A review by meguniqueuser
WomanCode: Perfect Your Cycle, Amplify Your Fertility, Supercharge Your Sex Drive, and Become a Power Source by Alisa Vitti

informative medium-paced

2.25

I have mixed feelings about this book. My summary would be on the one hand women’s health has not been supported or researched until recently so a book talking about differences in your body during the 4 phases of your menstrual cycle is interesting a good. How it is done and the rest of the book was not so good: it was very self promotional, a one solution fits all mentality, diet focused, and a bit super healthy/hippie. Overall it was a bit like a fad diet promotion. 

More in depth discussion: 

She grazes the summary that women have a monthly cycle vs men are daily and that the four phases of the menstrual cycle are different. However I wish she had dived in deeper about those differences. Like how our emotions might react differently, our body needs and can handle different amounts of exercise, activities we naturally want to do more of, our thought patterns. I also wanted her to discuss how to handle having to not be in sync with your current phase; like if you have to do a work task, run a marathon, etc at the sub-optimal time. 

The writing was slow to get going and repetitive. Not surprising for a non-fiction and research book. But later it felt like a super-healthy extreme book. She also didn’t really have a lot of science to back her up besides talking about the endocrine system. She didn’t really have research for only eating a certain type of way or her other suggestions. She instead kept referring to her experiences and her thoughts. That’s not to say this is not science backed, just that she did a poor job of explaining it so I don’t really know if it is. 

This book had a lot of self promotion. She mentions her website or courses almost every other sentence. The frequent customer stories leaned towards the MLM sob story vibe and don’t give any value to the topic. 

It is apparent that most people she has worked with are career focused New Yorkers and/or ones likely to believe in astrology. While not bad, it does frame a lot of her suggestions such as managing work stress with her example of someone working 14 hrs everyday even over weekends. 

Her process and suggestions:

I feel like a lot of her suggestions were to “just do it” or “figure it out” like for eating healthier, reducing stress etc which is not very helpful. Her suggestion for syncing with your cycle while on birth control was simply, get off birth control. It soon became clear that she views this process as a one-size-fits-all when in reality that’s impossible and people need different things for different lifestyles. 

Several times she contradicted herself. Like eating on a restrictive diet but getting pleasure from eating good food. Or she suggested decreasing stress in the same breath as suggesting a complete dietary overhaul and elimination. Or when she was talking about masculine vs feminine energy (yes, an out there kind of vibe) and she said have a balance have both, but then kept suggesting to focus only feminine energy.