Somewhere in the last few years, “fine” stopped being allowed. You sleep okay, you feel decent, your bloods came back normal — and the internet still has a fourteen-step protocol to explain why you’re secretly falling apart. Here’s the blunt truth, said with love: a lot of what’s being sold to you as “optimisation” is just a business model wearing a lab coat.
Who it’s for: any woman who’s healthy, capable and quietly exhausted from being told she could be more — more optimised, more balanced, more biohacked — if she’d just buy the next thing.
“Normal” got quietly rebranded as “not optimal”
Here’s the move, and once you see it you can’t unsee it. The wellness industry has stopped telling healthy women they’re healthy. Instead: your labs are “within range but not optimal,” your hormones could be “fine-tuned,” you’re “technically fine but not thriving.” It sounds caring. It’s genius, actually — because there is always a gap between how you feel and some theoretical perfect version of you, and the entire industry has set up shop inside that gap. The gap is infinite. You can’t close it. And here’s the part they’d rather you didn’t clock: closing it was never the product. The chasing is the product.
Feeling good is allowed to be the finish line. You don’t have to earn the right to stop worrying about your health by first buying six months of supplements and a subscription to an app that pings you about your “readiness score.”
Plot twist: you are the personalisation
“Personalised” is the word of the moment — AI coaches, biomarker-based diets, hyper-tailored everything. And personalisation isn’t a bad idea. But here’s the thing nobody selling it wants to say out loud: the most personalised data source ever invented is you, paying attention, over time. No algorithm knows you slept badly, skipped lunch and ate toast standing over the sink at 4pm. You know. You’ve always known.
What they’re actually selling you, at a premium, is access to information you already had — wrapped in a device so it feels more legitimate than simply noticing. Noticing is free. That’s the problem with it, commercially.
A filter for the whole circus
You don’t need to become a cynic about all of it — some tools genuinely help. So here’s a simple test you can run on any wellness thing before you hand over your money or your attention. After you engage with it, do you feel more trusting of your own body, or less? More able to make a decision — what to eat, whether to train, when to rest — without checking a screen first, or less?
Anything that leaves you feeling like you can’t be trusted to feed, move or rest yourself without a monthly payment isn’t selling you health. It’s selling you dependence, and calling it empowerment. Cheeky of them, really.
What actually moves the needle (annoyingly)
Here’s the genuinely useful, deeply unsexy list of what changes how a woman looks and feels: lifting something heavy, regularly. Eating enough protein. Sleeping properly. Walking most days. Eating enough, full stop. And doing all of it consistently, especially when it’s boring and no one’s watching. Read that back. Not one item on it can be turned into a $300 gadget, a glossy supplement, or a “protocol.” Which is exactly why it’s under-marketed, and why the flashy stuff gets all the airtime. Boring, free and effective doesn’t have a marketing budget.
If you want to see how much of the “why am I not getting results” puzzle is really just this boring list, my honest take on being healthy but not losing weight covers it, and the one on sleep and fat loss is the most under-rated of the lot.
The honest bit
You are not a project with a punch-list of things wrong with you. You’re a person who is, in all likelihood, doing pretty well — and who deserves to feel good about that without a receipt. The next time something online makes you feel quietly broken, check whose bank account benefits from you believing it. Usually not yours.
Want a coach who’ll tell you when you’re already doing enough, instead of selling you more? Come and train with me in Coogee.