Hormones, amenorrhea and weight loss

I emailed the menopause clinic today (the place where my Doctor is, that have me on my hormones supplements and are trying to figure out what's going on with my natural hormone production) and told them I'm still suffering from anxiety and could this be hormone related...
I secretly knew it would be but I was curious to see what they would say.

My consultant emailed me back and said "Yes it can be related to hormones.

Can you please let me know your availability for an appointment?"

INTERESTING! 

This is also what I heard from the podcast I was listening to yesterday- "Dishing up Nutrition". The ladies on there have so many episodes about how food and hormones can have an effect on anxiety. 

What I've read so far is this-

1. Without progesterone or an imbalance in hormones, women may begin to feel more overwhelmed and easily stressed. In many women, this leads to anxiety issues, including tension headaches, palpitations, digestive issues and more - and in some cases, even full blown panic disorder.  
2. When progesterone is lacking, women often suffer from estrogen dominance, which means that she doesn’t have enough progesterone to keep up with the amount of estrogen as progesterone is a woman’s calming hormone. This leads to symptoms like anxiety, sleeplessness, irritability, mood swings, breast tenderness, weight gain, bloating and more

Will be interesting to see what the doctor has for me then! 

Another thing I want to discuss is amenorrhea and weight loss. Amenorrhea is when a woman who has been having normal menstrual cycles stops getting her periods for 6 months or longer. 

You are more likely to have amenorrhea if you:

• Are obese
• Exercise too much and for long periods of time
• Have very low body fat (less than 15 - 17%)
• Have severe anxiety or emotional distress
• Lose a lot of weight suddenly 
• Polycystic ovarian syndrome
• Reduced function of the ovaries

When I lost my period at the age of 14 I was in the process of losing 13kg and completely changing my eating/exercise habits.

Long story short I exercised too much, ate too little, my body went into shock mode and shut everything down. I was eating less than 1200 calories a day, carb was a bad word and my main source of food was protein powders and diet jelly. 

I lost my weight but I forgot one crucial thing... Going back to eating maintenance calories. So for yearssss I would train nearly 2 hours a day (crossfit style training) and eat less than 1200 calories because of the simple fear of putting the weight back on after trying so hard to get it off.

No wonder my menstrual cycle went bye bye! Looking at the causes above, I not only exercised too much, I have anxiety (OCD), lost a lot of weight suddenly AND later on found out I has 24 cycts on my ovaries.

What really drummed this home to me was my recent experience with weight loss. I compete in powerlifting so I have a certain weight division I have to be in. For this competition coming up in October I wanted to source nutritional and weight loss help from a specialist in athletes. I wanted to get under my competition weight safely and slowly, but be leaner and stronger....

Its been close to 2 months, not only am I eating over 1400 cals, 125 carbs I have lost over 2 kilograms... That's right I've gone from 49.6kg to now 47.4kg eating so much more food and doing NO cardio... That's right NO CARDIO only strength training!

DISCLAIMER- I am only 152cm tall with a small build, so yes this might not seem like a lot of food for some but I am like a small car vs a truck...I need less 'fuel'.

So lets put this into context and comparison, I am losing weight whilst-

•  Eating over 1400 cals
•  Eating 125 carbs, 115 protein, 50 fats
•  Eating foods that I used to consider taboo such as Lebanese bread and falafels (weird obsession with falafels I might add)
•  Doing NO cardio ONLY weight training.

But in the past I was-

• Eating less than 1200 cals
• Eating NO carbs
• Only eating foods I considered good ie NO bread, NO gluten NO dairy
• Exercising WAY too much (mostly cardio)
• Getting injury upon injury
• andddddd lost my menstrual cycle...

No wonder I lost it! No way my body would be ok to have a baby in that state! I was pretty much starving myself and training like it was my job ! I'm losing weight now by eating more and exercising less... I'm working smarter not harder. 

Not only that, I'm the strongest I've ever been and the lightest I've been since I started powerlifting April 2014.

This is my message for today: 

1. DON'T STARVE YOURSELF
2. GET OFF THE TREADMILL
3. PICK UP SOME WEIGHTS
4. DON'T BE SCARED OF FOOD
5. LOOK AFTER YOUR OVARIES PLEASE