How to track your mood with your cycle (and actually learn something)

Why track mood with your cycle?

Memory is a poor narrator. A rough week colors how you remember a whole month, and good days are easy to forget. Daily tracking replaces I think I'm always awful before my period with a picture you can trust. That matters for three reasons.

• Self-understanding. Seeing that your low days cluster in the late luteal phase turns what's wrong with me? into ah, day 25.
• Planning. If you know which days tend to be harder, you can schedule around them.
• Medical care. PMDD can only be diagnosed with prospective daily ratings over at least two cycles. A record is the evidence your doctor needs.

What to log each day

Keep it small. A tracker you use every day beats a detailed one you abandon in week two. The research tool doctors use, the Daily Record of Severity of Problems (DRSP), rates 21 items from 1 (not at all) to 6 (extreme) each evening. That's ideal if you're preparing for a PMDD assessment, but a single daily mood rating plus a few symptoms is enough to see most patterns.

How long to track

• One cycle: gives a first glimpse, but one month can be a fluke.
• Two cycles: the minimum for a PMDD assessment, and enough to see a pattern.
• Three or more: your average starts to stabilize and you can spot changes over time, such as worsening in perimenopause or improvement on treatment.

How to read your chart

1. Line it up by cycle day. Day 1 is the first day of bleeding. Compare day 22 to day 22 across months, not the 22nd to the 22nd.
2. Compare two windows: the 7 days before your period and days 4 to 10 after it starts. Clinicians often look for a meaningful rise in symptoms in the first window and near-absence in the second.
3. Look for the off switch. Premenstrual symptoms lift within a few days of bleeding. If they don't, something else may be going on, like premenstrual exacerbation.
4. Note the exceptions. A stressful month or illness can shift everything. That's useful information too.

How Lulu's daily check-in and mood forecast work

Lulu was built around this exact method. Here's what it does, plainly:

• One-tap daily check-in. Pick how you feel from a row of Lulu faces: happy, calm, energetic, tired, tender, anxious, irritable, low. It takes about a second.
• Symptoms as bunny drawings. Tap cramps, bloating, headache, fatigue and more, so mood and body sit side by side.
• Phase-aware history. Every check-in is tied to its cycle day and phase from your period dates (and Apple Watch wrist temperature if you choose to import it).
• Mood forecast. After a few cycles, Lulu shows how you've usually felt on the days ahead, with a gentle heads-up before days that tend to be harder. It's your own history, not a prediction of the future: some months will surprise you, and the forecast shows how often that mood has come up around this cycle day.
• PMS chart and CSV export. A doctor-ready chart of mood and symptoms by cycle day, which you can export.
• Private by design. Your cycle data stays on your iPhone. There's no account, and no Lulu server holds your cycle data.

What Lulu doesn't do

Lulu doesn't diagnose PMDD or anything else, and it can't promise how tomorrow will feel. It shows how you usually feel and helps you bring a clear chart to your doctor.

Paper or app?

Both work. Paper is free and private; try our mood tracker printable or a PMS symptom diary. Apps line things up by cycle day automatically and remind you to check in, which is where most paper trackers fall down. IAPMD also offers a DRSP-based tracker designed for PMDD assessment.