Are You Too Fit to Get Your Period? 6 Things You Should Know about Missing Periods
Kersten Kimura is NASM certified personal trainer and overtraining recovery educator. You can learn more about her on her website, Instagram and YouTube.
Are you a fit and healthy woman, who loves fitness, gets high on intense exercise, and can’t spend a day without working out?
Or are you a woman who doesn’t love exercising every single day all that much, but does it anyway, because she feels like she has to…? (hint: you don’t, at least not every day!)
Whether you genuinely love working out a lot or do it because you feel that you must do so, there’s one big sign that tells you that you’re doing too much. And that thing is that you stop getting your period.
Can You Be Too Fit to Get a Period?
Yes, you can. You may have not known it, but it’s true.
Let me guess — you’re not only working out a lot, but you’re also watching your diet to make sure you don’t eat too much, so you can stay healthy.
Except… Without your period, you’re not healthy, no matter how fit you look, how many sub-4-hours marathons you’ve ran, or how “normal” your body mass index (BMI) is.
Missing your periods affects your health not only in the future, but actually already now, although you may not have known it! Missing periods means that you body is facing a serious hormonal imbalance, which can cause several health issues. Maybe you’re dealing with one or more of them already now?
6 Ways How Not Getting Your Period Affects Your Health
If you’re missing your periods, that means that your hormones are not working properly, which are the reasons why…
- You’re always fatigued. It’s getting harder and harder to motivate yourself to exercise (but you do it anyway because you’re so dedicated!). Once you get started with your workout, you’re able to power through and even feel good for a while. But it’s hard physically and mentally, and recovery takes longer than it used to. You’re just so tired!
- You have no sex drive. Are you in your 20s, 30s or 40s and have no sex drive at all? You know, “rather stab me in the eye than ask me to have sex with you” of a kind? This is NOT normal.
- You’re often brain-foggy. Do you forget things, can’t remember what you just read, or focus on what you’re doing?
- Your hair is falling out. I’ve heard this from so many women whom I’ve worked with: Washing their hair leaves handfuls of hair in the bathtub, or they find a handful on their pillow in the morning! No matter what hair products they try, it doesn’t help… That’s because hair products can’t fix hormones!
- You’re always cold. You can wear multiple layers of clothes, but you’re still freezing. When I didn’t get my periods (10 years!), my mom always said: You’re cold because you have no meat on your bones! And she was absolutely right, as I later learned.
- You’re infertile. You knew it, of course — you can’t get pregnant if your reproductive system is not working.
All these issues are caused by you stressing your body out too much, in other words, working out more and eating less than is good for you. Yes, working out causes your body stress, although you may have never thought of it this way.
It Goes Beyond Babies
You may think that you’re too young to have babies, so you worry about it later. But while you’re waiting, you’re only making your health worse. It’s scientifically proven that women who don’t get their periods, lose bone density, so that many of them end up with osteoporosis when they’re still very young. They’re also more prone to atherosclerosis and cognitive disease, like dementia or Alzheimer’s.
There are more reasons than these, why you really need to have your period every month. You can read more about them here. The good news is that you can restore your periods, without spending thousands of dollars on supplements or infertility treatments. Check out the blog suggestions below, to see how to recover.
By getting your period back, you will get all the health benefits that come with it. You can say goodbye to the symptoms that I’ve described above. You’ll be more relaxed around food, have more energy, your mind is more clear. And you can finally start a family, if that’s something you’ve always dreamed about.
If you’d like to learn more about health and missing periods, check out these articles:
You’re Getting Weaker By Overtraining — Women’s Guide
What Exactly Led me to Exercise Induced Amenorrhea and Burnout
Not Underweight But No Period?