To follow up on our episode from earlier this week about The Magic of the Menstrual Cycle and how being aware of your cycle can increase your happiness and productivity, I wanted to share some of my favorite resources. In this post I’ll share my favorite apps, books, and a great resource for business owners. One of the books I’ll be sharing is one I think should be required reading for all girls, and maybe boys, and should definitely be taught in classrooms.

Apps

MyFlo App

My first app recommendation is the MyFlo App app. This is great to learn more about the phases of the cycle and track your cycle through that lens. It’s a great reminder of the different phases and how we change and our bodies change throughout the cycle. It shows a calendar view and a rough estimate of the cycle days/phases using different colors. It gives recommendations on foods to eat, exercises to do, how sex may be different, and tasks to focus on and you can track all kinds of symptoms from bloating to backaches and it will give recommendations to make those symptoms lessen.

This is a great app if you want to learn more about yourself and your cycle.

Clue

My new favorite tracking app is Clue. I was at happy hour with a friend telling her all about how I love the menstrual cycle and feel so empowered about myself and my body now that I know the clues your body gives you around ovulation when a girl next to us chimed in to say that she takes her temperature every day too and uses this app called Clue. My friend and I downloaded it that night and both of us are super into it. What I like about this app is that it has a super clean, minimalist design. It shows the cycle as a circle, which seems like a small thing and is really a big thing. You can track things like temperature, sociability, cravings, sleep, sex, and add custom tags. My custom tags are “feel like I’m getting sick” and “up in the middle of the night.”

What I love about this app is that it’s made me super aware of what day I’m on in my cycle. I track my cycle on paper every day but there’s something about the Clue app that gets the day number to stick in my head.

My ideal world would be an app that combines the best parts about myFlo and the best parts about Clue.

Books

As a book lover, of course I’ve read a bunch of books on this topic.

Code Red

The first book I read after wondering how my creativity changed with my cycle was Code Red by Lisa Lister. This was the book that really got me into the cycle. Code Red has a chapter about each of the cycle phases and does a deep dive on each one. She uses some witchy-type language that may seem kind of off, but if that’s not your thing, just read around it and take in the parts that resonate.

Woman Code

Next, I want to recommend Woman Code by Alisa Vitti. Alisa’s company created the myFlo app and the book is a deep dive into the same concepts as the app—living with your cycle and how to heal cycle-related symptoms. I was really hesitant to get this book because it talks about changing your food along with your cycle and there’s a cleanse you can do and I just didn’t want the “shoulds” of that. But, it turns out, what I really liked about this book was actually the science/biology stuff behind it. It’s really interesting to know how the different systems in the body, like the digestive and lymphatic system, impact the endocrine system and the why behind the food changes. I recommend picking up this book when you feel called to and then giving yourself grace to take it slow and apply what resonates. Don’t pick it up because you feel like you “should” — you won’t get much out of it that way.

Alisa was on one of my favorite podcasts, the Kate and Mike Show, twice and I highly highly recommend listening to those episodes, as linked below.

Wild Power: The Magic of the Menstrual Cycle

In addition to Wild Power: The Magic of the Menstrual Cycle, another amazing book just to have on your shelf for reference like an encyclopedia is Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom by Dr. Christiane Northrup.

For business owners, Kate Northrup has a great framework and a group called Origin that ties the cycle and the seasons to phases of business development. I highly, highly recommend this group.

Taking Charge of Your Fertility

And finally, the book I think every woman should read and schools should use as a textbook when teaching girls about their bodies is, Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler.