Am I gaining weight on my period?
A step-by-step guide to evaluating water fluctuations on your cycle
A quick overview of water fluctuations
Pre-menopausal women experience water fluctuations throughout their cycle on a regular cadence
While the exact systems that interact together to cause water fluctuations have yet to be determined, it is an interaction of progesterone, estrogen, and sodium
The majority of women have a peak on the first day of their cycle, then flush water until a few days before ovulation, when the body starts retaining again, then flushes, then retains up to the onset of the next cycle
step 1: Track your cycles and weight
You'll need to collect 2 cycles worth of weight (5 days of weigh-ins per week+) and cycle data, either in a notebook or tracking app
For the first time, this would work best if you're tracking at maintenance calories vs in a deficit or a surplus
Plot your data in Google Sheets or Excel
Caveat: if you are on hormonal birth control, this will affect your results, and the examples provided may not be representative.
step 2: Graphing the data
This data is from a maintenance cycle with a flat trendline plotted in Excel.
step 3: reading the data
Perspective
This is going to look different for every body, as each person has their own hormonal balance
Using and looking at data is a way to zoom out and understand what's going on in your body
Weight fluctuations are 100% normal and in this example, I had 5.4lb variance range in water (144.7- 150.1), while the overall trend was flat at 146.1 and I ate the same amount of maintenance calories every day.
The big picture perspective here is that the day-to-day how we feel about the scale is not important, macro trends are
Apps that help with tracking
Menstrual Cycle Tracking
Flo Ovulation and Period Tracker
Tempdrop
Trend Weight
HappyScale (iOS)
Libra (Andriod)
Spreadsheets
Bonus: Reading Materials
Taking Charge of Your Fertility - Toni Weschler
Period Repair Manual - Lara Briden
