The Morning Anchor
"Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place." (Mark 1:35)
5:45am. The alarm pulls you from something that wasn't quite sleep and wasn't quite rest. Your hand reaches for the phone before your eyes are fully open. Emails, WhatsApp, the news. Fifteen minutes later, you haven't moved from the pillow but your brain is already in three meetings and an argument with your younger brother in another time zone who hasn't even woken up yet.
In the last newsletter, I gave you seven things that help with brain fog and promised I'd come back to one of them. This is it. I call it the morning anchor: fix your wake time, get outside, and eat protein. Three things, in that order, before you leave the house. It costs nothing and you can start tomorrow.
1. Fix your wake time
Your circadian rhythm depends on regularity, and during perimenopause, falling oestrogen and progesterone are already disrupting it. A consistent wake time (within about 30 minutes, even on weekends) is the single most effective thing you can do to stabilise that internal clock. I know, Saturday mornings are sacred. But your hypothalamus doesn't know it's the weekend, and the "catch up on sleep" approach actually makes the fog worse by shifting your rhythm every few days.
If you're a shift worker thinking "that's lovely for you, Lolu"... I see you. On days off, try to keep your wake time within an hour of your earliest shift time. On night shifts, anchor the routine itself (light, protein, consistency in the sequence) even if the clock looks different. If you work permanent nights, some research suggests staying on your shifted schedule on days off rather than flipping back, because it's the constant switching that disrupts you most.
2. Get 10 minutes of morning light
Within the first hour of waking, get yourself outside into actual daylight (not through a window, that doesn't count). That light signal tells your brain it's morning, shuts down melatonin, and sets the timer for that night's sleep. The effect is particularly important for women in perimenopause whose circadian rhythm is already under strain.
If you're in the UK, now is a good time to build this habit. We have daylight from half past four in the morning, whether we asked for it or not. (And when winter comes and it's dark until 8am, a 10,000 lux light therapy lamp on your kitchen table while you eat breakfast does the same job.) Stand in your garden with a cup of tea, walk to the end of the road and back, or sit on the step while your child finds their school shoes for the fourth time. Ten minutes outside, before the day swallows you.
3. Eat 30g of protein at breakfast
Most of the women I work with eat a breakfast that's essentially carbohydrates: cereal, toast, a smoothie that's mostly fruit. By mid-morning their blood sugar has spiked and crashed, and the fog rolls in right on time for the 10am meeting. Protein stabilises your blood sugar for hours and provides the building blocks your brain needs for neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. Research in women specifically shows better glucose control and better concentration through the morning.
What does 30g look like? Three eggs gets you close. Two eggs with smoked fish or a generous handful of nuts. Greek yoghurt with nuts and seeds. If you're having ogi or pap, stir in some ground nuts or pair it with moin moin. It works with what's already in your kitchen.
Why these three together
Each of these helps on its own, but what I love is how they reinforce each other. The wake time stabilises your rhythm. The light strengthens that signal. The protein prevents the blood sugar crash that would undo all that good work by mid-morning.
And there is something deeply spiritual about this rhythm. Rising at a set hour, stepping into the light, feeding your body before the demands of the day reach you. Jesus himself got up before the crowd arrived, not to be more productive but to be grounded in His Father before anything else could claim Him. That's what the morning anchor is, really. A way of saying "this comes first."
You don't have to do all three flawlessly from day one. Start with the wake time this week, add the light next week, build the breakfast the week after. The anchor holds because you keep showing up, not because you get it right every time.
And if you're thinking "but I'm not a morning person"... you don't need to be. You just need to be a same-time person.
