You can’t go anywhere these days without bumping into wellness. Target shelves are lined with protein powders and gut-boosting gummies, promising better digestion, clearer skin, and stronger gains. Our feeds are a constant scroll of run clubs, cold plunges, 5K training plans, and the latest biohack that swears it’ll add 10 years to your life. And while the pursuit of better health is never a bad thing, it begs the question: Are we actually getting healthier, or just getting better at keeping up?
In an era of optimization, wellness has become more than a habit—it’s basically a full-time job. Between syncing your workouts to your cycle, tracking your macros, micro-dosing sunlight, and building the perfect sleep routine, it’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind if you’re not doing everything right. What happens when optimization becomes obsession, and why, for many women, is wellness is starting to feel less like support and more like a second job?
Nicole Bendayan
Certified Holistic Nutritionist Nicole Bendayan educates women about holistic menstrual health and how to optimize their lives, balance hormones, manage menstrual related issues and thrive both personally and professionally by tailoring their nutrition, fitness and lifestyle to the four phases of their menstrual cycles.
What is the “Wellness Gender Gap?”
For women, overdoing wellness isn’t always obvious. It doesn’t just look like packed routines or endless supplements; it can also show up in our bodies as worse PMS, more anxiety or a cycle that suddenly feels totally off. While men might push harder and see performance gains, women often push harder and lose their period. “If you’re experiencing issues with stress and you feel like you’re getting overwhelmed by really small things that normally wouldn’t bother you, that’s a big sign,” Nicole Bendayan, a Certified Holistic Nutritionist and women’s health expert, says. “I’m also seeing a lot of PMS symptoms, irregular cycles—either too long, too short, or you’re not ovulating at all. I’m seeing that a lot right now, and it’s often tied to this pattern of over-optimization.”
What are the consequences of over-optimization?
When daily HIIT workouts become the norm, cold plunges stretch to 10 minutes, and body fat dips to meet the aesthetic of a curated bikini pic, the consequences are rarely discussed. Our PMS symptoms get worse, our cycles become irregular, and our nervous systems start to misfire. We don’t just feel tired, we feel off. “I’ve spoken with women who have lost their period because they’re over-exercising, under-eating, and doing cold plunges,” Bendayan says. “They’re having difficulty regulating their mood and their stress response because they’re doing all these things that actually increase cortisol and make them feel more stressed out.”
“While men might push harder and see performance gains, women often push harder and lose their period.”
3 popular wellness trends to rethink
There are so many things society pushes on us in the name of health: supplements to help our hair grow, ice baths to reduce inflammation, special diets that promise quick weight loss. But the truth is, not everything that’s trending is actually made for you, especially if you’re a woman. Bendayan shared three popular wellness trends she’s not totally on board with, and how to do them properly (if at all).
Intermittent Fasting
Research suggests there may be benefits to intermittent fasting, like potential weight loss, improved insulin sensitivity, and better heart health. But while all of that might be true, Bendayan points out that the way women fast should look different than the way men do. Most existing studies have been done on men or male test subjects, and while research on women is limited, some early animal studies suggest intermittent fasting may disrupt estrogen levels and negatively affect reproductive functions, including menstrual regularity, fertility, pregnancy, and lactation.
If you do want to try intermittent fasting, Bendayan recommends doing it in alignment with your menstrual cycle (i.e. intermittent fasting in your follicular phase, or the week after your period, and stopping during your luteal phase, or the week before your period) and adjusting your eating window. “Front-load your meals,” she says—meaning have breakfast, eat your meals earlier in the day, and stop eating a little earlier too.
Cold Plunging
People love a cold plunge, whether it’s for the mood boost, increased alertness, or potential anti-inflammatory benefits. But because women’s stress systems respond differently from men’s, Bendayan recommends making a few adjustments to avoid overstimulating the body. “Our ice baths do not need to be as cold as a man’s,” she said in a video. “You also do not need to stay in the ice bath as long as a man to see good benefits.” According to research, most cold exposure studies have been done on men, but evidence suggests that women may experience greater stress responses to extreme temperatures and benefit from slightly warmer water and shorter durations. If you do want to cold plunge, experts generally recommend aiming for a temperature between 55–60°F (about 13–16°C) and staying in for two to four minutes, which is enough to trigger the benefits without overtaxing the nervous system.
Women may also want to pay attention to their hormonal cycles—during the luteal phase or when experiencing PMS, when the body is already under more stress, shorter and warmer sessions are often more supportive. The key takeaway: more is not better. For most women, a few minutes in cool—not freezing—water a few times per week is enough to boost energy, mood, and resilience without pushing the body into overdrive.
Keto Diet
Carbs have been vilified in the wellness space for decades. And while (hopefully) gone are the days of skipping the bread basket when you’re out with your girlfriends (no shade to the gluten-free queens), the idea that carbs “make you fat” or are somehow the enemy is still alive and well. And for anyone confused—bread isn’t the only thing with carbs. For women, especially those who are active or athletic, the issue isn’t just whether keto “works” for fat-loss, it’s how the diet affects hormonal balance, energy availability, performance and recovery. While research on low-carb diets in women is limited, a 2021 review on female athletes found that many under-consume calories, especially carbs, which can disrupt menstruation and affect key metabolic functions.
If a woman adopts a keto or severely low-carb approach without adjusting for her unique physiology and activity level, she might be doing more harm than good—especially when it comes to menstrual health, metabolic function, recovery and long-term wellness. In short, bread isn’t the enemy. The problem lies in going too low, too fast, without fitting the approach to how a woman’s body and stress systems work.
Madison Freeman, Contributing Wellness Writer
Madison is a lifestyle writer with a love for all things health and wellness. Her work can be seen in Prevention Magazine, Clean Plates, Byrdie, and more!
