It started last night, after sitting in the church parking lot with my boyfriend. We had just attended Wednesday night student service and we were discussing the sermon. It was a really good message, one about diets. The pastor explained that the diet you follow, the things you consume, decide your direction. And my boyfriend and I discussed this for a good ten minutes before teetering off the subject. Somehow.. We came to the subject of my cycle. For an unexplained reason, boys find the topic "ew." Perhaps mommas forget to teach their boys that its not gross. Thankfully, I've found myself with a young man who allows me to talk about the subject and explain things to him like why my cycle is forty days long instead of the normal twenty-eight. And why I get so moody during certain phases, so talkative during one, and quiet the next phase. I had just mentioned to him that night that I was six days late compared to my last cycle. No big whoop. It was as if God heard me and said, "fine, quit complaining." And boom. A forty-four day long cycle was finally over.
What is Cycle Syncing?
Cycle syncing is a rising threat to birth control as it allows women to take control of their lives where BC would normally take over. I have been attempting to cycle sync since quitting the pill. I have found out in my last five months of tracking that I have forty day cycles, almost double the normal amount. I have serious cramps and body ache, I get unbearably cold and then get hot flashes, and I want to curl up into a ball and lay in bed all day. My symptoms make this event that is supposed to be positive and turns it into something negative. I lose my drive to be social and ahem.. my libido. Its all in the trash when my period starts.
Ahem.. Menstruation
According to Alisa Vitti from Flo Living and author of Woman Code, our cycles can be controlled and the symptoms can be relieved with proper food, supplements, and understanding what our body craves during certain phases. When in comes to the menstrual cycle, our body wants grounding and earthy foods such as mushrooms, wild rice, beets, kale, water chestnuts. It craves blackberries, blueberries, grapes, cranberries, and watermelon. It wants things that come out of the ground or off of the vine that are high in the nutrients [your body] is being depleted of during this destructive phase. For beans, it benefits best from adzuki, black soybeans, and kidney beans. There is so much more to it so if you're interested go check Alisa Vitti out here.
Menstrual Phase Supporting Soup
I woke up with cramps and decided to focus on eating phase-supporting foods today to hopefully help with my symptoms. I made some oats with blueberries before class and came home and elected to make soup. I was freezing cold (it was a whopping 37 degrees outside, hello Spring) and I was experiencing a cold flash (apposed to a hot flash). Soup it was. I dug out some wild rice, cooked that good stuff up (in a rice cooker on the brown rice setting) and then was off to the soup part.
I took 2 cups of vegetable broth and poured it into a medium sized pot and set the temperature to low. Cut up some button mushrooms, celery, washed up kidney beans, and let it simmer for an hour while the rice cooked. I didn't measure any of the vegetables out so just go with what you're intuition says.
Once everything was done I put some rice in the bottom of a bowl, poured the soup on top, mixed it around a little bit and then paired it with some good ol' naan cause why not? And voila, soup to support my phase is served.
Recipe
1 cup cooked wild rice
Sliced mushrooms
Diced celery
Kidney beans
2 cups vegetable broth
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