We were blown away by your reaction from last weeks article on Hypothalamic Amenorrhea. We received so many emails and comments.
Although it truly sucks that there are so many of us going through this, we do admit that it’s nice to know we aren’t alone. We received many requests from people wanting to know more about what we did to get our periods back.
Make sure you read this article first. But the 5 second overview is: we over exercised, restricted our calories, lost a stack of weight and our periods disappeared for 2 years.
This may be similar to your story or could be completely different. You may be just getting off the contraceptive pill and wondering where your period is, you could be going through stressful times and it’s MIA… the point is we can all ‘lose our period’ in different ways, so this means we’re all gonna get it back in slightly different ways.
There is no 1 way to optimal health or 1 way to get periods back. BUT we want to talk more about what we did to get our periods back… to inspire, help or to simply let you know you’re not alone.
We follow a paleo inspired, real food diet
By this point you know we follow a paleo inspired diet. We call it inspired because we do include good quality dairy in our lives (sometimes) and we also enjoy sprouted grains and quinoa (they’re on the fence paleo, right?!).
The point is, our bodies were lacking a lot of the good stuff so we added nutrient rich food in to our lives. Think bone broth, organic meats, heaps of fresh vegetables, some fruit, nuts, seeds and good quality oils.
We upped the carbs
Like many other paleo people do, we tested out the super low carb version of paleo. We’re talking paleo with NO sweet potato (so sad) and no fruit (even sadder).
We pretty much ate butter, eggs, high fat meat and avocado for a little while. We definitely do not recommend this. Possibly a good idea to shift some kgs… probably a better idea if you’re of the male species too.
This is our opinion (and a few others): us ladies need carbs in our lives. We’re not talking bread, pasta, cereal… we’re talking delicious sweet potato (preferably in the potato gem variety or chippies) and other higher starchy veg and some fruit.
[Tweet “Newsflash… vegetables contain carbs!”]
Yep! We upped the carbs, especially during active days. We now make sure we eat quinoa or sweet potato (or any other high starch veg) during 1 main meal each day. We’ve read other people add 1/2 cup serving at every meal, that’s another great idea.
We ate more and put on weight
We 100% stopped counting calories, instead… we got in tune with our bodies and began to eat when we were hungry and stop when we were full. Wow, we just realised how wanky that saying sounds… and for us it really wasn’t that simple at all. It took us a LONG time to actually get in tune with our bodies. It wasn’t an overnight job.
We knew we had to eat more food to be healthy, but probably… no definitely we ended up eating way too much food, and way too many paleo treats. We got sucked down the eating when not hungry hole… been there done that, don’t wanna go back! This is definitely not in tune!
This led us to put on a bit of weight. At the time (which was only about 4 months ago) we weren’t so happy about this but then we realised the weight gain led to us getting our periods back. We forgave ourselves quickly, realised it was all meant to be, celebrated the return of our periods and looked forward to optimal weight.
This in fact was part of the inspiration for our new Make Life Merry Challenge. We needed some structure back in to our lives to help us reach optimal weight. Now it’s cool that we get to share it with you!
Right NOW we put a huge focus on eating when we’re hungry and not when we are bored or because it’s delicious and fun. Yay for no more over eating merrymakers!
Yes, to get your period back… you may need to put on a bit of weight. And yes, you’re going to be ok. Once it is back you can then work out the perfect balance for YOU.
We exercised way less
We’ve always exercised a lot. In high school we’d swim at least 5 times a week, at least 3km a session. We loved our Les Mills classes and we were on and off runners. We got obsessed with RPM and high intensity interval training. We lived in the weights room for a while. We had a year of CrossFit… 5 times a week.
Yes, we have addictive natures and yes we over exercised for a very long time.
But in late 2014 we stopped.
We’re talking we barely did any exercise. Maybe a few walks a week and a yoga session, nothing like our old exercise lifestyle.
Usually, if we missed a training session it would’ve caused great anxiety and huge feelings of guilt. But the weird thing was… we didn’t feel bad. It was like we knew we had to slow down to get back to health.
No way do we recommend stopping exercise (especially if you exercise a lot). But we do recommend slowing down and swapping up your regime. Walk instead of run, swap a weights session for yoga. Do pilates instead of CrossFit. Notice the pattern? The exercise is low level stress on our bodies.
We’ve now started to exercise more because we want to and we’re excited to. We don’t want to put too much stress on our bodies, so we balance it up with yoga, body balance, RPM once a week and weights once a week.
We’re also keen to add a pilates session in to our week.
UPDATE: 2020.
We rediscovered our LOVE of Pilates and also discovered the magic of Yoga. WOW, these practises absolutely changed our lives. In 2018 we did our Yoga and Pilates Teacher Training, since then we’ve created the Online MerryBody Yoga, Pilates and Meditation Studio. You can sign up and start your FREE 7 Day Trial HERE!
We relax
We were stress heads, always on the go and never ‘living in the moment’. We never stopped and always had a to-do list running through our brains (do ya feel us?!). Learning more about gratitude and living in the present has really helped us chill out.
We now meditate, we’d be lying if we said we mediate every day but we TRY to! We also focus on living in a ‘calm intensity’ (got that one from our Chiropractor). This means we enjoy the highs and live the lows but we do it in a calm way, in an attempt to not raise the cortisol levels.
A few years back we’d be stressed in the negative, uptight sort of way and now it’s more the high vibe crazy sisters way. Both these scenarios actually put stress on our body, raise cortisol levels and cause a huge amount of health issues.
Slowing down, relaxing, meditating not only helps to get your period back… it makes life better.
Time
We didn’t make these changes and automatically get our periods back. For us it was back 1 month then gone for another 4, then it was every 2 months and oh yep there it is!
For us… this irregularity didn’t cause a lot of stress and since stress causes HA we suggest not stressing. Again… we’re all different so periods will come back in different times. For some it may be a couple months, for others longer.
Our saying we use a lot…
The more patient we are, the sooner it will come (including our periods).
Now what?
All we know is we don’t want to go backwards, we want to feel good and we want our periods to hang around. So this means we’re keeping all of the above front of mind.
To stay balanced, positive, motivated and of course to eat delicious food designed to nourish.
We’d love you to join the conversation below, your story might just help someone.
Always merrymaking,
Emma + Carla
