Summer is officially here. And with it comes the thoughts of holidays, excitement, ice creams, relaxation and beach time.

And maybe, for some of you who are in recovery, a bit of doubt, questioning and even anxiety at the idea of being in a swimming costume. Because your body has changed. You have put on weight. The reflection in the mirror does not look like the one you remember or the one you had in mind for this summer.

This newsletter is for you. To remind you why stopping your recovery this summer would be one of the most counterproductive things you could do. And to show you that this summer with its heat, its slowness, its gelatos and its long evenings, is actually one of the most powerful seasons for healing.

So grab something to drink, find some shade and keep reading.

The Swimsuit Problem Nobody Talks About

Let us address the elephant or rather, the bikini in the room.

From the women I interact with who are in HA recovery, one of the most consistent and painful challenges is body image. I was exactly the same. Seeing your body change, watching those love handles suddenly appear out of nowhere from your jeans, your thighs getting bigger, needing to go up a clothes size, it can feel genuinely devastating, especially when summer arrives and suddenly there is nowhere to hide.

I remember standing in a changing room in a swimsuit and thinking: this is not my body. And I know many of you are feeling exactly that right now.

So here is what I want you to understand. And I mean really understand, not just read and forget.

The body of a woman is not meant to be as thin as we see on social media. Not even close. We are surrounded every single day by images of bodies that represent perhaps 1 or 2% of the actual female population, presented as if they are the norm. And because we see them everywhere, we begin to believe they are what women are supposed to look like. We start to identify with them. We measure ourselves against them. And we feel like failures when we do not match up.

But walk down any street in any real city, I am currently in France, and I look around me every day and what do I see? Every possible shape, every possible size. Round hips, soft bellies, strong thighs, arms that wobble when they wave. And every single one of those bodies belongs to a real woman, living a real life.

That is what normal looks like.

A Brief History of the Female Body (That Nobody Taught Us)

Women are physiologically built to carry fat. More than men, and for very good reason. We are built for pregnancy, for nurturing, for sustaining life through cycles of abundance and scarcity that go back thousands of years. Wide hips are not a design flaw, they are an evolutionary masterpiece. Soft thighs are not laziness, they are stored energy, hormonal reserve, the body's way of saying I am ready.

And here is something that Ayurveda understood long before modern medicine: the female body operates on a completely different energetic principle to the male body. Women embody yin energy, the energy of nourishment, transformation, receiving, rest and cyclical renewal. This is not weakness. This is extraordinary power of a different kind.

A woman can go to the gym. Can make tough decisions. Can run companies and climb mountains. Of course she can. But she is not a man. And her body, her hormonal system, her nervous system, her menstrual cycle, functions according to its own deeply intelligent rhythm. One that is disrupted the moment we start treating our bodies like machines to be optimised rather than living systems to be respected.

The obsession with thinness, with diets, with restriction, with shrinking is not health. It is the society's paradigm dressed up as wellness. And for women with HA, it is quite literally what switched off your period in the first place.

So this summer, when you look in the mirror and feel the urge to restrict: remember that the body you are looking at is a body that is learning to trust again. And it deserves to be fed.

But Can I Not Just... Pause For Two Months?

I know this thought. I know it so well.

It is only summer. It is only two months. I will get back on track in September.

And I say this with as much love as I possibly can: please do not do this.

Here is why. If you have begun your recovery even if you have seen no dramatic signs yet your body has already started to shift. Hormonal recovery from HA is not linear and it is not visible on the surface. But underneath, a quiet and remarkable process is underway. Some of you may have started noticing cervical mucus. Some of you may have noticed a slight increase in body temperature. Some of you may feel nothing specific yet but I promise you, something has begun.

Your hypothalamus, the tiny but extraordinarily powerful gland that governs your menstrual cycle has been slowly, carefully, receiving new signals. Signals that say: there is enough food. There is enough rest. It is safe to reproduce.

The moment you withdraw those calories, the moment you ramp up exercise again, the moment you push through the summer on restriction, you send the opposite signal. The hypothalamus, which has no concept of summer holidays, interprets this immediately as a return to scarcity. And it shuts back down.

What happens next is the part nobody warns you about: the next recovery attempt is harder. Your body has now learned, again, that the abundance was temporary. That it cannot be trusted. The hormonal reset takes longer. The weight restoration feels more uncomfortable. The nervous system needs more time to feel safe.

Two months is not just two months when it comes to HA. It is a significant setback in a process that is already asking enormous patience from you.

What Yoga Says About Summer

In yoga philosophy, summer corresponds to the peak of rajas, the energy of activity, heat and movement. It is the season when the world is most alive, most outward, most intense. And paradoxically, it is the season when the body most needs the opposite: cooling, stillness, surrender.

This is why summer is actually one of the most powerful seasons for restorative yoga practice. Not the hot, dynamic, sweat-drenched kind. The slow, supported, deeply nourishing kind. Think long-held Supta Baddha Konasana, lying on your back, soles of the feet together, bolster under the spine, eyes closed, doing absolutely nothing for ten minutes. Think Viparita Karani, legs up the wall, cooling the nervous system, calming the adrenals, regulating the stress response that is at the very root of your HA.

These are not lazy practices. They are deeply medicinal ones. And they are perfectly suited to a woman lying on a beach towel, which — let us be honest — is exactly where you should be this August.

What Ayurveda Says About Eating In The Heat

Here is where Ayurveda becomes your best friend this summer because it has been thinking about hot weather nutrition for over 5,000 years.

According to Ayurveda, summer is governed by Pitta dosha, the energy of fire and transformation. When external heat rises, internal digestive fire (agni) actually decreases, which is why appetite naturally drops in hot weather. This is completely normal. But for women in HA recovery, this is also where things can go quietly wrong because a reduced appetite combined with a desire to eat lighter can easily slide into under-nourishment without you even noticing.

The Ayurvedic approach for summer — especially for HA recovery — focuses on these principles:

Hydration first, always. Warm or room temperature water, not ice cold (which shocks the digestive system). Coconut water is deeply nourishing and naturally electrolyte-rich. Rose water with a pinch of raw cane sugar and a squeeze of lime is a traditional Pitta-cooling drink that is both delicious and genuinely medicinal.

Easy to digest but still calorie-dense. Think rice with ghee, ghee is considered ojas-building in Ayurveda, meaning it builds the deep vital essence that governs reproductive health. Think ripe mangoes, avocados, full-fat yoghurt with honey, banana smoothies, nut butter, cold rice pudding with cardamom and saffron. Cooling, nourishing and deeply supportive of hormonal recovery.

Eat your largest meal at noon when digestive fire is strongest, even in summer. A warm, simple, easy-to-digest midday meal even if smaller than usual is far better than skipping lunch and then snacking lightly through the afternoon.

Include healthy fats at every meal. Olive oil, ghee, avocado, sesame, these are the building blocks of every hormone in your body. In summer, dress everything generously. This is not the time for fat-free anything.

Avoid raw foods in excess. Salads are wonderful but energetically cooling and harder to digest than cooked foods. Balance every big salad with something warm, a piece of bread with olive oil, a bowl of soup, some warm lentils.

And yes, the ice cream (!). Ayurveda might raise an eyebrow at very cold foods consumed in excess, but I will tell you what I truly believe: a woman sitting in the sunshine eating gelato with people she loves is nourishing her nervous system in a way that no supplement can replicate. Eat the gelato. Enjoy every single bite. That is medicine too.

Summer Is Actually On Your Side

Here is the beautiful irony that I want to leave you with.

Everything that summer naturally invites you to do, slow down, sleep longer, eat more freely, move less intensely, spend time in nature, laugh more, stress less is exactly what your hypothalamus needs in order to feel safe enough to restart your cycle.

Summer is not the enemy of your recovery. It is potentially its greatest ally.

The sunshine raises your Vitamin D, crucial for hormonal regulation. The warmth relaxes your muscles and your nervous system. The social connection, dinners that go on too long, afternoons that drift into evenings, conversations that have nowhere to be, reduces cortisol more effectively than any post workout you are missing. The permission that summer gives you to simply be rather than perform is the permission your body has been waiting for.

Let this summer be the one where you stop fighting your body and start trusting it.

Let it be the summer you eat the pasta, lie in the hammock, skip the morning run without guilt and give your nervous system the long exhale it has been holding for months.

Your period is not waiting for September. It is waiting for safety. And safety looks a lot like summer done right.

One Last Thing Before You Go

If anything in this newsletter has resonated, if you are sitting somewhere right now feeling seen, or feeling ready, or feeling like you would just like to talk to someone who genuinely understands what this journey is like, I would love to hear from you.

I offer a free 30-minute discovery call — no commitment, no agenda, no pressure. Just a real conversation between two women, where we can look at where you are in your recovery and explore what gentle, personalised support through Yoga and Ayurveda might look like for you.

It costs nothing. And it might just be the conversation that changes everything.

👉 Book your free discovery call here: https://calendly.com/yogawithaudrey64-6nse/30min

Be well, be nourished, and enjoy every single ice cream.

With warmth and a generous drizzle of ghee,

Audrey