How To Start Charting Your Cycle

You might have heard of cycle tracking, the practice of paying attention to each day of your cycle and recording what you observe. There are several different levels of cycle tracking, depending on your intentions. But all ways of tracking come with similar benefits: increased connection to your cycle, empowered decision making around your health and a brand new way to communicate and understand your self!

Tracking your cycle is empowering and plugs you into your rhythm. I firmly believe that what we pay attention to, grows. When we pay more attention to our cycle and put energy into noticing the subtleties of our cycle, we can live in more ease and flow. Wanting to start a charting practice but not sure where to begin? This post is for you!

what do we mean by charting our cycle?

There are a multitude of ways to chart your menstrual cycle, as well as varying levels of depth that you can go. If you are new to charting, start by tracking the basics, and slowly add elements as you go. Building habits take time, and charting is no exception. The longer you track, the more it will feel like second nature. Building slowly will help you stick with it!

the two types of cycle tracking

Cycle tracking at its most basic level is paying attention to the day of your cycle you’re on and how you feel, which is also called menstrual cycle awareness. It’s optimal to track this over several cycles so that you can begin to see patterns. Cycle Tracking can be done on a simple paper tracker, in your journal or in an app.

Charting your cycle with fertility awareness is a more in depth way of tracking. With fertility awareness you are tracking different fertility biomarkers to track ovulation. You can then use that information to avoid pregnancy, get pregnant, or monitor your reproductive health.

menstrual cycle awareness

Menstrual Cycle Awareness (MCA) is the practice of paying attention to each day of your cycle and noticing the ways in which the physical, emotional, spiritual and mental aspects of yourself are influenced by the cycle. Practicing MCA can be as straightforward as jotting down the day of your cycle and how you feel.

If you are charting your cycle with fertility awareness, you will already be halfway to menstrual cycle awareness. This is because you’re inherently paying attention to your cycle days by tracking your fertility. I really do think that FAM and MCA are an incredible pair - it’s almost impossible to not notice the effect that the cycle has on your mood, libido, appetite and more - why not use that information to live more in line with your cycle?

start with the basics

Let’s talk about the first step in charting and the most basic: keeping track of your cycle days. Remember, your cycle begins on the first day of your period (the first day of full bleeding) and ends the last day before your next period. Begin by noticing and starting to track which cycle day you are on. This is the foundation of charting, and from here you can start to add more to your charting practice.

Pay attention to your general wellbeing and energy levels for each day of the cycle. You can jot down a sentence a day of how you are feeling in each of your 4 bodies: emotional, physical, spiritual and mental. You can do this by:

Jotting down your observations in a journal at night
Creating a note in your phone to keep track as you go about your day
Using the journal section in an app like Read Your Body to keep your observations alongside your FAM chart
Downloading a printable tracker with space for each day of the cycle and your note for that day
Noting your cycle day in your daily planner and keeping track in your planner

Once you have several cycles worth of charting, you might notice some synchronicities on certain days! This is where cycle charting becomes really fun.

fertility awareness method (FAM) charting

Tracking your cycle with the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) involves paying attention to different fertility biomarkers (such as basal body temperature and cervical mucus) to track ovulation.

Menstrual cycle awareness and FAM are an incredible pair. Once you start charting fertility awareness it’s almost impossible to not notice the influence of your cycle on your entire being. You can track your fertility biomarkers (such as cervical mucus and basal body temperature) to identify when in the cycle you’re fertile.

Charting in this way means you can more accurately pinpoint ovulation, and sync up your life with your cycle. You can also use this info for natural birth control. If you’re avoiding pregnancy there will be times in the cycle when pregnancy is impossible and you enjoy worry-free unprotected sex. If you’re trying to conceive, you’ll know the optimal time to have sex!

the FAM basics

Knowing when you ovulate is incredibly empowering, and it’s quite straightforward. Chances are your body is already giving you the signs, you just need to learn how to interpret what your body is telling you. People chart ovulation with fertility awareness for many reasons, whether that is charting for health, charting to conceive, or charting to avoid.

If you’re brand new to fertility awareness, you’ll need a few things to get started:

You need a way to keep track of your fertility biomarkers, which can be done on an app like Read Your Body, or on a paper chart.
If you’re wanting to use the symptothermal method of fertility awareness (using cervical mucus and basal body temperature to track ovulation), you’ll need a thermometer.
You will need a method, that is, a set of rules and a method to interpret your fertility data.

keeping track of your data

Many people are introduced to FAM through paper charting, and switch to fertility tracking apps for convenience. There are also many others who are introduced to it through apps, and switch to paper to get away from their phones. I began with paper, switched to an app quite quickly, and now I am back to paper and I love it. With both the app and paper, you don't have to input all the information they ask for, you can make it as simple or as advanced as you like!

app

The obvious upside of charting with an app is the convenience! Wherever you are, you can input information into your chart, which will make it much easier to integrate with your life. The app I recommend is the Read Your Body app. There is a space in this app for a journal or note for each day - you can add your insights for the cycle day there or keep a separate tracker for your MCA reflections.

paper chart

I have recently discovered the joys of charting with a paper chart. Charting on paper becomes a really beautiful meditative practice, and a way to integrate charting into your everyday life. For a chart that is compatible with the Symptothermal method of FAM, I offer downloadable charts in the shop. I highly recommend starting out with paper charting - as this pen-to-paper practice helps with the learning process. Paper charting means that you never have to worry about apps selling your data.

choosing a thermometer

Most basal body thermometers that you can find online or in a drugstore will work as long as they go to two decimal places. A wearable thermometer like Tempdrop is sensitive enough to give you accurate daily readings unlike Ava, which is a wrist thermometer with an algorithm and is not recommended for avoiding pregnancy (and I’d argue that cervical mucus is more integral for folks TTC). You’ll find a guide to my thermometer recommendations in FAM Fundamentals.

choosing a method

Under the umbrella of fertility awareness based methods (FABMS) are secular and religious methods (commonly known as natural family planning). Religious methods mean that abstinence is emphasized in the fertile window and there may be a conversation around marriage and sex in the teaching. It's not black-and-white, however, and all teachers will come with their own set of beliefs regardless of the method they teach.

Symptohormonal methods include FEMM, Marquette and Boston Cross Check. These methods use a combination of hormone urine tests or a hormone monitor to test LH and sometimes estrogen in conjunction with cervical mucus.
Symptothermal methods like Sensiplan, Symptopro, Serena, NFPTA or the method from Taking Charge of Your Fertility use cervical mucus and basal body temperature as the primary fertility biomarkers, however some methods include optional cervical position checks.
Cervical Mucus only methods like the Billings Ovulation Method, Creighton or Justisse use very specific categories of cervical mucus to open and close the fertile window.