So I’ve spent most of my life thinking I was just shit at being a person.
Couldn’t stick to routines. Couldn’t stay “disciplined.” Some weeks I’m a gym rat eating clean and waking up early. Other weeks I’m horizontal and rewatching the same three comfort shows while trying to remember the last time I ate something green.
And for the longest time, I thought it was a me problem.
Not enough motivation. Not enough willpower. Not enough “grind.”
Turns out… it wasn’t me. It was the fact that nearly every system we’ve been told to follow, from fitness, food, work schedules, even productivity hacks, was designed around male bodies and a 24-hour hormone cycle.
Meanwhile, we’ve got phases. Like full-body emotional shifts every week. Mood, energy, appetite, sleep, pain tolerance all of it changes. And no one teaches us that. We’re just expected to show up the same every day and not fall apart. Which is honestly hilarious considering I can go from glowing goddess to emotional landfill in about 72 hours.
Anyway. A few months ago I started syncing my food, movement, and expectations to my cycle.
Nothing influencer level. Just noticing when I need more carbs, when I need to chill, and when I can actually push.
I swapped “consistency” for “actually paying attention.”
Game changer
Also: protein in the morning = life. Not for the aesthetics for my brain. No more mid afternoon dissociation spiral where I forget I exist
I’ve started making little notes for myself. Tiny adjustments. Like “don’t expect Olympic-level productivity when you’re bleeding, babe.” Or “today is a rest day. You’re not lazy. You’re human.”
And honestly? I don’t feel broken anymore
If you’ve ever felt like you’re always starting over or just permanently behind same.
It’s not you.
It’s the fact that no one taught us how to work with our bodies. We’ve just been trying to keep up in a system that wasn’t designed for us.
Anyone else doing this? Playing around with syncing your cycle, food, workouts, or just expectations? What’s helped you stop self-sabotaging in the name of being “consistent”?
(And if anyone wants the scrappy little cheat sheet I made for myself, I can flick it over. Just something that helped when I was fully spiralling.)
Comments
While women were often denied formal power (voting rights, land ownership, leadership roles), they still played crucial roles in families, economies, education, social movements, and culture. They navigated the system, resisted it, bent its rules, and sometimes changed them altogether.
From suffragettes and civil rights leaders to politicians, inventors, educators, and activists, women have continuously worked within and against the system to shape it into something more inclusive. Think of figures like Sojourner Truth, Emmeline Pankhurst, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Malala Yousafzai—their contributions are foundational.
A system can privilege one group while still affecting others. Just because it was built with men in mind doesn’t mean it only functions for them. Women, and especially women of color, queer women, disabled women, etc., experience the system differently—and that complexity is crucial to understand.
While built on patriarchal foundations, modern systems are being actively redefined to include more voices. Laws, institutions, workplaces, and cultural norms are slowly becoming more equitable, thanks in large part to the efforts of women pushing for that change.
So no, the system wasn’t just built for men—women have always been part of the story, whether the system acknowledged them or not.
Damn, I thought it was just me flying by the seat of my pants while the world expects us to be superwomen, but hearing this makes me realize maybe we can stop pretending and start working WITH our crazy cycles instead!
… It’s time to throw away those unrealistic productivity charts and accept that we’re not broken, we’re just women.