THE THREAD: Body literacy looks different at every stage because its always changing.
Here's something that should make you furious: your cycle has been generating reliable health data your entire adult life. Every month you get signals about your mood, energy, pain, sleep, focus, appetite, and libido. And all of it shifts in patterns that are completely legible once you know how to read them. These patterns can help you understand why certain weeks you feel like you're living in a borrowed body. Why you crave salty or sweet. Why the fog and clarity clear on some days and are non-existent on others.
Nobody really gets a good education on how to read our own particular ebbs and flows. But we do get a lot of messages that the good weeks are just good weeks and the hard weeks are something we've done wrong. Some of us even went to therapy for things that were hormonal patterns or were medicated for anxiety that was a luteal phase event happening on a predictable 28-day schedule.
Your body is sending signals all the time, you just need to know how to translate them.
🩸 If you're still cycling Your cycle is a 28'ish-day data set. Knowing the difference between how you feel in follicular phase vs. luteal phase, and why, is nothing more than physiology.
Follow: @clue — the Clue period tracking app's Instagram is one of the best feeds for evidence-based cycle education. No shame or confusion, just information.
Try: The Clue app itself is the most clinically rigorous period tracking app available. Tracks symptoms, mood, energy, pain. Starts giving you real pattern data within two or three cycles.
🌀 If you're in the middle The data gets harder to read right when you need it most. Cycles become irregular, symptoms blur with stress, and the pattern you spent years learning shifts on you. Perimenopause requires a new kind of listening and a readiness to understand the new signals.
Follow: @hormonally_ — Hormonally app account. Tracks perimenopausal symptoms across the hormonal chaos of this phase when a regular cycle tracker won't cut it.
Try: The Hormonally app. Logs symptoms, flags patterns, gives language for what's happening.
🔥 If you're in the fire years Without a cycle to anchor to, many postmenopausal women lose the rhythm they used to rely on. Body literacy after menopause is about building a new baseline for sleep, energy, skin, mood and understanding what moves those dials now.
Follow: @menopausewhilstblack — filling a critical gap in the menopause conversation. Race affects how menopause presents, how it's treated, and how it's discussed. This account is essential and long overdue.
Try: Oura Ring. For postmenopausal women especially, tracking HRV, sleep stages, and body temperature gives real data on how the body is regulating now. Particularly useful for understanding sleep disruption without guessing.
Still cycling? Forward this to someone a decade ahead of you. You'll want to have had this conversation before you get there.
READ OR LISTEN: Period Power by Maisie Hill, the most practical guide to cycle literacy we've found. Relevant at every stage. The perimenopause and menopause chapters alone are worth the whole book.