If you’ve never heard of seed cycling I don’t blame you. I had never heard of it until I saw someone mention it on my Instagram explore page. Full disclaimer, after looking into it, I can confidently say there is no evidence that seed cycling will fix (or even impact) your menstrual cycle. But, it also isn’t harmful. Seed cycling consists of eating a tablespoon each of pumpkin and flax seeds during the first two weeks (follicular phase) of your cycle and a tablespoon each of sesame and sunflower seeds for the second two weeks (luteal phase). Eating the seeds during the follicular and luteal phases of your cycle may balance your estrogen and progesterone, ultimately regulating your menstrual cycle. A quick Google search will provide many anecdotes of seed cycling success stories but to be clear, there is no scientific evidence that this works . As someone who has struggled with an irregular (if not totally absent) period since stopping hormonal birth control, I decided “why not?”.
As someone who enjoys tinkering with recipes and baking new things, I thought if I’m going to be eating two tablespoons of ground seeds each day, I might as well try to turn them into something I look forward to eating. First up was pumpkin and flaxseed. I made some pre-workout bars that I think are good enough to share. Check out the recipe here.