Think I’m about to lose my period by not doing enough research into time restricted eating
I’m feeling like an idiot - I was trying to be super sensible/clever with my eating and exercise.
I usually have regular 22 day cycles, but the last few months I’ve had an anovulatory cycle that lasted 40 days and now I’m on day 30 of a cycle after knowing I ovulated on 1 May.
I was trying very hard to be sensible with my exercise and eating, I had slowly increased to eating 2,800kcal a day to match my output and prevent losing any more weight.
For context I am 5’7, 155lbs with 24% body fat, I walk around 18,000 steps, do 3 weight training sessions a week, 3 spin classes and a yoga class. I had started swapping walks for cycles too.
However I had listened to a few too many podcasts about the benefits of time restricted eating, which said you can exercise before breakfast and that would overall be better for your health as it allowed your digestion to take a break, lower inflammation and reduce the probability of weight regain.
It’s only now that I’ve started looking into it that I realised it can also be a major cause of women to lose their periods through low energy availability.
I only started doing it in January, and I’ve only had 2/3 irregular cycles - does anyone else have a similar experience?
I spoke to a nutritionist on Wednesday who has now got me eating 4 meals a day, a first breakfast before exercise and a second breakfast afterwards. And she’s asked me to increase my carbs to 45-50% of meals.
I’m hoping as I was never too restrictive with calories, just eating in a stupid pattern, that I haven’t don’t too much damage and it won’t take too long to fix - is that naive?
Before Jan I had lost 130lbs over the 18 months before but never had any issues with my period over that time.
I only did all of this exercise and healthy eating to get my body ready to try and get pregnant - feeling like an idiot now!