Healthy weight but missing periods

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  • ERMOT
    ERMOT Posts: 8 Member
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    If your mom is a nurse, I would start with her suggestions first. Mom is usually right. Mine put me onto MFP to begin with. :wink:

    But I would echo the others who advised you add more calories and cut back some on the exercise. I'm 5'2", 125 lbs with a right down the middle small/medium frame. BMI is a tricky devil that will drive you mad. Don't let that one number fool you into thinking you need to lose more. I was eating 1700 calories and chasing 2 kids and running at home--and still losing when I was trying to maintain. And my mom and sisters all started telling me to eat more--my thinness was freaking them out. So, now I'm eating 1900 and eat back my exercise calories more often. I feel better for it. Always feel like you can tweak the numbers to fit you. That's the beauty of this.

    :smile:
  • geekyjock76
    geekyjock76 Posts: 2,720 Member
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    With that much exercise in relation to your food intake, your energy availability is likely low enough to cause disruption in LH pulsatility and ovarian function. In other words, you are not netting enough calories chronically to have a period.

    Here is the study.
    Luteinizing hormone pulsatility is disrupted at a threshold of energy availability in regularly menstruating women.

    Abstract
    To investigate the dependence of LH pulsatility on energy availability (dietary energy intake minus exercise energy expenditure), we measured LH pulsatility after manipulating the energy availability of 29 regularly menstruating, habitually sedentary, young women of normal body composition for 5 d in the early follicular phase. Subjects expended 15 kcal/kg of lean body mass (LBM) per day in supervised exercise at 70% of aerobic capacity while consuming a clinical dietary product to set energy availability at 45 and either 10, 20, or 30 kcal/kg LBM.d in two randomized trials separated by at least 2 months. Blood was sampled daily during treatments and at 10-min intervals for the next 24 h. Samples were assayed for LH, FSH, estradiol (E2), glucose, beta-hydroxybutyrate, insulin, cortisol, GH, IGF-I, IGF-I binding protein (IGFBP)-1, IGFBP-3, leptin, and T3. LH pulsatility was unaffected by an energy availability of 30 kcal/kg LBM.d (P > 0.3), but below this threshold LH pulse frequency decreased, whereas LH pulse amplitude increased (all P < 0.04). This disruption was more extreme in women with short luteal phases (P < 0.01). These incremental effects most closely resembled the effects of energy availability on plasma glucose, beta-hydroxybutyrate, GH, and cortisol and contrasted with the dependencies displayed by the other metabolic hormones (simultaneously P < 0.05). These results demonstrate that LH pulsatility is disrupted only below a threshold of energy availability deep into negative energy balance and suggest priorities for future investigations into the mechanism that mediates the nonlinear dependence of LH pulsatility on energy availability.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12519869
  • strflt
    strflt Posts: 29 Member
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    BMI. Drop it.

    It sounds like you exercise extensively, so you should stop using the BMI scale. It's really meant only for the average person, who maybe (or not) works out a total of 3 hours a *week*. Your muscle tone is going to blow that scale out of the water because you have so much muscle and muscle weighs more than fat.

    Don't look at your BMI anymore. :/ You are way beyond the ranges that scale is designed to accommodate. Go see your doctor instead and ask what a healthy weight is for someone your size who exercises as much as you do.
  • Xtrobelights
    Xtrobelights Posts: 39 Member
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    If you are very active you won't have regular periods. I know, I was like that ever since I started my period. I was so active and had a very low body fat percentage and was skinny so I almost never had a regular period. Doesn't mean anything is wrong it just means your body can't have a period every single month. I very much enjoyed it...lol. After I got on birth control it didn't matter how active I was, I always have the period...every month :( haha

    You should see a doctor. Chances are you're fine but you should get a diagnosis
  • startingtoday94
    startingtoday94 Posts: 21 Member
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    I'd say it's because you're exercising so much and - like everyone else has said - you probably have quite a low body fat percentage.

    A few years ago when I was exercising a lot and restricting my calorie intake the same thing happened to me. I lost my period for 16 months.... i was a healthy weight and the doctor couldn't find anything wrong. As soon as I stopped exercising so much and gained back some weight (which I wasn't happy about considering I was a healthy weight to start with) my period came back.

    Best of luck :)
  • lb0030
    lb0030 Posts: 24
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    --
  • Mitzigan94
    Mitzigan94 Posts: 393 Member
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    multivitamin it is that u needed.

    :)
  • fashionosack
    fashionosack Posts: 94
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    Hello, weight is an important symbol of reaction and measure the health of a person. Obesity and too thin is not conducive to health, it will not give people a sense of fitness. A lot of different body showed statistical material, reflecting normal weight ideal and simple indicators that can be used to represent the relationship between height and weight.
  • Larrytheloungelizard
    Larrytheloungelizard Posts: 8
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    At my most active and lowest body fat (I think it was 10% and 9 stone at 5"11) I was still having periods. What does cause my periods to skip sometimes though is my polycystic ovaries. You might want to get it checked out to see if you have it, as it can cause fertility and weight problems and is quite common in the US and UK.
  • Sarahndipity30
    Sarahndipity30 Posts: 312 Member
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    At my most active and lowest body fat (I think it was 10% and 9 stone at 5"11) I was still having periods. What does cause my periods to skip sometimes though is my polycystic ovaries. You might want to get it checked out to see if you have it, as it can cause fertility and weight problems and is quite common in the US and UK.

    This.^

    If you aren't pregnant, or feel there is no way you would be pregnant. I woul dbe checked for PCOS. It can cause irregular to non existant periods, hair loss or excessive hair growth in other areas of your body, weight gain, trouble losing weight, painful periods, infertility, ovarian cancer and in some much more.
    Please check with your doctor.
  • dalguard
    dalguard Posts: 36
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    5' 1" and 120 pounds is definitely not emaciated and I can't imagine you're carrying 20 extra pounds of muscle without looking like a body builder. There's probably something else going on and it's probably not tragic, but worth asking your doctor.

    Have you ever had regular periods? When I was younger, I always skipped a month or two between periods and it wasn't due to being underweight or malnourished. Doctors just said it was taking a while for my body to settle into a rhythm. I think for me part of it was going on hormonal birth control very young and so my body didn't learn to regulate itself and any time I'd go off the hormonal birth control, my periods would be all over the place. Now that I'm almost at menopause, my periods are like clockwork. Go figure.
  • graysmom2005
    graysmom2005 Posts: 1,882 Member
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    I can totally relate to this. I'm 5'6 and 148 pounds. My periods are very random. It's been 60 plus days since my last. Scale BF% says 22, but it changes depending on my water weight....so I'm thinking not accurate? I teach around 10 exercise classes a week...I will get period symptoms around my period and then no actual TOM. My dr would shrug it off when I'd mention it and bloodwork would come out perfect. Joining in to see your answers!
  • livingleanlivingclean
    livingleanlivingclean Posts: 11,751 Member
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    I can totally relate to this. I'm 5'6 and 148 pounds. My periods are very random. It's been 60 plus days since my last. Scale BF% says 22, but it changes depending on my water weight....so I'm thinking not accurate? I teach around 10 exercise classes a week...I will get period symptoms around my period and then no actual TOM. My dr would shrug it off when I'd mention it and bloodwork would come out perfect. Joining in to see your answers!

    Do you always eat such little fat? Good fats are so important for hormonal health, cutting out too much will likely effect your periods a lot. Higher carbs will also help...maybe consider changing your % breakdown a little? You eat a lot of protein that may not be necessary...

    I'm guessing you can't stop teaching the classes, but that amount of exercise probably doesn't help. I know that part is hard ...I'm kind of in a similar position, but train nearly 2 hours most days! It's a sacrifice I make to pursue my sport at the moment...
  • busywaterbending
    busywaterbending Posts: 844 Member
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    body fat has nothing to do with it.

    DIET has everything to do with it. Get your hormones checked by an endocrinologist stat, but you are probably suffering some kind of anemia that has prevented your body from functioning at the hormonal level. Elite athletes occasionally suffer this, but you must get this fixed immedietely or your body will suffer and your lack of hormones will destroy your every day life. This is a hormonal issue. Blood work will determine what minerals and hormones are low.

    - Coach Teresa
    advanced certified personal trainer, elite fitness and sports consultant

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