Super Hungry Before Your Period? Here’s Why, With @BrookeRozzie

die out Happy Saturday, outweigh fam. My guest today is Brooke Rozzie, and she is an expert in cycle sinking, which is understanding how our hormones they fluctuate throughout different seasons of our monthly cycle, and I recently had a conversation with her for my other podcast, Four Things. It hasn't aired yet, but it'll be up soon, so I definitely want y'all to go listen to that if you're curious about your monthly cycle and the four different stages

that are happening during that. But I thought it would be interesting to have Brooke come on and talk about our body since she's so knowledgeable and Brooke, you actually have experienced within eating disorder from back when you were in high school, so I thought maybe you could share a little bit about your story entering into recovery and why it is you do what you're currently doing and you're so passionate about it, and how how our bodies

are designed and they weren't designed to diet and exercise. When I was young, I was overweight as a kid, and I don't exactly know when that came on, but I lost the weight in sixth grade, and um played sports pretty easily, kind of kept it, maintained playing sports, but then um, when I stopped playing sports about midway in high school, in my sophomore year, the weight started

coming back on. In hindsight, looking back on it now, I know that for so much of my life, I grew up watching dieting as a way, and it was kind of like this unspoken thing that like, if you wanted to feel good in your skin, you needed a diet. And my mom was amazing, she was, you know, an awesome mother, but watching her talks poorly about her body, always dieting. I grew up in what I call like

the snack Wells generation. There's always slim fast shakes and you know, metabolife and all those things in our home. So I was kind of this unspoken message that I received that if I wanted to feel good, I needed to diet, and around sixteen years old that's when I started to really do that. But I didn't have any support into what it meant to support my body, or what it meant to eat well or how to nourish my body. So I would go into these different diets

and then I wouldn't be able to maintain it. It would leave me binging, which would leave me feeling guilty, which would leave me purging, and it just started the cycle and I didn't know how to get myself out

of it. And also during that time, I was put on birth control because I was having you know, strong PMS symptoms, and then I was note weight gained from the birth control, and I just kind of stayed stuck in the cycle of not knowing what to do until I got into my younger twenties and I went back to school and really started to learn more of how food was impacting my body. And for me, knowing more

of the education was what I truly needed. I really needed to understand how things were impacting me and how to support myself the best. So going back to school for it, I was able to kind of work through it, and working through in therapy a little bit with my

relationship and why I was doing those things. I was really able to understand more of what it meant to more nourish my body and start to shift my mindset and my approach versus dietting and those things, and understanding more that what it meant to nourish myself eat things that make me feel fueled and satiated for a meal to meal and start to really tune into and that's where I started to explore more of my hormones and my cycle Moore, start to tune into how certain stages

were impacting how I was feeling as well to be able to support myself through my hormonal stages of my cycle as a woman. To A big part of my recovery has been eating adequately. And I think when you spend so much time in the diet world, which like you, I was exposed to dieting in my teenage years. I had a great mom, and my mom actually wasn't even the first person I saw it from. For a little bit. We had a family that came to live with us. They had something going on in between houses, and my

mom was always like open door. Yes, come live with us, stay with don't don't pay rent somewhere, or just live with us for a few months. And that experience brought in these new foods of like spray butter and diet drinks and everything diet and fat free and snack wells. I know you mentioned that, and I was like, oh, I feel that snack wells generation right here, but that

dieting at a young age. And that's what you know in the restriction, And it's like finding your what is your even your baseline because you don't know because for so many years you've been manipulating it and in recovery figuring out, Okay, what is eating adequately for me? I don't know, but I am here to offer hope that it is possible to finally get there. It takes time

and patience. But what's also interesting to me about your work, Brook is that different times of the month adequately will change because there is a season of our cycle that requires us to consume more, like we need to eat more, and a lot of times we're like, oh, why am

I eating this much? I can't maybe my periods coming, But you still don't really understand why it's happening, but if you could just explain to us why it's happening, and it's like, oh, this is your body telling you, hey, I need more calories eat, So don't ignore it because then it might lead to you restricting more when your body definitely needs it, and then that's where another binge

comes into play. Yeah. Absolutely. I think the best way it was kind of pertained to me because when I first explored the idea of increasing my calories for a couple of weeks out of every month, it was scary, especially I think when you're in recovery from something, you still have a little bit of that in you, and so it was really scary to think, like, oh my gosh, I just have to increase my food. So if you're there,

I feel you and understand. And it actually, to me, the best way that I resonated with it was someone told me they were like, well, what you know, what that small little increase over like ten days does is nothing compared to like, when I do let myself get to that point if it turned into a binge or something,

what that's going to do? Right, So it was more of when I understood that, I was like, Wow, the small, little bit and knowing how to tune and trust myself and trust my body and tune into that tracking my cycle actually made that much easier for me. And being aware of how to trust myself. So in that loo real stage of our cycle after you've adulated, especially that ten day period leading up to your period, your menstrual cycle, your progesterone is usually more at a peak, and progesterone

hormone is a pro thyroid hormone. They can give your metabolism essentially a little bit of a boost. So this is why you can start to feel more hungry or an increased statiation in this stage of your cycle. And we do need to give it, you know, for talking medically, we say about five to ten percent. This can obviously very person of person, but um, giving yourself a little bit of that caloric boost and that stage of your cycle can actually help your energy during that stage of

the month. It can help prevent you from getting to that point where it does kind of leave a little bit more of that pre period binge. It can actually help support your statiation through the day so that we're honoring what our our hunger homloes and it actually can help support p MS too, if you are getting p MS. Usually, I say, our body talks to us as a woman, So sometimes those symptoms and things can be how our body is letting us know, like hey, I need something.

Usually what we need in that stage of your cycle is a little bit more of an increase of magnesium. So that's why we can start to crave chocolate and that stage too, So kind of building that trust and leaning into what your body is telling you in that stage can be really important. Another way that I get magnesium is through that calm drink. Are you familiar with that? I love the pink lemonade. I think I do a teaspoon and I just mix it with water and I

drink it before bed. I also have some magnesium supplements that I take from time to time before bed called Mago seven, and I don't do it all the time. But well, now that Brooke knows, because when I talked with her for my four Things podcast, I was like, Okay, it's finally time I have the capacity to track. My brain is ready for me to to take this on and I'm going to start tracking my cycle. And so now I'll know when I need to truly be intentional

of for sure, for sure taking these magnesium supplements. I love the chocolates an option for sure, but that calm drink also to me, it helps prepare me for sleep. I get better night's sleep when I do it. Magnesium is actually really calming mineral, so it can actually be very beneficial to sleep, important for anxiety. If you do experience, it can be amazing for that. The calm is actually a good option. It's you'll see it in a lot of places. The one thing I look for. There's different

forms of magnesium. Magnesium glycinate is one of the best absorbed by your body and one of the best ones for you to be taking, especially when we're talking hormonally leading up to that stage of the cycle. So you can find that in supplement form. It's a great one. Some of the calm drinks do have a glycinate form. Some of them are a citrate form. So I will say if you have taken calm in the citrate form, it can disrupt your digestive system or your bowels a

little bit. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. So if you've noticed that, maybe try switching over to a glycnate form and see if that helps. Oh. Interesting, I love that. I just learned that, And now next time I buy a bottle, I'll look for the glycerate because I think mineus sitrate. Yeah, but I'm now I'm going to look for that. See, we're learning. I love learning about new things. To take something else. I've started taking two before bed.

I don't know if it's gava or gava. Are you familiar? Yeah, Gava? Okay. My neuro therapist, I get feedback. That's what I'm doing right now to help treat some A D D d h D symptoms. And she told me I need to start taking it to help I don't know, disrupt some neurotransmitters in my brain and like calm some things down. Yeah, you have neurotransmitters that play a role and communicate with

your hormones as well. And a lot of times we kind of undervalue vitamins and minerals and how important they are, but they're literally the precursors or the communicators in so many different enzematic processes in our body. Magnesium, for one, is responsible for over two semetic processes in your body. So for deficient in magnesium, a lot of those things can be disrupted. Sometimes it's the simple things that we need to prioritize first before we try to get into

the detail stuff. So if you're listening, one of the first things I have a lot of my clients do, if they're not implementing its implement some sort of magnesium supplement, and they'll notice their sleeping better, they might feel more calm during the day, and they might notice that anxiety can sometimes come down a little bit too from it. Okay, good to know. I saw something on your website like

our body wasn't made to diet and exercise. So talk about that statement so often, and I remember for so much of my life we were, and I see it a lot with women, is like, well, what diet should I do? It's the main question I get. Should I be doing Keto? Should I do Paleo? Which diet should I do? And my answer really is whatever is the best for you, whatever is the best that makes you feel good, that gives you the energy that you need to and supports the way that you're meant to function.

I think of a lot of times as women, we try to fit ourselves into this little box, and our body was never meant to fit into that little box. We try to fit like, well, I'm going to do this diet and then we try to adjust our lifestyle to that diet, and instead I try to think what intrition do you need to support your lifestyle and what you need And there's no specific diet that's going to do that for you. It might be a combination of

several different things and whatever your body hormonally, etcetera. Needs. I have hypothyroids, so what my body needs is probably not going to be what another woman body needs, and what foods I feel good with is probably not going to be what another one does. So so much we think of like what's the diet and exercise, when there's so many other pieces to the puzzle that can really come into play with how we're feeling, especially if you are someone that has disordered patterns or you're in a

needing disorder. Some people have disordered behaviors and they don't even realize it yet, but you're starting to get curious, and if you might be one of those people that's curious and that's why you're even listening to this podcast, or if you're in recovery, I mean, that's when you also get to assess, like, Okay, none of these diets might be good for me, But then when you start to become in tune with your body and realize what it truly needs, then you can start to take little

bits and pieces from each thing and then you you form what is best for you so you feel you feel your best according to you, not anybody else or

what anybody else is doing. And I think that's what's so frustrating with some of my friends that are dietitians and therapists is like just people online everyday, people that have no education or background, and what they're saying, they're like, here's what I ate today, you know, basically saying, eat exactly like I ate today, and your body will look like mine, not sharing any of their genetic info with you at all in any way, shape or form, where if you were to like go look at their mom

and their Grandma's like, okay, genetically, this is how they look. And oh, by the way, we don't all have to strive to look that way. Our bodies were created very, very differently, but society has told us that there's this standard way to look and that's just untrue and a lot of what we're having to unlearn and Lisa Haim who is the co founder of Outweigh with Me. She's the registered dietitian that's normally on and she recently put

up an Instagram post. I guess I say recently, but it was from March eight and I even shared this one on my four Things podcast because I loved it so much. But she titled it unpopular opinion. We don't have to fit neatly into boxes. And then she just went on this whole thing about how we don't need to label the way we think, eat, move, We don't need to use concrete sides. We can just be and form our own thoughts and honor our own needs and stay true to who we are and that you know,

we don't have to be vegan. We don't have to be that you don't have like and for me, I when I was in you know, knee deep into my eating disorder, I had all kinds of labels and I was an expert on so many different things. But then I felt weird about it because people would come to me and then I felt uncomfortable because it's like, wait, why are they coming to me with these questions? But it was because I presented myself as this expert of

health and wellness because it's all that consumed me. It's all I talked about. It didn't really register to me. And then I when I had that aha moment, I was like, oh, okay. And also I have no formal

training and education, so I should start shutting up. I see a lot to the diets tend to lead us to this all in or all out approach, and it was all in or all out mindset, and it starts to lead us down this path of like, oh, of gosh, well I didn't eat paleo this week, so I failed, and we start to get into that cyclical place where we really don't need to be. I think when we start to step away from that stop labeling ourselves. We

learned to give ourselves grace more. We learned to be more flexible with ourselves and what we're needing and know that not every month, not every week or whatever is going to be the exact same for us. And we learn how to tune in and trust ourselves more because we've taken all those labels away and we have to start to learn to rely on and support ourselves just

as we are. Love it well. Thank you for taking the time to talk to the Outweigh Fam and then UM looking forward to our episode airing on four Things and Brooke, Where can people find more from you? Instagram, UM, brock Razzie is my Instagram handle or brick Rozzi dot com is my website. UM and I also have a podcast. It's called the Power of a Woman. I love it and Rozzie is spelled our O z z I E. Thanks Brooke, thank you, f