Talking Body: Part III: What Caused My Amenorrhea and The First Mindset Shift

I seeked out the cause of amenorrhea. How did this happen? What did I do wrong?

• undereating
• overexercising
• high stress

All of which impacts the hormone, and when imbalance happens, your body tries to protect yourself. If it thinks you’re not safe, then it’s definitely not safe to grow a baby.

To be fair, I don’t think I overtrained. I never went too crazy (I am still a sedentary coder and book nerd at the end of the day).

I never done more than a set of 30 minutes cardio a day, alternating it with a 7-10 minutes of high intensity training of compound movement within my comfortable range, being paraplegic (OK, sometimes combining when I feel fit and wired). Then I hit the gym only once a week for two hours, but probably only spend 60-90 minutes of actual reps. As a comparison, the recommended frequency of strength training I often see fitness content state is 2-3x a week.

I started slowly, didn’t go too hardcore and ambitious with the progressive overload. Cruising by, maintaining whatever I have gained. I don’t even remember how many kgs I did the last time. I just listened to my body and did the reps to the capacity I feel that day, and only trained till failure perhaps 20% of the time.

I don’t have trouble sleeping, I don’t get hot flashes. I have good energy availabiility, rarely crashed. I do sometimes get post-gym drowse 2-4 hours after and occasional “gym high” 12-14 hours after.

Okay now that I think about it, I usually train Sunday morning and sometimes I would get post breakfast drowse on Mondays and Tuesdays. And I always did. Thankfully I can afford to take naps with my work arrangement. I never skimped on sleep.

I would take days off, knowing I could snap back to being wired if I just decided to be consistent for a week. I was cruising along, maintenance mode. So all should be good.

I think what went majorly wrong is that I gotten more aggressive with my intermittent fasting. I could do 24 hour fast having One Meal A Day (aka OMAD) without much trouble, even till now.

Based on what I’ve read, majority of the released studies and generic “fitness advices” out there are designed / using male as the subject and object, while female bodies react very differently to intermittent fasting.

I then made conscious decision to drastically reduce it throughout 2019, only OMAD-ing once a week. This doesn’t help. Even at 4 – 6x a month I still don’t get the period back.

I also had irregular eating hours. I would often binge eat with inevitable food coma. My body just doesn’t know what to expect. When and how much food is coming.

“Your body is an instrument, not an ornament. Food is fuel, not entertainment. Your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Take care of it. love it, nourish it. Work out because you love your body, not because you hate it. Exercise to be strong, not to be skinny.”

I know all of those on an intellectual level. These are mantra when I am binging and mantra when I am doing cardio. But knowing doesn’t mean accepting or being truly at peace with it.

Thankfully I can feel a real momentum building for me to recover from this mess, 3+ years into being obsessed with exercising, of binge eating, and of tolerating amenorrhea.

I’ve finally internalised these a layer deeper.

The first mindset shift finally happened at the third week of December 2019. Something cracked open.

I remember that day, I was so fed up and I just blurted out, in front of the mirror:

“I am not playing this game anymore. I don’t mind losing this body. I have scored. I can move on.”

“I will work out because I can and I am not going to feel guilty for eating.”

I took this picture that same week in Dec 2019. I was quite happy with this state but I still can’t help but notice how less “dry” I am compared to late 2017 — mid 2018. See how twisted my mind was?

I think what triggered the shift was, first: sharing the struggle with my friend. And second: checking and really seeing other people’s bodies and realising this current “fallen from maintenance mode” body composition of mine is not bad. Sure I have more layers of fat than before, but relative to other people, I am in amazing shape.

I got out of my own head. I had a reality check.

I was doing research with a sample size of one. I was playing single players game. But the score card needs to be calibrated. Not against your subjective reality but against objective reality.

I realised now that I was playing 100% internal game. I was really up against myself, the past me, and the future me. My perception of reality was skewed. I know it’s skewed, but it never clicked.

The other trigger is these questions started sparking, getting louder, and more apparent: what’s the point of training more if all it does is incentivise me to eat more? Why do I need to maintain all these muscle mass?

I surely have enough for survival. It’s not like I will need to lift something for a living. I cannot see how these physical capability will translate into any practical advantage.

I don’t hope to ever outrun any zombie in the event of zombie apocalypse. I also don’t even feel comfortable or confident to post pictures of my biceps triceps delts traps or abs and flaunt them in social media.

My priority and pattern till then:

• build muscles, look tough, feel stronger, more energy
• more muscles = can eat more
• eat more = need to train more
• have unhealthy relationship with body and food till infinity

My priority starting then on, after the shift:

• Eat without feeling guilty. Feelin guilty doesn’t help me stop binging, so why waste the experience, just eat.
• Being OK with the amount of muscles I have and will have.
• It’s day one, bitch. You are already officially out of the maintenance mode and ideal state anyway. Just accept it and start over. Why argue with reality?

I immediately noticed significant change in my internal attitude towards food. I began to let go and be more relaxed when eating. This is different from talking and rationalising myself into accepting the new reality. This time it’s real acceptance.

The second mindset shift happened the last week of February 2020.

Hi there! This is the third part out of 5-part series on my experience with eating disorder and amenorrhea. Hopefully this can help someone out there going through the same experience.

If you relate with any of these or have any question, feel free to hit me up on Twitter. Happy to chat.

• Talking Body: Part I: I Have an Eating Disorder
• Talking Body: Part II: Amenorrhea and Food Obsession
• Talking Body: Part III: What Caused My Amenorrhea and The First Mindset Shift
• Talking Body: Part IV: The Second Mindset Shift and Recovering From Amenorrhea
• Talking Body: Part V: Battling Eating Disorder: Listen to Your Body.

Also published on Medium.