Round, Round Baby

Oooh it’s getting to that time. The jumpers are coming out and I love it. Autumn is absolutely my favourite season. Nature turns multi-coloured, the days are cold but sunny, coloured tights cover the legs… that one is probably just me. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the other seasons. I love crunchy grass in Winter, tiny baby animals in Spring and sitting on the doorstep until well into the evening in Summer. Every season has something special about it and the recent segway into Autumn has led me to start thinking about the seasons of my body.

My body definitely changes with the seasons. The food I crave changes with the seasons - salads with oily bread become soups with buttery bread, pizza toppings change from artichoke to extra cheese, mushroom risotto becomes spring green risotto… can you tell I am eating while writing this? Also, the movement changes - hikes become dance videos, seaside paddling becomes dance videos and kubb in the park becomes dance videos (I mean what else can you do but dance videos in Winter?). I sweat less in Winter despite holding a scalding hot water bottle against me at all times. There are countless differences to the ways I use my body and the shape of my body throughout the seasons. Some seasons I like more than others as a direct result of this - I have spoken of the troubled relationship that me and Summer have. But each season of my body has something special about it.

In Spring, my skin gets an injection of moisture after the dry skin of Winter. In Summer, my hair lightens and new freckles appear. In Autumn, rosy cheeks appear. In Winter, my feet achieve a new level of cold not felt before in these parts.

It’s not just this yearly cycle of seasons that affects my body but my monthly cycle as well. Since writing my post about how my body changes during my menstrual cycle, I have been super aware of the body changes that happen each month to the point where they’ve become irritatingly predictable. I bloat like clockwork, I feel fit for a very short 3 day window and a desire to move like hell always pops up in the same week.

So, if our bodies change throughout the month and the year in quite a regular, cyclical way then doesn’t that mean that it’s probably going to cycle in decades over the course of our entire lives? And if it does then why don’t we just relax about the way it looks right now? It’s probably going to change anyway so no need to get attached to it.