The Week

The core five

Five things, chosen because they're the highest-leverage and the most likely to survive a bad day: morning light on Toasty's walk, three walks total, cruciferous plus flax, no alcohol, lights out by 10:30. Two of the five are habits you already have. Hit all five and you've won the day, even if the workout didn't happen and dinner was improvised.

Why the streak forgives one day

All-or-nothing streaks are the main reason people quit. Miss once, feel like a failure, abandon the whole system. So this one survives a single missed day and only resets after two in a row. The rule is deliberately generous — the goal is adherence over months, not a perfect record.

Why there are no points or badges

Extrinsic rewards can crowd out intrinsic motivation for something you actually want to do. Checkboxes, visible progress, and a chain worth not breaking are the mechanics with the best track record. Anything else is more to maintain and less to gain.

Bonus items don't count against you

Training, spearmint, and supplements sit outside the five on purpose. They're worth doing and worth seeing, but making them mandatory would mean a travel day or a sick day breaks the chain, and that's exactly the failure mode above.

Where your checkmarks live

In your browser on this device, nowhere else. Nothing is sent anywhere. If you clear browsing data or open it on a different phone, it starts fresh.

You already walk him between 7 and 8, and again around sunset. Those two walks quietly cover two of the core five before most of the day has happened.

The morning walk is your light exposure

Getting outside within an hour of waking is the whole intervention for your bottom-of-range melatonin. You were already doing it — it just wasn't labelled. Two things to add and nothing else: no sunglasses, and look up rather than at the phone. Light has to reach your eyes to count.

The sunset walk is your post-dinner walk

Post-meal walking is the highest-leverage item in this plan, and the evening one matters most. If dinner lands before the walk, that's ideal. If it doesn't, the walk still counts.

Evening light is fine, unlike late indoor light

Sunset light is warm and low in the sky, and it acts as an evening circadian cue rather than working against one. It's bright screens at 10pm that suppress melatonin, not being outside at dusk. Walking him at sunset genuinely helps the sleep side.

Only the midday walk is new

The third one, 10–15 minutes after lunch, is the single addition to your day. Everything else was already happening.

The sunset walk moves with the season

In Austin, sunset runs near 8pm in late August and drifts to around 5:30 by December. In summer the walk lands after dinner; by winter it'll come before. Both work — don't force the clock time, follow the light.

Your DUTCH shows androgens elevated across every branch — testosterone above range, 5a-androstanediol 1.5× the ceiling, 5b-androstanediol 3.2×, etiocholanolone above range. That's a volume problem upstream, not a routing problem.

High total androgens plus hirsutism at 36 is a PCOS-pattern presentation, and insulin resistance is the most common driver. Insulin also upregulates aromatase, which converts those excess androgens into estrogen — likely where your slightly-high estrogen comes from.

One upstream lever explains both complaints. That's why this plan is built around blood sugar, not detox.

What this replaced

Earlier drafts targeted cortisol. Your saliva cortisol total, CAR, and catecholamine turnover all came back normal — aimed at a problem you don't have.

More iron loss than you'd think

15–16 periods a year instead of 13 is roughly 20% more menstrual iron loss, compounding across years. Add three pregnancies, each costing meaningful stores. Nobody has checked your ferritin. Low ferritin causes afternoon fatigue that looks exactly like the fatigue in 4 of your 7 sessions.

A short follicular phase, not a short luteal one

Your progesterone metabolites came back solidly mid-luteal, so the luteal phase is doing its job. With a 24-day cycle the follicular phase is compressed and ovulation is early, around day 10–11.

Consistently short follicular phases are one of the earliest signals of shifting ovarian reserve. At 36 that would be early, and it may simply be your normal — but worth characterizing. Add AMH and a day-3 FSH and estradiol.

Insulin sensitivity is highest in the follicular phase. Since insulin is the target of this plan, days 1–10 are when hard training does the most good.

Both hormones are at their floor and core temperature is at its lowest point of the cycle — heat tolerance and output tend to be better.

Exercise generally reduces menstrual cramping rather than worsening it.

The one adjustment: autoregulate. Feel rough, drop the load 20% and keep the session. Preserving the habit matters more than any single workout.

Being straight about evidence: research on cycle-phase training periodization is genuinely mixed and meta-analyses haven't settled it. The insulin-sensitivity finding is more solid than the strength-gain finding.

Non-heme iron — lentils, greens, beans — is poorly absorbed to begin with, and polyphenols in tea and coffee cut it further when taken with the meal.

You now drink two cups of spearmint plus coffee daily. On bleeding days, space them an hour from iron-rich meals.

The flip side: vitamin C roughly triples non-heme iron absorption. Lemon on the greens, berries at breakfast. Free, and it does more than the timing rule.

Heme iron from red meat is absorbed far better and is much less affected by any of this. That's why beef appears on bleeding days.

Your one genuine estrogen finding is the 16-OH pathway: 16-OH-E1 at 3.17 against a 2.6 ceiling, and your 2-OH/16-OH ratio at 2.69 — exactly the floor of range. That pathway is the more proliferative one.

Indole-3-carbinol converts to DIM and shifts hydroxylation toward the benign 2-OH route. Sulforaphane, concentrated in broccoli sprouts, activates Nrf2 and upregulates Phase II enzymes.

Note the contradiction in your summary doc: it says avoid sulfur foods and also take DIM. DIM is a cruciferous extract. Eat the vegetables — the "CBS sulfur overload" model has thin support, and your 16-OH elevation is measured on your own lab.

Also worth knowing

Your 4-OH-E1 — the genotoxic pathway that matters for cancer risk — is 0.62 against a range of 0–1.8. That pathway is in good shape.

Estrogen clearance has three steps: liver Phase I hydroxylation, liver Phase II conjugation, then elimination in bile and stool. Most people leak at step three.

Gut bacteria produce β-glucuronidase, which un-tags conjugated estrogen and lets it be reabsorbed. Fiber binds it so it leaves instead.

Flax adds lignans — gut bacteria convert them to enterolactone, which modulates estrogen activity. Must be ground to count, and goes rancid within days at room temperature.

Two small randomized trials in women with hirsutism found spearmint tea twice daily reduced free testosterone over 30 days.

Being straight about quality: small samples, short duration, and the second trial found the hormonal change without a significant change in measured hair growth in that window. Promising, not proven.

But it's a cup of tea. Zero risk, aimed exactly at your elevated androgens.

Steeping

Heaped teaspoon dried, just-boiled water, covered, 5–10 minutes. Covered matters — the volatile oils leave with the steam.

Walking 10–15 minutes after a meal blunts the post-meal glucose spike measurably — more than almost any supplement taken for the same purpose.

Three short walks a day is the single highest-leverage item on this page, and the one most likely to get skipped because it seems too small to matter. That's why it has its own row in the tracker.

Eating protein and vegetables first and starch last does the same thing from the other direction.

Skeletal muscle is your primary glucose disposal site. Building it is the most durable insulin-sensitivity intervention that exists — it changes your baseline rather than your day.

Three genuinely hard sessions with real load and long rests beat five moderate ones. Recovery days are where adaptation happens.

Progressive overload is the whole mechanism: add weight or reps week to week, concentrated in your follicular phase.

Your 6-OH-melatonin-sulfate came back at 10.4 against a floor of 10. Morning light is the best non-supplement fix.

Screened porch

Fine. Mesh cuts maybe 20–40%, but outdoor light is 1,000–10,000 lux versus 100–500 indoors. Still an order of magnitude ahead.

Glass is not

Windows cut enough that sitting inside by one reads as indoor light. Porch yes, sunroom no.

If it's dark

Standing outside in the dark does nothing — the signal is light hitting your eyes. Shift it later, or use a 10,000 lux box for 20–30 minutes. Relevant in December when Austin sunrise drifts past 7:30.

Same time daily matters more than duration.

Reasonable now

• Magnesium glycinate 300–400mg evening. Not sulfate, not Epsom. Double duty for cramps on bleeding days.
• Glycine 3g at bedtime — for sleep, on decent small-trial evidence. Not for detox; cysteine is the rate-limiting amino acid for glutathione, not glycine.
• Omega-3 ~2g EPA/DHA. Inflammation and breast tenderness.
• Vitamin D + K2 — dose to a tested level.

Worth raising given the insulin hypothesis

• Myo-inositol with D-chiro, 40:1. Good evidence for insulin sensitivity and lowering androgens in PCOS-pattern presentations. The most defensible addition here.
• B6 (P5P) in the luteal phase — reasonable evidence for cyclical breast tenderness.
• Low-dose melatonin, 0.5mg.

I'd hold

• Iron — until ferritin is tested.
• Saw palmetto. It inhibits 5-alpha reductase, and your own DUTCH puts your 5-alpha reductase activity at 27%, the low side of normal. Your 5b metabolites are more elevated than your 5a. Aimed at a mechanism your data doesn't show.
• DIM. Not unreasonable, but eat the vegetables first.

A primary care doctor can order all of this. Most is cheap or covered. This is the part of the page that could actually change your trajectory.

Iron — moved up because of the short cycle

• Ferritin, CBC, iron studies.

The insulin question — never checked in two years

• Fasting insulin, HbA1c
• SHBG, free and total testosterone, DHEA-S

The thyroid question — afternoon fatigue in 4 of 7 sessions

• TSH, free T4, free T3, reverse T3
• TPO and thyroglobulin antibodies
• Metabolized cortisol at the bottom of range commonly co-presents with low tissue thyroid hormone. DIO2 Thr92Ala is the one genetic finding with real literature behind it.

New — because of the 23–25 day cycle

• AMH, and day-3 FSH and estradiol.

Baseline

• Vitamin D (25-OH)

Only if metals stay a concern

• Blood lead, unprovoked urine mercury. Provoked or "challenge" testing isn't validated and produces alarming numbers in healthy people.

Page 10 of your report says the ranges use the 20th to 80th percentile, not the 5th–95th that standard labs use.

So "above range" means you're in the top 20% of healthy women, not that you're abnormal. By design, 40% of perfectly healthy people fall outside these ranges on any given marker.

Your total estrogen is 71.4 against a ceiling of 70 — roughly the 81st percentile. Real, worth addressing, not the emergency the label implies.

What came back clean

• 8-OHdG 1.6 (0–5.2) — no active oxidative DNA damage
• Indican 63.8 (0–100) — no gut putrefaction or dysbiosis signal
• MMA 0.9 — B12 functionally fine
• Xanthurenate and kynurenate normal — B6 fine
• Quinolinate 6.1 — no neuroinflammation signal
• Progesterone solidly mid-luteal
• Pyroglutamate 50.3 (28–58) — in range, despite being read as glutathione strain

• Fats: olive, avocado, butter, ghee, coconut. Nothing else.
• Hard roast cruciferous: 425°F, cut side down, don't crowd, don't stir for 15 minutes.
• Jammy eggs: 6 minutes in boiling water, straight into ice water.
• Broccoli sprouts go on raw and last — heat destroys the sulforaphane precursor.
• Flax must be ground to count. Grind a week at a time, keep in the fridge.
• Dressing, once a week: 6 parts olive oil, 2 parts lemon, 1 part dijon, salt.
• Aged cheese only — gruyère, parmesan, pecorino.
• Salt vegetables before they go in, not after.

Protein

• 1 whole chicken (4–5 lb) + 6 thighs
• 2 lb grass-fed ground beef or chuck
• 1 lb steak
• 2 fillets wild salmon + smoked salmon
• Marrow bones
• 4 dozen eggs

Cruciferous — buy more than feels reasonable

• 2 lb Brussels sprouts
• 2 heads broccoli, 1 cauliflower, romanesco if you see it
• 1 green cabbage, 1 red cabbage
• Broccoli sprouts, or seeds to grow them
• Arugula, kale, spinach

Rest

• Avocados (7), lemons (8 — more now for the iron), garlic, leeks, carrots, cucumber
• Sweet potatoes, wild rice, brown lentils, chickpeas, white beans, edamame
• Berries (frozen is fine)
• Whole flaxseed, pumpkin seeds, walnuts
• Olive oil, ghee, butter, coconut oil, toasted sesame oil
• Dijon, capers, apple cider vinegar, rice vinegar
• Aged cheese, goat cheese
• Bone broth
• Tart cherry juice, sparkling water

Tea

• Spearmint — buy a lot, two cups daily
• Nettle, rooibos, chamomile, lemon balm, ginger, tulsi, dandelion root