Are we optimising for the wrong thing?

I had a moment this morning while getting ready for my early workout.

A flashback.

As you know by now, I’m going through a harsh patch in my life and my mind is trying to piece together the whole story.

So these flashbacks just come out of nowhere.

And what resurfaces is usually memories with intense feelings.

This one was one of them.

I traveled back in time to this bootcamp class.

I challenged my friend to do this thing together. We kind of had an unspoken competition going on in almost everything we did together. So I was convinced I was gonna win this one.

Well, that day I experienced one of the most humiliating feelings.

I nearly walked out mid-session.

My body just… stopped cooperating.

I’ll tell you what was actually going on in a minute, because it changed how I think about wellness completely.

But first…

Name one thing that feels better than feeling good in your own skin. (This avatar that we walk in daily)

I can’t think of one either.

That’s the whole reason I’m so obsessed with women’s wellness.

So let me ask you something.

When you think of wellness, what definition comes to mind? Here’s what google says..

Whatever came up for you, I’d bet it wasn’t a number.

And yet, I feel we’ve come to a point where we track everything.

We measure the macros, we track the steps, the HRV, the pulse, the breathing rate.

We are on this continuous obsessive pursuit of optimisation.

More more more and more.

Is there an “enough point”?

A point where you say: yes, I’m happy with my level of wellness.

I ask because for years, I didn’t have one.

When I started my gym journey I quickly developed an obsession with muscle building and macro counting.

I overlooked the nutrients in my foods as long as I hit the number of macros.

I never had such a shredded body though.

Low fat percentage, muscle definition, the whole thing.

And it was wrecking me.

I missed out on so much in life during those first years into lifting…

I developed a slight body dysmorphia, because I looked in the mirror and I didn’t actually see how muscular my body was.

I wanted more.

I missed so many fun nights, because I was strict on my macro tracking.

I missed my cycle.

Literally, I would skip my period months in a row.

Highly ambitious people have a tendency to quickly develop obsessions. I am one of them.

And the gym was something that grew into an obsession really quick.

Which brings me back to that bootcamp.

That one time I challenged a good friend of mine to join a class here in Amsterdam (kind of like a Barry’s Bootcamp situation) was the slap in the face I needed.

I was so proud of myself, my fitness level… and we were 20 min into the workout and I could not make sense of what was happening.

My coordination was off! I was lifting the left foot when the instructor clearly said right. Instead of a 12 mph pace on the treadmill where I could easily finish a 6 min block, I was struggling at 8 mph.

What the hell was going on…

I left that room so humbled. Nothing on my tracking device I was using back then indicated that something could be off. The data said “I was fine”.

Yet my output clearly did not match my expectations.

As you know by now, I’m someone who loves connecting the dots, so I put my investigator hat on and started digging.

Looking for explanations again.

Sometimes my mind goes wild and I look for the most random concepts, trying to fit an experience into an explanation.

I looked at what I ate the days prior to it, I looked at my sleep, I looked at astrology, the conversations I had with people (cause those can impact too), did I give too much of my energy to the wrong people, wrong situations?

None of it fit.

And then 3 days later, my body answered for me.

I got my period.

When I think about it now it makes me laugh.

We think we know everything, but the more you know the more you realise the things you don’t know.

And the more you admit the things you don’t know, the more you realise there’s so much more that you don’t even know you don’t know.

Truth is… back then I knew nothing about the menstrual cycle phases, or very little at least.

But now it makes sense what happened.

I was in the last days of luteal.

I was someone who obsessively measured macros, without accounting for any differences in metabolism between cycle phases, or the need for extra calories in luteal, not to mention recovery protocols.

I was someone going all out, same schedule every day… running a male schedule in a female avatar.

My system crashed.

Coordination was bad, and on top of that the inner critic that is usually louder in luteal was now running the show.

I started spiralling before the class was over.

I knew I was going to fail, and that inner narrative just reinforced my beliefs.

Recipe for guaranteed disaster.

That class taught me something no tracker ever could.

I had been living like I was the same person every single day.

Same schedule, same expectations, same output. Monday through Sunday, week after week.

But I’m not the same every day. And neither are you as a woman.

We are not linear.

We are cyclical.

Across one month, your body moves through seasons.

Your energy, your strength, your coordination, your mood, your metabolism, your appetite, even your pain tolerance… they all shift with your cycle.

Same woman. Same workout. 2 completely different bodies, just 2 weeks apart.

And it’s not you being inconsistent, or lazy, or “off”. It’s you being a woman!

The problem was that I had zero awareness of the rhythm I was living inside.

Things started to change for real the moment I started paying more attention to this rhythm.

And these days I don’t guess anymore. I actually track my hormones with Mira, so I can see where exactly I am in my cycle.

That was the data I was missing back then. My actual hormones. 🔗Mira is a partner of our platform, supporting our community with a 25% off on the tracking devices with code THESYNCWAY.

But awareness was only the first door.

Cause once I could see the rhythm I was living inside, I couldn’t unsee the bigger thing.

Now that I understand hormones, I can’t stop wondering if us women are constantly optimising for the wrong thing.

Better sleep score, less bloating, less fat percentage, thinner legs, more muscle definition…

But all of these are the result , not the target of it.

They show up on their own when the foundation is right.

When your drainage works, when your lymphatics are flowy, when your liver is well supported, when your body has muscle (not for aesthetics, but for creating that surface for hormones to be better stored), when your gut is balanced (not to get a flat belly, but to get the right estrobolome to clear out hormones properly), when your fascia is hydrated so that it doesn’t compress your organs and vessels, so things can flow easier inside…

Do all of that, and you’ve built the environment.

Because hormones affect all systems in the body: from your brain, to your gut, to your metabolism.

And when hormones have the right conditions to flow freely, they will “balance” naturally.

On their own.

And then you get all the things you were chasing in the first place: you get the energy back, you get the physique you wanted because your body is using energy the right way, it doesn’t store it as fat, it uses it.

And as a result you get less bloating, thinner legs, less period pain, all that.

That’s why to me, hormone health should be at the forefront of the wellness conversation for women.

The question is not how do you optimise your hormones…

Because you can’t do that…

The question is how do you create the environment, aka your own body, so that hormones can flow freely.

When you build that environment, everything you were chasing becomes a side effect.

The energy, the steady moods, the better sleep, better recovery…

And as a result that avatar we started with, the one you walk around in every single day…

She gets to feel good. Every day.

She gets a peaceful mind, warm heart, more smiles.

All of it.

And honestly, I only scratched the surface with this article.

There’s so much more that I want to tell you.

There is a whole way of living in your body instead of fighting it.

We practice this daily in 🔗our community on Skool.

It’s not more more more. It’s the opposite.

We go back to the foundation. We build the environment. And we let your hormones finally do the job they were always designed to do.

I have to wrap this up, actually going on a live call with the members or our community in about 1h from now, we’re celebrating the women who went through all 90 days! So proud!

Anyway, if something clicked while you were reading this, don’t scroll past it.

Your body has been trying to tell you something for years.

Come learn how to listen.

Can’t wait to meet you inside.

Love, Teo

PS: If you are unsure if this is for you, 🔗just come inside, the first 7 days are free anyway so that’s enough for you to see what this space is all about and join at least one of our live calls to feel the room! Hope to meet you soon!