Is Hypothalamic Amenorrhea “HA” Temporary?
Are you of the mindset that although HA recovery is super important, some elements of it are going to ruin your life?
You’re NEVER going to be able to lose weight again if you want a healthy period.
You’re NEVER going to be able to push your body in exercise again if you want to cycle regularly.
Well, I’m here to provide some words of encouragement today – that all elements of HA recovery get to be temporary if you want them to be. Let’s break it down a little.
Before we dive in, this entire article is in podcast form! So if you’d rather listen, go listen to The HA Podcast episode HA Is Temporary.
Will you be able to work on your body composition again after amenorrhea?
I consider working on your body composition as using diet and/or exercise to change your body's muscle mass, build, body fat percentage and shape.
There is this fear that with intentional weight gain for period recovery comes inconceivable weight gain, loss of muscle definition and life altering body composition changes that can never be undone if you want to be healthy again.
Remember that when you lost your period it was because you pushed your body past the point that it could handle. Not because you are not allowed to pursue diet and exercise whatsoever.
There is a balance and you now get the opportunity to reset your body and start that balance again if you so choose.
There is no right or wrong here, but it’s entirely possible that you come out the other side of HA recovery with no interest whatsoever in returning to dieting again – and if that ends up happening for you then clearly you won’t mind at the time. Don’t let the fear you have today dictate how you’re going to feel in the future. You don’t have control over that.
I will say that I have been away from dieting now for over 2 years , maybe 3 now, and the desire for me to do it again has not come back at all. I was afraid that I’d never be able to move on from my obsession, but here I am, no longer afraid of LOSING the obsession, but happily living without the obsession.
If, when you get to the other side of HA recovery you do want to purse weight loss, there are safer, slower avenues you can take that get you there AND now you’re armed with a better understanding of your cycle health.
Weight loss is not something that ANYONE in the world should be doing intensely. Crash diets, cleans and neurotic food control isn’t ideal for anyone and just because you see other people doing it doesn’t mean that some people can do it but you just can’t. There are always repercussions whether you can see them in other people or not.
This means you’re not missing out on anything. Instead, you’ve been given an opportunity to do it again and do it differently. Taking a slower, more sustainable approach that does not impact your quality of life.
When you are ready, you’ll know what to look for in professional help. Whether you get a coach or take the advice from a professional online, or just do it yourself, you know now who is giving good information and who isn’t just based on this experience of hypothalamic amenorrhea recovery alone. So with that, remember that your current break from dieting is temporary. The sooner you adhere to recovery, the sooner you’ll recover, have had a healthy period for a solid amount of time and then if you so choose, you can try weight loss again.
Everything is temporary, and everything is on the table for you if you want it to be when the time comes.
Will you be able to train at a high level again after hypothalamic amenorrhea?
This is for my athletes – will you be able to train at a high level again, compete in sports or be able to just generally kick butt on the weekends with your friends.
Just like my answer above with body composition, getting back to high level training is possible because now you understand better:
How to fuel
How to balance training and rest
The importance of rest and sleep
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. With this journey comes something extra exciting: real gains.
When you have HA, you’re not performing at your best even if you think so. Maybe you were performing pretty good, maybe you were hitting records – but the truth is you could have been doing even better.
There is nothing more amazing than a woman whose hormones are firing on all cylinders and nothing more harmful than a woman whose hormones are running on fumes. When you had HA you could perform decently sometimes because you’re training hard, running on adrenaline and talented – but what if you could double your performance and you just didn’t know?
When I see clients and HA Society members take considerable time off from training and then return, we see a positive effect on their training.
They get to experience newbie gains again. Those are always fun! Your strength and performance will not take long to come back to up, even if you’ve had years off and you’ll feel amazing making so many PB’s so soon!
You also get to approach training with a new mindset: training smarter, not harder.
Many of us get in this HA situation because we’ve been led to believe that more is better.
Not improving your time or your numbers? Train more frequently and intensely.
Not losing weight? Train more frequently and intensely.
Not happy with yesterday's performance? Train more frequently and intensely.
Not gaining enough muscle? Train more frequently and intensely.
The same answer for everything! The truth is, the more more more strategy stops working pretty shortly after puberty. In my experience around weightlifters, the young ones are the only ones doing double sessions over the summer break – and it’s JUST for the summer. While you’re going through puberty and your growth rates and hormones are through the roof, your athletic adaptation is completely different.
As you become a grown ass woman, your body is going to respond better to more efficient training modalities and regimes.
This is especially true as you continue to age. Less is more and training less frequently, putting in strong, solid efforts on a well fed, well rested body is going to yield you better results. The best part – you get to spend LESS time in the gym and see more results – hello?
Honestly this advice goes for the body composition people too. It’s really all the same and I would approach reintroducing any kind of exercise and dieting in the same way, just with a more narrowed focus.
Remembering that HA Recovery is temporary is actually a tool, whether you use it or not.
But Dani, what do you mean a TOOL? How in the world can I use the thought “HA is temporary” as a tool?
Simple.
Before you discovered HA, body acceptance, body literacy and started to wake up to all of the diet culture messages around you, you had judgments. Judgments around people who gained weight, around people who didn’t exercise a whole bunch, people who didn’t watch what they ate or understand any of these things that you value.
Now you see things through a different lens, and it’s easy to transfer that judgment now to people who are similar to how you used to be. Now you see people who glorify looking and performing a certain way through a new lens...a more suspicious, critical lens. You might even feel a little more worldly than them at the same time as envious of their ignorance (or just their bodies tolerance to “handle” it all). It’s ok, it’s human nature AND we’re going to work through those thought processes because doing so can become the tool for allowing you to move through HA recovery with way less emotional turmoil.
If you can remove the bias and judgment that you have around “going back”, you can actually use it as something to help you get through.
Do you have a bias that going back to exercises means you’ll lose your period again?
Do you have a bias that going back to a dieting means you’ll lose your period again?
Do you have a bias that going back to either of those means you’ve actually failed at learning to love yourself and HA recovery in some way?
Heck, do you have a bias that getting plastic surgery is cheating in some way?
What if you could decide that none of that held weight. That getting your period is one thing and changing your body is another thing?
That one didn’t have to contradict the other and that you could, if you wanted to, go back to exercise later and it literally meant nothing about you and your recovery success? What if it just neutral?
Sometimes I think it’s like social media, we’re always comparing ourselves and our lives to others and in the disordered eating and HA space, it’s no different. If you don’t recover and then become totally body positive forever, you’ve failed.
This means that we don’t just think we need to recover our cycles BUT we need to recover them and never again touch what got us here with a 10 foot pole again.
This all or nothing mindset, this black and white thinking, is part of what makes committing and following through so hard. And for those that do fully commit, it’s part of what makes it so emotionally stressful.
What if you were committed to recovery now, put everything back on the table to return to it one day in the future and allowed that to be your safety blanket that gets you through?
You might find it helps you with relapses in recovery, because you’re not being restricted from it forever, you’re looking at it more with a ‘this is temporary, not right now’ mindset. You don’t have to mourn it, you just have to say “see ya later’. Then you might just find that once you’re on the other side, feeling better, less anxious and less out of control, you don’t want those old goals in the same way. And like I said earlier, you cannot unlearn what you’ve just learned from this journey, so you’re much more likely to approach it differently, see any signs of period problems and resolve them along the way before they become something more.
HA is temporary. You call the shots. You can’t let what some girls in a Facebook Group say, what authors in a book write or what people on a podcast say be the thing that makes YOU decide what you can and can’t have back in your life after all of this.
Every option is on the table for you, so just focus on getting your period back right now and stop being hyper focused on what it ‘could’ mean for the future – or could not mean for the future.
I have NO idea if this made sense to you, but I just want to give you the permission to not be so all or nothing with your recovery. If it's not helping you to recover, remove the rules and the expectations on yourself for what your recovery looks like.
