Cycle Syncing Won't Fix Women's Fitness

Plus more health news | Email not displaying correctly? [View it in your browser.]( [Health Matters]( [Cycle Syncing is All Vibes and Little Evidence]( By Haley Weiss Health Reporter Can you name all four phases of the menstrual cycle? Unless you use a period-tracking app or just finished high-school health class, you probably can’t. That’s because for most women without hormonal conditions, the three phases in between periods—follicular, ovulatory, and luteal—don’t feel all that different. But a whole new wave of fitness programs wants women to plan their workout (and in some cases, their diets), around those four phases. The concept is known as cycle syncing, and programs include overviews of the relative levels of different menstrual hormones throughout the cycle and exercises tailored to the generalized ups and downs in pain, energy, and other physiological states that can occur. While the approach is no doubt helpful for some, the reality is these programs are based on both oversimplified versions of the wildly unique menstrual cycles people experience and out-of-context assumptions about new and sometimes unproven findings in sports medicine. And though cycle-syncing programs encourage people to become more familiar with the ways in which their own menstruating bodies work, experts fear women will unwittingly accept the sexist idea that they are governed by their hormones. [READ MORE]( Share This Story What Else to Read [Column: Internalized Racism Almost Kept Me From Becoming a Mother]( By Debora Kuan 'For me, the fear of motherhood was inextricably tied to race,' writes Debora Kuan. [Read More »]( [What To Know About High Cholesterol in Kids]( By Sandeep Ravindran Detecting it could reduce the risks of heart attacks and strokes later in life. [Read More »]( [Is There Really No Safe Amount of Drinking?]( By Jamie Ducharme What the latest science says on drinking and health. [Read More »]( [Love Languages Actually Do Improve Your Relationship]( By Angela Haupt Research links relationship satisfaction to whether partners use each other's preferred love language. [Read More »]( [Stop Spending Money to Avoid Uncomfortable Emotions]( By Jenn Lim Happiness expert Jenn Lim on why we misunderstand the relationship between spending money on ourselves and our emotional wellbeing. [Read More »]( ONE LAST READ [How Big Tobacco hacked snack food]( What do Camels and Teddy Grahams have in common? At least for a while, their owners. In the 1980s and 1990s, Big Tobacco brands owned food giants including Nabisco and Kraft—and, as this eye-opening Washington Post story reports, tobacco executives purposely created snack foods almost as addictive as their cigarettes. [Read More »]( If you were forwarded this and want to sign up to receive it daily, [click here](. Today's newsletter was written by Haley Weiss and Jamie Ducharme, and edited by Oliver Staley. [Want more from TIME? Sign up for our other newsletters.]( [Subscribe to TIME]( TIME may receive compensation for some links to products and services in this email. Offers may be subject to change without notice. Connect with TIME via [Facebook]( | [Twitter]( | [Newsletters]( [UNSUBSCRIBE]( [PRIVACY POLICY]( [YOUR CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS]( TIME Customer Service, P.O. Box 37508, Boone, IA 50037-0508 Questions? Contact health@time.com Copyright © 2023 TIME USA, LLC. All rights reserved.