I don't know about you, but my self-esteem fluctuates. Some days I wake feeling slim and pretty. Other days I feel like I need to hide myself, starve myself, or just move into the gym.
For years I thought that was just me being inconsistent. Lazy. Greedy. I chalked it up to willpower on good days and weakness on bad ones.
Turns out, it was neither.
My body has been communicating with me, telling me exactly what was “to blame” the entire time. I just didn't know the language.
Sometime in 2021, I discovered cycle syncing. Cycle syncing is the practice of adjusting your diet, exercise routine, and daily habits to match the hormonal shifts and energy levels of your menstrual cycle. I can't remember exactly where I first came across the concept, but it was life changing. I became obsessed.
I couldn't believe there was something that could actually, scientifically explain the idiosyncrasies that seemed to rule my world. I became so obsessed that at one point I considered creating a gym concept just for women where personal training and wellness were based on your menstrual cycle, not just your goals or whatever random hour you happened to have free that week.
Medically, the menstrual cycle has four distinct phases, each with its own hormonal profile, its own symptoms, and its own needs. This isn't wellness culture BS. This is endocrinology. Estrogen and progesterone rise and fall in a predictable pattern every month, and that fluctuation directly affects your energy, your appetite, your mood, your cognitive focus, even your tolerance (or lack thereof) for other people.
The phases look like this.
During the follicular phase, right after your period ends, estrogen begins climbing and you get a genuine burst of energy. This is when your body is medically primed to initiate. Start the project. Pitch the idea. Begin the workout program.
Ovulation comes next, and this is when estrogen peaks. You are, quite literally, at your most magnetic. Your ability to connect and to draw people toward you is not imagined.
Then comes the luteal phase, and everything shifts. Progesterone rises, estrogen drops, and your body turns inward. This is biology asking you to slow down, get detailed, finish what you started instead of beginning anything new.
And then your period arrives, and estrogen and progesterone both bottom out. This is the phase most of us have been taught to push through. But your body is asking for rest.
I share all of this because I think we have confused discipline with what’s actually forced negligence. We think discipline means doing the same thing the same way regardless of what our body is signaling. No excuses. Mind over matter. We wear 5 AM check-ins from the gym as a badge of honor, even when that two mile run on the treadmill is working against us.
Ecclesiastes 3 tells us there is a season for everything under heaven. We believe that about grief. We believe that about calling. We even believe it about the weather. But somewhere along the way, we decided our own bodies were the exception, that we should be able to perform at the same capacity every single day, in every single phase, without acknowledgment of the season we're actually in.
But real discipline is work and wisdom.
It's eating a second breakfast after a workout during a phase where your body medically needs more fuel, instead of skipping it because a smaller number on the scale feels better.
It's understanding that the same workout that builds you up during your follicular phase can tear you down during your luteal phase, when your body is already managing inflammation and your cortisol is more easily elevated.
It's waiting until your body enters the phase where clarity abounds instead of pulling the trigger on a hard conversation during the exact week hormones have made you the most irritable and irrational version of yourself.
I think about how often I've white-knuckled my way through a week, forcing myself into a routine that worked beautifully two weeks earlier, and then called myself a slacker when it stopped working. Turns out I wasn’t lazy, I was uninformed. Nobody taught me that my body operates in seasons, not a flat line. Nobody taught me that even how I feel about my own reflection has a season attached to it.
There is wisdom in the body. Not chaos. Not inconsistency. Remember, God is not a God of confusion. Where He is, chaos cannot exist. That includes your body.
Fearfully and wonderfully made doesn't just mean physically beautiful. It means its complexity is awe-inspiring, exceeding our basic understanding, the same way we stand in awe at the wonders of the world. Your body holds more knowledge than our trend-chasing standards of beauty and ultimate physicality ever could.
You always have the ability to override what your body is telling you. Most of us have been doing that for years. The question is what it's costing you to keep doing that.
I wonder…
- Where in your life have you labeled something a discipline problem when it was actually a listening problem?
- What is one signal your body has been sending you consistently that you have been overriding instead of honoring?
- What would it look like this month to work with your body's rhythm instead of against it, even in one area?
- This month, track how you feel about yourself and your body every single day, starting on the first day of your period. Use a post-it note each day and stick it in a drawer so you can't see the previous day's entry. Just one word or one line. At the end of your cycle, line them all up and see what unfolds.
I love you.
Coi Marie
Affirmation
My body is not working against me. We want the same thing, and getting there means I work with its rhythm, not against its wisdom.
If you know someone who may appreciate this perspective, please share this link with them. See you on Sunday.
