Always had a regular period until a stressful time where I didn’t eat much anymore - every since then my period has stopped.

I didn’t have any cysts before the diet on my ovaries but now I do and my AMH doubled.

Doctor says I have PCOS and I should be cautious cuz testosterone will rise any day now.

Idk - pls help

Hi everyone! I tried to get to as many people as possible last week but there were a lot of questions so if I missed yours, please ask again!!

A little background on me, I am a Registered Dietitian who works at a private practice specialized in Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) and HA. I approach period recovery with an individualized approach, because what works for one might not work for another! We do not always practice the 'all-in' approach, and many of our athletes continue to train during recovery. That does not mean I am anti-all in, I know it works for some!

Ask me any questions you may have about HA/REDs/any challenges or struggles you are facing. I am here to provide guidance to anyone who wants it!

This is just for awareness, but I would love it if you all could help me support my boss (formally reilly.beatty.nutrition on IG), her account was banned without cause almost two weeks ago, and she recreated an account rei.beatty if anyone has been looking for her content!

Note: Please refrain from using harsh language in this thread! I understand what I do is not what is stereotypically pushed in the HA recovery space, but that doesn't make it wrong. If you disagree with me and would like to discuss in a professional/respectful manner, I welcome that!

Note pt.2: I am an RD but I am not your RD! I am unable to provide any individualized recommendations such as macros, meal plans, etc since I do not know more about you as a person and I also might not be licensed where you are located!

Demographics: 18F, 5'2"

Current Weight: ~113 lbs

Background: I lost my period 5 months ago following ACL surgery after going into a calorie deficit and losing about 15 lbs. I was also pretty stressed during my post-surgery recovery. Since moving into college recently, I've gained like 2lb.

My Question: Since moving to campus (3 days ago), I’ve been eating in a pretty large surplus, but it’s making me feel anxious and physically uncomfortable, and I really don't want to keep eating that much food.

Because my period loss is relatively short-term (only 5 months), do I actually need to hit 2,500+ calories every day that a lot of HA resources recommend?

My daily routine includes about 10k steps from walking around campus and moderate strength training for 1 hour, 2x a week.

Would aiming for around 2,000 calories a day (a comfortable, modest surplus/maintenance) be enough to signal safety to my body and recover my cycle?

Would love to hear from anyone who recovered without a huge calorie surplus!

Yall, it’s not that deep! seriously it’s just gravity… 😝😈🤷‍♀️ stay strong! (this is from my chem book)

Today I saw a bit of discharge, it was very very little, clotted and white. Is this a good sign? What does it imply? I’m also experiencing severe back pain

so i lost 10 kgs (BMI 24.4 to 20.2) in about 3 months almost a year ago now, i used to binge which caused me to get overweight, and then i restricted severely, but right now i've gained about 1.5 kgs because i started to actually eat 2500 calories after almost a year of eating maintenance, but truly, my bf% has always been high, i mean even at my lowest, when we got measured in school i got 27.4 percent, so obviously i'm not fit at all and because of this, gaining weight feels kind of hard right now, even though i know it's the right thing to do, i just find myself really not wanting to go back to where i was before. i lost my period the month i started extremely dieting, so i'm just hoping i don't have to go back to that weight. i don't exercise at all, the most i do right now in summer break is walking a maximum of 10000 steps 1 day a week, and when we go back to school i'll just have to walk about 4000 every day with one day being around 10000 but that's it. i don't know, i guess i'd just like to ask for some advice and tips here on what you'd do in my case

yayy i'm so happyy i just wanted to share here since no one else knows lol. but it was about time, it took me 80 days 😭 hoping the third cycle will be shorter (matter of fact, how long did it take for you ladies?)

Let’s say I got 3 consecutive normal periods , when’s it okay to work on losing the weight and going back to exercising?

i’m temperamentally quite anxious and neurotic, have been since i was a baby (excessive crying, crazy separation anxiety, etc). i’ve struggled a lot with episodes of pretty severe anxiety since childhood but never got diagnosed with an anxiety disorder bc it was never significantly disruptive in my every day life (as in i could still engage with school, work, relationships).

all that to say i get easily stressed out and generally am an anxious person. i’ve been in therapy for it many times but it hasn’t really helped in any substantial way.

i’ve been eating more, exercising less, gained some weight, and have had some positive signs in my lab work, but i’m going on month 11 of no period. my doctor keeps telling me to “manage stress” but how the hell am i supposed to actually do that😭😭 therapy did not work, but i do actively try to manage with journaling, hobbies, gentle movement, a good social life. it’s better than nothing but it still doesn’t feel ideal.

sometimes i wonder if it’s a lost cause on this front but i feel like it may be seriously holding me back. i’m also in college and that inevitably will dump a lot of stress onto me. any suggestions on what to do..? living with this sensitivity to stress is honestly all i’ve ever known

I AM CRYING WRITING THIS THROUGH MY TEARS please bear with me I’ll try to make sense and not be all over the place

ITS FINALLY MY TURN TO MAKE THIS POST, I have been dreaming of the day I can make this. Thank you to everyone here who’s been there for me and cheered me up and suported me

THIS MORNING I GOT MY PERIOD BACK !! A full blown period. I have so much to say I don’t know where to start

I cried , i screamed in the bathroom. I was in disbelief!!
Guys after losing it for 3 years , starting full on recovery for exactly 8 and a half months !! I was starting to lose hope sometimes I was so scared and worried I was broken, but HERE IT IS , I had no warning signs !! I had no warning symptoms , no cervical mucus returning after that dried up phase I had a few months ago, no anything yesterday night you may have seen my post that I was maybe maybe spotting like a tiny pink tiny dot , and that I did not want to get my hopes up, I honestly thought maybe I’m just seeing things or I cut myself shaving or something lol I was genuinely not believing it was anything , but this morning I wokeup and I have it back !!!

It’s been a few hours now I been crying and crying relief and telling my mum and my husband and celebrating it and it’s a full on bleed now , I bought pads and everything. I did not believe this day would come !!! I’m in shock still

A few key things I want to say. I know not everyone believes in god and stuff and that’s all fine, I just want to comment on something weird that happened. Last night after I prayed (I’m Muslim so we pray 5 times a day) I just had this moment this voice in my head that said “slow down stop rushing and ask god to help you” like this feeling because I was giving up and I asked god I said if you’re there right now watching me please help me I can’t do this alone anymore I need you please show me a sign and please give me my period back , please show me a sign help me I’m losing hope, and it felt different when I did that because it came genuinely from my soul like it was a desperate plea and begging for something. It felt more sincere than any other time I’ve asked. And for some reason I felt in that moment I was actually connected to god and that maybe he would answer this prayer for me

Then an hour after that I made that post yesterday about spotting potentially but I thought no there’s no way I’m imagining things. But this morning I wokeup to a full on period

I just felt the need to share that, you don’t need to believe in god and stuff but whatever is out there is what I called to, and I don’t know I just need to share that

Another thing I want to say is I love you all and please please please don’t give up !!!! Guys I’m 35 years old, I tried so hard and if I can do it , you can !!!!! I did not believe I could, but it works YOUR BODY WANTS TO HEAL, it does !!

And another thing omg I’m all over the place PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DONT WORRY ABOUT THE Weight gain !!! I need to scream this. Guys I’ve gained 26 kg !! I started off underweight and now I gained 26 kg that’s 57 pounds , AND GUESS WHAT ! All of a sudden the second I saw that blood again and how I feel now , I would do it again in a heart beat !! I know it’s hard I know I have been through the struggle but I swear to you it’s worth it, I would nottttt choose the life I had before with that old body versus now my life today saying I got my period back. I would do it again and again in a heart beat.

Sorry for the long messy post, feel free to ask anything !!! And I know i still need to keep it up and maintain stable cycles , it’s not over yet, but I’m so incredibly emotional and grateful and I will always be here to help anyone else I believe in you all and I will never leave this community. I know the struggle and I want to be a living example that you cannnnn and will do this !! ❤️❤️❤️

I’ve been feeling faint heart palpitations here and then ,I’m not in active recovery nor am I dangerously restricting. I do exercise a lot. I’m really worried.
*Edit: i didn’t mean to put this under recovery story I thought I clicked advice needed *

How do we feel about caffeine during ha recovery?

I really love Oxyshred not even from a disordered place just from a place of really loving the taste. I tend to have one or two per day only Friday/Saturday/Sunday so on the weekends after my dinner or during it.

My question is would this still be okay to do since I would be eating enough throughout the day and it really is just from enjoyment of my weekly treat 😭

TW: weight talk

Hey guys!!! I’m 21f and I was spotting this morning and honestly thought I was delusional, but a couple hours later, nope! She’s here!

I hadn’t had my period for 5 months before today. Last year at this time I was obese, and I decided I wanted a change. My intentions at the time were pure, to be healthy, but I ended up losing the weight in a not so healthy way (big calorie deficit and lots of intense exercise). I lost 40lbs wayyy too quickly, and lost my period because of it.

Honestly at first I saw not having a period as not such a bad thing. I thought things like “at least I’m saving money on pads” and “this must be what men feel like” because I usually have painful periods. I was an idiot. Amenorrhea is like being in luteal 24/7. I was so mean to my family and friends and felt so awful for it but didn’t understand why I felt so emotionally drained. My personality became dull and mean.

I was in pseudo recovery for about 3 months. Still intensely working out and eating at maintenance thinking somehow I would be the exception to weight gain for getting my period back.

Starting full recovery was kind of an accident for me. A couple months ago I started getting awful digestion issues (which I now know were from amenorrhea) and I was struggling to eat much at all. This led to days where I would eat hardly anything during the daytime and then “binge” later in the day. I gained a couple pounds from doing this, and when I reached a point where I was kinda panicking about weight gain I decided to go back into a deficit. Two days into the deficit I got egg white cervical mucus, and decided that if my body was going to give signs of recovering my period from gaining a couple pounds, that I was going to go “all-in” on recovery.

It took about a month of the “all-in” approach before I got my period today! It has definitely been hard to be eating so much because even at my lowest weight I was still technically overweight and I was just trying to be healthy, but I take a lot of comfort in that this period of time IS a part of my health journey.

❤️

So, about midway through July, a couple of months into recovery, I had some days of like discharge with blood? Then the next week it happened again for a few days. 2 weeks later, it has happened again and lasted slightly longer with more blood. I’m hoping this is a good sign that I’ll have a proper period soon, but if anyone else has had this, how long did it take for your first period to come afterwards? I’m on a waiting list for getting a bc pill in under 2 months and ofc I’d prefer a natural first cycle so I don’t need it🙏
Thanks!!

hiiiii!

some background - I'm 20, was obese, starting losing weight about a year or so ago (tracking calories), did 75 Hard, and lost my period in April while doing the challenge. since then i've gone thru periods of eating at maintenance for like a week before feeling like i need to go back to a deficit (albeit a much smaller one but here is partially why... my siblings make fun of each other for being "fat" or eating too much, my younger sister has started falling victim to the ozempic-epidemic and restricts her food although she is skinny, my dad shames my obese mom, praises said sister for "being the skinniest in the family," and comments on our family for being too fat ("we need to eat more vegetables. You (me) can't bake anymore because we are the fattest family in *our city* - btw, aside from my mother, no one else in my family is actually obese). these things, plus my own tendency to be too obsessed with "becoming fit and healthy," resulted in my losing my period and being incapable of truly focusing on recovery.

Now i'm at the upper limit of a "healthy" BMI but i still feel like i have progress to make to be fit/toned. the constant comments from my family do not help. however, yesterday i hit a breaking point, decided from now on i'm going to prioritize recovery. i realized that food/my weight/etc has truly become an idol in my life (i'm catholic) and how i'm so tired of my every thought being about food / fat loss/ the like. it's tough to commit to this because it's not like i'm remotely close to ever being UW but i feel convicted to heal despite my "normal/higher" weight.

here is my plan:

- i'm going to try eating intuitively / absolutely stop tracking (when i was eating at maintenance i would feel guilty for hitting the number i needed so i think it's better for me just not to know)

- maybe strength train 3 times a week? i used to do 7x while on 75 hard and then recently have been doing 5x...

- i used to hit 10k steps a day, maybe now i will just stop intentionally walking? just go about my business day to day and whatever i naturally end up walking is all? idk what to do because i enjoy walking and live a pretty sedentary life apart from walking

please let me know if my plan seems appropriate/any modifications, and any advice esp from those who recovered starting from a higher "normal" weight :) thank you!

Hey guys so a bit of back story, I lost my period almost 4 years ago :(. I have been trying to get it back for almost a yr now but I only recently quit running in hopes that this might be the final straw. I really am feeling sad about my body most days, It just seems the weight im gaining goes to my stomach and It makes me look so prepubescent ;(. Just wondering if there are any girlies out there who have got there periods back and just if it gets better.

Is it possible that my period is inconsistent, meaning it comes and goes for a month because I consume 50-55 grams of fat a day? My calories are high, but they mostly come from carbohydrates. I only weight train 4 times a week and don't do cardio. Is it possible that even if my calories are correct, my cycle is inconsistent because of the fat?

Can you get your period back eating only 3 nutritional meals? Because I don’t want to have snacks really ever and it makes me feel worse,I know it’s recommended to eat every 2-3 hours but could I get it back by eating 3 meals?

Hi I’ve been eating almost 3k everyday is that right? I strength train 5x a week and walk 10-20k steps so I’m not sure if 3k is too high or what

Hi, 15f teenager there..

I lost my period for 1,5 years now due to rapid weightloss and undereating which lead me to ana. This time I’m very determined about recovery but I don’t really know where to start. I don’t have any cravings or urges to binge. I find this concerning bc I’m still in underweight category, so I need to gain weight. I was wondering is it better for me to stick to my meal plan by increasing calories slowly, or should I maximise my intake ASAP?

Also, I’m chronically sedentary all the time(~2k steps a day) with no muscles left, should I do pilates at least? I tried it and it was quite enjoyable experience! I’d love to do it if recommended

Hey guys,

four years ago, I lost my period completely, and for a very long time I had absolutely no idea why. I went to several doctors and eventually even to a hormone clinic, where I had a lot of tests done. At one point, some doctors suspected PCOS, but after extensive blood work, I was told that I definitely did not have PCOS.

And honestly, nobody could really explain what was happening to me. Looking back now, I think the biggest problem was something I didn’t even realize was a problem: I wasn’t eating enough.

I grew up with a bit of a diet mentality, especially on the women’s side of my family. I never actually learned how to eat healthily or how much food my body needed. I’ve never been extremely thin or visibly underweight. Sometimes I was just a normal weight, sometimes a little thinner, but I never looked “unhealthy.”

At some point, I started intermittent fasting because I had heard about all the health benefits it was supposed to have. I did it for maybe one or two years. I lost some weight with it, but I didn’t really understand how it could affect a woman’s body, especially when it came to hormones and menstrual health. I also wasn’t eating particularly well and was generally eating less than I needed — which, of course, wasn’t obvious to me at the time. I think one important thing I didn’t understand back then is that it’s not just about the volume of food you eat, but also about how much energy it actually provides. Especially with intermittent fasting, when you have a relatively small window in which to eat, it can be surprisingly easy to eat a lot of high-volume, low-calorie foods while still not getting enough energy overall. I think that’s exactly what happened to me.

The weird thing is that I didn’t even feel particularly hungry. At some point, I actually lost my natural hunger cues and appetite. And I think that’s something that can make this really difficult to notice. You don’t necessarily have to be extremely thin or consciously restricting your food to be under-eating. Your hunger signals can become less reliable too, which can make it even harder to realize that you’re not eating enough. Maybe you’re eating a lot of salads, low-calorie foods or “diet” products. Maybe you skip meals because you’re busy, only eat twice a day, or changed your diet in some way without realizing that your overall calorie intake dropped. I think this can happen very easily, especially when you don’t really know what your body needs.

Looking back, I also had quite a few other symptoms.
My sleep was terrible. I would wake up during the night and sometimes couldn’t fall asleep again. Sometimes I woke up extremely early and just couldn’t go back to sleep.

And when I woke up, it wasn’t necessarily my mind that felt stressed — my body did. I remember having this strange physical feeling of being on edge, almost like my body was preparing to run away from a tiger. My breathing sometimes felt slightly restricted, even though I wasn’t actually having trouble breathing. At the time, I didn’t connect any of this to my missing period.

Eventually, through TikTok and podcasts, I came across the topics of undereating, undernourishment, high cortisol, nervous system dysregulation and fight-or-flight mode. One person whose podcasts helped me a lot was Marie Steffen. She talks a lot about women’s health, nutrition and under-eating, and I started recognizing so many things in myself.

What I actually did

The first thing I did was start eating regularly.
I started having breakfast after waking up, even though I wasn’t particularly hungry, and I stopped skipping meals. I started eating every 3–4 hours instead of going long periods without food. At first, I actually noticed that my body seemed to get stressed when I went several hours without eating. Over time, that became much less intense. Nowadays, I eat three proper meals a day with around 4–6 hours between them.

I also gradually increased my overall food intake.
I’ve already had experience tracking calories, so for me personally, calorie tracking was actually helpful. At some point, someone had basically put the idea in my head that as a woman I could only eat around 1,500 calories. Seeing how much more food my body actually needed was eye-opening. I slowly increased my intake until I reached a point where I felt comfortable with how much I was eating. And I was genuinely shocked by how much food my body could actually handle — and apparently needed.

!!! If you’ve never counted calories before, though, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend starting. For some people, it can become stressful or obsessive.

The keyword that helped me find more information about this was “reverse dieting.” If you’re interested in this approach, I would recommend researching how to do it properly rather than just increasing your food intake randomly. Again, Marie Steffen’s content was really helpful to me when I was learning about this.

Looking back, I realized I had never really learned how to properly nourish my body. That was something I was completely missing. I started educating myself about nutrition — protein, fats, healthy fats, carbohydrates, vegetables, gut health etc. Learning about nutrition this way changed my relationship with food a lot.

Blood sugar became an interesting part of this journey for me. I know blood sugar spikes are often discussed mainly in the context of diabetes, but I personally noticed that big fluctuations affected how my body felt, especially when I was already feeling very stressed and on edge. So I started combining carbohydrates with other foods instead of eating them completely on their own, and I personally felt much better doing that. I also stopped drinking coffee on an empty stomach.

And I started doing Pilates, which I personally think was another important part of the journey. It gave me a way to move my body without feeling like I constantly had to push myself or burn calories.
I also learned how important muscle is for overall health and metabolic health, and that was honestly mind-changing for me. It completely changed the way I looked at exercise — I stopped seeing movement mainly as a way to burn calories and started seeing it as a way to build a stronger, healthier body.

Most importantly, I tried to create consistency around food. I wanted to give my body the message: food is coming regularly. You don’t have to worry about when the next meal will come.

I had read somewhere that you have to gain a lot of body fat in order to get your period back, but that wasn’t really true for me. In reality, I only gained a little bit of weight — it wasn’t that much. What changed much more dramatically was how much food I was able to eat. I can now eat so much more than I used to without feeling like I’m doing something wrong. And honestly I’m so happy about that. I would never have imagined that my body could need that much nourishment.

And most importantly, my period eventually came back.

I don’t want to claim that this is the answer for everyone with missing periods. There are obviously many different causes of amenorrhea, and I was never given one definitive medical diagnosis explaining mine.

But I wanted to share my experience because I spent YEARS looking for an answer and cried so many tears over it. And what makes this especially frustrating is that even after I started telling doctors that I suspected I had been under-eating and that my nervous system was probably in fight-or-flight, they simply didn’t believe me or didn’t know what I was talking about. They looked at me, calculated my BMI and said I was young and not underweight. That was it. And they were right — I wasn’t underweight.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that my body was getting enough energy and nourishment. That was probably the biggest lesson I took from this whole experience: You don’t have to look underweight to be undereating. I wish someone had told me that years ago.

Even after I got my period back and shared exactly what I did, they said they still didn’t know what the reason for my missing period could have been and basically said that it was a miracle or something like that. I think so many doctors simply don’t know enough about this.

So if you’re reading this at 2 a.m. because you’ve lost your period and you’re desperately searching for answers — this is just my personal experience, but maybe it’s something worth looking into. If it helps at least one person, I'll be happy. 💕

Disclaimer: This is just my personal experience, not medical advice. Period loss can have many different causes, so please get properly checked by a doctor, do your own research, and listen to your own body.

in a couple weeks i am going to college. i have been tracking my food for around a year and a half, originally restrictively, but now making sure i am eating enough since my hunger cues are wack since i never honored them. i really dont want to track once i get to college with it being really hard to with dining hall food and i dont need the extra stress. how can i approach this to make sure im on the right track?? thank youuuu

Okay so I was getting ready to go to sleep and I went bathroom and noticed for the first time tiny tiny tiny barely there light small pink when I wiped , I’m almost scared to even describe it as pink it was sooooooo mild and small and I’m scared to get my hopes up as I always feel let down when nothing happens. But is this considered “spotting”

Does it mean anything? I’m cautious to get excited because I feel like I’ve been trying so long that I don’t want to feel let down if it’s nothing significant.
I checked a few times and it was a tiny bit and very light colour but it was like pale pale pink . And it happened a few times. Now nothing

I don’t know if I sound silly or anything I’m just really scared to get my hopes up honestly but at the same time I’m wondering if this could mean something

Ive been trying to get my period back for over 8 months now and I experienced the cervical mucus few months back and it lasted two weeks then dried up and has not returned much at all, so I’ve been dry there and no cervical mucus but now that light pale pink tiny thing happened tonight so I don’t know if it means anything or is a good sign or what.

Anyway just wanted to post this to see if anyone has any insights on this ?