Twenty-five years as a physician assistant and Amy Dave was not taught that PMS wasn’t normal. Not by a professor, not by a supervising doctor, not by the training that made her qualified to treat other people’s bodies. Like most of us, she found out on her own. For Amy, it was COVID lockdown when she finally decided to blow the dust off a book about cycle syncing that had been on her shelf for years.
This conversation is about the gap between what medicine trains us to accept and what our body is telling us. I learned the hard way that the body communicates its needs; humans are (generally) too stubborn to listen. Cycle syncing is a framework to learn your body, and in Amy’s experience and practice, find healing.
On this episode:
Amy’s own diagnosis which came from outside the medical system
The four phases of a woman’s monthly cycle and how to leverage them
Using the smallest possible unit of measurement to track progress
Where hormone replacement therapy fits for some, not all
The Truth: Your Body Tells You What It Needs
Cramps, cravings, mood swings, exhaustion? Amy Dave, a PA and women’s wellness coach at The Wealth of Wellness, doesn’t treat these as symptoms to medicate, she treats them as information. “If you’re mindful of how [eating] that makes you feel, instead of eating a bag of chips, you’re eating dark leafy greens or a banana,” she said, describing a salt craving that’s a magnesium deficiency in disguise.
Her method for finding data that shows where you can optimize is stupid simple. Write down what you’re craving and how you feel, every day. Include your energy level, your sleep load. Start there; no app, no protocol and all of it written down in a journal by hand. Record what’s happening with your body and watch the data make patterns visible.
Unfortunately, most of us were never taught this. For the first fifteen-plus years of her career, Amy did know better. Eventually she stumbled into it; when we know better, we do better.
Four Weeks, Four Different Jobs
Cycle syncing is a wellness practice for women where you adjust your diet, exercise, and daily habits to match your shifting hormones during the four phases of your menstrual cycle.
Amy walked us through how it works:
Get your notepad and write this down!
Bleed week: rest, gentle movement, no pushing it. This is time to rest and restore.
Follicular week, right after your last bleed ends: cardio comes back online. Warming up the body’s system after a cool down period.
Ovulation: this is when a testosterone surge gives you your highest output of the month, this is when to chase a new max or push a hard interval session.
Luteal: is the week most people associate with PMS. This is strength-training week slower, controlled, still building, still putting out the effort before taking a break.
Honestly, I had heard of cycle syncing prior to this but I never knew much else than it was something. Turns out, it’s a thing.
Amy mentioned a women’s soccer team that structured an entire training block around the menstrual cycle to keep the whole team optimized. Not everyone doing the same workout, but instead everyone doing “the right workout for them.”
I did some research and learned it’s Chelsea Women’s FC in the English WSL, and the person leading the charge on this initiative was manager Emma Hayes. Around 2019, team coaches started to track each player’s individual cycle and adjusted her training load and intensity week to week. Same team, same week, different plans per player, based on where each woman actually was in her own cycle.
There are no peer-reviewed findings around this method at this time. And still, it’s been adopted by England’s national team. Then, in 2025, UEFA published a consensus statement on menstrual cycle tracking in football, noting tracking is increasingly recognized as important for supporting female athletes in an effort to further research.
Overall, research findings are neutral. More studies with consistent, high quality data inputs are needed. But we can’t discredit the improvements women who cycle sync experience. That relief is real and if a “woo-woo” methodology can bring someone relief from feeling like shit, I’m all for it.
In the conversation, I realized I intuitively sync simply because I can tell what my body needs. Not something we tend to learn without a life altering event, unfortunately. Let’s skip the trauma and start tracking. The body will show patterns before illness or disease are symptomatic. So, yeah, let’s track how we feel and see what we learn.
Two Cancers, One Day at a Time
Amy is a two-time cancer survivor. When I asked how daily movement supported her through treatment and recovery, she described a super small, and important measurement: “Yesterday I couldn’t get out of bed. Today at least I can get out of bed.”
The lesson: small progress is still progress!
That’s the same definition of strength Amy gave at the start of our conversation. When I asked her how she defines strength, she said: “the ability to do something today that you couldn’t do yesterday.”
It sounded like a nice line in the abstract. In the context of chemotherapy, strength is a life strategy.
Where Muscle Shows Up
Amy isn’t training for a number or a competition. She shows up and does her strength training routine so she can show up for her life.
She told a story about a family photo in Mexico. A photographer casually tells her and her husband to pick up their kids for the shot, and Amy, with a sprinkle of hesitation, picks up the (now) ten-year-old she hadn’t lifted in years and held him through the whole shoot, no problem.
That’s real-life strength! 10 year old humans are not babies. You need muscle to pick up and hold a child.
A smaller version of the same story in her life; years earlier, eight months pregnant, unable to make it up a hill at the zoo without losing her breath. Later, after having a baby and rebuilding her strength, she got to jog up that same hill with family to catch a glimpse of a tiger exhibit. When she was home later that night, it hit her with pride, something that was once hard, was not easier. It just happened in her life because she is consistent with her own strength program.
Neither of those is a personal record. Both are strength as a life strategy.
Now What?
Amy’s advice for where to start: “Become aware of your energy levels.” Not a program. Not a full overhaul. Attention.
What I want to add: the next time something pings inside you — a pang, a pull, a small huh, that’s odd you’d normally ignore, don’t. Talk to it, ask what it was. And give yourself room to hear the answer, even if it doesn’t arrive right away.
You don’t need to be fixed. But you do need to listen to your body. It’s giving you clues.
ABOUT AMY DAVE
Physician Assistant Of 25 Years. Women’s Wellness Coach. Founder Of The Wealth Of Wellness. Two-Time Cancer Survivor. Mom Of Three Boys. Host, This Incredible Mom Life Podcast.
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Website: thewealthofwellness.com
Instagram: @thewealthofwellnessllc
Free Guide, Live A Life Without PMS is available here.
