✨ Round-up #3 – Light, Reads & Push-Ups
Recharge your rhythm, read something light, and build quiet strength.
Miss the previous round-ups? You can now find them all in the Round-up Section
🌞 Light Is Not Just Mood — It’s Metabolism
By now, the longer days are no longer a novelty — they’re your new baseline.
And if April felt like a gentle nudge, May is where your body starts expecting more from you.
More light exposure
More movement
More regularity
If you’ve been feeling a bit more energised but also a bit more restless or wired, this is often why.
As daylight extends, your circadian rhythm continues to shift. Cortisol rises earlier. Melatonin gets pushed later. Sleep can feel lighter, even if you’re doing “everything right.”
And in perimenopause, this matters more than it should.
Because you’re not just adapting to environmental changes — you’re doing it with fluctuating estrogen and progesterone, which directly affect sleep quality, temperature regulation, and stress response.
So instead of pushing harder, this is the moment to refine.
Here’s where May becomes powerful:
Protein timing becomes more important than total protein.
Morning light increases cortisol naturally — pairing this with a protein-rich breakfast helps stabilise blood sugar and reduces that mid-morning crash or late-afternoon energy dip.
Your body is more responsive to strength signals.
With more daylight and often more incidental movement, this is one of the best times of year to reinforce muscle-building habits — even small ones.
Your gut adapts faster to change.
Seasonal shifts in diet — more raw veg, herbs, lighter meals — tend to be better tolerated now than in winter. It’s a great time to add, not restrict.
Think: fresh herbs, crunchy vegetables, fermented foods (yes, our sauerkraut habit is perfectly timed).
📺 / 🎬 WATCH
I just finished watching the third season of Shrinking, and honestly, it’s one of those shows that gets under your skin in a really good way.
It’s basically about grief and people trying to cope, but it never feels heavy or preachy. It’s more like… messy humans figuring things out in real time.
What I liked is how it balances humour and emotion. You’ll be laughing one minute and then suddenly hit with something that feels way too real the next. But it never feels manipulative — it just reflects how life actually is, where the funny and the painful are constantly mixed together.
And the characters feel really real. No one is perfectly put together; everyone is kind of flawed and a bit chaotic, but you still understand where they’re coming from.
It’s not about big transformations, more like small shifts in how people deal with life.
🤓 SCIENCE
A 2026 meta-analysis on dairy intake and mortality risk highlighted something simple but often overlooked:
Dairy isn’t uniformly “good” or “bad” — the health effects depend strongly on the type and amount consumed.
Across 29 prospective cohort studies (over 1.6 million participants), yogurt intake stood out as consistently protective. Around 200g/day was associated with a lower risk of both all-cause and cardiovascular mortality. Cheese showed a small reduction in cardiovascular mortality, and milk showed modest benefits for heart health in some analyses.
This matters because it challenges the idea that “all dairy behaves the same” in the body — fermented dairy, in particular, seems to have a different metabolic and gut-health profile compared to other forms.
The takeaway isn’t to remove or overthink dairy completely.
It’s to focus on smarter patterns:
prioritizing fermented dairy like yogurt
keeping overall intake moderate (around 250–300g/day total)
not treating all dairy products as interchangeable
Small distinctions in food type and dose, repeated over time, are what actually shape long-term outcomes.
🌱 HABITS
This Month’s Habit Review: 1 Tbsp of Sauerkraut a Day
This one surprised me. Not because it was hard — but because it was almost too easy.
Some days, I had it before dinner. Other days, I threw it into a salad or bowl. A few days… I forgot entirely 🤷♀️
But overall, it naturally integrated into my routine without friction, because I made sure to place the jar at eye level when I opened the fridge — which is exactly what you want from a habit.
To be honest, I didn’t notice much… but science has clearly shown the benefits of eating fermented foods, so I’m content knowing this is most likely supporting my gut health 😅
New Habit for May: 10 triceps push-ups a day
It’s a small habit, but it actually ticks a lot of important boxes for me at 48.
Tennis season has finally started, and having that baseline upper-body strength makes a real difference in how I feel on the court.
Upper-body strength naturally declines in midlife if you don’t train it consistently, and triceps push-ups are a really efficient way to work the arms, shoulders, chest, and core all at once. It’s also a nice way to support bone loading through the upper body, which matters more as estrogen levels shift.
I like it because it’s not about intensity — it’s about daily signalling. Just enough stimulus to maintain strength, joint stability, and neuromuscular connection without needing a full workout.
And yes… let’s just say it doesn’t hurt when it comes to the “bat arms prevention plan” either 😄
🔥 HOT MERCH ON THE MENOPAUSE COACH SHOP
Get 25% off all products with code SUB25
Yep, Mother Nature sometimes is not really funny…
The real perimenopause definition
Because if menopause had a spirit animal, it would definitely be a cat: unpredictable, dramatic, and suddenly affectionate at 3 am.
For the phase where you stop asking for permission, start speaking your mind, and let the hormones deal with it.
📚 READ
While researching new designs for my candle shop, I came across a new word: smut.
Smut is not an acronym, but it refers to romance or fiction that includes explicit sexual content. It’s often used informally online to describe books with steamy or graphic scenes.
Last month, after seeing the trailer for a new series based on books, I got curious and, of course, picked up the book series written by Elle Kennedy and read the first.
It’s a new adult romance series, which means the characters are in their early 20s and the story is set in a college environment. It’s kind of a “smuttish” read in the sense that it includes explicit scenes alongside a full romance storyline, making it the perfect light read just before sleep.
Beyond the romance and spice, it also touches on more serious topics like trauma, consent, and domestic abuse, which are explored through the characters’ backstories and relationships.
The series is called Off-Campus, and it will be streaming on Prime Video starting May 13th.
SUBSTACK
So Substack just launched translations, and honestly, I think it’s kind of a big deal.
Basically, it means posts and Notes can now be automatically translated into a bunch of languages, so you can read writers from anywhere without needing to speak their language. And the same goes for your work — if you write in English, people in other countries can now actually discover and read you properly.
What I like about it is that it makes the whole thing feel way more global. Like you could suddenly stumble across a writer in Japan or Italy you’d never have found before, and their ideas just land in your feed in English. That part feels genuinely exciting — it’s like the internet opening up again in a good way.
But I also wonder about it a bit. Because with a bachelor’s degree in translation and after learning five languages, I know that translation is most of the time not perfect. It flattens tone, humour, little cultural references… all those things that make writing feel like someone.
And I also think it might subtly change what people write, like maybe people start writing in a way that’s easier to translate rather than more personal or local.
Still, overall, it feels like a pretty huge shift. More access, more reach, more cross-cultural discovery — just with a bit of a trade-off on nuance.
📩 This Month’s Hits
Recipe #4 - Hormone-Supporting Turkey and Lentil Stew
AMA #2 - Spring Diet, Hormones and Weight Loss, Dietary Fat, Constipation, Right Weight
Recipe #5 - Mediterranean Sea Bream with Spring Veg Medley
Letter #65 - How to Beat Bloating as a Woman in Your 40s. 7 Science-Backed Steps to Flatten Your Bloat and Reclaim Your Confidence
Recipe #6 - Spinach, Avocado & Feta Omelette (High-Protein, Low-Carb)
To be honest, this month I missed publishing one recipe and one regular post.
Life got in the way, and I chose that and health over Substack.
What did I learn from it? The world kept turning as if nothing had happened. 😉
🥗 EAT: Spring Protein Crunch Bowl with Yogurt-Lemon Dressing
2 servings
Ingredients
100 g rocket (arugula)
100 g spinach
1 medium cucumber (about 200 g), sliced
6–8 radishes, thinly sliced
1 small fennel bulb (about 150 g), thinly sliced
200 g cooked chicken breast, sliced
2 tbsp pumpkin seeds
2 tbsp sesame seeds
2–4 tbsp sauerkraut (optional but recommended)
Dressing
150 g Greek yogurt
1 tbsp olive oil
Juice of ½ lemon
1 tsp Dijon mustard
Salt + black pepper to taste
Instructions
Cook the chicken breast (grilled, pan-seared, or boiled), then slice into strips.
Wash and chop all vegetables and divide evenly between two bowls.
Add the chicken on top of each bowl.
Sprinkle with pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, and sauerkraut if using.
In a small bowl, mix yogurt, olive oil, lemon juice, mustard, salt, and pepper until smooth.
Drizzle over both bowls just before serving.
Nutrition (approx. per portion)
Calories: ~390 kcal
Protein: ~35 g
Fiber: ~10–12 g
Why this is good for perimenopause
This bowl is designed to support stable energy, muscle maintenance, and gut health, which become key priorities in perimenopause.
The high protein content helps preserve lean muscle mass and supports metabolism, while the fiber-rich vegetables help regulate blood sugar and reduce energy crashes.
The yogurt-based dressing and optional fermented sauerkraut support gut health, which plays an important role in hormone metabolism and inflammation balance.
It’s a light, nutrient-dense meal that supports both energy and recovery without feeling heavy.
Note: The recipe image is AI-generated
Coming up Next Week…
Next week is the time again for an AMA (Ask Me Anything) newsletter.
Same format:
real questions
practical answers
no fluff
If something has been on your mind, this is where we work through it.
Full transparency: the AMA article is available to paid subscribers only. It’s one of the ways I support the time and care that goes into answering your questions thoughtfully and thoroughly.
So if you’re a paid subscriber, drop your question in the comments or by replying to this email.
And if you’ve been thinking about upgrading, this is a beautiful month to join.
💬 Comment & chat!
Did anything shift for you this month — energy, habits, mood, motivation?
Or are you still finding your rhythm?
Tell me what April felt like for you.
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