Reader -
There are a few (okay quite a few) things I have very strong opinions about: Yorkshire Gold Black tea, making sourdough with bread flour, sleeping in a cold room with a heavy blanket, whole milk, having candy in my car, cappucinos, colour coordinated google calendars, sleep hygiene...
...and sharp knives.
My 2026 resolution is: quadrouple it. If I'm going through the work to make one serving of vegetarian pot pie, I may as well make four. Same for bolognese. And chickpea curry soup. You get it.
You know what I wouldn't be able to do if I didn't have a very sharp knife? Quadrouple a recipe.
Because in order to get ahead and fill my freezer I had to: chop 22 carrots, 9 onions, 20 cloves of garlic and two hundred hearts of celery. No way in hell I'd do that if I had a dull ass knife.
Hear me out while I yell my strong opinions about knives:
- those swipey knife sharpening thingys don't do ANYTHING. You need to learn or get your significant other to learn how to sharpen knives with a whetstone. It's the only way.
- a dull knife makes your life significantly worse. If your knife is slipping and sliding while you're chopping onions, are you going to want to do a big batch of bolognese and get ahead on your freezer meal prep?? The answer is no!!
- investing in a sharp knife is an investment. But if you care for it and learn how to sharpen it, it will pay dividends in happiness.
Sure, you can get away with a dull knife but you really don't know what you're missing. Sharp knives make you want to chop. It doesn't have to be a fancy Japanese knife (although they're fun), but any decent knife with a way to sharpen it will improve your quality of life.
It's a lot like fertility awareness.
You can get away with only charting your period start date in an app for years. But you don't know what you're missing
A dull knife still cuts. Eventually. With way more effort than necessary.
Same with half-assing charting.
You can track something and tell yourself you’re doing FAM. You might even avoid pregnancy for a while. But everything feels harder like it should. Like cutting onions with a dull ass knife ;)
Learning fertility awareness properly your ovulation signs, your fertile window, how to handle non-textbook scenarios requires an upfront investment of your time and money.
And then everything clicks. You're not crossing your fingers hoping for the best, or second guessing your app (or yourself). You unlock the knife that cuts like a laser feeling in your own chart.
Just like a sharp knife makes you want to cook more, having real understanding makes you want to chart more, because you actually know what you're doing.
Once you know what sharp feels like, you can't go back.
I'll teach you how, inside Cycle Love: launching tomorrow! My FAM group program gives you support when your cycles don't look textbook, and the exact formula for charting your cycles for birth control (and ditching the app predictions!
On the Blog: How to be a Cyclical Gym Girlie.
What I've noticed working out with my cycle + how to flow with it rather than against it
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In your ears, listen to the most recent episode of The Habit Cycle
The kick in the butt I needed to start meal prepping, and our goals for 2026
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Warmly,
Nat