My polycystic ovary syndrome diagnosis arrived with all the ceremony of a coffee order. In a 15-minute appointment, I was given a name for my symptoms, a pamphlet, vague advice to lose weight and then gently ushered out of the room. No roadmap, just a quiet sense that I was now on my own.
At 35, after years of heavy periods, stubborn acne and unexplained weight gain, I finally had an answer – albeit a late one. Relief was quickly replaced by frustration, though. PCOS has no cure, no clear treatment pathway and exists in a women’s health research blind spot that affects millions. Despite impacting an estimated 6 to 13 per cent of women globally, the options offered to patients are often limited to hormonal contraception, less because it’s a solution and more because, well, there aren’t many others.
With little follow-up support and plenty of unanswered questions, I did what many people do after a brief, information-heavy medical appointment: I went online. Almost immediately, my feeds began to reflect my diagnosis back to me, offering frameworks, language and lifestyle strategies that medicine hadn’t. Among them was cycle syncing – a term I’d never heard in a clinical setting, but one that seemed to carry real weight in digital wellness spaces.
Cycle syncing proposes adjusting your exercise, diet and workload to align with the four phases of the menstrual cycle: menstrual, follicular, ovulatory and luteal. For those, like me, who suffer from PCOS, cycle syncing supposedly can help regulate imbalanced hormones through changing diet and exercise to the phases of my menstrual cycle.
“Despite impacting an estimated 6 to 13 per cent of women globally, the options offered to patients are often limited to hormonal contraception, less because it’s a solution and more because, well, there aren’t many others”
For some, cycle syncing is a way of paying closer attention to hormonal fluctuations; for others, it’s positioned as a solution to everything from fatigue to productivity. Either way, it’s continuing to explode online. Last year on TikTok alone, the hashtag #cyclesyncing surpassed more than 285 million views, while Google Trends shows searches for the term have surged over the past five years, with interest continuing to climb year on year. Its popularity highlights a bigger issue: when it comes to women’s health, social media is filling a gap that medicine hasn’t.
I wasn’t looking for a miracle cure when I did a deep-dive into cycle syncing – just something that made sense of what I was experiencing. And, for me, it didn’t arrive as an answer so much as an invitation to pay closer attention. But the sheer volume of content was overwhelming, and I found myself sucked in, scrolling through tips, routines and personal accounts late into the night: people planning heavy weightlifting or high-intensity workouts during their follicular or ovulatory phases, lighter yoga or restorative workouts during menstruation, or scheduling busy workdays and creative projects to match ‘high energy’ phases. Some also adjusted their diets – eating more protein and carbs during certain phases, or cutting caffeine and sugar in others. Others used supplements, strict meal timing, or daily journaling to track moods and symptoms.
I spent hours watching creators like nutritionist Paige Lindgren, whose videos rack up millions of views, advising women to eat sautéed spinach, hemp seeds and wild rice during their periods to balance hormones and boost energy. Others, like Anna Trims, who creates digital cycle syncing journals online, recommended skipping exercise during menstruation and saving high-intensity workouts for ovulation, when a woman’s energy is supposedly at its peak. As I watched, I began to question how much I actually knew about my own body. Had I been doing my period... wrong? Was eating chocolate during my menstrual phase making things worse? Could a few simple diet and exercise tweaks really be the cure for it all?
I wanted to try syncing my diet and workouts to my cycle – the problem was having PCOS meant my periods are irregular. I couldn’t tailor a plan to my cycle because my cycle didn’t follow a ‘normal’ rhythm. My experience also made me wonder how universal this advice really was, and whether it held up beyond carefully curated social media routines.
The cycle syncing concept’s spread across media – from podcasts like The Diary of a CEO featuring discussions about cycle syncing to high-profile mentions such as England footballer Lucy Bronze talking about using it to optimise her training – can make it feel evidence-backed. But while some social media creators claim you can ‘biohack’ your period to get fitter and cite research, the reality is more complicated: only a few influencers reference actual studies, and many experts say there’s limited and inconclusive evidence that syncing diet, exercise or productivity to cycle phases delivers consistent benefits beyond encouraging personal awareness and tracking.
“Cycle syncing has never been studied [in the general population] so there is no evidence that it works,” says Emily Pfender, a postdoctoral researcher at Perelman School of Medicine in the US. “Those studies [that influencers cite] are only done on athletes. The average woman doesn’t need to worry about training during certain menstrual cycle phases because she might not get injured to the same extent as an athlete.” She explains that physiologists haven’t found a reason for women to work out differently during their cycle, because there isn’t evidence showing it impacts the outcomes of either strength or endurance training.
Emily also points out that diet and exercise advice promoted online can create “inconsistency” and rarely considers the long-term health consequences for women. “One of the major concerns is women are already highly at risk for things like osteoporosis, especially as they get into menopause,” she says. “So if we are conditioning women to train differently during the four menstrual phases, then we’re not setting them up for a successful exercise routine [in the long term].”
“Cycle syncing’s popularity highlights a bigger issue: when it comes to women’s health, social media is filling a gap that medicine hasn’t”
Another worrying trend Emily found while researching hormonal contraception misinformation on social media was an over-simplistic anti-contraception rhetoric linked to cycle syncing. “Creators were saying that cycle syncing is a good alternative to contraception, and lets you get in touch with your ‘divine feminine’,” she says. In her research, Emily spoke to college students on barriers to cycle syncing, and most of the women she interviewed said using birth control was a major obstacle to following the method. “Cycle syncing doesn’t align with using hormonal contraceptives,” she says. “Young women are perceiving from this trend that if they want to cycle sync, they can’t be using hormonal birth control at the same time.”
While it’s getting people to pay more attention to their bodies, taken together, these findings show how cycle syncing trends can mislead young people or even create risks around their reproductive choices – all while framing it as a form of self-empowerment. Put simply: the flashy TikToks promising you can ‘biohack’ your period are mostly based on anecdote, not science. Tracking energy, mood, or sleep can still be useful, but the idea that your fitness, diet, or productivity must change based on the day of your cycle? There’s just no solid evidence for it – and the pressure to try can be more stressful than helpful – which is exactly what I found.
Because my periods are irregular, following a rigid plan – like exercising more during ovulation because that’s when women supposedly have the most energy – simply didn’t apply to me. With PCOS comes fatigue, and it doesn’t neatly align with any one phase of my cycle; it can hit during menstruation, ovulation or seemingly at random. Trying to follow a system like cycle syncing wasn’t realistic. In fact, focusing so closely on my cycle only made me less consistent at the gym, not more.
Still, it’s not surprising so many of us are turning away from traditional medicine in search of answers. “After years of being ignored and silenced in the medical setting by medical professionals, women are seeking tailored health advice online,” says Emily. The problem is, getting medical advice online is anything but tailored, plus everyone’s cycle is different.
Not only does cycle syncing toe the line of misinformation when it comes to exercise and diet, adds Emily, but it also “perpetuates stereotypes, biases and inequalities related to menstrual cycles” when it comes to advice on scheduling work and life commitments around your cycle. “A woman working a low-wage job with strict shift schedules may not have the flexibility to rest or adjust her workload based on her menstrual cycle. Adhering to something so strict that changes during each cycle stage, like exercising differently and eating differently, would also be so stressful for women and, honestly, hard on their mental health.”
Wellness coach Kate Gaffey, who has worked with Facebook and Google to educate staff about periods, sees cycle syncing as pointing to a slightly dogmatic focus on optimising your cycle for productivity or personal gain – and that’s part of the problem. While she’s glad social media is sparking open conversations about a once ‘taboo’ topic, she worries the trend is promoting an impossible ideal: the ‘perfect period’. “Women are told how we should look, what we should do and how we should show up in the world – I think we need to be careful that [cycle syncing] doesn’t become another stick to beat ourselves with and make us feel like we’re failing if we don’t achieve perfection.”
It’s a fair point: the pressure to perfectly sync our workouts, diet and life with every menstrual phase can also backfire. Like many people, I have felt guilty when my energy doesn’t match the phase I’m supposed to be in, or when I can’t stick to the recommended routines. Social media amplifies this by presenting curated, idealised versions of people ‘mastering’ their cycles – leaving anyone who struggles feeling like we’re failing at our own biology.
“Women are told how we should look, what we should do and how we should show up in the world – we need to be careful that cycle syncing doesn’t become another stick to beat ourselves with and make us feel like we’re failing if we don’t achieve perfection”
That’s why experts like Kate stress that understanding your body should be about choice and empowerment, not pressure. She believes women should be educated about how their bodies work and have the freedom to decide what works for them, whether that’s cycle syncing, hormonal contraception, or something in-between. “Understanding your cycle and how your body works doesn’t take away from bodily autonomy – it strengthens it. When a woman understands herself, she’s in a far better position to decide what’s right for her at any point in her life: whether that’s hormonal contraception, fertility awareness method or anything in-between.”
Both Emily and Kate don’t deny that some women do benefit from following cycle syncing advice – they just caution against blindly following advice you see on social media. Advice that is often being used to market plans and products we don’t need. “Tuning into individual patterns is more important than following a framework,” says Kate. “Each woman will be different and, for me, it starts with a simple daily check-in: taking a moment to notice how you feel and noting where you are in your cycle. This is menstrual cycle awareness. Over time, this helps you see your own patterns in mood, energy, behaviour, and other needs. The key is that it’s personal: tuning into your rhythm, understanding your rhythm, and then meeting yourself with compassion, grace and care.”
Women may share common threads in how menstrual cycles are discussed, but our bodies are not interchangeable. My PCOS diagnosis forced me to stop chasing one-size-fits-all solutions and start listening to what my body was actually telling me. It has taught me to prioritise my health over online trends, and to treat wellness advice – especially when it goes viral – with healthy scepticism. Cycle syncing can be a useful tool for learning about your body, but it isn’t a rulebook. If it helps, use it. If it doesn’t, you don’t owe it your loyalty.
