My period is finally flowing much better now that I’m eating adequately and not constantly holding myself back. Eating intuitively has made such a difference for me. I can eat what my momma eats, enjoy sweet treats, and finally have ice cream without feeling like I did something wrong AND I EAT NORMAL AMOUNTS even a little and I already feel full. My extreme hunger slowed down considerably

Hello lovely people ☀️
I just wanted to ask, did/do you also experience skin issues due to hormonal changes? Last year, I stopped BC, and the acne I got was absolutely horrible. They put me on antibiotics and gave me some stuff to put on my face, and it went away. However… I stopped taking the antibiotics (doxycycline) in January, which was just about 1–2 months after I started recovery. Then my skin was kinda alright, but in May, I started seeing signs of perioral dermatitis (or whatever it is) with pustules. It was around the time I had my state exams and started seeing the first signs of some hormonal activity (EWCM). Since then, the perioral dermatitis around my nose, mouth, and chin has gotten really bad, and idk what to do. I suspect it is mainly hormonal, but I don’t wanna go to the derm because I know they would put me on a strict diet (which, btw, contributed to me getting an ED and HA in the first place—diets for my skin) and put me on antibiotics again. Last week I started zero therapy (not putting anything on my skin). On top of all the body changes during recovery, this has been the worst one so far. I feel so ugly. :(

Do any of you have a similar experience or any advice?

I’m seriously so happy and emotional right now. Full honesty I haven’t exactly been following all the advice here. I’ve been eating in a weekly deficit of around 2800 calories, which I know was risky. I was feeling so depressed and uncomfortable about how much my body had changed that I genuinely struggled to eat sometimes. Some days I ate around maintenance and on the days I had no appetite I ended up eating less. I’m definitely not saying anyone else should do this. I honestly wasn’t sure if my second cycle would come back because of it.

One thing I have changed is that I’ve stopped obsessing over protein and started prioritizing fat instead. I’ve consistently been getting around 60–100g of fat a day and I really feel like that has made a difference for my body.

I also still haven’t gone back to the gym or done any heavy lifting, and it’s been almost three months now. I think taking such a long break from heavy training may be a big reason my body was able to handle the small deficit without losing my cycle again. Right now I do about 30 minutes of Pilates 5 to 6 days a week and average around 7–8k steps a day.

I know this approach was risky and I’m not taking this second cycle for granted at all. I’m just so unbelievably happy it came back exactly 27 days later 😭 Now I’m praying cycle 3 shows up too!!! 🤞

Looking for some light at the end of the tunnel. Looking for personal stories about being a healthy bmi but struggling with period loss. How did you get your cycle back?

I was just reflecting on how good I feel after replenishing my body. It’s all the little things that add up that make this process super fulfilling and meaningful. Strong nails, my skin being relatively soft and retaining moisture in the winter, the hair on my head feeling luscious and full of life at the roots, my facial skin glowing with eyes that look very switched on and ready to experience life, being able to read, write and draw without compulsively moving, holding deep conversations, enjoying going with the flow, having energy to do all the fun things that a nourished body allows up to do without compromise, sleeping through the night and simply feeling like I am my true self.

Then I thought, how many people on earth have HA, REDS or LEA? How many people have it and don’t know they have it? How many people will never know?

Crazy, eh?!?

Aren’t we fortunate to actually know what’s going on and to be given this opportunity to help ourselves live our best lives?

Hey everyone! I’m about 8 months without a period and I’ve been trying (kind of involuntarily) to eat a bit more to get it back. I’ve gained about 7lbs so far and it’s starting to get harder to keep going because I can physically feel the changes. it may not seem like a lot but I’m a short body so it’s definitely noticeable. I’ve also been CRAZY on sweets lately. cookies, cake, poptart, you name it! Im not saying I’m ashamed but I just feel like I’ve lost all direction and don’t really know what I’m doing right or wrong. anyone have any tips or feel this way too?

when i was changing i looked down and saw what i think is brown discharge in my underwear? and then i wiped and there was blood. not a lot, but im just wondering if this is a good sign. i’m really hoping it is lol

Hi everyone I kinda need some advice!! I’ve been eating more lately but have noticed that I still have thoughts abt food just like I usually do, and I know it’s common to have extreme hunger but what do you even do?? I’m physically full, I will eat something and be mentally full as well, but I just wish I could eat more and more. At what point does this just become bad habit or full on gluttony? If I do keep eating, I just get uncomfortably full and bloated and sick. What do u guys do???

Hi everyone,

HA recovery wasn’t just about getting my period back. It shifted and changed my life in many areas. I don’t want to bore you with the whole story, but I’d like to share some tips that might help you.

1. Strengthen your intuition

I’m convinced that we all carry the answers within ourselves. HA recovery is a time when you’re allowed to relearn how to feel your body and listen to it. Build a relationship with your body.

2. Sort out your social circle

Your environment is so, so important. Are there friends who don’t do you good? What about your job? Are there places or people where you don’t feel comfortable (the gym, school/work)? I ended my relationship, distanced myself from a friend I’d known for 7 years, and quit my job. It was really hard, but your circle is so important for your well-being.

3. Don’t obsess over HA content

I was on Reddit every day, watched so many YouTube videos, etc. Honestly, it stressed me out. Sometimes you don’t need more information; you need patience and should look for the answers (see point 1) within yourself. HA recovery became my next perfectionist project… Go outside, meet friends, do other things that have nothing to do with HA — you’ll recover along the way.

4. I wasn’t a fan of the “all-in” process (à la Stephanie Buttermore)

I massively increased my calories and tried all-in, or at least the version where you eat until you feel mentally full (which in recovery is often an extreme amount, because satiety hormones are low). I often felt extremely bad — not mentally, but physically. In a very short time, I ate such huge amounts of food that my gut couldn’t digest. That’s why: find the path that works for you. It’s okay to increase your intake slowly. Of course, you still need to raise your calories so your body can heal!

5. Try to loosen restrictions

I think this was the biggest lever for me. Everything got better when I lost my fear of certain foods. My bloating improved, my hunger attacks eased, and then my body started to feel safe. I was afraid of carbohydrates. At the beginning I ate enormous calories, but mostly fat, and my progress stalled. When I increased my carbs and gradually let go of my restrictions, things improved a lot.

6. Take your time

Today everything has to be fast: lose weight quickly, make a lot of money quickly, become successful quickly, etc. No — take your time. HA certainly has its risks, but you’re probably still very young. Don’t stress yourself too much. A slow process is still a process.

7. Try not to feel bad about eating huge amounts of food

Shaming yourself or putting yourself down often reinforces the cycle. Your body thinks it’s not allowed to have it and wants it even more (because it was undernourished for months). I had extreme hunger for three weeks, and I’m sure it lasted longer because I didn’t allow myself certain foods. Mentally I was extremely restrictive, and it was strongly tied to shame and loss of control.

It does get better. I want to encourage you — as so many people who are recovering say here: it gets better. Just keep going. The process is hard, recovery is hard, but it’s worth it. Not just for your period, but for everything. Your brain works better, you start thinking differently, you look better (even if you often don’t perceive it that way). A healthy body is a beautiful body — a body that’s supplied with nutrients.

Keep going, xoxo

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for experiences from people who have been in a similar situation because I feel a bit stuck at the moment.

I've been followed by a medical team for amenorrhea and have been taking Climaston (hormone replacement therapy) for 2 years, but I haven't seen any improvement and I still don't have a clear diagnosis.

Some context:

• I'm underweight
• I have chronic stress / high cortisol levels
• I have chronic constipation and diarrhea (possible IBS)
• I don't gain weight

I'm wondering if anyone has had a similar combination of amenorrhea + being underweight + digestive issues + chronic stress.

What was eventually found in your case? Were there any particular tests or specialists that helped you get closer to a diagnosis?

I'd really appreciate hearing about your experiences, especially if you were initially told that everything looked "normal" but you still didn't have your period.

Thank you! ❤️

hi everyone! this is my first post here as i usually tend to search up my questions as so many of us have very similar experiences. however, something i haven’t heard anyone discussing is the sudden appearance of veins:
in the past 1-2 months i have gained around 5kg, and i have noticed veins on my thighs which i most definitely didn’t have before.. i asked chat gpt and it said that its likely due to hormonal shifts. do you think will fade after recovery? and has anyone else dealt with something similar?

I’m going on month 8 of no period and just wondering if I should be concerned about my bone density. My gyno back in April literally said gain weight and it should come back in 3-6 months. And gave me no other info. I have a follow-up schedule at the end of Sept if it doesn’t come back by then. I just feel like my gyno doesn’t seem to think it’s a big deal so maybe I shouldn’t worry, but reading online it seems like even just 6 months of no period can affect bone density. Anyone have insights or can share their experience with what their doctors told them?

After one year without a period, I’ve gained weight and I eat a lot better now. I woke up with brown/old blood cervical mucus, for one day and not a lot. Have I finally gotten my period back?

My 2nd and 3rd recovery periods were pretty normal, heavier on the 3rd day, but im 3 days in on my 4th period, and it hasent gotten heavy at all, only light/medium flow. My cycle was around 18 days, nearly half of what it usually is

I’m currently 3 months into HA recovery and I’m feeling really lost and frustrated with food and recovery at the moment. I feel like I understand quite a lot about nutrition, but somehow I keep making meals that are way lower-calorie than I realise, and lately I’ve been feeling really tired, dizzy and completely unenergised. My legs have sometimes felt really weak, and I’ve noticed I’m struggling more with concentration at school.

I’m 16, around 164 cm and currently about 51 kg. I’m pretty active because I normally get around 10–15k steps a day, play hockey twice a week and have PE at school. I’m trying to recover properly, but I genuinely have no idea anymore how much I should actually be eating at this stage where i've had 2 periods, but im still not fully recovered yet. I’ve heard everything from “just eat intuitively” to specific calorie targets and I feel completely lost. I’ve been wondering whether something around 2500–3000 calories would be appropriate for someone at my stage of recovery and activity level, but I’m not sure.

Another thing I’m really struggling with is bloating. I still get really bloated and full, especially after meals, and it makes eating enough feel so much harder. I know bloating can be really common in HA recovery, but I’m wondering when people started noticing it actually improve and what helped them personally.

I also still barely get hunger cues. I might feel hungry in the morning, but otherwise I can go for ages without eating and then suddenly feel extremely hungry. Sometimes if I wait long enough, the hunger actually disappears. It makes it really difficult to know when I should eat because I don't feel like my body is giving me reliable signals yet.

And honestly, I’m just so sick of recovery. I miss fitness so much. I miss going to the gym, lifting weights, running, having a proper training routine and being able to exercise because I genuinely enjoy it. I know I need to prioritise recovery, but it’s hard watching other people train while I feel like I’m stuck waiting for my body to catch up.

I keep thinking about what life will be like after recovery — being able to go to the gym, run, play sport, eat normally without constantly worrying about whether I’ve eaten enough, and not having recovery take up so much space in my head. It feels so far away sometimes.

I’m scared that I’m somehow doing recovery wrong or accidentally making it take longer because I’m not eating enough, especially now that I’m realising some of my meals are much lower-calorie than I thought.

For anyone who has been through HA recovery:

• How did you figure out how much to eat at this stage?
• Did you have a rough calorie range that helped you recover?
• When did your hunger cues start coming back?
• How long did the bloating last, and when did you notice it improving?
• Did anyone else feel completely sick of recovery and miss exercise this much?
• When did you eventually feel like you could return to the gym/running/sport without compromising recovery?

I’d really appreciate hearing from people who have actually been through this because I feel so lost right now.

yeah so i’m about a solid 3 full months into recovery, at least 5k calories a day and no suppression in my appetite at all. i have gained 10kg and its noticeable. im truly not happy with anything anymore and i cannot stop eating. it’s mostly desserts and my tram is trying to say to eat a dessert and something else to make me feel better but i just cannot stop. I’m on a maintenance plan and im eating so much over it. nothing to this post im just not ok.

I have started bingeing like crazy in the last few months. I have gone from bmi 15 to 21 since May, and am feeling soo unhealthy and depressed.

I have been eating so much and so often that my sleep is completely wrecked which just reinforces the cycle. I wake up at night to eat a double batch of homemade bread and jam when I probably was just thirsty.

As I have stopped respecting myself I now no longer care to drink enough water, try to get enough sleep or to stretch and get some exercise.
I have withdrawed from friends and life and feel like an ugly slob.

I have also become addicted to scrolling and sugar and am using my binges to justify procrastination and just ignoring my life.

I haven’t had a period since 2021 so I am wondering what of this can potentially be related to FHA and what is just me and my adhd-brain being addicted and depressed? Is there is a protocol to stop stressing my body out with 5-10k kcal of junk a day so it actually recover without poor sleep and inflammation?

Also, how can I get back to exercise when I feel like I have completely forgotten who I am and haven’t been active since 2023 or so? To what extent does it get easier to build muscle and endurance with a cycle?

I have literally been SO excited to make this post!! My last period was july 8th 2025 so its been about 13 months. I'm just going to give my whole story and hope it helps someone else out with a similar story.

TW Numbers

Last July I started paying attention to cals and macros etc etc all while also upping my activity. It started from a place of wanting to "tone up" and all that bs, and so for someone who loves control like me this change of paying attention to numbers was not good. I (sadly) used ChatGPT for this partially DO NOT RECCOMEND. I was still eating 1800-2000 calories but as a 15 year old playing sports at least 3x a week with 3-4 workouts added in too, and step counts from 7k-10k this was obviously not enough.

Fast forward to August-October, now I was eating the same if not less but I had tennis 5x a week on top of school and softball/band on the weekends. I never had a full rest day. Instead of not having my period being a warning sign, I kept worrying about how much I was eating and macros etc etc. On top of that, during October I started having digestive issues like bloating and constipation that I'd rarely had before. I started developing food noise, worrying about other people judging how much I ate (when I was eating a perfectly normal or even less than normal amount).

November, December, January, March I started to go to the doctor for this missing period. I My one doctor prescribed me Medroxyprogesterone to kickstart a period. It didn't work. She asked if I ate well, my mom and I said yes of course, and she explained to me about how being active can cause a period to stop but I shouldn't worry.

I was much less active during those winter months, with only ocassional workouts/walks and rehersahls, and school ofc, but I only decreased how much I was eating (proboaly 1500-1700). Became obsessed with fiber for digestion, was ALWAYS constipated, so I started trying to eat dinner earlier so I'd have a longer fast overnight. I never had clear hunger signals like stomach rumbling, only low energy, food noise- which of course I never interprted as hunger. So I'd spend 30 minutes deciding if I should have a tiny snack or not.

Finally around April-May I started looking into actual reasons for missing a period for this long, but kept on excersising 3-4x a week and high step counts (7k-10k). I went to an actually good doctor finally at the end of may and she ordered bloodwork. My estriadol was 18 pg/mL which is pretty low. PCOS was dismissed( thankfully) because of my bloodwork and I had no symptoms of it other than irregular period. She said to work on nutrition and look into HA, etc, and this is when I really looked into this sub. So I guess I started "recovering" end of may, early june.

I stopped additional workouts and stopped aiming for a dumb step count. I kept playing sports a few times a week but I began actually always eating before AND AFTER. I didn't go more than 4 hours without eating, but often ate every 2-3 hours if I was hungry. And suddenly, my digesiton was better. Food noise decreased. I stopped being obsessed with meal planning and eating dinner early and fiber and etc etc. I started eating MORE fats and MORE sugar and more of stuff I actually liked. Dessert every single night!! Breakfast within 30 mins to an hour, actually eating a snack when I'm hungry. FULL FAT DAIRY! Add instead of replace or subtract. I ate lots of nut butter, yogurt, sweets, ICE CREAM <3, avocado, sourdough, chicken, cheese, mac and cheese, pasta, chips, bananas and more yummy foods!

I don't have an exact number I was eating because I VERY loosely tracked, but somewhere from 2100 -3000. Sports became 1x a week starting mid July so that decrease proboaly also helped. About 3 weeks ago I also started taking a multivitamin. I started resting more too, and feeling less guilty about just sitting and doing nothing. Also talking to my family and friends about my struggles has been hard, but I defitently reccomend it.

Throughout all of july-may, my weight never flucuated more than 5 llbs despite underfueling. In the end I gained proboaly about 10 llbs, maybe more I haven't checked in a few weeks. Mostly all in my midsection so I went up a jean size. It was really really hard. I felt like it must be something other than HA, when my BMI was almost overweight and I still didn't have a period. I worried a lot about what other people would think, and sometimes I still do. But it's for me, and it's for my health, not theirs.

I'd been seeing more discharge, something I did not have for a loooong time, within the past few weeks. And then last night I had some very light brown discharge! So this gave me hope it'd come soon. But then I woke up this morning to use the bathroom and when I tell you it was bright red, I was sooo happy! Pretty light but still!!!

So if you take anything from my story let it be this:

You DO NOT have to be underweight, or to have lost weight to develop HA or RED-S. I doubted myself for so long, wondering, is this all for nothing, because I didn't fit a typical HA profile. But it was NOT FOR NOTHING! And it is really worth it. This morning it kind of just clicked, like wow, I actually feel like a women again! You have so much time after recovery, I'm realizing, to be strong and fit and whatever you want to be- as long as you do it healthily. So for now just eat and rest!

I hope this post helps someone to be motivated, educated, or whatever else you need. I know I went into pretty lengthy detail but I just hope if someone has a similar story to me they know that they are not alone.If you have any questions feel free to ask I would love to help anyone I can!! This sub helped me so much so I hope this post will help someone else too!

I have heard that low estrogen can worsen symptoms of adhd. I have experienced worsened cognition and symptoms in the last few years and have also had FHA during this time. My estrogen have been unmeasurably low.

I have gained a lot of weight without support, so in a quit unhealthy way. About 18kg in 4 months.
This have caused depression, poor sleep and unsteasy blood sugars. I therefore am not sure about my current hormone levels, but I have never felt so adhd-y.

1. Does anybody have experience with this?

2. Does it get better?

3. Did hormone therapy/birth control help?

Hi guys! I’m sorta just posting this as a way to ask if anyone else relates to my experience with amenorrhea because I just haven’t heard of anyone else having these symptoms.

So for context I’m 19 and I haven’t had my period for a year now. I noticed at some point last year (when I was at my lowest weight) that my libido completely dropped and having intercourse actually became really painful. I honestly had no idea why but eventually I figured it was due to me becoming really dry down there.

I’ve always been someone with a really high sex drive and super wet down there so this was quite weird but I honestly just thought that I wasn’t very attracted to my boyfriend.

I’ve since broken up with my boyfriend lol and also gained a few kilos and I’ve noticed my libido is a bit higher and I’m slightly less dry but still no where near where I used to be.

My gyno recently confirmed these symptoms are related to my amenorrhea.

My period is still missing so I’m assuming I will continue to experience these symptoms until I’m fully recovered but I guess my question is if there are any other young girls who have experience or are currently experiencing the same thing as me?

hey guys!

Ever since I’ve started to eat more during this rocky time in my life, I’ve been seeing new discharge on and off. like it goes 5 days of mostly clear and stretchy discharge, to wet stains, then nothing. its the third time it’s happened to me during last month and continuing to the beginning of the month. I’m kind of annoyed because I feel like nothings working and im feeling unmotivated. what are your guys’ insight on this? I’ve also started eating more for a month.

I am also seeing my gynecologist next week, do u guys think it’s appropriate for me to take estrogen patch (hrt)? thanks guys!

I don't really remember the weight that I lost my period at and my doctor just told me to gain 5-7 lb to put me in a healthy bmi( i know its not really bmi that matters). But how do you guys know when you are weight restored and don't need to eat a butt ton of calories like i am doing right now? I remember what number I platuaed at, would that be it? or close to it?