Should I use an App to track my cycle?

I highly recommend paper charting when you first learn to chart (for at least 3 cycles). Paper charting is also really helpful for kinesthetic learners. You get to practice your coverline, erase it, try out your peak count, and BBT count and make mistakes as you are building this skill. I also think paper charting makes interpreting your own patterns way easier to see. However! It’s my job to make charting more sustainable and individualized to your personal needs and desires. I understand that charters want options and for many people charting on paper isn’t suitable to their lifestyle. That’s when a app can be immensely helpful!

The cycle tracking app business has exponentially increased in recent years. There are MANY apps out there to choose from, some of which are “period trackers”, some of which are advertised to help you get pregnant, and some that claim to help you avoid pregnancy.

Apps that predict when you are fertile or in an infertile time of your cycle DO NOT take into account being human—seriously! An app simply cannot predict the nuances of your body, and thus your cycle. Your cycle will be affected by your life choices and environment, which is the beauty of this method, but that means that not every cycle we have is the same!

Did you know your cycles are impacted by stress, illness, staying up late, diet, travel, new supplements, new lovers, etc.??

Which is why some of your cycles are longer than others (ovulation is being delayed). With cycle charting, you use real time bodily signs to make a decision about whether or not you are fertile in the present moment. This is why the sympto-thermal method, and other observation based fertility awareness methods, are much MORE EFFECTIVE than using a predictive app, which in essence is a calculation based method.

Calculation based methods, include methods like The Rhythm Method, which is historically known for not being a highly effective from of birth control.

If you would prefer to use an app, or even if your paper charting and you need to use an app for a short period of time, for instance while traveling,

The only APP I endorse is

Read Your Body (RYB) app

WHY?

This app is female-led, was created by a trained Fertility Awareness Educator, and it is one of the few non-predictive apps on the market. RYB also provides data privacy, which means the company does not sell your data to any third parties, which is very important to us especially in the current political climate in the USA and the criminalization of abortion access. You are inputting sensitive information into these apps, and it is imperative that they protect this data.

Furthermore, RYB is inclusive of all charting goals, values, and FABMs, and offers unique customization so that you can track a variety of other symptoms. I have found this app to be user-friendly and most accredited training programs have pre-made templates that you can download so that the language and specific tools used match the method you’re learning.

This app is non-predictive, which means that you determine when you are in a fertile time of your cycle, rather than an algorithm. This feature may be one of the most important that separates Read Your Body from other “period tracker” apps. When using Fertility Awareness Based Methods (FABMs), regardless of your fertility goals, it is imperative that you are interpreting your own real-time fertility signs, rather than leaving it to algorithmic predictions. These predictions are usually based on your previous cycles and/or a larger database of cycles, so predictions are can be incorrect due to the uniqueness of how each cycle and body responds to different human experiences (ie getting sick, coming off of synthetic hormones, being postpartum, travel, stress, etc.).

It's worth recognizing that apps that claim to predict fertility cannot fully understand the individual nuances of our bodies. Factors such as stress, illness, sleep patterns, diet, travel, and other lifestyle changes can significantly impact our cycles, causing variations in cycle length and ovulation timing. This is where the importance of cycle charting using the sympto-thermal method comes into play, as it involves understanding and interpreting real-time bodily signs to accurately determine fertility.