In the early days of January, women around the world are bombarded with messages urging them to start strong, to build habits, to be consistent. The start of a new year often comes with a sense of pressure to reset, refresh, and hustle. But for many women, the narrative of “new year, new goals” feels impossible to meet. They are already overwhelmed, exhausted, and feeling disconnected from their own rhythm. Why? Because this push to “start strong” often ignores the truth of how women’s bodies function, and how they’re not designed for the constant output that modern work demands.
Ale Wiecek Rojo understands this better than anyone. A visionary hormone health advocate, Ale is the founder of BIFTSBO, a women’s health and longevity startup dedicated to transforming how women navigate their hormonal cycles, perimenopause, and menopause. She has spent her career helping women, leaders, and organizations create sustainable health practices by addressing the root causes of hormonal imbalance, chronic stress, and misaligned lifestyles.
Ale’s mission centers around a simple but revolutionary idea: burnout is not a failure. It’s a signal. She has made it her life’s work to ensure that women understand what their bodies are telling them instead of pushing through the symptoms of stress and hormonal imbalances that society often labels as weaknesses.
The Birth of BIFTSBO: Changing the Conversation Around Hormonal Health
Ale’s journey to founding BIFTSBO wasn’t easy. It was shaped by her own struggles with PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder), ADHD, and perimenopause, while building businesses and leading innovation teams. Over the course of 21 years in corporate innovation and leadership, Ale faced what many women do: feeling burned out, mentally foggy, and physically depleted, yet still being expected to perform at the same high level as her male counterparts.
“I realized the real issue wasn’t lack of discipline or resilience,” Ale says. “It was a dysregulated nervous system living in a world designed for constant output. Women aren’t burning out because they lack willpower, they’re burning out because their bodies are designed differently.”
Her personal experiences drove her to seek solutions that were more than just symptoms of hormonal imbalance, solutions that addressed the system at large. This is where BIFTSBO came in. Ale created a platform that combines nervous system alignment, somatic psychology, behavioral science, and data-driven insights to help women and organizations not just survive, but thrive.
The Real Problem: Mismatched Systems and Female Biology
One of Ale’s most profound insights came when she realized that the systems women work in, from corporate environments to societal expectations, were fundamentally mismatched with the way their bodies function. Women’s biology is cyclical, dynamic, and deeply responsive to stress. Yet, society continues to operate as if everyone’s body operates on a linear, predictable output. This mismatch is one of the leading causes of burnout and often guilt and shame for not feeling ‘the same’ every day
“Burnout is not a mindset problem. It’s a nervous system problem,” Ale explains. “Your body is not betraying you; it’s trying to lead you.”
Understanding this, Ale set out to shift the conversation away from motivation and discipline and instead focus on nervous system regulation and cycle syncing. By acknowledging the natural cycles of a woman’s body and aligning work with these rhythms, women can avoid pushing through exhaustion and instead create systems that support their biology, optimise her productivity and performance and her mental health.
Consistency Is Not a Character Trait, It’s a Timing Issue
The idea that “consistency” is the key to success is often touted as a virtue. But what happens when that “consistency” starts to feel impossible? For many women, it’s not a lack of motivation but a mismatch between their bodies’ natural rhythms and the expectations placed on them. This is 10x in neurodivergent brains where consistently can be a real challenge. Consistency isn’t about forcing output every single day, it’s about aligning your work with your body’s needs at different points in the cycle, no matter how unpredictable a cycle might be.
Ale advocates for cycle syncing, the practice of aligning your work, energy, and productivity with the natural fluctuations of your hormonal cycles. She emphasizes that this approach should not be viewed as rigid or limiting but rather as an invitation to harness the body’s rhythms for maximum flow and effectiveness.
When women align their work with their cycles, they don’t have to force themselves to meet arbitrary goals. Instead, they can flow with their bodies, knowing when they’re at their most energized, focused, and creative, shifting their schedule to serve them best, becoming more innovative and agile with their approach to outputs and managing their energy on a regular basis .
Ale’s framework for cycle-smart productivity, which she calls the 4S Cycle-Smart Productivity Loop, provides a tangible way to design work that matches a woman’s capacity:
- Signal – What is my body telling me today?
- Strategy – What work matches my capacity today?
- Support – What regulation tool helps me access my best brain?
- System – What needs to change so I don’t rely on willpower next week?
This approach ultimately leads to sustainable consistency, built on safety, timing, tiny action, and flow, not hustle, discipline, or burnout.
Rethinking Women’s Health at Work: A Structural Problem
The impact of hormonal health and burnout on women extends beyond the individual. In Europe, it’s estimated that €1.8 billion is lost annually due to ignored women’s health, and 86 million workdays are lost every year due to unmanaged menopause symptoms. This isn’t just an individual problem; it’s a systemic one. Yet, most workplaces still offer no hormone or nervous system support.
As Ale points out, “When women don’t have language for what’s happening in their bodies, they interpret it as failure, instead of feedback.”
The solution lies not in asking women to adapt endlessly to environments that exhaust them, but in creating environments that adapt to women’s needs. By integrating nervous system regulation, somatic psychology, and hormonal health education, Ale advocates for a new paradigm in the workplace, one where women’s needs are seen as an opportunity for growth, productivity, and alignment, not a burden to be fixed. In fact, research shows that managers trained in somatic awareness can create teams that are 3–21 times more productive and reduce emotional contagion under stress (McKinsey, 2024), demonstrating that attention to human-centered, body-aware leadership benefits everyone, not just women.
A Gentle Invitation to Rebuild Consistency
Ale’s work is not about pushing more output or demanding more resilience from women. It’s about creating a safe space for women to reconnect with their bodies and align their lives with their true rhythms while succeeding in their careers. For those who feel overwhelmed, behind, or disconnected from their natural flow at the start of the year, Ale offers a solution: small daily alignment. Through her free 30-Day Daily Intention Anti-Challenge, women can rebuild their consistency without force or shame.
For those ready to go deeper, From Burnout to Flow, a guided program focused on cycle-aware productivity, is now open for early bird enrollment. This program teaches women how to design their work, energy, and leadership around their bodies’ needs, creating sustainable vitality and flow.
Visit BIFTSBO today to learn more and begin your journey to sustainable health and success.
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