Missing your period? These food rules and rigid habits may be contributing to your period loss and hypothalamic amenorrhea. Challenging these food fears and rules will help you become closer to regaining your period back naturally.
So what are food rules anyway?!
These are usually some rigid, strict rules that we've got in place that we might not even realise about and they're surrounding food. Usually these are subconscious rules and habits that have been imposed on us through social media, diet, culture or family and friends, things like that.
First of all, might start off with you just wanting to be the better version of yourself, wanting to be healthier, faster, fitter, stronger. And then it becomes that little bit too far, that step too far, and you find that you have got food rules in place that make you feel really guilty if you're not following them.
You may feel like you really need to work out and earn your food.
This distance us from our body and our hunger cues, meaning that it contributes to an energy imbalance and our period loss and adding that extra mental stress to our plate.
There's lots of different examples of food rules and disordered habits.
I often talk to clients and they might know a few off their head, but it's not until we really dive in and I ask them questions, give them examples that they actually realise, wow, I actually have a lot more of these disordered little habits and traits I kind of didn't even realise and brushed under the carpet or thought wasn't even normal because other people around me are doing that.
Examples...
So this can be things like you can't eat past a certain time, maybe you're avoiding butter, avoiding dairy, only having one slice of bread a day, or limiting those slices of bread per day, using small cutlery, only eating 'low fat' things, eating in secret, not allowing yourself to eat a whole banana, fearful of sugar, having coffee instead of food etc.
Questions to ask yourself...
What are your food rules or strict rigid habits?
Have a think or maybe ask a friend/family to see what they pick up on too.
How did we come up with this rule?
Where does it even come from? Where did we hear it from? Was it a magazine? Was it a friends /family who made up this rule?
What happens if you break that rule or habit?
Is it based on fear or is it based on fact?
How is this way of living, this habit or this thing I've picked up, how is that impacting my life, my work life, my relationships, maybe your period, your health, your mind space, how is it actually impacting you on a day to day basis?
Do others have to follow this rule as well?
Can this rule be seen in a different way or a different version, a different light by someone else?
Once you have reviewed your answers, you can look at putting some steps in place about how to move forward and conquer some of the fears and habits and challenge them. The more you challenge these, the closer you will be to period recovery with HA.
Need help? Reach out. I offer 1:1 personalised coaching, along with a self-paced course for period recovery.
*Some of these questions are pulled from the book eight Keys to Recovering from an Eating Disorder Workbook, which is a very inspirational book.
Comments