A Fast Near Ovulation Cut Her Progesterone by More Than Half

Stephanie Crasweller, who has described herself as "CEO and founder of Vitality OET," which focuses on weight loss and female hormones, had taken on a fasting protocol close to ovulation. She said the fast was "strictly for spiritual reasons," not for health.

The timing mattered. After that cycle, she said her ovulation was weak, and her progesterone came back at less than half of what she usually sees. The reason, in her account, was simple. She did not eat enough, and that was a stress on her body.

It is a small story about one cycle, and it points to why she now urges care with progesterone. Progesterone, she said, "helps your mitochondria stay in good shape and repair themselves." Mitochondria are the tiny engines inside cells that turn food into energy. "It also helps protect your brain."

That repair role matters because progesterone is usually the first hormone to drop in perimenopause, the years before periods stop, and it stays low afterward. When it falls, women often feel fatigue, brain fog, mood swings, and broken sleep. Sleep is when much of the body's repair happens, so she describes losing progesterone as kind of hitting twice.

The link, as Crasweller explains it, runs through stress. A heavy stress load decreases progesterone production, which leaves mitochondria unable to repair themselves and allows more inflammation to build. In her case, not eating enough counted as part of that stress load.

Fasting, she said, can be good in the right setting, but it is not for everyone, and not at certain times of the cycle. In perimenopause especially, when ovulation is already less reliable and hormones swing sharply, she describes the internal environment as chaotic, and argues that what the body needs most is stability.

For her, creating that stability is practical and unglamorous. She takes time for prayer and devotional reading, and pauses for a few slow breaths to lower her heart and breathing rates before transitions like leaving her office or getting out of the car to see her children. She also focuses on eating enough calories, steadying blood sugar, and protecting sleep, because each takes pressure off progesterone when the body is least able to spare it.