Hating Doesn’t Bring Your Period Back Faster (and What to Do Instead)

Are you frustrated that you have hypothalamic amenorrhea? Are you upset because you have to stop exercising and put on weight? Do you actually hate all those women who are perfectly healthy? 

Hating, just being angry or jealous, won't help us recover faster. In fact, they're probably slowing the process down.

[tweet_box design=”default”]Hate has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet. – Maya Angelou[/tweet_box]

I love this quote, and it's true also when it comes to recovering from hypothalamic amenorrhea: Hating this situation and everything related to it, won't make the recovery any faster.

I'm not a fan of having hypothalamic amenorrhea either (duh). And I get it that it's hard to control our feelings around it. But there are ways to cope with them, and over time, feeling less of them.

In case you're losing your focus at times during the recovery, or if you're getting second thoughts on if the whole recovery process is actually worth the effort, please read my ebook. There are many reasons why you should care about getting your period back. It IS worth it.

Can You Hate Others – Because They're Healthy?

I started thinking about the whole hating thing the other day, when someone who is trying to recover from hypothalamic amenorrhea, said that she is absolutely hating every moment of it.

She had stopped working out and started to eat more, but had seen no changes. And she said that she absolutely hates other women who can run all day long, be skinny and healthy, get their period every month and get pregnant at the very first try.

She was losing her motivation because she was disappointed and angry: How come I can't be one of them? Why do I have to go through all this?

Another girl said that she's totally upset because she was going to have to give up that smokin' hot body that she had worked so hard to achieve. After all, it is unfair! She worked her ass off and now she has to let it go!

We Can't Hate Ourselves Healthy

But, I'm absolutely sure that hating is not going to give us the period back any faster.

[tweet_box design=”default”]Hating the recovery process doesn't give you your period back any faster. [/tweet_box]

Negative self-talk is destructive; it doesn't build us up, but tears us down.

Have you ever pinched your belly or butt in front of a mirror and told yourself that you're fat? Punished yourself with excess exercise? Told yourself that you're a bad, unworthy and gross because you're so fat?

But that kind of attitude didn't make us healthy, it made us miserable. Punishing for eating by working out or working hard to earn our food are the reasons why many of us are in this situation right now.

We didn't get healthier from this repetitive negative self-talk. Hating just can't lead to anything positive. As cheesy as it sounds, healing must start from the place of love, not hate.

Stress Matters

Even tough hypothalamic amenorrhea is mostly caused by excess exercise and insufficient food intake, there's one more huge factor that we can't forget: Mental and emotional stress.

It's been shown that in some women, hypothalamic amenorrhea is caused by emotional stress only. There are stories about women who get their period in few weeks after quitting a bad relationship.

Recently, I heard about a teacher who gets her period only in the summertime when there's no school–because that's the only time when she's not stressed out.

One girl emailed me and said that she got her period last month when she was on a vacation, when she was super relaxed (and also ate a dessert every night, which I'm sure also helped as well).

Similar thing happened to myself years ago. I got one very random period, when I was literally having the time of my life. I had finished a hard relationship, moved to another country, made a lot of friends, met a new guy and I was in love–life was nothing but fun, and BOOM–there was my period! Yes, I was a bit heavier than I am now, but I believe that all of those things mattered. Physical and mental.

The mindset piece is huge. If we're so hyper focused on hating our body, hating (seemingly) healthy and happy people around us, or hating ourselves for getting into this situation first place, then this crazy amount of hating accumulates and ends up creating us ton of stress.

All it does is poison our mind and slow the recovery process down.

How to Not Hate the Situation

If we find ourselves hating the situation, there are some things we could focus on:

At least we know what we have to do. Nine times out of ten, if someone has ever lost significant amount of weight via exercising a lot and eating way too little, the way to recover is to get rest and eat more.

Sure, there may be other, genetical reasons too. But, if you ever stressed your body out by excess exercise and eating super low calories, you know deep inside that that's probably the main reason, even if all that happened years ago.

There are a lot of diseases and illnesses out there that are very hard to find solutions to. We are in a good situation in at least we know what it takes to fix it.

We just have to get started. Stay on track. Keep our eyes on the prize.

[tweet_box design=”default”]Get started. Stay on track. Keep our eyes on the prize. [/tweet_box]

Realize that we don't know other people's lives. We may think that so-and-so gets to workout a ton and still have this rocking body and perfect health, but we don't know the whole truth. In social media, where we nowadays get most of our information from, people tend to show only their best moments and best days.

Also, a lot of those people may have other problems they're dealing with. We don't know them. People have way, way bigger problems in life than putting on a few pounds.

[tweet_box design=”default”]People have way, way bigger problems in life than putting on a few pounds.[/tweet_box]

Click “Unfollow”. Stop following those accounts on social media that make you feel bad about yourself. If we're following those uber fit people who show off their abs on Instagram, we have to stop doing it. Constantly comparing ourselves to them will only make us feel like crap about ourselves and feed the hating cycle.

Make the recovery enjoyable. It actually is possible and I want to talk about it more in the future posts, but I personally feel more energized and also sleep a bit better now as I've reduced my exercise. I had my food dialed in already before and I've been off any restrictive habits for years now, but if you're still skimping on calories, consider stopping it and start eating more. The energy you'll find is pretty amazing!

Enjoy the mental freedom. The other day when I was having my bowl of ice cream, I told my husband that there are not too many health conditions in the world that can be fixed by eating ice cream.

Of course, that's not the only “treatment”, but it's still pretty cool, isn't it? For those people who have restricted their food intake for years, it can be very liberating and something they've maybe wanted to do for a long time. They finally have the “permission” to eat; they can finally get out from that mental prison they've been stuck in for way too long.

Conclusion

There are ways to deal with feelings of hate and frustration that we may often feel while trying to regain our cycles. Hating doesn't help, because it creates more and more stress, and stress is one of the biggest factors in recovering. So let's not waste our time on it and think positively instead–it will get us to our goal faster.

 

Update: I am now recovered from HA and would love to help you do the same!

Learn how to eat to recover from it. 

You can also apply for 1:1 coaching with me! 

https://kerstenkimura.com/work-with-me/