How Optimisation Culture Fails Women
We are living in an era in which almost every aspect of the human experience can be measured, monitored and optimised. In the pursuit of better health, wellness has become increasingly intertwined with the products we buy, the routines we follow and how we present ourselves on social media. A workout can feel like it never happened if we forgot to press record on our wearable, morning routines have become aspirational, and a $16 iced strawberry matcha latte has become a status symbol.
But beneath the carefully curated routines and endless data points lies an uncomfortable question: at what point did looking and feeling our best become a marker of self-worth?
The women sitting across from me in clinic are rarely doing too little. Many are doing everything they have been told they need to do to “glow up” and become the “best version” of themselves, only to be left feeling exhausted, burnt out and as though they have failed.
Somewhere along the way, self-care has become another form of work. We need to question not only what we are optimising for, but also the cultural pressures shaping how women perceive themselves, spend their money and define what it means to be healthy.
Science has not always had women’s best interest in mind
One of the most significant contradictions in modern optimisation culture is that women are increasingly encouraged to make health decisions based on scientific evidence that has historically underrepresented them.
For decades, women were excluded from important clinical research, partly because of concerns of potential pregnancy or the perception that hormonal fluctuations were uncontrollable variables that could complicate results. The male body was presented as the default, and as such, much of wellness advice was designed based on a body that runs on a 24 hour cycle with fairly stable hormonal rhythms - far different to the 28 day cycle most women experience.
Women can undergo hormonal fluctuations far more intensely than men. Oestrogen and progesterone rise and fall across the month, influencing stress resilience, energy levels, recovery and hunger signals. During perimenopause, that cycle becomes erratic, with hormonal fluctuations becoming even less predictable.
When a male-centred protocol is applied to a female body that is constantly shifting, it is not the woman who has failed, it is the template.
This is not to say that all research has been exclusively conducted on men, or that findings from male participants are inherently irrelevant to women. Rather, we cannot assume that all evidence applies equally to everyone without investigation. We must be able to distinguish between what is biologically plausible, what has been demonstrated in research, and what has simply become popular wellness culture.
Female biology does not fit into a static protocol
Optimisation culture thrives on predictability. It promises that if we follow the right routine, consume the best supplements and maintain perfect discipline, our bodies will have no choice but to get thinner, stronger and healthier. But female physiology is dynamic and a rigid protocol fails to acknowledge this reality.
Extended fasts, extreme calorie cutting and high-intensity training while under-fuelling, day after day, all signal scarcity to the female body. This triggers a rise in stress hormones, poorer blood sugar regulation and disrupted sleep, resulting in a body that wants to hold onto fat in a bid for survival rather than shedding it.
A similar issues arises with cycle synchronisation, a popular wellness trend that encourages women to align their diet, exercise and lifestyle habits to the four phases of the menstrual cycle. While some women notice meaningful changes in energy, appetite and recovery throughout their cycle, the evidence does not support a universal set of rules that apply to every woman. Although this concept offers women some relief from the male-centred approach discussed above, it risks replacing one set of rigid protocols with another, overlooking individual differences that make a personalised approach to health and wellness so important.
Losing touch with intuition
Perhaps the highest cost of optimisation culture isn’t physical at all. The more we outsource our health to metrics, the easier it becomes to lose trust in our own experience.
Our bodies are constantly communicating with us. Hunger, cravings, fatigue, mood and restless sleep are all signals of our actual state of health and offer clues to what our body actually needs. Yet we train through exhaustion, push through hunger in pursuit of a calorie target, or wake up feeling rested only to have a sleep score tell us otherwise. Optimisation culture teaches us to override our innate signals in the name of discipline.
For many women, this disconnect becomes intensified during perimenopause. Symptoms such as weight gain, anxiety and broken sleep can be interpreted as an issue of willpower rather than recognising the signs of a changing physiological landscape. The result is women pushing themselves harder and feeling like they’re not doing enough, which only reinforces the cycle of exhaustion and burnout.
The goal of any health optimisation strategy should be to bring us closer to our bodies, not further away from them. Data and metrics should be used to support our own experience rather than allowing them to dictate how we feel about ourselves.
What would a more female-centred approach to wellness look like?
If optimisation culture fails women by oversimplifying biology, overpromising what discipline can achieve and turning self-care into a performance, we need an alternative that is grounded in science, responsive to individual needs and sustainable in the messiness of life.
Women deserve research that represents them across different reproductive stages and health circumstances. This means designing studies that address questions relevant to women’s health, investigating differences in treatment responses and improving the quality of evidence for conditions that disproportionally affect women. It also means being honest about uncertainty.
Additionally, wellness practices should be personalised to the individual. Current health conditions, symptoms, health history, stage of life and medications greatly influence how effective and sustainable a protocol will be from one woman to another. Sometimes this means improving health through proper investigation with a healthcare professional, not another optimisation strategy.
A sustainable approach must also leave room for the realities of being human. A late dinner with friends, a spontaneous weekend away, a slow morning, and a missed workout are not necessarily obstacles to health. They are part of a life worth being healthy for.
We should be able to care for ourselves without turning our health into an endless improvement project.
Perhaps the most important question is not how much more we can optimise, but whether the way we pursue health is actually helping us live a fulfilling life.
