Shopper's Guide•Women's Health

6 signs your hormones are running the show

Summary: For about a year I described my life as just busy. Then I wrote down what was actually happening week to week and it stopped looking like busy and started looking like a pattern. Here are the six things I'd noticed and kept explaining away.

Here's all 6 👇

1. The drop arrives at the same hour every day

Not tiredness that follows a bad night — tiredness that keeps an appointment. Mine was 3pm, near enough to set a clock by. Something that punctual is worth paying attention to rather than out-caffeinating.

2. You slept eight hours and woke up owing sleep

The hours were there and the rest wasn't. I spent months trying to fix this with an earlier bedtime, which is the wrong lever if the problem isn't how long you were unconscious.

3. Your mood turns before you can explain why

Not in response to anything. The turn arrives first and the reasons get assembled afterwards, usually pointed at whoever is nearest. That gap between the feeling and the cause was the part I found hardest to admit.

4. The cravings run on a schedule

Same stretch of the month, same foods, same strength. Once I could predict it I stopped treating it as a willpower problem, because willpower doesn't usually keep a calendar.

5. Your cycle changed and nobody mentioned it

Shorter, longer, heavier, differently timed. I'd been tracking it for years and still didn't register the change until I looked back across a whole year in one view.

6. You've been told it's stress, and only stress

Stress is usually part of it. What I wanted was the rest of the sentence. Superbalance was where I started because the label was legible: myo-inositol, shatavari, rhodiola rosea, magnesium glycinate, every amount printed and third-party tested.