How I Got My Period BACK! My Hypothalamic Amenorrhea Recovery Story

I am so excited to tell you that I finally got my period back!!! I have been waiting so long to say that. I started the recovery journey over a year ago but was “half in” the first 5 months and the last 7.5 months I went all in. Today I finally get to tell you what I did to get my period back!

This is my new healhy body!

My History

I have always been self conscious of my body and weight especially the weight I carried in my stomach. I recall wishing every birthday from a very young age that I would get skinny that year. I believed that would lead to happiness. My entire life I have always been on that journey to get to lean and ripped. I was obsessed with my weight from a young age and was always trying to lose that last 5 or 10 pounds. I owned Shape, Muscle and Fitness Hers and Oxygen magazine and those women were the ideal body types I always dreamed of having. I never wanted to be super skinny but I wanted to be muscular and lean and then I thought I would be beautiful.

My relationship with food and exercise started changing in high school. I tried a vegetarian diet because I thought that was the way I could drop a few pounds because I didn’t know much about nutrition. I also started doing cardio to get in better shape and I was happy with the progress and loved working out but it just wasn’t enough.

Exercise was a part of my life since I was young. I fell in love with lifting before lifting was cool. It was back in the day when I was told I would turn masculine if I lifted weights. Throughout college my weight went up and down and I went through bursts of exercising a lot to not caring about it and drinking and partying like most college students.

I never could quite maintain that ideal weight that I wanted to be. My body would usually not let me get below a certain weight before I rebounded an my weight would go back up. That was years ago and I really haven’t dealt with the restrict-binge cycle in about a decade. Even though I was past that, I still wasn’t listening to my body’s needs and would do all the wrong things.

Healthy Intentions that Turn Unhealthy

Fast forward to 2011 and I lost a ton of weight for my wedding. This is the first time I actually got to that low weight I had always dreamed of. I had abs but I could only achieve it by being on a very low calorie diet. There was no way my body could maintain it. I never once lost my period through any of the years but I was also on birth control and I remember the withdrawal bleed got lighter and lighter. Once I got married I got off BCPs and we started trying to have a baby. I was cycling normally after I came off Birth Control but had a short luteal phase. We both knew something was up and we saw a fertility Doctor 6 months into trying and we found out we had to go straight to IVF due to low sperm count. I did 5 IVFs to get my son and throughout these I was exercising a lot to counter all the weight I gained on the hormones.

Wedding Week Photo

I did a lot of cardio and lifting during the two years I was trying to conceive to keep the weight gain to a minimum and to keep me sane. I hate to admit it but this could be why it took so long for the embryos to stick. I finally did get pregnant and I had a fit pregnancy but quickly lost the pregnancy weight soon after our son was born. I breastfed for a year so my period never came back before we started our next IVF for our daughter. I do think my body was in a better place because I was fueling it more and eating a lot of carbs. I wasn’t doing the endless cardio and long sessions anymore because I didn’t have the time and I realized more was not always better. I was exercising smarter not harder.

I got pregnant on the first round but I was also at that same higher weight I was when I got pregnant with my son. After my daughter was born I was really stressed. More stressed than I have ever been in my life. My husband went to work second shift and I was home at night with both kids, exhausted, waking solely in the middle of the night to breastfeed, working full time and exercising daily. Needless to say even after weaning from breastfeeding my period never arrived. The doctors kept saying to give it longer. Finally almost 3 years after having my daughter and about 1.5 year after weaning I decided I needed to make a change.

If I was to pinpoint all the causes of Hypothalamic Amenorrhea they would be:

• BCPs and IVF Hormones
• Pregnancies Close Together
• Pregnancy/Breastfeeding
• Constant Caloric Deficit
• Too Much Exercise
• Stress
• Intermittent Fasting
• Lack of Sleep
• Postpartum Anxiety
• Low Fat
• Low Body Weight

My Recovery Journey

August 2018 I decided to start cutting back exercise and only lifted 4 days per week. I put on 3-5 lbs but my period did not come and had blood work taken. My Luteinizing Hormone was 0.5 and Estrogen was about 5. It was like I already was in menopause.

January 2019 I decided I had enough and I went “All In” since I didn’t have any significant changes. I started really gaining weight and focusing on decreasing stress. I did yoga and very light walking on occasion. I was at BMI of 18 to 19 when I started and I knew I needed to get to at least 22 which was damn scary. I would punch in that number in those online calculators and prayed I didn’t have to gain so much.

My current healthy and recovered body 🙂

February 2019 I started working with a coach in February and then boosted up calories to at least 2500 but some day it would range from 2200 to over 3K depending on appetite. The more you eat the faster you recover. This is something I learned throughout this journey. I gained a significant amount of weight for my size. I am a shortie. I didn’t record how much I ate but I ate enough where I was probably putting on about lb a week in the beginning. I know some people don’t like to give numbers but I think it’s good to hear others experiences as long as you know that yours could be more or less. I gained 20 lbs so I went up 20% in body weight which is a pretty decent amount to feel damn uncomfortable.

May 2019 I tried Clomid one time to see if it would kickstart my own cycles. I did ovulate and I had a period but it did not start my cycles the next month. After that my body seemed stuck trying to ovulate.

June 2019 I had all the signs of ovulation but nothing was happening. My body was stuck trying for almost a month straight of signs. I was having a follicular wave that didn’t end. I decided to go on Provera again which I had tried twice throughout the past year but never had a period. This time it worked which meant I was closer then ever before. I went on Soy Isoflavones (the natural Clomid) after Provera and 30 days later I had a period!

Changes that brought my period back:

• Reducing Stress – Journaling, Asking for Help, Being lazy!
• Stopped Stressing Over Food and My Body and Exercise
• Exercising Less – No Lifting or Cardio
• Sleeping More
• Yoga
• Meditation
• Time (this one was difficult because it’s out of our control)
• Extra Weight
• Extra Calories
• Possibly Soy Isoflavones
• Stopped Intermittent Fasting
• More Fats

If was to pinpoint what happened over the last month before I got it back it was that I completely let go. I stopped trying to control my hunger and suppressing it. I let go of what I thought my body should look like and learned to love it the way it was. I accepted that this is where my body needed to be. I do think my body wanted to get to my postpartum weight. That was the weight I got to before my periods were restored and it was the weight I was before I dropped nearly 20 pounds in 12 weeks right after my daughter was born. Your body knows and it remembers.

I’ve seen girls seriously recover in 3 weeks which to me seems mind blowing. Especially since it took me almost 8 months of going all in and another 5 months prior to that half in. I think my mind needed this time to heal. I wanted to give up many times but I never did. This process works. Try not to compare and be patient with yourself. Your body will recover when it’s ready.

This journey has completed changed the trajectory of my life and given me the energy to take my life back into my hands. I believe in the process so much I am going to start coaching other women on how to recover their periods and heal their relationship with food, exercise and themselves. If you are interested send me an email or DM me on Instagram!

Birth Controls to Get Your Period Back?

Were you told to go on birth control pills to get your period back? Are you wondering if you should go on birth control pills to bring you periods back and to “kickstart” your body to start having monthly menstrual cycles?

For me, it was a personal choice not to go on them. I knew that I am not a big fan of Birth Control Pills because I am sensitive to hormones. I was on a million hormones when we went through IVF so it was not something I wanted to reintroduce into my body. If my body was not ovulating on it’s own, I knew that something was wrong and “bandaiding” the problem was not something I was willing to do. I told my gynecologist about this and although she wanted me to go on them she was willing to give me time if i was actively trying to get my periods back. Many doctors may tell you that it birth control pills can kickstart cycles but that usually doesn’t happen. In fact many women temporarily have amenorrhea after coming off the pill.

I decided I would give myself one year to try to recover my period before going on any medication. If I did go on medication, I am not sure it would even be Birth Control Pills. There has been some recent research that the Estrogen in the pill may not be as effective on bone health as once thought.

Before making the decision to recover, there are many things to way out: How willing you are to recover? If you aren’t willing to try and get your period back on your own then some medication may be better than having low levels of hormones.

Birth Control Pills will not give you your cycles back. They suppress your natural hormones so that you don’t ovulate and in turn can’t get pregnant. The “period” you experience is a withdrawal bleed from the hormones in the pills you are taking. This is why you can take the active pills for months in a row and skip your period.

In natural periods, the reason you get your period is because your lining is built up from Estrogen. If you don’t become pregnant during that cycle your lining is shed as progesterone drops and a new cycle begins. So it’s not your period that is so important that you are missing but the Estrogen and ovulation that allows you to have a period. Estrogen protects your bones and is a vital hormone in the normal monthly cycles.

Things to consider is before starting Birth Control Pills

• Do you truly have Hypothalamic Amenorrhea or something else that is causing Amenorrhea?
• Do you have osteoporosis?
• Are you willing to give it everything to recover?
• Will you accept the weight gain that could come?
• Are you willing to give it up to 6 months or a year?
• Do you need professional help?
• Do you need a coach to guide you?

To sum it all up, birth control is not as good as your own natural hormones to protect your bones and your health. Your period is a sign of health and if you don’t have it this is a sign there is something wrong. I hope this helped!

Let me know in the comments if you were told to go on Birth Control when diagnosed with HA.

Afraid to Stop Exercising?Amenorrhea, RED-S and Weight Gain Fears

Healthy Habits That Turn Bad

A healthy habit of working out can easily slip into being too much for your body. There is a thin line between over exercising and Exercise Addiction just like there is a thin line between Disordered Eating and Eating Disorders. There is no secret recipe for how much one’s body can handle. Some people can handle two a days and some people get burnt out from 5 days a week.

My Story

I have always loved exercise so for me it wasn’t a big deal to exercise everyday until I took it too far. I began to cling to exercise and became so fearful of gaining weight and becoming deconditioned if I took rest days or time off from the gym. I used exercise as an outlet for me to get away and relieve stress.

So a bit of my backstory in regards to exercise. I have been lifting and doing cardio for as long as I can remember. Initially it was always to change the size of my body but I found that I loved it once I started. I wasn’t into organized sports but loved Taebo (that was a thing!), kickboxing and lifting weights when I was in middle and high school. Fast forward to when it became too much. It started when I was dropping weight for my wedding. I was barely eating and lifting moderately. Ironically, I never lost my period at that time but my body didn’t stay long at such a low weight. I bounced up in weight not matter how hard I fought it. Years later I fell into overtraining again when I was trying to have a baby. I was on a ton of fertility meds, doing a lot of cardio and weight lifting in between IVFs to loose the weight I put on during the IVF cycles. I was doing Jamie Eason’s Livefit program and I was always keeping calories low and it would send me into binges.

My very pregnant self still working out.

Finally, I took it down a notch let my body gain and I finally got pregnant on my 5th IVF cycle (a FET). I lifted throughout pregnancy ans was very fearful of the weight gain after the baby. The overtraining began again postpartum. I was lifting 5-7 days a week despite not sleeping with a newborn, breastfeeding and exhausted and definitely not getting enough energy through the calories I was eating. I was scared to cut back in exercise. I got back to my prebaby weight but I kept going. I loved eating so I didn’t want to have to cut back on exercise and was just so fearful of gaining weight if I did. I kept pushing myself harder and harder. I would do lots of active rests where I would be doing jump squats, jumping jacks, box jumps whatever I could do to burn more calories. I would do more than what was on my planned program to get better results or what I thought was better results. I felt like I just couldn’t really control it for all the fears I was feeling if I would stop. Obviously, I never got my period back after my daughter because my body was in shock.

RED-S and Overtraining Syndrome

What is over training syndrome? It is when you can’t recover appropriately and in impairs performance. There is a lot of controversial information on this so I am going to stick with RED-S which is more in line with amenorrhea. RED-S is Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport. You don’t have to be an athlete to have this. You can be someone that is just heavily involved in working out like runners, cardio bunnies and lifters and not eating enough to withstand the amount of energy that you are burning .

The cause of this syndrome is an energy deficiency created from the amount of energy that is burned from exercise and daily activities in relation to what one is eating. Psychological consequences can happen either before or after you have RED-S. By the way RED-S has basically replaced the female athlete triad because you don’t need to have all three to have it.

There are multiple signs of RED-S very similar to Hypothalamic Amenorrhea

• Fatigue
• Hormone Issues
• Injuries and acute inflammation
• Insomnia/Sleep Disturbances or Wake up unrefreshed
• Moodiness or Depression and Anxiety
• Loss of appetite

The psychological impact can be thoughts around exercise, food and weight gain which tend to lead into the unhealthy obsession. Fears if you do stop that you will gain or lose your strength. In the back of your mind you may want to stop. You may feel an uncontrollable urge to train. You may have disordered thoughts about earning your food. Fears because it’s your way to decompress or manage stress so you don’t want to stop.

I remember in the past researching over training and exercise addiction. That right there should have been a clue that there was something. I didn’t think I had it because I still had energy to workout.

Are you exercising too much?

If you are teetering if you are doing too much or you are trying to recover your period you most likely need to cut back, cut it out or at least ask yourself on a daily basis “Is my body rested enough to exercise today?” Many people fall into the trap that more is better with exercise. Remember, more isn’t always better. This is the exact opposite of the what you have always been told. It’s all in the audience. If you are that person that pushes the limits and is an overachiever you may be doing too much. I recall Bret Contreras, the “Glute Guy,” saying one of the biggest mistakes he sees most of his female clients make is exercising too much. Imagine if you could actually exercise less and get better results? If you are unsure if you are exercising too much start asking yourself the following questions:

Do I have any of these symptoms?

Am I scared to stop training?

Am I exercising despite being exhausted or not sleeping enough?

Do I enjoy it?

Would I feel a sense of relief if I were forced to stop?

Am I taking rest days?

Am I seeing improvements in my performance?

So after answering all those questions you probably know the answer whether or not you need to stop or slow it down. If you are thinking HELL NO I am not stopping start to ask yourself why?

Are you worried about weight gain? Are you using it to earn your food? Are you wanting to eat more but fearing that you will gain weight? Are you fearful that it’s your way to let go of stress or that maybe you will lose friends?

Just take a deep look at yourself only you can answer this.

How to Stop?

The best way to stop is to try cold turkey if you are completely depleted and exhausted. You should at least try to take a week off. If I mention try to take a week off and you just got anxiety then you probably need to reevaluate what is going on with you. If anything cutting back on intensity, start taking deload weeks and take at least a week off every quarter.

Prevention for RED-S

It’s important that you learn to exercise mindfully and find a healthy balance. There are so many stressors in life like being a mom or if you have a high stress job or there are a lot of things happening in your life. It’s easy to use exercise as a crutch and say you can’t cut back or a way of controlling something in a world that feels so uncontrollable. I am by no means saying not to exercise for stress reduction but if you lost your period or have RED-S you may need to stop and then find your sweet spot once you recover by doing the following:

• Balanced Training
• Deloads and Periodization
• Rest Weeks
• Fueling Properly
• Timing of Foods around exercise
• Sleeping Enough

Click to access 83e2e89d257b3e62b6f0e6bb6fe0584eba42.pdf

My Hypothalamic Amenorrhea Symptoms (Can You Relate?)

I have had a number of symptoms when I was at the peak of Hypothalamic Amenorrhea (HA) before I started recovery. At the time, I thought there was just something wrong with me. I thought that my body changed after kids and this was the new normal. Month after month I started to think maybe this isn’t normal.

Now everyone is different so don’t judge whether or not you have HA, by my symptoms but what I do think it is good to hear someone else’s symptoms to know that this isn’t normal and that maybe you do have HA..

The first big flag for me was how cold I was. I have always been cold but not to the extend that I was experiencing. Another big symptom I had was Digestive issues Issues and elevated Liver Enzymes. This goes without saying but libido seriously takes a hit when hormones are off. Sleep and Insomnia was another issue that would not go away. I was exhausted both mentally and physically because of the insomnia and because my body was crying out. I had body pains and recurring injuries that wouldn’t heal.
My brain was so foggy that some days I could’t think of words.

Do any of these symptoms sound familiar? Watch the video I made where I go into detail on each one of my physical symptoms.

Leave a comment if you shared some of these same symptoms and if and when they started to go away.