The key ideas

In the FLO: Unlock Your Hormonal Advantage and Revolutionize Your Life

Alisa Vitti, 2020

Why does the same run energize you one week and leave you drained the next? Alisa Vitti believes the female body has a second clock lasting a month and proposes planning tasks, exercise, and rest around four cycle phases. A popular method, with an honest examination of what science supports and what remains the author’s model.

Who it is for

For women who notice their energy changing through the month and want to account for this when planning work and rest, without promises of miracles.

Women have a second biological clock, and it is no less valuable than the twenty-four-hour one.

What the book is about

The same five-kilometer morning run. One week, afterward you feel ready to move mountains. Another week, it leaves you completely drained, although the pace was identical. Why?

Alisa Vitti, an American nutritionist and founder of FLO Living, answers that the female body has a second clock running over a month rather than a day. In the FLO offers a practical system for planning work, exercise, and rest around four menstrual cycle phases. The author calls the method Cycle Syncing.

An honest qualification first. This is the author’s model rather than established scientific fact. Some parts draw on research, others on her experience, and in several places science is considerably more cautious. Painful, irregular, or missing periods are not a scheduling problem.

Idea 1. A second clock

Almost everyone knows the daily clock. Alertness in the morning, sleepiness in the evening, the body repairing itself overnight. This is a circadian rhythm, and science has long recognized that disrupting it can harm health.

Vitti adds another layer. She places the roughly monthly cycle among rhythms longer than a day: an infradian rhythm. She believes conception is not the only capacity that changes during the month: hormones influence metabolism, immunity, stress responses, and brain function.

Her main criticism of familiar routines is that we respect the daily clock, sleeping and eating by it, while almost ignoring the monthly one.

You schedule an important presentation, a long trip, and a cleaning marathon for one week, using only available calendar dates.

If your inner state changes through the month, an identical weekly plan may sometimes work against you. Vitti suggests noticing this second rhythm before deciding what to do about it.

Read in Livria

About the author

Alisa Vitti is an American nutritionist, founder of FLO Living and the MyFLO cycle-tracking app, and author of WomanCode and In the FLO. In her account, she was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome as a student, and seeking her own approach to it became the starting point of her method.

All books by this author: Alisa Vitti

Terms from the book

  • Meta-analysis
  • Circadian rhythm
  • Infradian rhythm: A biological rhythm longer than a day. Vitti applies the term to the monthly cycle and centers her model on it; research on how strongly it affects everyday abilities remains limited.
  • Follicular phase: The part of the cycle from the beginning of menstruation to ovulation. Its length varies considerably among women.
  • Luteal phase: The part of the cycle after ovulation until the next period. In Vitti’s model, a time for finishing tasks; this is her interpretation rather than a scientific characteristic of the phase.
  • Cycle Syncing: Alisa Vitti’s method of planning work, exertion, and rest around cycle phases. The author’s system rather than medical advice; scientific support remains limited.

All terms

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