387: Haley: Nurse Practitioner and Runner Who Recovered and Got Pregnant
The Hypothalamic Amenorrhea PodcastSummary
Haley, a 28-year-old nurse from Iowa, shares her journey of recovering from hypothalamic amenorrhea (HA) on the Hypothalamic Amenorrhea Podcast. She recounts how her struggles with HA began during her sophomore year of college, driven by stress and a desire for control over her body through food and exercise. Despite initial attempts to seek help, it wasn't until she faced a back injury and the pressures of graduate school that her HA symptoms resurfaced, leading her to recognize the need for change.
After getting married, Haley started to feel a sense of freedom regarding her eating habits, which played a crucial role in her recovery. She highlights the importance of accountability and support from the HA Society, where she found guidance to navigate her relationship with food and exercise. By allowing herself to eat more and reducing her running, she experienced significant progress, culminating in her first ovulation and subsequent pregnancy shortly after joining the program.
Haley emphasizes the psychological aspects of recovery, noting that buying new clothes and embracing a different body size were pivotal steps in her journey. She reflects on the importance of listening to her body and the changes in her cravings during pregnancy, illustrating a newfound respect for her body's needs. Her story serves as an inspiring testament to the power of community support and self-acceptance in overcoming health challenges.
Show Notes
In this episode, Dani sits down with former client Haley, a nurse practitioner and marathon runner, to share her journey through hypothalamic amenorrhea (HA) recovery. Haley opens up about her struggles with food rules, exercise, control, and body image, and why eating more wasn't quite enough to restore ovulation. She shares the changes that finally helped her move forward, including stepping away from running, accepting a changing body, and getting the support she needed to keep going when recovery felt uncomfortable. Just weeks after finishing her marathon, Haley ovulated and became pregnant on her first ovulation! If you've been doing all the things but still feel stuck in recovery, Haley's story is a reminder that sometimes it's not about trying harder. It's about figuring out what's still standing in your way.
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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.