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When and what you eat may also depend on the time of day that you workout. If your session is at 5am (or early morning right when you wake), you may not feel hungry for something substantial. In this case, you can experiment to see if you feel like you have enough energy to put forth in your session without eating. If you feel weak or have low energy, feel light headed or dizzy, you probably need to eat something. If you feel totally fine and can push yourself, the choice to eat before is up to you. Food gives us energy. Your sessions are to make you stronger. If you cannot put forth enough energy to increase your strength and ability week by week, that's a problem (so eat!).

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Follicular Phase:
Typically, this will be the first 14 days of your cycle. This is the time where performance and strength will be highest. A good way to remember this is “follicular gains.” You will have more energy during this phase and your sleep and recovery will be at its peak. Your core body temperature also returns to baseline (see later in ovulation and Luteal phase).

Your mood and your motivation will be higher at this time as well due to the link between oestrogen and serotonin. 

If choosing to begin a diet, this would be a good time of your cycle to begin based on energy levels (see note later in Luteal phase about energy expenditure).

Ovulation:
Immediately prior to ovulation occurring will be where your strength and performance are at their absolute peak. You can remember this as “a window of opportunity.”

Calorie expenditure can increase around 10-20% during this time. This reasoning helps explain why we often feel ravenous during this part of our cycle. While yes it is estimated that we expend more calories during this time, I wouldn’t say I recommend accounting for that. Fulfill your cravings but if you have goals in mind, don’t let it be an excuse to go bananas. 

Hormone fluctuations cause your core body temperature to rise after ovulation. Hello night sweats, anyone? Me too!

Luteal Phase:
This phase occurs post ovulation and lasts until your next menstruation.

Prioritizing recovery during this part of our cycle will be beneficial due to low energy and mood, and perhaps some more intense PMS symptoms. 

Often times our sleep quality is impacted and unfortunately we’re in a loop of bad sleep, low energy and mood. In fact, premenstrual insomnia occurs in 30% of women. This can be correlated with the rise in core body temperature and a drop in the hormone progesterone. 

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I often will say that training a muscle group more than 1X week is more beneficial for muscle growth than only training it 1X week.

However, there are now studies that take new variables into account that prior studies did not, and it now shows no effect of training frequency on muscle growth. With a set amount of volume (think sets, reps and load per muscle group a week), it doesn't matter if you train a muscle once, twice or more times per week.

BUT! There is a caveat.

As muscle volume gets higher, it warrants more frequency than training a muscle group just one day a week because you can't get it all in one day.

At the beginning, our muscles don't require as much volume but as we train longer and get stronger, we require more volume to stimulate growth.

Let's think about getting 25 sets of exercises ONLY for our quads in a week. This would obviously be more achievable over multiple training days. There's no way we would be able to train with adequate effort in every set if we tried to smash this all in one day. 

So, the take-home here is that there isn't necessarily anything "magic" about training a muscle more than 1X week other than it is what allows us to get adequate volume per muscle group. 

I hope this is useful, and let me know if you have any follow up questions or comments!

Study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30558493/

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It is no secret that I am not a fan of the “What I Eat In A Day” posts. While I do believe they are well intentioned, the information provided can be misinterpreted or can simply do more harm than good.

When a person you admire shows you what they eat in a day, chances are you want to eat like that so you can look like them/achieve their same results. Although, I can almost guarantee that you will have a different body (height/weight), different goals, different activity levels, different lifestyles, and the list goes on. Therefore, there is no way you can eat the same and achieve the same results.What’s more, is that they also may not show you treats, an oversized meal, etc., which can lead to a false perception of their diet.

My goal is to educate so you have the knowledge to make nutritious, balanced decisions that leave you feeling healthy, confident and happy. In this post, I am going to explain HOW I eat and not specifically WHAT I eat for every single meal. I will write about my main sources for each macronutrient (fats/carbs/protein) and why I choose them, and how I incorporate less nutritious food into my diet to keep me happy.

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