I Test Women's Hormones for a Living. Here Are 8 Things I Do for My Own Cycle.

People assume that because I look at bloodwork all day, my own routine must be complicated. Twenty supplements, a biohacking gadget on every wrist, some elaborate protocol taped to the fridge.

It's actually the opposite.

The longer I do this work — running functional blood chemistry on hundreds of women — the shorter my own list gets. Because when you've seen enough labs, you stop guessing. You see the same patterns show up over and over: the blood sugar swings hiding underneath "mood swings," the sluggish drainage underneath the breakouts and bloat, the luteal-week crash that women have been told to just push through.

So no, I don't do these eight things because I'm disciplined. I do them because I've seen the data — mine and everyone else's — and I'd rather get ahead of the shift than chase it after it's already knocked me down.

Here's what that actually looks like, in depth.

1. I eat protein before coffee.

Steady blood sugar is the floor every hormone stands on. If that floor is wobbly, everything built on top of it wobbles too — cortisol, insulin, and eventually your sex hormones.

When you wake up and pour coffee onto an empty stomach, you're stacking a cortisol spike (caffeine) on top of an existing cortisol spike (your natural morning rise) with zero fuel underneath it. For a lot of women, that's the start of the daily rollercoaster: the 10 a.m. shakiness, the 3 p.m. crash, the "why am I crying over an email" afternoon.

My rule is simple: protein touches my lips before caffeine does. Breakfast is protein-forward — usually 25 to 30 grams — never a naked carb, never skipped. Eggs, leftover dinner, a smoothie with real protein in it. The coffee still happens. It just happens after my blood sugar has something to stand on.

If you change nothing else from this list, change this one. It's the highest-leverage fifteen minutes of your day.

2. I clear the exits first.

Before any "fancy" supplement, before any hormone-balancing anything, I make sure the exits are open: water, minerals, daily movement, and a daily bowel movement.

Here's why this is non-negotiable. Your body clears used-up hormones — especially estrogen — through your liver and out through your bowels. If you're not going every day, that estrogen doesn't just politely wait in line. It gets reabsorbed and recirculated, and now you're dealing with symptoms that look like "too much estrogen" when the real problem is a traffic jam at the exit.

This is the foundation of how I work with clients, and it's the foundation of how I treat myself: drainage before repair. You don't renovate a house with clogged plumbing. Water, minerals, movement, fiber, daily elimination — boring, unglamorous, and responsible for more symptom relief than most supplements I've ever seen.

3. I track my cycle like a dataset, not a calendar.

Most cycle tracking stops at "when is my period coming." Useful, but it's the least interesting thing your cycle can tell you.

I track mine like a dataset: mood, energy, sleep quality, cravings, workout performance, patience with my kids (yes, really). After a few months, the pattern is undeniable. I know which week my energy dips. I know which days the cravings show up. I know when my capacity for hard conversations is high and when it's... not.

And that knowledge changes everything, because I can plan around it instead of getting blindsided by it. Big project? Not scheduled for day 24. Grocery run? Done before the craving week, with the right things in the house. It's not about controlling your cycle — it's about refusing to be surprised by something that happens on a schedule. Life is going to life regardless. This just means my hormones aren't piling on.

4. I protect my luteal week.

The week before your period — the luteal phase — is when progesterone is running the show, and progesterone is a quieter hormone. It wants calm. It wants sleep. It gets depleted fast by stress and low blood sugar.

So instead of white-knuckling PMS every month, I build a different week on purpose: a lighter calendar where I can manage it, earlier nights, more magnesium, more intentional meals. I stopped treating that week like every other week and started treating it like what it is — a week with different requirements.

And here's the part I need you to hear: this can be your normal too. PMS is common, but the level of suffering so many women accept as "just how it is" is very often a pattern that can be read and supported. Your luteal week doesn't have to be something you survive.

5. I test myself on a schedule.

I rerun my own bloodwork regularly — not when I feel awful, but on a schedule, the same way you'd service a car before it breaks down on the highway.I use our very own Foundations panel.

Because here's what I know from reading hundreds of panels: the shift shows up in the blood before it shows up in your life. Markers drift out of their optimal zones long before they're flagged as a problem. By the time you feel terrible, the pattern has usually been building for months.

Testing on a schedule means I'm reading the shift early — catching the drift while it's still a gentle correction instead of a crisis. This is the whole heart of "test, don't guess." Not testing once when things fall apart, but testing rhythmically so things don't fall apart in the first place.

6. I lift heavy-ish.

Muscle is the organ that carries you through perimenopause. I mean that literally — muscle is metabolically active tissue that buffers your blood sugar, supports your bones, protects your joints, and keeps your metabolism resilient exactly when hormonal changes start working against all of those things.

So I train for the next decade, not the mirror. "Heavy-ish" for me means progressive, challenging strength work a few times a week — not punishing, not two-a-days, not earning my food. Just consistently asking my muscles to do hard things so they stay with me.

If you're in your 30s or 40s and you've been living on cardio and cute little weights, this is your invitation. The strength you build now is the cushion you land on later.

7. I treat sleep like medicine.

Not as a reward for finishing everything — as the intervention that makes everything else on this list actually work.

Sleep is when your body regulates cortisol, balances blood sugar, processes hormones, and repairs tissue. Skimp on it and you can do everything else perfectly and still feel like you're running uphill. The protein breakfast, the magnesium, the training — sleep is the multiplier underneath all of it.

With two little ones, I'm intentional about this because not every night is perfect. Kids get sick. Sleep gets interrupted.

I can't control that — so I control what I can: a consistent wind-down, an actual bedtime, screens down, the room dark and cool. I protect the conditions for good sleep even on the nights sleep doesn't cooperate, because the average matters more than any single night.

8. I keep my supplement shelf short.

Every bottle on my shelf has to earn its spot — and do more than one job.

This might surprise people, given my line of work. But seeing that much bloodwork is exactly why I don't take twenty things. Supplements are tools, not insurance policies, and a cabinet full of random bottles usually means a strategy built on guessing.

Mine are specific and based on my own data — chosen because my labs showed a reason for them, not because an influencer had a discount code. And they rotate with my life: a demanding week gets a different lineup than a calm one, my luteal week gets different support than my follicular week. Short, intentional, responsive. That's it.

The thread that ties it all together

Notice what's not on this list: nothing extreme, nothing expensive, nothing that requires me to overhaul my life. None of this is about doing more.

It's about reading your body early enough to do less, sooner. A protein breakfast now instead of a blood sugar crisis later. A lighter luteal week now instead of a flattening PMS week later. Bloodwork on a schedule now instead of a confusing pile of symptoms later.

That's what getting ahead of the shift actually means.

And if you read this whole thing thinking "okay, but what is MY pattern?" — that's exactly the right question. Every woman's version of this looks a little different, and yours is sitting in your symptoms and your bloodwork right now, waiting to be read.

Come tell me what week of your cycle hits you hardest — reply to this post, or find me on Instagram @drmoniquerey and comment PATTERN on the latest post. I'll meet you in the DMs and we'll talk through what your pattern looks like and how to find it. No script — just a real conversation about what your body's been telling you.