The Body Knows Before You Do
- Savitha Enner
- 21 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Five years ago I wrote about what happened to my body when I turned 40.
The hair, the periods, the anemia, the long slow process of figuring out what my body needed and giving it that — without drama, without a ten-step programme, just patience and attention. That post resonated with a lot of you, and I am grateful for every message I received.
I am writing this one because something is shifting again.
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I came back from India late Feb and dove straight back into life — full-scale gardening, teaching workshops and classes, supper clubs, cooking events, time with family. The kind of full that feels good until it doesn't. And in the middle of it all, I began to notice the changes again. Not subtle ones. Real ones.
There is a concept in Indian astrology called Saade Saath — literally, seven and a half. It refers to a period ruled by Saturn, a time of challenge and transformation that comes in roughly seven-year cycles. I will be honest — I have almost zero belief in astrology. But beyond the mythology, there is something deeply true in the idea itself. The body moves in cycles. Not just monthly, not just seasonally — but in longer, slower waves. Seven years feels about right. The woman I was at 33 was genuinely different from the woman I was at 40. And the woman I am now is different again.
I feel it not as a crisis but as a conversation. The body speaking. The question is whether I am listening.
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Around 40, the conversation was about blood, rest and greens. This time it is different. I have entered perimenopause.
April hit hard. I was operating on about fifty percent of my usual energy — not occasionally, but consistently, day after day. A heaviness that did not belong. A sense that my body and I had slowly, quietly drifted out of alignment. Not illness. Not even just fatigue. More like a signal — the kind the body sends when it wants your attention before things go wrong rather than after.
I posted a video last summer about my experience of perimenopause and what I was choosing to do with it.
watch here
perimenopause journey
Acceptance
But after six months of quietly experimenting with diet and movement, here is what I am ready to share.
Acceptance came first.
I made a decision to stop pushing through and start paying attention. I have reduced my workload by fifty percent. I am not hosting any supper clubs in June or July — apart from a few private events I had already committed to. For someone who has built a life around feeding people, that was not a small thing to say out loud.
For the first time in my life, I stepped on a scale outside of a doctor's office. I pulled out a notebook, made some honest notes and set goals — not around how I want to look or how much I want to weigh, but around how I want to feel. That distinction mattered more than I expected.
"Growing older gracefully means having a keen curiosity about learning things about the world that you did not know yesterday, no matter how many yesterdays you have had." — Padma Lakshmi
Then came the restructuring.
I am not changing what I eat so much as how and when I eat. Spacing meals properly. Making sure every meal has enough protein to actually sustain me through the yoga teaching and the cooking and everything else I ask of this body. I am not following a rigid plan — you know me well enough to know that would not survive a week. But I am following principles.
Eat real food. Enough protein at every meal. Stop eating before the body gets confused about whether it is hungry or just bored.
I am also strength training regularly for the first time in years — slow, deliberate, with small weights. Nothing dramatic. But I am noticing things I had forgotten. How good it feels to use muscles with focus. How different that is from the fluid movement of yoga, which I love, but which asks something different from the body. The two together feel complete in a way that neither does alone.
And the food — this part has been genuinely joyful. I simplified my everyday eating around afew reliable staples, then gave myself room to experiment within that. Adai made from four different dals. Palak paneer without cream, without losing any of its warmth. Soya chunk bhurji. Edamame salad with chaat masala and lime. Flaxseed and apricot ladoos I made myself and rolled into eighteen small balls. A post-workout smoothie with kale, berries and whey protein after my evening session. I am cooking for my health but I am still cooking for pleasure — and those two things do not have to be in conflict.
One small confession: I gave up chai for almost three weeks and felt dreadful by midday. So I brought it back — one cup after my morning practice and breakfast. I think that small dose of caffeine genuinely helps me focus and move through the morning with more ease. Some experiments end in surrender.
"This is not an experiment to optimise my every day, every minute — but to feel more alive."
I want to say something to the women reading this who are in their forties, approaching them, or have moved through them and are now in their fifties.
The seven-to-ten year cycles are real. Not as fate, not as doom — but as rhythm. The body you had at 35 is not the body you have at 42. The body at 42 is not the body at 49. Each version asks something slightly different of you. More rest here, more strength there. Different foods, different rhythms, different relationships with energy and sleep and hunger and effort.
The women who move through these transitions well are not the ones who fight the changes. They are the ones who get curious. Who notice earlier. Who pay attention to the small signals before they become loud ones.
I missed that skill in my twenties because the body forgives so easily then. I found it in my early forties out of necessity. I am trying to practice it now — in this new cycle, not out of fear, but out of respect for what this body does for me every single day.
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I am only a few weeks into this particular experiment and I am not going to make any grand claims. I do not know yet what will shift, what will hold, what I will quietly abandon by week eight. That is the honest truth.
What I do know is that I slept well last night. That I had enough energy after two yoga classes and a long afternoon of cooking to still feel present at dinner. Nothing feels forced — not the strength training, not the protein smoothie. Oh, the bedtime is still irregular. I get caught up in reading or writing. This is not an experiment to optimise my every day, every minute — but to feel more alive. These things have simply started to feel like mine.
These are small things. But small things, paid attention to, have always been how I find my way back.
The body knows before you do. It is always talking. The work is simply learning to listen — and to answer with kindness rather than panic.
"Unlike a lover or a friend or a car, your body is reliable. It does not go away, get lost, stolen. If you will listen, it will speak." — Geneen Roth
More soon, Namaste
Savitha
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If this resonated with you, I would love to hear what your body has been telling you lately. Reply to this email or find me on Instagram.