Hi everyone! I hope your week is going well so far. Happy you are here! 🙂
How great has the sunshine / warmer weather been for those of you who live in Michigan?? Such an instant upgrade to the week!
I wanted to do a post today sharing some of my general thoughts on gut health AND share about a tool that I’ve been excited to be incorporating more in my practice over the past few months.
First things first! Some random gut health and candid dietetics processing:
If you are someone who has lost your period due to inadequate nutrition and/or excessive exercise, it can be hard to know what changes to start making and how aggressively you might need to make them in order for your hormones to recover and your period to come back. Any change can be hard, especially when working on your hormones, as you don’t know for sure to what extent you might need to make changes and for how long.
All of this can feel overwhelming and anxiety-inducing! –> Not knowing how your body might change, what exercise might look like in the future, what eating changes you might need to make, or even how much weight you might need to gain.
What was most helpful for me in my own journey was continually returning my thoughts to the idea that whatever changes I would need to make and for however long I would need to sustain them would be worth it for the sake of my overall health and ability to exercise in a healthy way in the future. I needed to trust that my period would return given enough time and commitment to nutrition/stress/exercise changes.
In my experience, how long it takes for someone’s period to return generally depends on (1) how long it has been gone to begin with, (2) how “aggressively” someone is making changes on the nutrition/exercise/stress front, and (3) what other underlying factors may be going on.
If you are wrestling with hormonal / missing period challenges, here are 4 key changes to consider TODAY to jumpstart your period recovery journey!
Do you avoid, or intentionally incorporate, fat into your diet?
It seems to me that many people are under the misguided impression that fat is always something to be avoided, and that consuming a higher-fat diet will lead to weight gain or worsened health.
My general nutritional opinion is that it is more the quality of fat in our diets that matters, and that it is generally other factors (like chronic stress, overload of processed foods (including many unnaturally low/non-fat foods!), sedentary lifestyles, etc.) that lead to poorer health outcomes.
Eating a diet full of high-quality fats is essential for hormonal health, brain health, immunity, energy, nutrient absorption, and more!
My appreciation for this macronutrient was recently reinvigorated as I was learning more about the story behind one of my favorite cookbooks, Run Fast, Eat Slow. Elyse Kopecky, one of the co-authors, had been a competitive runner since her preteen years and still hadn’t had her first period by the time she went off to UNC to run cross-country in college. Predictably, the doctors she saw prescribed the birth control pill to induce what we know is an artificial period. Not one suggested she alter anything in her diet/lifestyle!
After college, Elyse tried several times to go off the pill to have a natural cycle. Time and time again after waiting and even nixing the running, her period fail to make an appearance, leading her to repeatedly return to the hormonal birth control band-aid “solution”. It wasn’t until moving overseas to Switzerland and experiencing a whole new way of eating that Elyse had her first natural period at age 30! She left behind her low-fat, processed foods diet and filled it with satisfying and nourishing high-fat foods like whole milk yogurt, aged cheeses, butter, egg yolks, and grass-fed red meat.
Elyse started her first natural period after only a couple of months of eating this higher-fat, nutrient-dense diet. (And noting no noticeable changes in body size or composition). Later on, despite being told by doctors she would have trouble getting pregnant due to her period history, Elyse got pregnant immediately with her first daughter!
You can read more about her story here or listen here.
Reflecting on Elyse’s story and my own story of using higher-fat foods to get my period back and balance my hormones has re-inspired me to be even more intentional about incorporating more quality fat into my meals and snacks throughout each week. Read on for some of my favorite fat sources to incorporate, as well as ideas for enjoying them in especially delicious ways!
10 Healthy Fat Sources to Include Regularly:
Imagine a scenario such as the following. You used to get your period regularly but haven’t had your period for quite some time (anywhere from ~3 months – a decade or more). You make an appointment with your doctor to inquire why this may be and/or what can be done about it. Without taking the time to ask important and relevant questions regarding lifestyle factors like your stress level, nutrition, exercise, and sleep, your doctor prescribes you the birth control pill to “solve” your period problem. Take this and you’ll have a regular cycle, clear skin, and balanced hormones — problem solved!
Fast forward several years to when you decide you want to get off the pill for whatever reason. Maybe you decide to go off it because you want to hopefully start having kids soon. Or maybe you want to be done taking a pill every day given that you’ve heard there may be negative side effects associated with it. The months go by and… low and behold, no period! Only now the situation is even more dire and stressful than before, due to increased confusion as to what could be wrong, length of time spent on the pill, and possibly even a strong desire to start a family soon.
Unfortunately, this type of situation is all too common!
I can relate, and I know several of my clients, a number of my friends, and many other women whose stories I have read about on the Internet can, too.
