How To Track Your Cycle
Menstrual cycle tracking–regardless of method–can be a beautifully subversive tool to get to know your body, support your hormonal health, and develop your ability to affect systems change.
Tracking your menstrual cycle is an excellent place to start when you’re first learning about your cycle, seeking to address hormonal imbalances, or simply wanting to identify how to bring more ease into your life. But these aren’t the only reasons we recommend menstrual cycle tracking as an essential practice. In this guide, we’ll walk you through why tracking your menstrual cycle can be so empowering, what to track, and our recommended methods and apps.
The Benefits of Tracking
At its most basic, tracking your menstrual cycle is a way to discover the unique patterns of your body. But in our experience, it’s also one of the most rebellious practices women and menstruators can engage in.
A big statement, but we’ve got big reasons to back it up:
It deepens your relationship with your body. Yep, your body that everyone seems to want a say about but is yours alone. By tracking what’s happening in your body during your menstrual cycle, you build up a vast knowledge base about yourself. And self-knowledge is power.
It helps you advocate for yourself. Going to the doctor isn’t always an empowering experience for women and menstruators. But by collecting data on your menstrual cycle, especially if you are experiencing any pain or concerning symptoms, you’ll have a detailed log to share with your doctor to help pinpoint what’s going on together.
It makes ease and pleasure more accessible. By observing how your needs and preferences change over the course of your cycle, you can begin to plan into these patterns. Sure, you could take what you learn and “biohack” your life to be more efficient or productive. But we prefer to use these learnings to discover opportunities to infuse our lives with the qualities we see as essential to a just, regenerative world, like ease, pleasure, rest, connection, and flow.
It cultivates your ability to affect systems change. A system is a set of parts that work together to “produce an effect that is different from the effect of each part on its own.”¹ Your body is a system. Our government is a system. And yep, your local ecosystems are systems. So if you want to learn how to affect change within systems, whether that’s addressing your PMS, protecting reproductive rights or making your community more resilient to climate change, tracking your menstrual cycle is excellent training–and bonus: it’s free.
What To Track
Hopefully, now you’re on board and excited to start tracking. But let’s clarify first what we mean when we say “menstrual cycle tracking” and what exactly to track.
Menstrual cycle tracking refers to the practice of noting the physical, mental and emotional changes in your body over the course of your entire 28-ish day menstrual cycle.
You might have heard this called “period tracking” but that’s not exactly accurate. That’s because your period is only one of the four phases of your menstrual cycle, and it’s important to track what’s happening throughout your whole cycle, not just during your bleed.
Since you’ll be tracking your cycle throughout the month, it is essential to include which day of your cycle you are on when recording your observations. (Cycle Day 1 = the first day of your most recent bleed)
At Sister Seasons, we focus on tracking the menstrual cycle for general self-knowledge.² To get to know your body, you might consider tracking the following:
Menstrual blood quantity and duration
Cervical mucus
Physical sensations, such as pain
Appetite, including hunger level and what foods you crave
Digestion
Sleep quality
Energy level
Mood, including your emotions and how social you feel
Exercise and how it felt in your body
Or if you’re just starting out, you might even just try these two questions:
What felt easeful today?
What felt out of flow?
Remember, what data you choose to collect will depend on your unique goals for cycle tracking, so don’t feel like you have to track all of our suggestions. You’re welcome to pick and choose based on what you’re focused on right now.
Tracking Methods
There are many ways to track your menstrual cycle to grow your self-knowledge. Our best advice is to experiment and find the method that feels easiest to practice consistently. Any method that enables you to gather data over time and then look back over your data to identify patterns will do the job.
Here are our top recommendations:
Field Notes (Free)
This is our unique daily journaling practice that helps you track your menstrual cycle alongside the cycles of the natural world. This simple practice is both a great first step for anyone just beginning to track cycles and an excellent companion practice for experienced trackers looking to integrate collective cycles into their menstrual cycle tracking method. Sign up for our free Field Notes course to learn how to use this method and to receive a downloadable cycle journal template.
Clue (Free and Paid Options)
The Clue app is founded by women for women, easy to use, customizable for what you’d like to track, and full of science-based suggestions. We love Clue for their transparency about what they do with your data and how they make money, including making their de-identified data set available to researchers to advance women’s health. And because they’re based in Europe, your health data is protected by the European GDPR, one of the strictest data privacy laws.
Tip: Switch off ovulation day predictions if using an app. These predictions are inaccurate and misleading as they’re based on past cycle data rather than true predictive ovulation signs, such as cervical mucus and basal body temperature (BBT).
MyFlo Period Tracker ($4)
This app from Flo Living founder Alisa Vitti includes all the basic menstrual cycle tracking features, plus cycle insights, suggestions on syncing your exercise, food and activities with your cycle, and–our favorite–a notes field for daily observations. MyFlo’s website includes a public commitment to never sell user data and has introduced new data and privacy features, but it’s unclear how or where your data is stored.
Fertility Awareness Method (Initial Investment Varies)
This method is not for the casual tracker, but it is a phenomenal tool for intimately getting to know your menstrual cycle through tracking ovulation signs, such as cervical mucus, basal body temperature (BBT), and your cervical position. Following proper instruction from a certified practitioner (and only then!), this method can also be used as a natural form of birth control or for support with conception. But let us say that one more time: do not rely on this method for birth control unless you have received instruction directly from a certified Fertility Awareness Educator. Head to our Resources page for instructor recommendations.
Whichever method you choose, let yourself enjoy it!
Getting to know your body is one of the best investments of time you can make, no matter what age you are. And knowing that when you’re tracking your menstrual cycle, you’re also practicing a future where all women and menstruators are empowered with self-knowledge and equipped to make the systems change we need for a just future–well, that’s the icing on the cake.
1 This definition of a system comes from Donella Meadows’ book Thinking In Systems.
2 Tracking your cycle for self-knowledge vs. for the purposes of pregnancy avoidance or achievement are two very (very!) different things. This article–and all we do at Sister Seasons–is focused on tracking for self-knowledge. If you are seeking to track your cycle as a method of birth control or conception support, visit our Resources page for Fertility Awareness Method books and practitioners.
Photo Credit: Biel Moro
Disclaimer: This article is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. None of the information provided should be construed as medical advice. If you have concerns related to your menstrual cycle, please consult a licensed health care provider.