Wellness with Swati

Before the meal plan. Before the programme. I ask three things. 🌿

How is your sleep? Not how many hours — how is it. Because sleep tells me more about someone’s hormonal health than almost any blood test.

Are you eating breakfast? Not what. Just whether you are. That one habit alone quietly runs cortisol and cravings for the entire rest of the day.

And then the third — the one that changes everything.

What is your why?

Sometimes there’s a long pause. Sometimes tears. Sometimes she laughs — because nobody has ever asked her that before or even reflected on this before . Your “why” is so intrinsic and unique that it stands true for you. And most often drives a sustainable, long lasting change in habits , food and lifestyle.

Mine is simple.

To live the way I want to. To move the way I want to. To feel free in my own body — strong, present and energised. Not performing health. Actually living it.

That’s it.✨

When a woman finds her answer to that question — something unlocks that no meal plan ever could.🤍🤍

This summer I made recovery a non-negotiable. Then I found The Calla Project ( hot and cold therapy for women)— and met Ana, the founder. 🌿

Women-only. Science-based. Built around female physiology — not adapted from male research.

Because women are not small men. And this space gets that.

The sauna: regular Finnish sauna use is linked to a 65% lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s. Your heart rate reaches the same level as a moderate walk. Sitting still.

The cold plunge: women vasoconstrict faster and lose core temperature more quickly than men. Go below 12°C and you spike cortisol instead of calming it. The plunge here sits at 12–14°C — the evidence-based sweet spot for women. Cold enough for the benefits. Not so cold that your body reads it as a threat.

Sauna first. Always. Heat opens circulation so the cold does its job.

Recovery is not an afterthought. It’s where health is built. 🤍

The Calla Project

I was listening to Jordan Sullivan’s podcast Performance That Matters recently — he’s one of Australia’s leading performance dietitians, and works with UFC champions and Olympians. Go listen if you haven’t. Worth every minute. 🎧
And he used a phrase that stopped me to ponder and think especially through the lens of nutrition.
~Shortcut mentality.

Because here’s what struck me — we don’t apply shortcut thinking to most things we genuinely care about.
We don’t parent on autopilot hoping for the best outcome. We don’t build real relationships by doing the bare minimum. We don’t buy things we value based on whoever promised the fastest result.

And yet when it comes to our own bodies — we are living in an era of outsourcing health entirely. Slimming pills. Injectable shortcuts. Bikini body programmes promising results in three weeks.
I’m not here to judge any of it. I’ve caught myself looking for the easier version too. We all do.

But outsourcing your health to a pill is quietly disempowering. Not because the pill is evil. But because it doesn’t build anything. And a body with no foundation will eventually ask you to pay attention to it — one way or another.
The answer isn’t more information. It isn’t a better supplement stack.
It’s doing the unglamorous thing. Consistently.
Four things. Free. Proven by decades of research:
🏃‍♀️ Movement
😴 Sleep
🥗 Nutrition
🔄 Recovery
80 to 90 percent of the time. Not perfectly. Just consistently enough to build something strong enough to hold.
Something to sit with. 🌿

I spent years not knowing why the week before my period felt like a completely different body. Now I do.

Progesterone declines naturally from your late 30s. The week before your period is where most women feel it most — even if they’ve never connected it to this hormone. 🌿
For me it showed up as fatigue, mood shifts and heart palpitations I couldn’t explain. Once I understood the biology — I stopped fighting that week and started working with it.
Here’s exactly what I do:
🍠 Eat more carbs — and I mean it. Rice, sweet potato, raw vegetables. Carbohydrates support serotonin production when progesterone drops. This is not comfort eating. This is your body asking for what it needs.
🚶‍♀️ Train at fifty percent. More walks, slower sessions. My body is doing significant work that week. I stop expecting it to perform like it isn’t. This was something my body craved for- taking it easy the few days before period.
💊 Magnesium — throughout my entire cycle. Not just that week. Non negotiable for me and for every woman I work with.
📵 Protect your social energy. I have a natural urge to cave in that week — and I honour it by being selective. Fewer commitments. More intentional time.
📱 Track your cycle. This is the one I tell every single client. Use an app. Log your meals, energy and mood alongside your cycle. You cannot work with a pattern you haven’t noticed yet.
This is biology. Not a breakdown. Start tracking — and watch how much suddenly makes sense.

02. Fuel around your workouts.
Fasted training raises cortisol in women. Unlike men, we don’t have the testosterone to buffer that spike. Eat before. Refuel after. Always.

03. Finish eating by sunset.
This is where the magic happens. Closing your eating window with the light aligns your metabolism, digestion and cortisol clearance with your biology.

The window that works for women? 10–12 hours. Not 16. Not 20. Specially late 30s onwards.

👉longer fasts are beneficial in case of severe obesity and diabetes but needs clinical intervention and guidance.

And the caveat that makes all of this work — 🏋️‍♀️resistance training, three times a week. Without it, you’re not preserving the muscle that keeps your metabolism running.

You don’t need to fast longer. You need to eat smarter. 🌿

Here is what 25–30g of fibre actually looks like. No powders, no supplements, no 90-ingredient tub. 🌿
Six real foods. All accessible. All easy to layer across a normal day.
½ cup lentils — 8g — base of any meal
🌱 2 tbsp chia seeds — 8g — stir into yoghurt or a smoothie
🫐 1 cup raspberries — 8g — breakfast or snack
🥣 ½ cup rolled oats — 4g — breakfast staple
🥦 1 cup broccoli — 5g — side at every dinner
🥑 ½ avocado — 5g — on toast, in a salad
That’s 38g. Target hit before you’ve even thought about it.
You don’t need all six in one sitting — layer them across meals and it adds up faster than you’d think.
This is not exotic, but real food.This is a normal week of eating, with intention.

I checked the label on one of the popular all-in-one tubs everyone’s been asking me about.
One scoop = 2.5–3g of fibre. One cup of broccoli = 5g.
That’s the part the marketing skips. 🌿

Before you spend $80 on a tub — here’s why fibre matters so much more than “just digestion” for women in their late 30s and 40s.

Your gut bacteria help clear used oestrogen out of your body. Not enough fibre, and the wrong bacteria take over — recycling that oestrogen back into circulation instead of letting it go. Bloating. Mood swings. Heavier periods. Even with “normal” blood work.

👉The target : 25–30g fibre a day. Most women get half that.

Real food first — lentils, oats, chia, berries, broccoli, beans. Check your plate honestly before you assume you need a supplement.

If you genuinely can’t close the gap — skip the 90-ingredient tub. Plain psyllium husk is the one with real research behind it: shown to shift gut bacteria toward more beneficial strains in studies on women specifically, plus an FDA-recognised claim for lowering cholesterol — relevant as it tends to climb through perimenopause.

Stop paying for noise. Eat real food!!

fibrefirst womenover35