375. From HA to Purpose: How Recovery Led Meg Dapper to Help Other Women
The Hypothalamic Amenorrhea PodcastShow Notes
In this episode, Dani sits down with Meg Dapper, an HA Society HHAP Certified Practitioner, to discuss her journey from anorexia and hypothalamic amenorrhea to helping women recover their health and reclaim their lives. Meg shares how she physically recovered from an eating disorder as a teenager but later realized she had never truly healed her relationship with food, exercise, and control. Years later, those same patterns resurfaced in a different form, leading to hypothalamic amenorrhea. Together, Dani and Meg explore the difference between physical recovery and mental recovery, why identity plays such a significant role in healing, and how recovery ultimately led both of them to discover a deeper sense of purpose. If you've ever wondered whether life after recovery can become bigger than simply getting your period back, this conversation is for you. In this episode, we discuss: Meg's journey from anorexia to hypothalamic amenorrhea Why eating disorder recovery and HA recovery are two different healing journeys How control around food often shifts into exercise and routine The hidden mental work required to fully recover The importance of finding a compelling "why" during recovery Why community is one of the most powerful tools for healing How recovery can lead to a complete identity transformation Turning your own healing into helping other women The realities of building a coaching business after recovery Why purpose and service often become the greatest rewards of healing
Connect with Meg: Instagram: @meg.n.recovery
Become a certified HHAP Practitioner https://www.holistichapractitioner.com/
Try the Blueprint https://thehasociety.com/blueprint
Join The HA Society http://thehasociety.com/join
Work 1:1 with us to get your period back http://thehasociety.com/coaching
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Follow us on IG http://instagram.com/thehasociety http://instagram.com/danisheriff https://instagram.com/ashley_marie_smith_ https://www.instagram.com/itsmishigarcia
The Content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician.
More from The Hypothalamic Amenorrhea Podcast
In this episode we answer listener questions that range from: - I used to menstruate at X weight, why not now? - Cycling going backward when REDUCING coffee, is this possible?! - How does BC affect lab work & more - and we address a listener comment from a past episode, explaining that honestly, having HA probably isn’t very feminist either.
If you’ve ever thought, “I’ll do what it takes to get my period back…I just really don’t want to gain THAT much weight,” you’re going to relate to Ali. Ali spent years in and out of recovery, sometimes bleeding, sometimes not, but never really letting go of the food control or trusting her body. And when she finally decided she wanted to become a mom, she had to face the thing she’d been afraid of since childhood...allowing her body to change without knowing exactly where it would land. We talk about her years of “quasi-recovery,” trying to find a way to recover while staying thin, the very real fear of weight gain, and what changed when she finally said, essentially, screw it, I’m doing this. Once Ali went all-in, she got her first period in about 50 days, ovulated, and eventually got pregnant on her third ovulation. If you’re currently trying to figure out how to recover without having to fully surrender to recovery…this episode is for you.
Mady thought she’d go all-in on HA recovery, get her period back in 3 months and move on with her life. Instead, recovery took about a year and forced her to completely rethink health, her identity as the “healthy girl,” weight gain and her need for control. Ironically, it wasn’t until she stopped making recovery the center of her life and started actually LIVING again that her period finally came back.
You've lost your period, you know you're not pregnant... the good news is it's probably just something called hypothalamic amenorrhea. Easy to understand and simple to resolve but surprisingly difficult to actually execute. In this episode we walk you through why you should be relieved that it's not something else like polycystic ovaries, premature ovarian insufficiency or early menopause and how to approach it!
You've gained weight, you've been eating more food consistently, you've even reduced or stopped working out. This isn't making SENSE! I get it and as a coach who works with many women with amenorrhea all of the time, this isn't an uncommon concern.