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Hormonal Intelligence: A Guide for Moms of Teens and Daughters
41 Plays4 months ago
Is Your Menstrual Cycle Your Secret Parenting Superpower?
Stop fighting your body and start leading your family with hormonal intelligence. For many moms of teens, the monthly cycle feels like a "curse" to endure while managing a busy household and a daughter’s shifting moods. But what if your cycle wasn't a burden, but a strategic tool for productivity and connection?
In this episode of The Positively Healthy Mom Podcast, host Laura Ollinger sits down with hormonal intelligence expert Alyx Coble-Frakes. Together, they reveal how to move from "getting through" your period to using your biological rhythm to improve your parenting, your work, and your relationship with your daughter.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- The "Superpower" Reframing: How to stop resisting your hormones and start using your cycle as a communication and planning tool for your family.
- Practical Cycle Tracking for Busy Moms: A simple breakdown of the "Four Seasons" of your cycle to help you plan work projects, self-care, and social commitments.
- Ending the Cycle of Mom Guilt: Why irritability and low energy aren't "bad parenting"—they are biological signals. Learn to match your expectations to your biology to reduce burnout.
- The Mother-Daughter Connection: How teaching your teen daughter about body literacy creates a foundation of emotional safety and body confidence.
This Episode Is For You If:
- The Overwhelmed Mom: You feel like you’re on an emotional rollercoaster and want your peace back.
- The Mother of a Teen Daughter: You want to give your daughter a healthier relationship with her body than the one you grew up with.
- The "Cycle-Breaker": You want to understand the biological roots of reactive parenting to stop the cycle of mom guilt.
- The High-Achiever: You want to align your workouts and work schedule with your natural energy shifts.
Key Questions Answered:
1. How can I stop viewing my period as a burden? Most moms were taught to hide their cycles. Alyx explains how to flip the script, viewing your menstrual cycle as a strategic tool for planning your family’s schedule and self-care.
2. What are the "Four Seasons" and how do they affect my parenting? We dive into the four hormonal phases. Learn why you feel like a "Super Mom" one week and need isolation the next—and how to communicate those needs to your family without guilt.
3. How do I talk to my teen daughter about hormones without it being awkward? By modeling cycle awareness, you show your daughter that her hormones are a communication tool. We discuss practical ways for moms and daughters to track rhythms together to foster deeper emotional connection.
Resources Mentioned:
- Alyx’s Guide to Cycle Awareness:https://www.theagendaperiod.com/
- Connect with Alyx on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyx-coble-frakes-3b27845b/
- Connect with Laura: @positivelyhealthycoaching
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Transcript
Introduction to Positively Healthy Mom Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Positively Healthy Mom podcast, where positive parenting meets well-being.
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Positively Healthy Mom.
Introducing Alex Coble Freaks and Her Mission
00:00:14
Speaker
I'm your host, Laura Olinger, and today I'm so excited to introduce you to my guest, Alex. And so Alex, tell us your full name, where you're from, and what you do for work.
00:00:24
Speaker
Hi, I'm Alex Coble Freaks. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I am from Iowa. I'm in Des Moines hanging out in the the Midwest here. So I'm super excited to be with you today. And I am a period entrepreneur. So I help women and menstruators understand the phases of their cycle to increase their productivity.
00:00:43
Speaker
And as a mechanism to increase their overall health and wellness, because the menstrual cycle impacts everything we do. So I'm, so I'm super excited. Thanks for hosting me today. i can't wait to be on your podcast.
00:00:53
Speaker
yeah Yes. Yes. Okay. So I think when people hear this, they're just like, what, like, what's happening? ah Like, yikes, what? What? Gross. I don't want to talk.
00:01:04
Speaker
Everyone's like, here he is. No, thank you. I don't want to talk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes. Okay. Stick with us. It's definitely going to be worth it. Okay. So moms, this is going to be awesome. So Alex, let's just start with like, how did you get into this line of work?
Alex's Journey and Business Insights
00:01:19
Speaker
Yeah. So I had learned about like the healthy menstrual cycle when I was in college, I had read Elisa Vidi and Christiane Northrup. So like women's bodies, women wisdom, or like kind of hearing about like cycle syncing in terms of eating and our nutrition and our exercise, but had IUD at the time. So i was like in one ear out the other, I don't really think this is that important for me.
00:01:39
Speaker
And then I finally, i was like in like my upper twenties and I was like, yeah, I'm really ready to get this thing out. I'm ready to understand myself. And throughout that whole time, I had been working in in health and wellness. And I went back to school to get my own health and wellness certification.
00:01:53
Speaker
i started working a lot with women. And I was also tracking my own sales. And I found that I had higher sales during the ovulation phase of my menstrual cycle. And I was like, what? They did not tell me that in business school. Why did they not teach me this in my sales class?
00:02:07
Speaker
Yes. Yes. I mean, that's just literally when you, I hear that I, I, my brain can't even process that. Like i would think if there were, you know, a cycle of sales that it would be like the time of the year or, um maybe related to something you're going through personally. So maybe you had more energy at a certain point, but it never, I've never dawned on me that you would have better sales during a certain time of the month. So, okay. So then what happened? Yeah.
00:02:33
Speaker
Yes, and I found, i like went looking for for anything that would back me up because I'm like, am I crazy? Am I really having higher sales during ovulation? This sounds so weird. And so I got, I went into the rabbit hole.
00:02:44
Speaker
I found a study of exotic dancers and they split them up into a cohort of women on birth control and then women not on birth control. And the women who were not on birth control all made more money during ovulation in tips, up to 30% more than any other phase of the cycle. So talk about business use case.
00:03:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:02
Speaker
That's true. That's true. Like 30% straight to the bottom line. Get out of here. What are we talking about? This is crazy. Right. And so what I, what I really found and like the more I've been in this work over the last seven years now is that we've got a really pro pro social orientation. The first half are because our body wants to get pregnant. That's what humans are made for. all supposed to be populating the species. Right. So even if your brain doesn't want to do that, your body is still sending off clues, cues, cues,
00:03:29
Speaker
to the external world. And it's easier to say yes to people. If you're already a mom, it's easier to, it's, you're going to find your parenting is easier and more fun during the the first half of the month, because the way estrogen works with serotonin in the brain, it's just easier to be in a room with loud kiddos when you have more estrogen supporting you and backing you up.
Biological Influences on Productivity
00:03:50
Speaker
Then the second half of the cycle, very intentionally, our body turns to a pro self hormonal orientation because that's when you're protecting a potential pregnancy. So even if you aren't, even if your human brain knows there's no way I could get pregnant this month, your body doesn't know that. So it's, it gets self-protective. So our face changes, our nose shape changes, it like gets wider at the base so that we can smell things that may disrupt ah ah a potential pregnancy, right? Cause you're, you don't want to eat something rotten or get food poisoning.
00:04:19
Speaker
That could end a potential pregnancy. So our body is very meticulously designed to go out and get pregnant or to stay pregnant throughout our menstrual cycle. And we do this over and over again because that was the intention.
00:04:33
Speaker
That's how humans evolved to be here. So this is deep from our evolutionary biology that that we experience these things. And then you can start to understand from a modern lens when motherhood with our lack of support is demanding that we show up the same every single day, why we're all exhausted, burnt out, and a little bit frustrated sometimes at trying to have a career, being parents,
00:04:58
Speaker
while all of these changes are going on, especially if you're not even getting supported. This may be the first time you're hearing about this, but like you've got that in like that gut feeling like, oh crap, that's what's been going on this whole time.
00:05:09
Speaker
Yeah. So it's a lot harder when we don't recognize that it's going on because we just think we're broken. Like, wow, last week was so fun with my kids. Why are they driving me crazy today? Yeah, yeah. So moms are just kind of beating themselves up and, you know, there's the infamous mom guilt and the shame and the, you know, all that stuff. ah Okay, so how can we now that we have this information, what can we do with it? How can we optimize everything?
Understanding Menstrual Phases Through Seasons
00:05:34
Speaker
Yeah. i i would love to tell you that the seasonal orientation is a really great one. and This is from the UK from Red School. I did not come up with this, but I think it's really easy if you're hearing about cycle syncing for the first time to digest and to give yourself some pointers in real time. So our four phases of the menstrual cycle are like the four seasons that we have on the planet.
00:05:54
Speaker
Our menstrual cycle is like our inner winter time. So we are more internal focused. We may have ah desire to hibernate, think about warm, comforting food. So think of how you would treat, what tools you would use for yourself in the winter, on the external winter.
00:06:09
Speaker
That's what you need to provide to yourself during your period every single month, right? So maybe some more quiet time, some more time alone. And this is the time to dream and vision. so really to sit down with whatever you're working on and think about the month to come.
00:06:23
Speaker
The follicular phase is our inner springtime. So this is when the engine revs back up, right? We've got more estrogen coming back online. We are excited. So this is our busy bee time. So I say this is like one of the work great worker bees of the cycle. So you want to take the plan that you just made on your period and start to do the plan in the follicular phase. so go to the meetings, go to the networking, launch something new.
00:06:46
Speaker
This is not the girl to plan your calendar. She should not plan your social calendar because what used to happen to me very predictably every month, I like would come out of my period. This is before this company, obviously. And I was like, so full of energy that I would schedule myself every, I would i would schedule out the next three months full of activities.
00:07:05
Speaker
And then by the time i would get to the luteal phase again, I would have no energy to do the things I just scheduled for myself. And then I would feel stupid and pissed off that I had scheduled myself so many things I didn't want to do.
00:07:16
Speaker
Right. That sounds so familiar. We fall into it. We fall into that pattern when we're not doing it intentionally because we're like oh my God, I feel great. I'm on top of the world. We almost forget that in two weeks, we're not going to want to talk to anybody. Yeah. So.
00:07:30
Speaker
The follicular phase, she does she does all of the work. we don't We don't put her in charge of planning our schedule because it just does not go it does not go well. Then in the ovulation phase, that's our next phase. This is the shortest phase of the cycle. This is our inner summertime. So this is a time that's hot and potent.
00:07:47
Speaker
And it is great for asking, like getting your husband to book that vacation that he's been putting off. You know, like you're magnetic. You're like very magnetic during this time asking for a raise at work. love that.
00:07:59
Speaker
Family photos, really great time to schedule like pictures for yourself, but family photos. if you If you are an entrepreneur, a good time for your branded photo shoot, anything like that during this time.
00:08:10
Speaker
And then the second the last phase is our inner autumn time. This is the luteal phase. And it kind of has two parts. So the first part is about eight to nine days-ish. And this is what I call our CEO time. This is like very high energy, but internally focused. So if something's been bothering you, if something's not been going well, something's been getting under your skin, you're going to have tough conversations during this time. And it'll be you like, you will have a lot of clarity and more directness during this phase.
00:08:38
Speaker
And it can be when we are even called like nitpicky or like naggy, when we give this phase something to chew on, like our analyzing and organizing, wrapping things up, clearing the clutter, getting going through that pile of mail you've been ignoring, clearing out your email inbox.
00:08:56
Speaker
When we wrap up all of those projects during this time, when we go through a phase of completion, like we do in autumn time, what do we do? We harvest, right? We pick the plants, we pick the crops, we pick apples, we store them away for the winter.
00:09:08
Speaker
When we are honoring that cycle, we don't get as nitpicky to anybody in our lives when we're really getting the work done. And then the last three to four days before your period is kind of like luteal phase two. And this is when we are, our estrogen has dropped, which helps keeps us happy.
00:09:22
Speaker
And our progesterone has dropped, which helps keep us calm. So we can feel very sensitive to the entire world. We feel a lot of things. You may have more tears. You may have more really big sensitive feelings during this time.
00:09:35
Speaker
And that's okay to have that kind of phase with yourself to really see what are the places in my life that need to get tended to. And then you start your period again, everything sheds and releases and the whole cycle begins anew.
00:09:47
Speaker
Oh, wow. That was so awesome. That was so awesome. I had no idea really about any of this. um I mean, I kind of had the gist, you know, obviously I'm a woman, but um I just, i didn't think of it this way. So, so when we're thinking about, um,
00:10:05
Speaker
you know, what you do and how you help clients, like what is it that you offer them when you're working with them? Yeah, the number one thing that we start to do, because often that the same thing that you just said, like, I kind of knew, but I didn't really know.
Tracking and Understanding Hormonal Patterns
00:10:20
Speaker
Like this intuitive hit for women is like, man, I could tell something was funky or but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. So the number one thing that we recommend for people is to start to track your menstrual cycle.
00:10:31
Speaker
So give yourself five minutes a day to do a cycle check in. You want to see your mood, your energy, So we recommend like starting on the first day of your period, the first day of where you'll need the first day that you need a period product is day that we count as day one.
00:10:45
Speaker
So we count our entire cycle from day one of our period all the way to day one of our next period. So that would likely be somewhere between 25 to 35 days. And it kind of depends on on you. And it's going to change as women start to enter perimenopause.
00:10:59
Speaker
But just start tracking. And then when you're counting the days, if you're in a journal or on the agenda period app, for instance, or whatever you, whatever it may be, you can start to see the pattern when you're paying attention because these events. So think about it. We just have each, each period day one is about 30 days away from me it from it, from itself.
00:11:19
Speaker
So if you always get a migrate on the first day of your period, sometimes it may be hard to remember that because a whole 30 days have gone by since your last period. So maybe it feels random rather than a pattern.
00:11:33
Speaker
Right. So when we start to take the notes, we can start to tease out the pattern and then we can get symptomatic relief because different symptoms occurring on the same day or ah around the same time every month can lead you to an awareness of what support you need in your own body, like what's kind of misfiring in your own hormones.
00:11:54
Speaker
But if we aren't paying attention, if we aren't taking a note of it, it's really hard to connect those dots in space and time because so much happens in a month. Yeah, um totally. OK. And I know you do have an app, so we'll get to that in just a second that that um we can suggest for the women so they can track.
00:12:12
Speaker
um The part that I'm so fascinated also, if you could add on any more kind of context, is you know, I work a lot with um kind of neuropsychology. Like I, when I coach, I'm, I, it's called the the process I use is called the neuro encoding process. And so, um you know, we work a lot with dopamine and we are kind of have an awareness of like what we call the happy, happy hormones and happy chemicals. But it, it I just didn't ever actually know that there was a connection with those neurotransmitters and the hormones. So,
00:12:46
Speaker
Is there any other kind of advice or how else can I use that information maybe in the, with the moms that I'm coaching or just in my own life? Yeah. So when we have that, when estrogen kind of starts to fall out during this the second half and women again also start to experience this in perimenopause.
00:13:04
Speaker
they can have more of those symptoms of depression or anxiety because they don't have estrogen there that's working with with dopamine and serotonin. And this is even a higher issue for people who have ADHD or any of those kind of like those conditions because we can have we already our brains already have, me being a person with ADHD, our brains even already have a hard enough time like slowly the ah reuptake of dopamine. And so that's even worse during the luteal phase.
00:13:30
Speaker
And so one of the things is just understanding that this is a biological reality. And kind of having that first piece of awareness is really, really important for for women to understand like, hey, i'm not I'm not going crazy. My body just responds differently to the events of the world, depending on where I am at in my cycle, because estrogen does different things in my brain. So just understanding that is really key.
00:13:55
Speaker
And then the the way to kind of combat for that is all the stuff that we know we're supposed to do in health and wellness that isn't that fun to do. Like drinking water and exercising every day. like,
00:14:09
Speaker
um like not eating hyper-inflammatory foods, especially during the luteal phase, because that can make it our brain that's already struggling. So like a bunch of sugar or a bunch of gluten, all of those, a bunch of caffeine, all of those different things will compete for our brain's already struggling attention during, during the luteal phase. So, and we also need like, it's, it impacts everything. Like we need more calories during the luteal phase. We need about 20% more calories during the luteal phase. Wow. i didn't know that.
00:14:40
Speaker
And if we don't, it can kick off binge eating, right? Like, because our body will have so many cravings. Yeah. Like, think of like, oh, I'm just like a hungry monster during the luteal phase. I'm PMSing. I'm so hungry. yeah no Babe, you're just, you just need more calories. But because of diet culture, we we think we're like bad and wrong for needing more food during that time. Yeah. And it's just biological because our metabolism speeds up during the luteal phase to help protect a potential pregnancy.
00:15:06
Speaker
Right? So you can see like all of the dots, they're all tied up together. So without like some additional like hormone replacement therapy as people are getting older, like some people have looked at like if you've got a condition adjusting their SSRI during the luteal phase, there are some doctors now that are getting tuned into that neurobiology and that neurobiological reality that like women need different medication doses during the second half of their cycle because their brain is not the same. Yeah. um And if that's something that's not in your wheel your wheelhouse or something you're going through right now, it's really all of those additional lifestyle factors.
00:15:40
Speaker
So we got recommendations for like, therere there are different times of the month where you should focus on different exercises. If women focus on hard cardio all month long, that's going to stress our bodies out and drive up our cortisol response, which will make PMS worse.
00:15:52
Speaker
Like all of these little, we're like a puppet on a string and it's all connected back to the menstrual cycle. And it's so funny because, um you know, as we kind of mentioned that everything you said, everything in kind of health and wellness has been designed or geared or um the research is used from men, but there's this, we take up actually more than half of the world's population.
00:16:20
Speaker
And so like, it's just kind of pretty cool now that like, there's no almost, I guess you know, I would want to say two days of light, but there's no in, in, in, you know, these are kind of like little chunks of time, like a few days here, the longer phase you mentioned with eight or nine days. And so just the idea that like you, you mentioned, like,
00:16:38
Speaker
everything is connected everything is evolving it's constantly shaving shifting and shaping and all these things and so um when i kind of first heard about you i i almost got like a little overwhelmed like well how the heck am i supposed to incorporate that so how what would you say to a mom who's like this is way too deal you know because i'm not a much of a detailed person i leave the details to my people i have people that do my you know nitty-gritty stuff so how could like You just, um I mean, I think I already feel empowered just talking to you, but instead of a mom like shutting this off and be like, oh my gosh, I can't handle that. Who might be overwhelmed.
00:17:15
Speaker
How can we just like make her feel empowered that she can like at least take what she's learned even from just this and kind of go and apply it somehow?
Embracing Menstrual Cycles for Balance and Self-care
00:17:24
Speaker
I think the simplest phrase, so I love talking about the four phases, and I understand that that it can be a lot to, like, grasp onto. And you're like, oh, my God, I'm only, like, because, like, men are hormonally similar every single day.
00:17:36
Speaker
And out of our whole calendar year, women are hormonally similar 13 days, right? Because, like, one day in each and each cycle, kind of, like, because you're constantly, like, from one day to the next, you're amping up like a roller coaster, like, ch-ch-ch.
00:17:51
Speaker
So like wherever you would slice down and find that date, like that will match up with the next cycle on day one, but you're not that similar from day one to day two. So it is completely can be overwhelming.
00:18:02
Speaker
And so that's why we've started to look at it, like kind of thinking about the two halves of the cycle. So from day, from day one of your period, all the way through an ovulation, most women know about the ovulation. they're like, Ooh, I feel sexy right now. You're like, maybe have the slip and slide situation when you go to the bathroom, like your libido is up.
00:18:18
Speaker
So from, from your period through then you really, it's just, no, it's easier for me to want to go out and do things for my family. It's easier for me to be attentive to my husband. I find him sexy and hilarious during the ovulation phase, right? Like That man could tell me anything. And I'm like, look at you taking out the trash today. Like you look so awesome. Right. yeah So just understanding our brain has that pro social orientation in the first half.
00:18:41
Speaker
And then we get turned inward. We are. more pro self. And this doesn't mean you're bad. This doesn't make you a bad mom. It doesn't make you a bad woman. It is literally a biological function of your body trying to protect a potential pregnancy.
00:18:54
Speaker
And you can like it or not like it. It's just the reality of the situation. And so just, I think having that understanding of like, we're just, we're just different because our body is trying to accomplish different tasks throughout our month.
00:19:09
Speaker
Right. It's just like a good, like, okay, it's not all in my head. It's I'm not going crazy. This is just how my body is. This is how my body is. Yeah. Yeah, man. I have a bunch so many more questions, but we need to wrap up pretty quickly. So is there any last kind of like I mean, I know you kind of alluded to self care. Is there any last tips you want to give on that self care piece? Or is there anything else that we should know?
00:19:37
Speaker
I would just say your cycle is your superpower. It is really this like beautiful way for you to live your life in the world. And so i think that seasonal framework is the best way to kind of consider how do I wrap myself in self-care? So on your period, ah good book,
00:19:52
Speaker
in a cozy spot may feel really great in the follicular and ovulation phase, trying something new, going out with friends as a mechanism of self-care. And in that, in that luteal phase, you know, giving yourself that time. Like sometimes I find it very soothing in the luteal phase to like go through my craft drawer and put everything back in the right place and store all the, you know, cause like I'm, I'm, I'm doing something that really is supportive of that phase. And so when you recognize that every, like nature doesn't have to rush. It doesn't have to have snow storms in July in order to have enough winter, right? Like it just, it each, everything has a place and everything has a season.
00:20:29
Speaker
And when we allow ourselves to slow down long enough to fit things into the right place, Everything changes in our life. Everything changes. Yeah. Yeah. I love the idea of the self-care at the different seasons or different times because, um, most people just typically think of self-care as that more inward, you know, bath,
00:20:52
Speaker
relaxing kind but there's also the element of self-care which is commonly known but we don't think of it in this way is like oh I'm self-caring by hanging out with my friends I'm self-caring by doing these fun things and self-care doesn't have to be at home it's it's like out in the world and like you said pro-social and making plans and doing all the things so awesome so how can people find the app and how can people follow you Check out theagendaperiod.com.
Resources and Further Learning
00:21:16
Speaker
That's our clearinghouse. That has got our products on there. It's got a link to the app. um If you want to check out other things that we're up to or what we're creating, that's just a really great place to come hang out with us. And we're at theagendaperiod on Instagram and at agendaperiod on TikTok.
00:21:31
Speaker
So I talk about perimenopause, divorce, parenting. We talk about it all. So come hang out with us. We're the tinfoil hat ladies about the menstrual cycle. So come get cozy and come hang out.
00:21:43
Speaker
I will. I definitely will. I'm super excited. Well, thank you so much for your time. i really appreciate it. Thank you so much.