instead of spinning in circles where you’re like “I don’t know what to do! I’m trying these random supplements that I only got through half a bottle before I realized they don’t work for me.” All of this stuff, you’re basically turning around in a circle. But what we want is that you are always building success for the next part. And then that way you can watch yourself cycle by cycle by cycle get better and better and better. And then when you look back 6 months you’re like “oh my gosh! Look how much, look how different my life is.” And for us we’ve realized how much easier things are.
The other reason we change focus half way through is not only because physiologically that’s how it work – and I’ll explain that in each individual class – but, it’s much easier to do this when you don’t feel like you’re constantly falling off and forgetting to do everything. So if you’ve been someone that’s been following a natural living lifestyle for a while, you probably have a huge list in your head of things you know you should do. Right? And so we are always sorta tend to run around and being like, “oh I forgot to dry skin brush for the last three days!” “Oh shoot, I forgot to coconut oil pull!” “Oh I forgot my morning elixir!” You’re kinda constantly feeling like you are picking up the balls you are dropping as you are juggling everything. In breaking up into two discrete phases, and tracking the phases – especially with the app that we recommended- what you’re doing is you never feel like you have to do one thing all the time, or that your list of healthy things to do will actually take you two hours a day to get done. And that’s never really the goal. The point is not to spend so much time on health that you don’t live your life, the whole point is to be healthy so you can do everything else in your life that you want to do. And so really it’s a way to simplify in that it takes away that feeling of constantly unable to keep up with this. It’s a way to say this is the phase for this, and then when that phase is over, I’m done with that for this cycle. Right, so I only do my detoxing tools in the second half. And in the first half if I don’t do them, I don’t feel bad about that. That’s not something that’s weighing on me. They’re just taken care of. There is a time and a place for everything, and that’s fine.
You’ll also find that there is some overlap in the opposite configuration. You’ll see that phase one and phase four are the more gentler, introspection, retrospection, planning, discussing. That phase, those two kind of get lumped together, and then phases two and three are more active phases where we take action, we start new things, we figure out how it works, we make improvements, we make conscious decisions about where we want to go. And we’ll be able to group them that way. There’s lots of different ways to play with these four phases so that you can live your life in the way you wanted. And so all of this is designed to make it as clear and easy and simple as it can possible be while being really really effective. Because we don’t want to have, of course we want things to be effective, but we don’t want by the time they get effective, it’s so much work that it’s unreasonable to live like that. So that’s why we do it that way. Hopefully that make some sense.
This class is going to be short, so I’m going to wrap it up here. But make sure you click on over, find the phase you are on next, and go listen to that. And then circle back around till you’ve listened to all four phases. Okay. Thanks for joining me. Have a wonderful day, and we’ll talk to you soon.
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