Knowing your body is the greatest thing you can do for yourself

Megan · 2 August 2026

Last time I gave you the long version of my history with period pain. Vomiting on Boxing Day in Edinburgh, ten years on the pill, going to a naturopath and a skin condition no cream would touch.

Now I want to start to share what happened next - what I actually did to better understand my body, get to the root cause of my pain, and what I learned on the way. It started way more basic than any of this ‘health-maxxing’ stuff, and it was free.

It was writing down three things a day that I shared with you last time:

1. what day you’re on (‘day 1’ is your first day of bleeding)
2. your energy out of five
3. one word for how the day felt

So if you did it, you’re now looking at a month of scribbles that probably feels like it’s telling you nothing.

Mine felt like that too, but I kept going with it, which led to this happening:

I was on day 31. I’d written “low energy - exhausted today”, and for whatever reason I compared it to day 31 of my last cycle…

Day 31: “wiped out.”

It was wild.

Nothing had happened to me on either of those days. No bad meeting, no argument, nothing I could point at and blame (I checked), so I kept recording in case it was a fluke.

Keep going

Two more cycles. That’s the whole next step, and it’s the only reason my day 31 moment happened at all - it needed another cycle to compare against.

This time, add a fourth column: anything physical. Headache, cramps, sore boobs, dodgy stomach, great skin, terrible skin. A word or two, same as the rest.

I added mine late and I wish I’d done it from the start, because it caught something I’d never have found otherwise - I get a headache on day 7 and again around day 17/18 (example below). To confirm: I did not look back and review this until a lot later, once I had loads of info in there.

Energy comes up after my bleed, sits high through the middle, drops away over the last week, and my body seemed to react to that rise and fall of energy with a headache (I figured this part out later). This pattern could be very different for you, but how will you ever know unless you track it?

Here’s why it’s worth three more cycles of your time

I have come to realise - knowing your own body deeply is the greatest thing you can do for yourself.

I’m sure you scroll on social for at least 10 minutes a day. Take a couple of minutes away from that and write about yourself - treat it as self care. You don’t have to do anything with it at this point, just write it down.

Eventually you will end up knowing yourself so well and also be able to find ways to support yourself better (more on that next time).

You also end up with data. If you ever sit in front of a doctor about your cycle, or anything health related for that matter, you’ll have months of it in your own words, symptoms and all, which is worth considerably more than whatever you manage to remember in a ten-minute appointment.

And it stops the low days feeling quite as tough, because I know for a fact the weeks where I feel unstoppable will come back around.

Two things that will help you with tracking

1. Keep it all somewhere you can see each ‘day 1’ side by side (but don’t cheat and look at what you wrote last cycle - cover it over and write freely - you can look back and compare another time).
2. Wherever you track, pick somewhere you can be honest and that is super easy for you (I used a spreadsheet as I work on a computer all day). Most days I put in my three things and closed the file. Some days I’d keep typing - a paragraph about something that had wound me up, or a run of days where I clearly wasn’t coping and this was my place to say so. Nobody was ever going to read it. Some of the most useful things I’ve learned are in those extra ramblings.

And I know there are tracking apps, but personally I found that I used them to input symptoms and nothing else - it also didn’t feel like a space for all my honest thoughts. If that works for you then great, but the main thing is to stay CONSISTENT, even on the days you feel amazing - even just one word: ‘amazing!’.

Next time: what to actually do with your pattern once you’ve got one.

In the meantime, I would love to know if you spot anything - email me at hello@nadi.health and tell me.

If you need more guidance on how to track/count your cycle days, just message me - I promise to speak in normal language, my aim is to keep all this stuff as simple as possible!

I read every email and I will always write back.

Megan