Let's talk periods / The female endurance athlete

A couple of years ago I lost my period. It didn’t return until 4 years later, earlier this spring.

I didn’t see how serious it was back then. I thought about how nice it was not to have to deal with it — the hormones playing games on me, and having to plan my life around my period. It was convenient.

But somewhere deep inside me, I knew that it wasn’t a good thing. The doctors kept telling me to eat more, but even when I did nothing happened. Looking back today, I can see that I pushed my body too hard in those days. I was obsessed with training a lot and eating healthy. If I had a glass of wine or a bag of chips, I loathed myself. And whenever I felt weak in training, I thought I simply had to train more. So I did. And I started feeling worse and worse — I lost my period, lost weight, and felt tired and hungover most of the time. The power rush and increase in performance I had been feeling before was long gone. Instead, I entered a spiral which kept going downwards until I hit the wall completely in 2018 and had to be on sick leave for 6 months. Training was out of the question, I had pushed my body too hard and I had to focus on getting back on my feet again.

I‘ve never really had any idea how my body works as a woman, how the hormonal cycle works and how that affects my health and performance. I don’t even think we ever learned about this in school. Why? And why have we never talked about how serious this is?

Lately I’ve been staying busy reading up on things like the female hormonal cycle, how that affects my well-being and performance, fasted training and other things that have an impact not only on my athletic self, but also as a woman and human being. A whole new world has opened up to me, and I find it outright insane that I’ve never learned about any of this before.

Which is why I was super happy when I got to chat with sports dietitian @r_mcgregor for the @runwithlovepodcast and ask her all my questions. She’s officially my new guru in this area.

Never sacrifice your health for performance. The episode with Renee is out now on Spotify, Stitcher and iTunes. Or follow this link!

Do you have a similar story to share? Let me know in the comments!