Fertility Awareness in Practice: One Practitioner’s Journey (Episode 524)

Full Transcript: Episode 524

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Today I’m sharing a brand new episode in my FAMM Practitioner Series. I’m sharing my interview with Amanda Borucki, who is a current member of FAMM. At the time of this recording, we are about eight months into the program, and the program is a total of nine months long. So Amanda is really deep into her practicum. She’s had the opportunity not only to learn the principles that we teach within the FAMM program — our protocols, our strategies — but at the time you’re listening, she’s also had the ability to apply these directly to her clients and in her business for several months. She’s deep into her practicum work and we’ve had many, many sessions together.

Before we jump into today’s episode, I’m going to go ahead and share a little bit about Amanda. She is a holistic health coach and personal trainer specializing in women’s health. Her mission is to teach women body literacy so they may reclaim their health, freedom, and power. In a culture where we have outsourced all of these things, Amanda is driven to provide the missing education necessary to put us back in the driver’s seat. She uses the menstrual cycle as the metric for overall health, which allows her to create individualized programs. She will teach you how to chart your menstrual cycle so that you can track overall health, prevent pregnancy naturally, and/or optimize conception. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and jump into today’s episode with Amanda.

And I’m really excited to be here today with Amanda Borucki. We are towards the end of our program, which is insane, because that means it’s almost been nine months, and that really went by in the blink of an eye. So really excited to have you. Thanks for coming on the show, Amanda.

Amanda Borucki:

Thank you so much for having me.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Yeah, I mean, where to start. I’d love for you to take a little bit of time and introduce yourself to the audience. The question that I like to start with most of the time is — what was your first menstruation like? You could tell us a little bit about that and then share how old you were, and then just tell us a little bit about what brought you to this place where you were wanting to jump into fertility awareness as part of your practice.

Amanda Borucki:

Those are big questions that could go so many places. I know, just like a softball. So my first period was at 12 years old. I was sitting in band class when it started and I knew exactly what was happening. My mother was out of town and I did not have a good relationship with my dad. So that was a little awkward. It was a lot awkward. So I had to call him and have him bring me clothes and it was the whole thing. And I don’t have a lot of memory after that — like that time while I was at school. I don’t really remember much of that transition. I think I blocked it out of my memory. I didn’t have a lot of introduction, even when my mom came home from her vacation. I was never really shown how to use anything. I was just really like — it was a free-for-all. Figure it out. That was kind of my experience.

So yeah, that kind of set the precedent for the menstrual cycle for my entire life leading up to the last handful of years. We didn’t talk about it. I have a mom and an older sister. We didn’t talk about it. We didn’t really have any — it was just a thing that was there. And I didn’t have really significant periods in the sense that I had pain or really heavy bleeding. I didn’t really have anything that caused me to disrupt my daily life. And so I just kind of lived with it and didn’t really acknowledge it at all until many years down the line.

I’ve been a health coach for nine years. I’ve been in fitness — just in lifestyle coaching, holistic lifestyle wellness coaching. And in all of my training, I didn’t have any women-specific coaching or education. And so when I came to a position in my own life when I decided I wanted to start to try to get pregnant and I couldn’t, I didn’t really know where to go with that. And so I didn’t have a lot of information to work off of. And that really sent me down into this deep rabbit hole of my own health and my own menstrual cycle, and then it really illuminated me to just how much is in there and how much is unknown to the general population. And that’s kind of what started me down this journey. And then when I discovered you — well, I had to do this program because I jive with everything you say.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, I mean, I always have questions, so I’ll ask more. I always find it interesting how we find our way into this work. And your experience, even of your first menstruation and how it was not something that was talked about — I think that’s pretty common. And it’s ironic because you were one of three women in your home, so it would seem to set the stage for rich discussions of this topic. But you’re certainly not alone in that. And when I look at those things, I think sometimes the first question can be, you know, why didn’t they tell me? But I’ve thought about that as well with my mom — she didn’t know. So what was she going to tell me?

Amanda Borucki:

Exactly, right?

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

So maybe share a little bit about when you discovered charting. How did that come about? Was it quite a bit later? What was that journey like, going from not doing that to doing that? And maybe share with the audience if you had a bit of a birth control history.

Amanda Borucki:

Yeah. So I did use hormonal contraceptives for a relatively short period, all things considered. When I was 20 years old, I got engaged and it was just the thing to do — go get birth control. So I went to the doctor and got birth control pills, and that was that. No conversation about options or anything about it. It was just, this is what we do. And I was on it for six years. And during it, I don’t have any awareness of what it did to me or how it affected me. I really was very disconnected with my body and everything at that point. And there came a time when — nothing else besides my intuition is all I can say. My intuition said to stop taking it. I cannot recall a specific reason. I just had this really intense intrinsic knowing that I needed to stop. And so I did. And then I think with about two or three years off of that is when I got the copper IUD. And I had that in for two years. That was not a very pleasant experience. And I’ve had that out for about eight years now.

As far as menstrual cycle charting and fertility awareness — that never came onto my radar until about two and a half years ago. I had signed up to work with a coach, and my intention was to get my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual existence kind of ready to get pregnant and have a baby. And so I had some physical imbalances that I wanted to work on. And in the process of that, she asked me to start charting my cycles. But she didn’t give me a lot of detail and information on how to do it. And I remember being really frustrated — my cycles were really out of whack at that point. I started sort of tracking and I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t understand it. And I think she didn’t really know either. She wasn’t trained. It was just something that she had done. And so in my frustration, I stopped charting because I just couldn’t handle the fact that I didn’t know what was going on. And the data was just making me upset.

And then I think it was maybe seven or eight months later when I discovered Taking Charge of Your Fertility. And that’s when I also discovered your book, The Fifth Vital Sign. And that really just sent me into this whirlwind of — I have to start charting, I have to start tracking, I have to learn all of the things about my body — and I never looked back since then.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

It’s so interesting what you said. You were charting and you stopped because all these things were happening and you didn’t understand them. And getting to know you and your personality — I always say this work really attracts people who are super keen about this topic. But we also tend to want to know the answers. We tend to have a bit of a type A personality, and really detail-oriented. We want to know what’s going on, we want to know why, and we want to know how to fix it. And obviously we want our cycles to be air-quote perfect, which I hope to shift away from in the program because it’s not about that. But all I can say is I’m glad that you kept searching in that respect.

Amanda Borucki:

Me too.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Did you want to share a little bit about the copper IUD? Anyone who’s listened to the podcast for a while and has heard some of those Pill Reality series episodes — it’s obviously the copper IUD rather than the pill, but I categorize these contraceptive options under the same category at least for that series. And I’ve spoken to so many women who’ve had issues with the insertion process. Not that that was your experience, but share a little bit about what happened, because it seems like things kind of went a little wild after your copper IUD experience.

Amanda Borucki:

Yes. It was a hellacious experience. I’m not even sure if that’s a good enough word. I was really, really wanting some sort of birth control option that did not have hormones. And I had a lot of anxiety in that two to three year time period when I was not on any birth control. And I was not in a serious relationship and I just was anxious and I really wanted something. And I think at that point I did not really know or recognize that condoms were actually a really reliable and viable option. And so they gave me anxiety. And so in all the conversations with the doctor and just my research, the copper IUD was like the best option. And I happened to be a good candidate in that I didn’t have heavy periods, I didn’t have painful periods, and I didn’t have all of these things that the copper IUD tends to make worse.

So I was like, okay, I sat with it for probably a year before I made the decision to actually do it. I took myself to the doctor’s office. They had told me to take 800 milligrams of ibuprofen in preparation, which is a significant amount. And I did that.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Like a red flag. Yes.

Amanda Borucki:

And I didn’t think anything of it at that point. So I did that. I took the 800 milligrams, I show up, and I have no memory of what time of my cycle I was at or if they recommended a certain time — I don’t know the details on that. But it was the single most painful experience of my entire life. The whole thing — having it put in, and then just the several hours afterwards was awful. And that was with 800 milligrams of ibuprofen. I was there alone, so I had to drive myself back home. And I ended up having to sit in the office for like one to two hours after they were done because it was so painful and I was lightheaded and I couldn’t transport myself. And then for the rest of that day, for hours still, just so much pain. And they said for the next probably week it was going to be painful, and it was. And then from there on out, every period that I had was excruciating.

And this was so new to me because on a scale of one to ten, my period cramps before this point were like maybe a 0.5 to one. And so this was very new — it was quite awful. And a lot of the things I’d read and things that the doctors said was that the pain might subside after five or six months, and it didn’t. It just was — every single time I had a period, it was just excruciating. And I did what is often done and I took ibuprofen and just carried on through my days. And I did that for about two years.

And the same thing occurred with this one where I can chalk it off to nothing but my intuition. There was just some intrinsic knowing that my body felt was rejecting the IUD in a certain sense. And so when I had that sense, I started doing some research and that’s whenever I discovered about copper toxicity and how that can have a relationship with causing your hormones to be imbalanced and can cause all these other problems. And immediately I had it taken out. I had it taken out two years after it was put in. And it has now been eight years since I had it taken out. And the experience of painful periods never went away after I had it removed. And I wish that I had been tracking my cycles or paying attention to really anything at that point. But I wasn’t. So I’m not sure of the length of my cycles or how any of that changed. I’m really not aware of that, but the pain has been present that whole time.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

And obviously the copper IUD did something there. Your story is uncommon, I think. I’ve heard a lot of different stories about the IUD. I’ve heard many women talk about how the IUD made their pain worse or their periods heavier. I’ve had many stories of women who improved when they had it removed. But in your case, having this intense period pain that has continued for almost a decade since having it removed — it does beg the question of whether something else is at play. And maybe the copper IUD exacerbated something that was already there. Hard to know if it could be the sole cause. So as people listen to this episode, I wouldn’t want people to think like, oh, now she’s saying that the copper IUD causes all these problems. But what we are saying is that it’s obviously involved — we’re just not sure specifically what it did.

What are your thoughts on that at this point?

Amanda Borucki:

Yeah, it’s interesting because there’s been a lot of reflection on what it could have done. After eight years, I start to question — surely some of that has healed by now, cleared itself out, considering all the lifestyle factors that I’ve worked on in that time period. At this point, I do have a sense that it caused problems, and it wasn’t the sole cause of the problems. The one thing that I really take away from it is that when we add these exogenous external things into our body and it interrupts our process, it kind of adds this other layer of question about how that’s impacting us, and we have less connection to what our bodies are actually doing. So regardless of whether it’s the sole cause of the issues, it did create a lot of disconnect from my body. And that is something that is really important to me now. So it’s been a kind of a love-hate relationship, but I’m grateful to have the reflection of what it looked like to be separated from my body and what it looks like now to have that connection and to be able to use the signs and symptoms and pay attention and address them.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, I feel like the topic of the copper IUD in some ways is tricky because it is one of the only non-hormonal, set-it-and-forget-it methods. And so for a lot of women, it represents this fantastic opportunity to avoid pregnancy with high efficacy while not specifically altering your cycle with hormones. But then you get into the copper IUD research and you talk to women who’ve had it inserted, and there are still side effects that mirror hormonal effects. And there’s obviously this issue with insertion and removal.

I’ve seen many women who’ve had IUDs inserted and removed — I’m not saying it’s causal — but it’s an observation that many do have a period of time where they might see less mucus, which begs the question of whether there’s a connection between that kind of insertion and removal, if it’s damaging any of those crypts in any way. And where’s the research on that? Who’s studying that? I haven’t seen any paper. I don’t know if anyone’s even interested to do research like that. So there’s a lot of unanswered questions. And it’s like anything where we just have to be informed of the potential risks when we’re using any type of birth control.

Amanda Borucki:

Yeah. And it feels really important to really provide the option and the education around fertility awareness because that just wasn’t on my radar. Like I had no idea. I’m sitting here with all this anxiety feeling like my choices are hormones, the copper IUD, or condoms, and I didn’t really like any of those choices to be honest. I was kind of anxious about all of them. And at no point did I have any idea that the fertility awareness method was even a thing. Charting my cycle — I’d never heard of that in my life. And so to have women have that as an option when they’re in that same position and they don’t want the hormones — to have the option of charting their cycles — to say, oh well, actually there’s no risk in the sense of it’s not going to give me more pain, it’s not going to be a procedure that I need to go through, and I don’t need to go to the doctor. And I think that it’s something I would have considered had I been offered it.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, interestingly — you mentioned at the top of our episode that you’ve been a holistic health coach for quite some time, and you had already specialized in women’s health. So given that you’re in the program, you wanted to add this as kind of that missing piece. I’m interested to hear your perspective because you had already been in this field. How is it possible that this piece is missing from it?

Amanda Borucki:

I’ve wondered that. Because it’s so big and profound. I guess it’s just like everything else — the same reason that women aren’t being studied in the different studies that occur in fitness and health and anything in general. That has racked my brain. There’s not information provided about this, and I guess the answer is it’s a lot easier to tell everybody to do the same thing. It’s a lot easier to ignore the menstrual cycle than to teach a woman how to train in the gym around her menstrual cycle. It adds so many complexities to our existence and we’ve tried so hard as women to shove it down, forget about it, and act like we’re the same when we’re not.

Yeah, a lot of it comes down to just a lack of interest in diving into the fact that we are in fact different. And that doesn’t mean that we’re not equal, but we’re different and we operate differently. And it’s been really interesting for me because I grew up more likened to being a tomboy — I enjoyed hanging out with boys more, playing with boys more — and I didn’t really know what it meant to be a woman. And so this whole process of diving into health through the lens of being a woman has been kind of like an existential crisis of sorts. Because I lived my whole life really trying to pretend like I was the same. I would work out in the gym like I was the same. I have a pretty competitive nature and I would compare myself to the men. And now I’m learning about the menstrual cycle and how to live cyclically and what that means.

And so I’ve spent a lot of time really shifting the lens of how I’m viewing life, how I’m viewing self, how I interact with the world. It’s a paradigm shift for my existence — who am I and what does it mean to be a woman? And I know that a lot of women are still in the position where they’re not ready to have that confronting conversation with themselves. And I think that has a lot to do with it. It’s a change of belief system at its core, because we are shifting how we believe we are as women and how we should operate in the world.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

It’s loaded, right. It really is. But from my perspective — once you start looking at it this way and once you understand how integral the menstrual cycle is to a woman’s life outside of even reproduction, it’s obviously integral to our reproductive life. But it’s also integral because as you get into the cycle weeds, as we do in the program, you see how the cycle changes and shifts with what we’re doing. If you’re working out a lot, you see shifts. If you eat less optimally, you see the shift. If you make positive changes, reduce your stress, optimize your diet a bit more, start addressing nutrient deficiencies — you see positive shifts. There’s always this dance that’s happening between your cycle and your life. And when you’re working with clients who have issues with their hormones or various other challenges that we can see in the cycle, it gives us a very unique and customized, tailored way to work with women.

Now that you’re knee deep into your practicum, you’ve been taking clients through this process — how has it changed your practice?

Amanda Borucki:

My favorite thing about having the menstrual cycle chart as a diagnostic tool is that it provides this truly individualized metric. And when you’re in the health and wellness field right now, particularly in fitness — the number one thing that people come to you for is weight loss. Specifically women — weight loss, weight loss, weight loss. It’s all the rage. And it’s very frustrating to be in that space and to be fighting against social media and any kind of media and what the image is presenting to how a woman should look and the ideas that are being put in her head about what the appropriate weight should be.

So you get somebody and they come to you and they want to lose 15 pounds and the question is, well, why do you want to lose 15 pounds? And they don’t really know the answer. They just have in their head that 130 lbs is how they know they’re going to feel best. What I’m most excited about using this metric for is that I don’t now have to argue with a client over the fact that they shouldn’t actually be losing the 15 pounds because they need this weight. I don’t need to argue with them because I have this metric now that shows up and just tells them for me.

If they decide that they want to lose 15 pounds and that puts them at a weight that’s actually underweight and an unhealthy weight for them, and it throws their cycle all out of whack — then I get to say, hey, this is actually not a healthy weight for you because your cycle is doing XYZ. Then we can have the conversation of what would be an optimal weight based on the cycle. And so then we get away from “I want to be at this specific weight” and we’re looking at “I’m just going to get to whatever weight it is that causes my cycle to be healthy.” And just shifting that perspective alone feels so potent for working with women. Because there’s been no metric that’s really truly individualized that can say, this weight’s not healthy for you, but it might be healthy for Jane Doe.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

I love that. And it can go both ways because there are women whose body shape and size are naturally very small, and people assume that they’re undereating. And similarly, there are women who might be perceived to be overweight and doctors want to attribute certain conditions — I’m always going on my PCOS rants where if someone looks a certain way they’re attributed all of these scenarios. But if the cycle is the metric, then it informs us in a completely different way about where this person actually is.

Amanda Borucki:

I mean, it’s invaluable. Like this resource is invaluable. And in all of my years of training and education and research that I’ve done on myself, I have never found anything that’s just more valuable and so easily accessed.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, as we start wrapping up today — for someone who is a women’s health practitioner, maybe in a similar situation to you, where they’ve already been working with clients but they’re discovering this incredible additional piece — what would you say to that person, someone who’s contemplating diving into the FAMM program?

Amanda Borucki:

Really what I just said — that it’s invaluable. Having this resource is tapping into something that women need more than anything right now. I signed up and I knew it was worth it within the first month of signing up, just from the conversations I’d had with women. And the women that I’ve done work with through the practicum — their feedback is raging enthusiasm. One of them in particular has seen a lot of practitioners for a lot of different things and she’s 42 years old, and she is like, I have never had anyone talk to me about this. I’ve never been able to look for myself at any of this information. And she’s just like raging. And so there are no words to really describe the value of having this because what I’ve seen and how it can help people — this resource is just so, so needed.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, thank you for sharing that. My vision is to transform women’s healthcare. I’ve heard so many stories, even in the program itself, because each practitioner works with several clients and we do our client case study presentations where we’re anonymously bringing those clients to class so that we can dive deep into their cycle. So it really multiplies the number of stories that I hear. The number of times that I’ve heard stories where someone goes to their doctor and they’re barely listened to, they’re not provided with any information or resources, or they’re provided with the wrong information, given a diagnosis they don’t have, or they’re just laughed out of the office. It continues to fuel my fire to change things.

So I want to give you an opportunity — if you have any other last thoughts, feel free to chime in. And also share about yourself, where you are, website links, all the places.

Amanda Borucki:

Last thoughts are: dive into the rabbit hole and don’t turn back. You won’t regret it. So I live in a nice tiny little town of Durango, Colorado, and have a nice community of people that I do in-person work with here. And for anyone that’s not in this tiny little community, I can work online. I have a website, amandaborucki.com. I do have social media and Instagram. That’s amanda.n.borucki. My kind of disclaimer with that is that I’m developing my relationship with social media right now because I don’t love it, and I want to believe that I can exist in the world without it. So it’s there and I am cultivating a relationship with it right now. You may or may not find me on there. You can find me on my website and it has all my contact information on there.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Well, thank you for sharing that. This has been an amazing conversation, Amanda. I really appreciate you for jumping on and sharing your story. Not everybody wants to — not everyone is comfortable doing that. So I really appreciate that. And I just feel like today’s episode was so valuable in so many different ways because we were able to dive into so many different topics. So thank you for that.

Amanda Borucki:

Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it with a friend. You’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at fertilityfriday.com/524.

I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode with Amanda. It was such a treat to have her on the show. And one of the things that I always find whenever I’m doing these types of interviews is that even though Amanda and I have had many, many sessions together — the program runs for nine months, we have at least 39 calls together when we do the math week by week — when I do an interview-style podcast episode and I get to ask her to tell her story, I feel like I learn a lot more and I just get a fuller, better understanding of her story.

There are so many interesting points that came out of today’s episode, and I just wanted to highlight one. Amanda fully went to receive her education and training, and she’s been working in women’s health for many, many years. And even with that background and experience, menstrual cycle charting was not something that came onto her radar for quite some time. I would argue that it’s not just a cool add-on to be able to support your female clients with their menstrual cycles in the way that we do — using it as a diagnostic, being able to monitor overall health by paying attention to it in a specific, systematized way — I would argue that it’s essential and it really should be a mandatory part of your practice when you’re working with women, especially related to their hormones, to their health, to their fertility, because you really can’t separate it out.

And one of the huge benefits that I found is that it really allows you to have a customized approach beyond any other tool that’s available. Because the menstrual cycle shifts and changes in real time, it really forces you to not take a cookie-cutter approach with all of your clients. You might think that everybody needs to do XYZ in this order. But when you’re looking at the menstrual cycle chart, you’ll quickly find that some women respond very well to XYZ and they respond quickly and you kind of see it happening in an even predictable fashion. But then you always have certain clients who don’t respond that way. And when you have the menstrual cycle and you’re able to have your clients track cycle over cycle, and you’re able to track what changes they’re making, then it really helps you to see who’s benefiting from this and when it’s not working the way you thought, when you need to course correct.

So in our practitioner training program, we still have a framework, we still have fundamentals, we have protocols, we have specific tenets — we’re all humans and we do have certain things that we need to do in order for our body to function optimally. But that doesn’t mean that everybody needs to follow the exact same instructions and everybody can benefit from the same approach.

For those of you who are listening and are women’s health practitioners, I’d like to invite you to join us in our FAMM practitioner program. We are starting our next round in just a few weeks. So I really hope to have you in there, and if you’d like to join or just gain more information, head over to fertilityfriday.com/famlive. So with that said, I hope you have a wonderful week or weekend whenever you’re tuning into the show, and of course, as always, until next time, be well and happy charting.