I know I say this every week, but I am so excited for you to hear this episode of Period Story! I spoke with Jenn Pike, a functional nutritionist and medical exercise specialist and we had a wonderful conversation about the power of our menstrual cycles, our period as a report card and the information it gives us and how to exercise in a way that is synched to your menstrual cycle. And of course, Jenn shared the story of her first period! Be prepared to take notes because Jenn shares amazing information and tips!
Listen to hear the story of Jenn’s first period, which arrived when she was at Canada’s Wonderland, a Canadian amusement park (for my British listeners, think Alton Towers!). She says that when she thinks back on it, she wonders why she didn’t learn more about it at school and home.
Jenn says that she now has really open conversations with her son and daughter about periods and menstrual health. It’s important for her son to understand that this isn’t something to shame girls about and he can try to take care of them instead.
Jenn started tracking her menstrual cycle when she was 17 (!!!). Listen to hear why she started tracking at such a young age and what she learned about her body and how to take care of it.
Jenn says that our period every month is a report card, telling us what’s happening with our bodies and giving us the opportunity to heal ourselves. She says that when you understand what your body is telling you, it will change how you show up for yourself in your life, your career, the way you move your body and so much more.
Jenn wants all of us to know that our bodies are our friends and they’re not against us. Our bodies want us to feel the most vital, the most energised, the most loved and the most balanced possible! Thank you, Jenn!
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JENN’S BIO
Jenn Pike is a Functional Nutritionist and Medical Exercise Specialist. She specializes in women’s health and hormones and is the Bestselling author of “The Simplicity Project” as well as her two cookbooks The Simplicity Kitchen and The Simplicity Body.
She is the founder of the global and revolutionary women’s health programs The Hormone Project, Synced and her Simplicity Body Movement series. These programs are dedicated to teaching women what they should have known about their bodies all along; the incredible healing abilities, wisdom and power their bodies hold and how to bring them to life.
You can catch her weekly tips and tools on her podcast The Simplicity Session and her youtube show Simplicity TV. She sits on the Advisory Board for STRONG Fitness Magazine and contributes to CHCH Morning Live, CTV, Global, CP24 and Breakfast Television.
As an inspired Wife and Mom of two, she understands that true well-being is a journey to be enjoyed not a struggle to be forced. She will inspire you to create more Simplicity and Ease in all you do!
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Le’Nise: Welcome to the show, Jenn!
Jenn: Thank you so much for having me.
Le’Nise: So let’s go straight into it. Can you tell me the story of your very first period.
Jenn: Yes. So I was 13. I was in Grade 8, and it was actually this summer between grade eight and going into high school. And I was at Canada’s Wonderland with my friends, which for those of you who aren’t from Canada, it’s a giant amusement park. Think like Disney World, but on a much smaller scale. Anyways, it’s not the place that you want to get your period for the first time.
And I was not prepared. Looking back, I don’t think I was really in touch with my body in that way in terms of noticing any signs or symptoms. I just remember walking and all of a sudden feeling this gush and being like, uhhhh… And luckily two of the girlfriends I was with already had had their period. So I said, like, “I just feel like I peed my pants.” They were like,”Oh, my gosh, I bet you got your period.” I was like, “What? No!”
And then we went into the bathroom and I was like,”Oh my gosh.” I didn’t have anything, they didn’t have anything. And back then they had like the twenty five cent cardboard, no name brand tampons that were on the wall in a machine. And so I got one of those. So I had to use a tampon for my first time having a period and we had just gotten to the park. This wasn’t like part way through the day and our parents weren’t picking us up for like eight hours. And at that time where this amusement park was, there was no like pharmacy or drugstore around. It was literally off the highway in the middle of nowhere. There was like a gas station there. And so I had to use this cardboard tampon that I had no idea what I was doing with. I also, there’s no cell phones. I couldn’t call my older sister or my mom and be like, “Can you walk me through this process?” My girlfriends had never used a tampon. They’d only used pads. So they’re like coaching me on the other side of the door. None of us know what we’re doing. And I, I insert the tampon and I walk out and I’m like, this is so painful. I had left the entire cardboard applicator in as well as the tampon. I had no idea that that was just how you get it in and then you pull that out. So for the next hour, I’m walking through the park and I am like, this is this is the worst thing ever. How do women have this for like 40 years of their life?
And so, we are in line to go onto a ride. And I’m like whispering to them, you guys like this cardboard is killing me. How do you make this pain go away? And there was a woman in front of us with her small kids and she was like, “I don’t mean to interrupt, but do you still have the cardboard for the tampon inside of your body?” And I was like, “Yeah.” And she’s like, “No, no, you are not supposed to.”
So we went back to the bathroom, got another quarter, tried it again, and then it was much more comfortable.
But I was just like, “Oh my gosh.”
Le’Nise: How do you feel when you look back and you think about that story now?
Jenn: I think to myself, how did I not know? Like, where was the conversation in any of my classes in school or even with my mom and my sister? Right. I understood what tampons and pads were and there was no weirdness around periods in our house. My older sister is 12 years older than me. So like she was 16 when I was four, I was exposed to a lot of things at a young age that is very normal. But I think because things were so normal in our house that they didn’t go into detail. Right. And like, tell me certain things. And then I think back to grade five, six, seven, even grade eight of like sex education and health, and that there was never that conversation that went into that kind of detail. So looking back, I’m like, oh, my gosh, I wish I knew. And then it kind of spears’ this off side conversation of, well, what else didn’t I know? Right. So, yeah, my oldest, she’s 14 now, and so and I have five nieces that are all older and my, one of my nieces was 10 when she got her cycle. So she was quite young. And so when my daughter was around that age, I had really open conversations. I put together like a little package in her backpack with like a fresh pair of underwear and like a panty liner and those kind of things. And we had those talks so that she did not have to go through that.
Le’Nise: So when she got her period, has she already got her period?
Jenn: Yep.
Le’Nise: And there was no surprises for her?
Jenn: No, actually, she, she took it like a champ. She just came home one day. I think I got my period and I was like, tell me more. And she was like there was just like stuff in my underwear. And so, I just used the stuff that you brought me and my other friends, you know, they knew what to do. And so, like, it’s fine. And she was very asymptomatic with her cycle for a very long time. And I taught her to start to track, like, right away so that she had this idea and not even just tracking, you know, when it was coming, how long it was when it was ending. But also, like, just start to notice how you feel so that because especially in your first couple of years, you can have very irregular cycles and you can be surprised. We talked about the tying the sweater around your waist, if any accidents happen and all of those little things.
Le’Nise: Wow. I mean, you just wish that every, every girl had a mom like you with all this knowledge that they go into, when they get their period, they’re totally prepared and totally nonchalant. like your daughter.
Jenn: Yeah, it’s interesting, too, because my other child is a boy, our son, who’s 12 now. But ever since he was, we’ll probably like, Emerson, it was four years ago we started having these talks with my daughter. So Sam, our son, he was around eight. We just are very open and they’ve grown up in my studio when I owned it, in my home, teaching women, hearing all about hormones, health periods. And so it’s not gross to them. It’s just like, “oh, God, Mom. Like, again, stop talking about it.” Right? They’re just over it.
But he, growing up, I always made sure for him, he also understood that, you’re going to have friends and class and girlfriend at some point in life, and you might notice that her mood changes, that she’s a bit more emotional, you don’t call her bitchy, you don’t say, is it that time of the month? You don’t make rude comments to her and it’s going to happen when you’re around at some point where some girl is going to get up and you’re going to notice that blood has leaked through on her pants or on her chair or something. You do not be the kid that makes fun. You take your sweater off and you give it to her to wrap around her waist. Like I was very clear about those things: as a boy, that this is not something to shame girls about and take care of them.
Le’Nise: That is ,that’s so beautiful. I love that and I wish that more, more parents taught their sons that because these conversations aren’t just for girls, they’re for boys as well. And this is how we break these taboos about periods and menstrual health and move away from this idea that we’re supposed to be bitchy or we’re supposed to be, quote unquote, moody cows.
Jenn: Yeah. Yeah, I know.
Le’Nise: So when you got your period, you were at Wonderland. And then what happened when you got home?
Jenn: Oh, my gosh, I got home. And it was another, another girl’s parents who had picked us up. So when I got home, I got home and I went to my mom, my sister and I was like, “Oh, my gosh, you were never going to believe what happened to me.” And I was like, “I got my period today.” And they were like, ready to have a freaking cotillion for me, like, you know, that episode in The Cosby Show. And like, Rudy gets her period and they have like the menstrual parade. And I was like, you don’t understand. And I told them what happened. And they were like, my sister: “Jenn, oh, my gosh, I can’t believe you left it in.” And I was like, “I can’t believe no one told me that you’re not supposed to leave it in.” And yeah, so it was and then it was just a thing of, you know, that my mom going and get me all the things, putting a basket under the kitchen sink, the bathroom sink. But my brother and I shared a bathroom at the time. And so again, he was like, an older sister. It was no big deal in our house. My dad was aware, like it it just was never a hush hush, like this is bathroom talk kind of thing. And there was three of us women in that house now at that time that we’re all menstruating. And eventually we all ended up on the same cycle as well, too. So then my brother, my dad would just be like, oh, you know, a few days leading into it.
Le’Nise: You know, that’s really interesting that you say that, because whenever there’s any discussion of that in like magazines or newspapers, inevitably, you get people saying, oh, well, that’s been debunked. You know, women’s cycles, they don’t regulate to each other. But then you hear all of these stories like women in the same household where their menstrual cycles do align. So I just, it’s more proof that actually, there’s more to this than we realise.
Jenn: Oh, my gosh. And I would say as a health and hormone practitioner and I only work with women in my practice, I would say that I have like, unequivocal data to prove that those articles are wrong because majority of the women I’m working with are mothers and they are in sync with their daughters or they’re in sync with their coworkers.
They’re in sync even with, like long distance friends that they have. The more they talk about their bodies, the more they talk about their cycles, the more open, vulnerable and honest the relationships they have in their life, the more attuned they are to what is going on. I find that it just there is like this interweaving, this webbing that happens with the women in their life. And everybody starts to become within a few days of what’s going on in their cycle.
Le’Nise: That is so fascinating. And when they’re, when their cycles are actually seen as a positive thing in their life, they kind of get the benefit of aligning around the follicular phase, that energy of ovulation. And you can just see all the benefits of that. So this is what happens for you and your daughter?
Jenn: Yeah. So it’s interesting. I don’t think she picks up on it as much just being her age and she has other things she’s thinking about. But for me, I definitely do like, I notice how she walks into a room, the way that she communicates with us. And because I do cycle synching, I’m just very aware on that level. And it’s actually a really, it’s become a cool parenting tool, the dynamics with my husband and I because she’s in a mood or whatever, and he’s like not tolerating the mood. I’m like, hey, just so you know… Is there ever a safe time for me to let her know that that’s not appropriate to act that way or behave, or is it always because I’m like, no, you just have to understand. And and the other thing I always say to my husband and my son is like, here’s the thing. If you just let it go and give her the space to just feel the way and granted like we’re not talking, like being rude and belligerent and whatever, it’s just like if you notice it, just pretend you don’t notice it. Like let her just have her space, because that’s really for us as women. All we need is we just need to be able to feel like it’s a safe environment to, to feel how we want to feel. Let us move through that. And the faster we get to move through it, the better we feel what we like.
Le’Nise: I mean, just so many lovely parenting gems you’re coming up with here that listeners can take away. So when you go back to your experience in high school, so you are about to go into grade nine, you got your period and you said that your, the education you got in health wasn’t that great. So how did you then educate yourself about your body? And then what was your relationship like with your period?
Jenn: So going into grade nine specifically, I don’t remember a lot changing in the beginning, but coming in towards the end of grade nine, like I had my first serious boyfriend and there were definitely, I mean, being in high school, you’re hearing more about people being sexually active and the conversations were changing and circumstances were. And so for me, I’m adopted. And my birth parents were 15 and 16 when they had me.
And I knew this story my whole life growing up. And so in my mind, when the conversation in school, the education of that time in like sex ed was how not to get pregnant, there was kind of this hard wiring in the back of my mind where I was like, oh, my gosh, I am like living proof that this can happen, right? Like, this is how I was born. And so, I became very curious about how not to get pregnant.
So for me, when I thought that I was going to become sexually active, it wasn’t just about the pill because I was like, I’ve also heard that’s not one hundred percent and that you possibly could get pregnant. And so I was like, well, I want to learn more about barrier method and right, so condoms. And then I was like, I learned I mean, from a young age, I understood what spermicides were and those types of things like using foam. And I was very well versed to the point by grade 10 in gym class, we were learning about things in health and we’d go back in the change room and I would say to my girlfriends, “OK, we just learned actually not true. I’m going to tell you the real deal.” And so I was essentially teaching these classes at the age of like 15, 16 years old in the locker room after gym class. And then by 17, I was I was tracking my cycle. I was actually, pen and paper. I had graph paper. I was in a yoga studio one day. I was 17 years old. And there was this book called Taking Charge of Your Fertility. And I started to read it and I was like, oh, this is fascinating, I thought reading the cover, it was like how you’re going to get pregnant.
And for whatever reason, I started to flip through and I was like, wow, this actually is not just about if you want to get pregnant, this is if you want to really have a deeper relationship with your own cycle, your body and understand your health. So I started tracking at 17. Now, I was on the pill at that point and no one told me that when you’re on the pill that that’s not a real period that you get. I didn’t know that I didn’t ovulate at all when I was on the pill.
I really, I didn’t understand really what it was, other than I needed to take it at the same time every day, and that this would prevent me from getting pregnant. And so beknownst to me, I was tracking all the way through being on the pill. So when I came off of it, I actually went into a very healthy cycle right away afterwards. But in high school, it was more so just recognising and noticing that no girls knew anything about their body. I was just like baffled by it. And at the same time as when I was really into health and fitness and I was in a gym environment and I was changing what I was eating. And it just, I was always referred to as the weird one, like I was the black sheep, the purple duck, because I was bringing, like, salad and vegetables to school while my friends were eating poutine and pumping out liquid cheese on their fries. I was the weird one.
Le’Nise: Poutine! So Canadian.
Jenn: So it was, it was more so just like this is this is not the norm. What I’m doing, what I’m interested in, what I’m reading about, what I’m talking about with my friends, this is not the norm. But I’d always be the girl that when my friends would start to become sexually active, they would come to me and be like, “OK, what do I need to use? How to protect myself? What do I need to know about my cycle?” And so what I do for a living now, for me, it’s no surprise because it just became this evolution issue.
Le’Nise: There’s so much I want to ask you about. Is this having this self awareness when you were so young is incredible, but also just doing all of this while you’re on the pill. So talk a little bit about why you originally went on the pill,
Jenn: Because I knew I was going to become sexually active. I had a boyfriend. I knew that that’s where things were going to move to. And so I actually went to my mom and I was horrible timing on my part. I went to her and she was getting ready for work in the morning. And I was and I sat on the edge of the tub and I was like, “Mum, I think I should probably go on the birth control pill.” And she was like, “Why?” And I was like, “Well, I think I might have sex.” And she was like, “Lonnie!”, which is my dad’s name. Right? Calls my dad and my and I’m like, “Mum!” So he came up and she was like, “Nothing like, we’re fine.” Anyways, I just said to her, “Look, I’m coming to you because I understand what can happen. Hello again. Birth parents, very young and I want to protect myself.” And so she was like, “OK.”
And so she booked me an appointment with the doctor and I went in. But I still continue to not only use the pill and use a condom, like I was like doubled down on that because I again, like I just, I think it was that just knowing in the back of my mind, like, this is not just a story they tell us to scare us as kids like girls legitimately get pregnant when they are still a child. And so, yeah, it was that. And then I think also, too, I’ve always been very curious about the human body. My dad exposed me to a gym when I was like five, six years old. He was always very active. My mom was doing Jazzercise with the local ladies and I just loved how it felt. And so the older that I got, I just continue to move towards things for my body. That brought me closer to that. And I remember when I was in school to become a holistic nutritionist, one of our teachers one day was teaching a subject. And this is going back like 20 years ago now, called estrogen dominance. And I had never heard of this term before. I had no idea what this meant.
And I was 21, 22 at the time. And she, in a part of her talk, went on to talk about the impact of the birth control pill on our gut, on our health long term, on our mental health, on all of these different things. And I was, I was flabbergasted because at no point in taking the pill for seven years at that time had my doctor asked me any of those questions, explained any of the things that could happen. And when I was 17 on the pill, I started to have breakthrough bleeding and I was like, this is not normal. And I went back to my doctor and I said, I’m having these breakthrough bleeds. And he was like, “OK, we’ll put you on a different one.” And he put me on a different pill. And within two weeks I had put ten pounds on an entire bra size. I was crying. All the time I felt like I was losing my mind and I was like, “Mum, I have to go back to the doctor. Something is wrong with this pill he has put me on. It’s the only thing that has changed in my life.” And I went back to the doctor and I explained to him what was happening with my body. And he and I remember I am 17 years old and I’m crying as I’m telling him this because I’m like, my body is not the same that it was literally two weeks ago. I’ve not even gone through a full cycle of this pill. He looked at me and said, “You know what, why don’t we maybe talk about a low dose of Prozac, an antidepressant?” I was like. What, what and I was like, “No, I just need you to not have me on this pill, can you put me back on the other one or a lower dose? I was like, I’ve been reading about this.” And so he switched me back to a lower dose pill and those symptoms went away. But I left that office and I was like, that was my first moment of, wow, here I am as a woman, as a girl. At that time, I have literally laid out for you exactly what is going on in my body. You saw me two weeks ago and I was not in this state. You know, the only thing that has changed in this, is this pill. And you were prepared to not only keep me on this pill, but then stack me with an anti depressant at 17 years old.
I, I was just, like, flabbergasted.
Le’Nise: And you, it makes you think how many other girls, not even women at that point, girls are on or were on antidepressants unnecessarily because…
Jenn: A ton because I work with them in my practice.
And the stories are. Oh…
Le’Nise: So you what you had this experience with your doctor, did it change and you had to have this experience of breakthrough bleeding on the pill, did it change the way that you felt about your period? Did it change anything else at that point, even like your relationship with their doctor?
Jenn: The relationship with my doctor, I became very, I was very wary in anything he recommended to me after that because I was like, you don’t get it. That was my whole thing. And in my head, I was like, it’s because he’s a guy. He’s a man. He doesn’t get it. I later went on and later in life after having babies and had female doctors and understood. You also don’t get it. So I don’t think this is a person issue. I think this is a system issue. And then in terms of my body, you know, at that time it was tricky for me because I knew that I could use the spermicide, I could use condoms.
But that also felt outside of me because that was the responsibility of someone else. And so I stayed on the pill because I did not want to get pregnant. And I didn’t really feel at that time like I had many other options. And there wasn’t a lot of women around me talking about other options, which is why I firmly believe that, you know, at 17 was the same age this happened to me. It was only a matter of months later when that book, Taking Charge of Fertility, like, literally fell off a shelf at me at a yoga studio, which then led me to read Dr. Christiane Northrup’s book, Women’s Wisdom, Women’s Bodies. And it sent me down this loophole of. not loophole, rather this like rabbit hole, beautiful one, of really just discovering. And then it was like a full circle moment sitting in that class all those years later having this instructor talk about estrogen dominance. A lot of the symptoms that I had actually struggled with that I was told are normal because you’re a woman and you have a period now and you’re on the pill and all these things are going to flux and change. But no one gave me solutions. No one was telling me to, you know, nourish my body in a certain way to take B vitamins and magnesium. Like none of that.
None of that.
Le’Nise: You see a lot of these women who have had a similar experience to you but have gone the way of taking the antidepressant in your practice now. What are the kind of things that you tell them that you wish you had heard? You mentioned magnesium, vitamin. What other other things that you tell them?
Jenn: Yes. So the birth control pill is very depleting on our body, our minerals. It impacts our gut microbiome almost identically to the way that an antibiotic does. So a lot of us can’t wrap our head around being on an antibiotic for five, 10, 15 years. Yet this is like the actual life cycle of a woman being on the pill, averages a decade or more. And it’s like I said, it’s very depleting and it will rob your system of a lot of the core nutrients. So I work with them on helping to heal what’s going on in their gut digestively. So are the bowels eliminating this is a big part, like are we able to actually break down the food that we’re consuming and be free of struggle, of bloating, of gas, of indigestion, of pain, of constipation, of diarrhea. So that’s really the first pillar is making sure that their gut health is on par and that they’re regularly eliminating. And then it’s helping to bridge the gap of where some of those nutrient deficiencies are. So it’s helping to build a foundation.
And I don’t know your your listeners personally, obviously, so please, those of you listening, take these recommendations with a grain of salt and always work with someone. Making sure things like the complete B vitamins, magnesium, vitamin D, those are like some of the core essentials, probably restoring that bacterial balance with a good quality probiotic as well too and some healthy fats, some omegas.
We don’t realize also the impact that the birth control pill has on certain elements of our cerebral cortex and our brain because it’s impacting the gut, your gut and your brain. They’re sharing the same blood barrier. So oftentimes, there’s going to be suppression of neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, which those are our free anti anxiety, anti depressant hormones that we can produce. But if we have barriers there, if we have injury to our gut, that then impacts the way that our body is able to produce those and then obviously how we feel. So, yeah, and then working on what they’re putting in their body food wise, I mean, our food is that is what’s restoring our system. That is what is balancing us, that’s what’s literally getting into our cells, which we’ve learned this is as far as you can go back in science, no matter where you live in the country or what grade you’re in, like the powerhouse of the cells, the mitochondrial energy, that is what everything is made up of in our body. And so teaching them about how to step away from focusing on the macro, which is the calories, the carbs, the fat and the protein and how to actually focus on the micro, like let’s get the nutrients. And then once they’ve worked on that, I will teach them on the certain foods at different times in their cycles. And it really honestly, it depends on the woman, because for some they’re just ready for all the information right out of the gates and for others, there is a period of grieving what they didn’t know and what they went through. And so I work with women individually and I work with them in group settings, and I’ve just learned that I don’t go in with an agenda anymore. I go in and I listen.
And then based on what that woman is dealing with, how she feels about it, there’s a lot of women that when you start to talk to them openly, like it’s so amazing that you do a podcast like this, because there’s a lot of trauma for a lot of women in their period story, not just about the period itself, but the environment around them when it happened, the way they’re made to feel the lack of proper education and love and support they were given to about their bodies. And so women need to feel safe, that they can openly grieve and move through that trauma of going through that experience.
Le’Nise:It’s so fascinating to me that you’ve you’ve talked about the idea of grieving for what they didn’t know. These women who they’re, I speak to so many women in their 40s and their 50s who say, I just wish I had learned this. My life would have been so different. And I think just connecting that with the way that you’re educating your daughter is incredible. And, you know, it’s something it’s something that a lot of us can aspire to, having these really open conversations and moving away from shame.
If you could, if a listener is hearing this and they are saying, well, this is all fine and well, but I feel a lot of shame around my period. What would your message be to them?
Jenn: First of all, I understand why, because everywhere you look in society, we’ve been conditioned to feel that way, not just about our period, but about our body and being a woman in general, like there’s always something to hide. There’s always something that’s not good enough. There’s always something that should be changed. And what I want you to know is that your period, like you being a woman, you were literally given a superpower. Our period is a superpower and it is a superpower of the divine feminine, but also divine intuition. It is a compass that we can tap into every single moment of every single day. And if you’ve never been taught how to use this tool, it’s going to take time. But our period every month is a report card. We literally are the only human beings that walk around and can check in with ourselves on such a visceral level, on a regular basis and understand what feels good and what doesn’t, what appears to be normal and what doesn’t, what are our signs and our symptoms and start to understand the terrain of what is going on hormonally and our body. And this is, it’s a beautiful gift that we wouldn’t be here if our bodies didn’t have the ability to do this to create. And, you know, that’s a lot of the messaging I teach to my daughter and to the younger generation that I’m working with is that, you know, this is a generational gift. And, yes, there can be generational trauma and information that that comes down with it. But each of us have the opportunity to really, you know, flip the page and to heal ourselves in this way of understanding that your period is your voice. Your period is your body’s voice literally speaking to you on a regular basis and letting you know what is going on and when, you can start to understand that language. Because that’s literally what it is, it’s like a different language that none of us have been taught from a young age, and then you just it’s like once a month you’re dropped into this other country with a new language and you don’t understand what’s going on and you just kind of roll with it.
You suck it up. And that’s what life is like for a lot of women for that week on their menstrual cycle. And so, you know, helping them to understand that this is a gift be our response to this gift are our journey. And this is to elevate our education.
Right. So it’s following women like yourself. It’s working with women like myself. It’s understanding that there is this entire collective of women like us that we’ve literally created a livelihood out of this because we’re so passionate, because we know the difference of how you can show up in every facet of your life. This is not just about having a more manageable, healthy period. This is how you show up in your relationships, how you show up in your career, how you show up with your self-confidence, your self-esteem, your self worth. When you can get this part down for you, you stand taller and stronger on your own two feet.
Le’Nise: There’s so much again, there’s so much in what you’ve said that I think listeners, you should rewind and take that all in again, taken Jenn’s knowledge and her wisdom.
You’ve talked about the, the gifts that you can get from your period and your menstrual cycle and how you can connect more with different parts of yourself. I want to touch a little bit on the exercise side of it, because that’s such a big part of what you do. Talk about how women can use exercise as, align exercise with their menstrual cycle.
Jenn: Yes, so I created a program called Synched, which is about synching up your movement, your exercise to the different phases, the four different phases of your whole cycle. And so the reason that I did this is I have been in the fitness industry for 24 years. I’ve been teaching classes since I was 17. I’ve done fitness competitions, worked with athletes, you name it. I’ve been there, taught it and done it. And what I kept realizing and noticing is that so many women were training the same way that men would be. They were going in with a grunt mentality. They were always and oftentimes, truthfully, women were working harder than the men. They were doubling down on double cardio sessions, cardio and strength the same day, never taking days off. They were not respecting the fact that their body is not on a 24 hour cycle like a man’s is. That we can have anywhere from 23 to a 35 day or longer cycle, and that each different phase that our body is moving through impacts our energy, our performance, our recovery, and that by showing up every day and always going hard, long and intense, you are actually creating diminishing returns not only on your physical goals, you’re wearing your nervous system down, you’re depleting your adrenals, you’re impacting your thyroid health, and you are sending a message to your brain into your pituitary gland that is controlling how healthy or whether or not your ovulation is going to happen, the quality of your eggs, your fertility overall and all these things that we do in those fertile years as a woman are what set up perimenopause and menopause and beyond. So I started to create this because I wanted to move my body in a way based on my cycle, and I could not find an actual system that would help me to lay it out, create a calendar where I could press play and go. And so I started to fiddle around and put these together for myself. And I was sharing with my team one day what I was doing. And our director of programming was like, “Why are you doing this quietly and not letting anybody know you have to put this out there like there’s nothing that exists like this”, because she had been looking for something and I didn’t know she was looking for something. Excuse me. And much earlier here than it is over there, morning voice.
And so what Synched is, is I have created a series where during your follicular phase, so follicular phase is that period of time. Once your bleeding is done, bleed week is over and it’s like where you start to feel connected to your body again. It’s like, oh my gosh, OK, like I can reemerge now back into the world. And so it’s a great time to actually challenge yourself. The follicular phase is also the best time where the neuroplasticity of our brain is a woman. We are hardwired to start something new. You will have a better chance of actually sticking with it if you start this in the follicular phase. So it’s a great time for heavier lifting. It’s a great time for a little bit more intensity. And then as you start to transition into ovulation, ovulation is like this. Look at me, very outward energy, high feminine. I am in charge. It’s a very it’s a woo energy. Right, because ovulation is meant to, like, woo in a partner. Right. To procreate life so we can use that woo energy to add a little bit of spice during that period of time into your training. Now, all these things I’m saying is that taking into account you have a healthy nervous system, your adrenals and your thyroid are in check, and you are not exhausted because if you are any of those things, then there’s a beginner approach that I give you in the program so that we’re not further plummeting your your body state of health, but saying that you are healthy, everything is going well, out of ovulation, you come into the luteal phase, which is the longest of the four phases, and this the first week of the luteal phase, is still a really good time to be lifting weights using your own body. But I like to shift it where we go little bit lighter in the actual load, but a little bit higher and repetition and love incorporating more yoga into this period of time as well, too, because yoga for me is like the coming home to our body. It incorporates your breath. It’s a very intuitive way of moving. The longer that you do it, you really just start to access different energy channels in your body. And it’s very calming and takes us out of that sympathetic state, which when you’re in the follicular and ambulatory phase because you’re like literally unstoppable, it’s what it feels like in your energy. You tend to function in that higher fight or flight stress space. Very reactive, quick to decision. You’re an action taker in that period of time.
The luteal phase starts to draw you into the parasympathetic, which is more like pull back and analyse, complete the things that need to get done and start to prepare for the fertile void, like that winter, which is the bleed week. And so as we start to taper into the end of the luteal phase, it is definitely encouraging more things like fresh air, walks outside, yoga, pilates. We’re still strengthening your body, but in a much more compassionate way. And you become the tool and the equipment as opposed to barbells, dumbbells, those types of things.
And then the bleed week, the first couple of days is you like rest. If you want to walk, that’s fine. I also teach women how to do uterine and abdominal massaging using a tool called the Coreageous Ball. So it’s amazing to help to also free up restrictions in the diaphragm to bring us back into our belly breathing. And also if they have any type of crepitus or scar tissue, whether it’s from an abdominal surgery, they have a history of fibroids, cyst, uterine pain. We will use this ball in those first few days to help to ease that. And then in the couple of days after once, typically for most women, they’re more challenging days for their menstrual cycle are days one through three. So by the evening of day three, I’m talking about foam rolling and deeper, stretching, nadi shodhani, like alternate nostril breathing. And then by day 4, 5, 6, 7, now we’re starting to move our body again. But it’s, again, yoga based. So it’s like we enter into a cycle with the coming home to our body. We start to phase out of our cycle, back into the coming home, and then that sets us up if we’re there and feeling it to move back into that follicular phase.
Le’Nise: How long does it take women to typically get into a groove with understanding how to move according to their cycle?
Jenn: I find about four to six months.
Four to six months is typically what I find, because it all depends on how often they’re showing up to this type of movement, and it’s hard the first couple of months, especially for women, like I was this woman who was always used to intensity training for a goal, measuring it, benchmarks, all of that.
I would start and then I’d be like, oh, this isn’t long enough, this isn’t intense enough. And then I would swing back to what was comfortable and what I knew. And then I would not recover well, not feel good. And I’d be like, oh, I’ve got to get back to my Synched. And so they do this back and forth because women don’t trust their bodies. They do not trust that they can do something effectively in less than 40 minutes a day. Sometimes it’s 12 minutes a day. And that, that is enough to make their body feel good because we are not being taught to feel good. We’re being taught to look good.
And there’s a big difference. And a lot of women are living out of alignment with that. So they’re doing the workouts that do not feel good, that are killing them, that are making them exhausted for the rest of the day, burning out their system, that are actually increasing inflammation, creating a plateau with their weight and leading to more issues because they believe the story that they have to look a certain way, way a certain amount, be a certain size. And if they don’t… fill in the blanks, because for all of us, it’s something different, I won’t be loved, I won’t be valued, I’m not worthy. It’s we all have that. I’m actually reading this book right now that is blowing my mind. And it’s called Patriarchy Stress Disorder. And it goes through all of this of like, how every layer of our life is the coating as women that we have been ingrained in us, that our role is how we’re supposed to function, show up.
Look, all of these things and I read this book and I’m like, oh, my gosh, this is every woman I know.
And it it bleeds itself into everything we do, including our movement, which exercise is not meant to be torturous, and we’ve been taught that because of slogans like no pain, no gain. Right. And like the Beachbody mentality of like P90X just grind it like insanity, wear the shirt that’s like sweat dripping. That literally says insanity. Yeah, that that is fucking insane. Right. And that we are not programed that as women. So what happens on a hormonal level is the more you are a grinder with your exercise, you are stepping into a more androgynous, more yang, masculine energy that pulls you further and further out of your own feminine and further and further away from being able to listen when your body is whispering because whispers we will look at as weakness. They don’t matter. Not a big deal. I can suppress that. I’ll take an Advil. I’ll take a Tylenol. I’ll take something. I’ll just move through it until the whispers get seriously agitated and start to yell and start to kick and start to scream, and now you can’t get up in the morning, you are gaining weight, you have horribly painful periods. You have massive breast tenderness. You have hormonal migraines. You are losing fistfuls of hair. You have no sex drive. You are not sleeping. Those things do not show up overnight. There were whispers and signs, but we don’t believe them and we don’t trust them because that’s not what the outer world is telling us.
Le’Nise: What happens when women, they start to get into alignment with their bodies?
Jenn: They become so much more compassionate with themselves. There is a level of grace that starts to show up in how they move through their life. I notice with the women that I work with Synched, in The Hormone Project, their entire tone changes like the tone of their body, the tone of their words, like the language they choose. There is a softening that happens. In some women, there is a fierceness that shows up and it’s like a beautiful fierceness where it’s like, yes, I have known this woman was in there who has needed to speak her truth and needed to come forward, and it’s allowed her to do that. But I would say for most of them, the feedback in Synched around that third fourth month is I never knew it could be this easy and have this great of results, meaning like I never knew that I could only move my body for less than an hour a day and feel so good and all these other parts would start to come into balance.
Le’Nise: So that’s definitely something that we should all be aspire to, being in sync with our body, being in alignment. If a listener is, they’re taking in everything you’re saying and they’re thinking, gosh, there’s so much here. What would you want them, the one thing for them to take away to be?
Jenn: Your body is your friend. And there are beautiful messages that are being communicated to us on a daily basis. But we need to create the space to not only hear them, but to then also like absorb that like soak it up and take it in. And you don’t have to analyse everything. You know, my response when my body communicates something is, “Huh.”
And I just breathe in around it and then I’ll continue to move forward, and as you do this, you will naturally, you will, you will be blown away at how you start to choose things differently for yourself. And so your body is not against you. Your body is not broken. Your body has no agenda coming after you. Your body ultimately wants you to feel the most vital, the most energized, the most loved and the most balanced possible. Our body is not what is in the way, it is us that is in the way. So we need to learn how to sidestep that and saddle right up next to it and start to really listen and massage and receive those messages and lead forward from there and give yourself time, ladies. This is not something you’re going to achieve in 30 days. And this might take years depending on how long you’ve been going through things. But, you know, the gift is, is that the sooner that you can start to do this, the better your relationship will be, the better your transition into menopause will be. And, you know, it’s just your health overall. Your menstrual cycle is the gateway into your health of your entire body.
Le’Nise: Your body is your friend, your menstrual cycle is a gateway into the health of your entire body, words to kind of burn into your brain. Beautiful words.
Where can listeners find out more about you?
Jenn: So they can go to my website, www.jennpike.com. Instagram is where I spend most of my time. And that again is @jennpike. And then I have a podcast, The Simplicity Sessions, and we talk all about women’s health hormones and so much more.
Le’Nise: Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Jenn: Thank you so much for having me.
