How Your Menstrual Cycle Affects Energy, Cravings, and Cutting Weight
If you've ever felt like your body is working against you while trying to manage your weight, you're not alone—and you're not wrong. Female wrestlers face a unique challenge: a constantly shifting internal landscape that impacts energy, cravings, strength, and recovery.
We all know weight cutting by its traditional model—a short term, rapid reduction in weight where athletes typically use crash diets, extreme dehydration, and extreme exercise to hit a weight goal, is risky and leads to a plethora of issues. These issues include energy crashes, poor performance, increased injury risk, and long-term hormonal disruption (especially for females, see The Female Athlete Triad).
But here’s the good news: understanding your menstrual cycle is one of the most powerful tools you have in your weight management journey. There are a few simple methods in this article you can utilize in order to gain perspective on how your cycle affects training and competition. We’ve also created an in depth tool that help athletes move away from poor and outdated weight cut methods. I’ll go over that at the end. Be sure to apply these new methods so you can reap the benefits and rise above the competition. Knowledge is your secret weapon!
🩸 Days 1–7: Menstrual Phase
What’s happening: Your period begins. Estrogen and progesterone are at their lowest. You may feel fatigued, crampy, and bloated.
Why it matters: This is often the most challenging phase to manage weight. Even when you’re doing everything “right,” the scale might not budge—or might even go up due to water retention.
Goal: Stay consistent. Trust your habits. Being 0.5–1 lb above your target the night before weigh-ins is perfectly normal. Weight management is a lifestyle. Learn your body through tracking and choose a proper weight class to allow for your personal weight fluctuations.
🌱 Days 8–14: Follicular Phase
What’s happening: Estrogen is rising. You’re likely to feel strong, energized, and mentally sharp.
Why it matters: This is the most “cut-friendly” phase of your cycle. Your body is primed for intense workouts, and better recovery.
Goal: Lean in. This is the phase to make visible progress while feeling good.
🔥 Days 15–21: Ovulation Phase
What’s happening: Estrogen peaks, then drops. Progesterone begins to rise.
Why it matters: You might feel powerful—then suddenly hit a wall or feel bloated. That doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It’s hormonal.
Goal: Stay the course. If the scale stalls or jumps, don’t panic—it’s likely water.
🌊 Days 22–28: Luteal Phase
What’s happening: Progesterone is dominant. Cravings may increase, and mood or motivation might dip.
Why it matters: This is when many wrestlers feel "off" or fall into the trap of pushing harder, cutting more, or blaming themselves.
Goal: Be kind to your body. Maintain momentum with protein-rich meals, hydration, and recovery-focused training.
Practical Tips to Get Started
Track your cycle. Apps or journals work great. You’ll start seeing patterns in energy, mood, and weight. You should always know when your next period will start, especially if it aligns with competition.
Give yourself context. If you’re feeling sluggish or bloated, it’s not a failure—it might be your cycle.
Adjust, don’t restrict. Eat more when your body needs it. Recover more when you’re run down. That’s how champions train.
Make a plan. Line up tougher training or slight calorie adjustments during your follicular phase. Be gentler during the luteal.
Open the conversation. Athletes, coaches, and parents—when this becomes normalized, everyone performs better.
How to Track Your Weight
It can be helpful to know how your weight fluctuates throughout the day. Here are the best times to weigh yourself, especially the week going into the competition so you are aware of how your weight can shift and change:
First thing in the morning. Weigh yourself before any food or drink so you know your weight on an empty stomach.
Before practice. In order to track how much will be lost during training.
After practice. This helps you learn how your body reacts to a light, medium, or hard training session. Also helpful to know how much to rehydrate.
Before bed. This number will help you estimate how much you “float” overnight.
This Isn’t “Cutting” the Old Way—It’s Learning a Smarter Way
What we’re talking about isn’t the traditional idea of a weight cut—extreme, last-minute, and draining.
This is strategic weight management: learning to adjust your nutrition and training around your body’s natural cycle so you can safely and consistently manage a couple of pounds, stay within a healthy weight range, and feel strong doing it.
It’s not about pushing harder. It’s about planning smarter.
Want the full breakdown?
The Female Wrestler’s Guide to Weight Management was built for athletes who are done guessing, panicking, and breaking down right before competition. If you’re tired of burning out, starving yourself, or believing you have to shrink to succeed—you’re not alone. And you don’t have to keep doing it this way.
We’re engineering athlete-centered tools that work with your body, not against it. We're here to help you compete strong, stay healthy, and rewrite what it means to make weight in this sport.
Because changing the culture of wrestling starts with you—and it starts here.
