“I relapsed and started eating 1600 calories a day and my cycle went away, what do I do??”
I get this question (just the number of cals may vary a bit) quite often.
Two things we need to understand about hypothalamic amenorrhea recovery are these:
1️⃣ Recovering from hypothalamic amenorrhea once doesn’t mean that it can never come back
2️⃣ If we repeat the SAME things that caused our hypothalamic amenorrhea the first time, then it’s VERY likely that we lose our periods also the second time.
You don’t “fix” hypothalamic amenorrhea once and then let your health go again.
You 👏need👏to keep👏taking👏care👏of 👏yourself 👏forever.
Yes I just clapped my hands together because that’s how important it is!
Ok, but what do you do if your cycle went away again because you started restricting?
There are three things that get you back on track:
1️⃣ Don’t panic
2️⃣ Cut back at the gym, eat more again, get your sleep in (okay, that alone was 3 things…). See if you’ve started choosing workout out instead of sleeping again. That can easily do that!
3️⃣ Do your mindset work – remember that you’re not an ornament and your life goal is more than being lean 🤷🏼♀️ Find your value elsewhere not just in your appearance or leanness.
What you need to know about weight set point:
Another important thing: the more we bounce our weight up and down (and find and lose the period again), the higher our set point may go. That means that each time we lose our period again, we may need to gain MORE weight than we did the last time, to get the period back.
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The set point weight thing that you said makes sense - but what happens after, long - term?
Do you return to normal, the way you would have been if you hadn't struggled with HA and increased your set point weight? Or do you remain at this new set point (after all, that's why it is called a set point)