How to coordinate your life with your menstrual cycle

Perform tasks when you’re at your best, hormonally speaking, by scheduling around your menstrual cycle.

You Will Need

* A record of your menstrual cycle
* A record of your menstrual cycle

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Adjust for your cycle
Step 1: Adjust for your cycle

Realize that the days cited in the following steps are based on a 28-day menstrual cycle. Your dates may vary.
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Step 2: Start a diet
Start a diet at the beginning of your cycle, when you’re menstruating. At this point, a drop in the hormone progesterone causes a drop in insulin, a hormone that creates hunger by reducing sugar levels. Less appetite, more willpower.

Step 3: Attract a man
Lay off deodorant and perfume during Days 6 to 14 of your cycle. Research has found that men find your body’s natural scent most appealing in the week around ovulation.

Step 4: Go on a game show
On Days 6 to 13 of your cycle, challenge your friends to an evening of charades. Rising levels of estrogen and testosterone boost your confidence and make you unusually quick-witted.

Step 5: Have sex
Pencil in sex for day 13 or 14 of your cycle, when the libido-boosting hormones testosterone and progesterone are peaking. Do it in the morning, when a man’s testosterone peaks.

Step 6: Feel pain
Schedule anything physically painful—bikini waxes, root canals, tattooing, or piercing—on Day 14, around the time you ovulate. That’s when your tolerance for pain is highest.

Step 7: Get a pap smear
Schedule your annual pap smear between the 14th and 24th day of your cycle, when the reading tends to be the most accurate.

Step 8: Quit smoking
Increase your chances of giving up cigarettes by quitting during the second half of your cycle, when high levels of progesterone could help reduce withdrawal symptoms. One study found that women who tried to quit smoking in the first half of their menstrual cycle were half as successful as those who quit in the latter half.