That's the Tea Sis #5 : Maru on Menstruation and the Media ~ Part II
- Mary Richardson
- Aug 3, 2019
- 7 min read
Along with eating disorders and body dysmorphia, another condition that many female athletes deal with is athletic amenorrhea. Athletic amenorrhea is the loss of one’s menstrual cycle due to a combination of intense training and underfueling, consciously or otherwise. When a female reaches a certain point of leanness (low-body-fat percentage), their levels of estrogen and progesterone become “low enough to prevent or stop monthly menstrual cycles.” AA (let’s call it that fo’ short) is frequently found in sports such as ballet, gymnastics and distance-running. All of these sports have a pressure to be lean, and “with this pressure…some young women…develop eating disorders”. When AA is present, “the lack of estrogen leads to a lack of calcium…[making] bones brittle and weak” which can lead to stress fractures and osteoporosis.
Though my personal journey with AA started around age fifteen, let’s start at the very beginning. I got my first period on Christmas day in the 7th grade, and maintained a fairly regular cycle until my sophomore year of high school. That outdoor track season was a breakthrough season for me, I PR’d in the 1600m and the 3200m and was taking my training more seriously than I had ever before. Our 4x800m relay went to the New England Track and Field Championships that year, and I remember after that meet and following my week off, I got my period. It was very light, and it was my first one since the winter. Since. Winter. I didn’t think much of it, but I was a little frustrated when it returned. I didn’t know what AA was at the time, but I had heard/gained the perception that when you were getting your period you were “fat” and when you weren’t you were “fit”. How AWFUL is THAT?
Throughout that summer my periods were few and far between, and my chiropractor recommended that I try to eat more fats in order to regain it. It was still irregular by the time my junior cross-country season wound down, so my doctor suggested that I start taking birth control pills to jumpstart it. For those who don’t know, the pill provides a form of estrogen and/or progesterone that can help to restore hormone imbalances, but the “period” it generates is ultimately one that is artificially-produced, not one that is truly produced by your body. Still, at the time I believed that the pill was my answer, that I got my “problem” figured out. Throughout that winter and spring I had said “period”, and when I went off the pill in the summer my true period returned. I maintained a fairly regular cycle through my senior cross-country season, and recall that my best time at the hilly Ellsworth course was the first time that I’d ever “felt my boobs” during a race, i.e. I felt a bit curvier than I had in previous years and was absolutely BOOKIN’ it! It was the first time that I felt like my woman-ness and my passion for running truly crossed paths and seemed to celebrate a symbiotic relationship.
That winter was especially hard for me and my binge-eating really took a turn for the worst. In late March I visited a nutritionist for the first time, and from then until graduation-or so I ate a diet that had been prescribed to me to help combat my eating disorder, and in the process, return to a healthy weight. Though I was preaching body positivity on my Motivation With Maru account and even giving talks to my own track team about having awareness of the female athlete triad, I was toxically clutching onto the fact that from February until late June, I didn’t get one hint of a period. Not a hint I tell you! As much as it hurts my heart to admit it, at that time, it was a success to me. I was proud of it. I convinced myself that it was a biological sacrifice that came with the sport. That, because there was a correlation that season between my running and my lack of a period, that the absence of my menstrual cycle was a positive. That I’d just not get a period until I was done my serious running career after college, gain some weight before I wanted to have babies, then my period would return and all would be well. Speaking of babies, while I was secretly thrilled to not have my period the spring of 2018, my chiropractor was not and gave me pre-natal pills to see if they might kick-start my period. They did not. I would joke with my friends at lunch when I took out my “baby pills”, and explain why I was taking them. But an ugly hopeful creature in my heart was crossing its fingers that they wouldn’t work.
That month of June I took a lot of time off running and I really started to worry about my period and understand why getting your period is actually AWESOME. At the very end of June I went to my doctor again to discuss my period’s nearly six-month-hiatus. They made me take a pregnancy test (“just to check” they said), and after it came back negative, ultimately just told me that I needed to back off my running and eat more, that it was “part of being a female runner”. It was not the answer I wanted. I explained how I’d taken nearly three weeks off and had been eating extremely intuitively since my last run (like, icecream erryday), to which they just shrugged and assured me it’d return. Return it did (eventually), and for the most part, has stayed.
The more I’ve learned about the Female Athlete Triad, R.E.D.s, and AA the more I respect and appreciate my body and the more I realize and accept just how much food and self-care it needs in order to function its best. And yet sometimes it is so very frustrating. So. Frustrating. When you know of someone who is underfueling and overtraining and having success. You want success too. But when we experience/witness someone going about it in an unhealthy way, we believe that that is the way. That that is the answer. It can be so appealing in so many ways, but at the end of the day we must remind ourselves. I must remind myself…
THAT, during my senior spring, though I thought that I was eating enough to keep up with my training, that I felt SO brain-foggy-out-of-it sometimes that eventually I went to the hospital to get tested for Lyme. For LYME I tell you! That’s how much of a space-cadet I felt like!
THAT, during an AP Human Geo quiz I had a panic attack because all of the words were swimming on the page and when I went to the nurse the FIRST thing she asked me was what I had eaten that day.
THAT, I was also struggling with my anxiety and as a result was a crab during Student Council meetings because I was so stressed. A CRAB I tell you!
(Something super important that I learned about this year via my therapist at school is energy availability, let's call it EA fo' short. A pamphlet she gave me reads : “The term ‘energy availability (EA) refers to the amount of energy left over and available for your body’s functions after the energy expended for training is subtracted from the energy you take in from food.” Symptoms of having low energy availability (not a lot of energy left over once you factor in your training) include : chronic fatigue, anemia, depression, disordered eating thoughts, absent or irregular menstrual cycles, irritability, and poor recovery. BOOM baby! That was ME!)
THAT, those who suffer from AA and see it as a positive and are purposefully over doing things typically have short-lived success stories that wind up in injury, because the combination of overtraining and underfueling is simply not sustainable. I don’t want no stress fracture!
THAT, while X amount of calories may get me through a workout, X amount of calories is not enough to give me energy and brainpower throughout my day. There is a DIFFERENCE between surviving and THRIVING. There is a DIFFERENCE between functioning and LIVING.
When I sense myself spiraling down into the yuckuhmuck that is self-loathing-self-harming-restrictive-behaviors-in-order-to-look/run-better, the same yuckuhmuck that made me think it was a victory to not be getting my period, I access my body-word-bank and remind myself of what kind of runner I wish to be. What kind of a woman I wish to be. What kind of a totally awesome rocking boppin’ PERSON I want to be! The sort of vocabulary I wish to keep in my body-word-bank include STRONG, POWERFUL, MFCKINWOMAN, ENERGETIC, POSITIVE, and SUSTAINABLE. I’m giving words like : restrictive, controlling, food-scared, focused-on-my-physical-appearance, jealous, anxious, pessimistic and toxic the mothertrucking BOOT because they do NOT belong in the body-image kingdom that I am building for myself. Though it’s hard not to partake in destructive habits and hard to use positive body-language and HARD to focus on our own unique individual progress, strengths, and goals, WE are the captains of our own ships and can DECIDE how, with what, when, and with whom we build and create ourselves.
I wish to quote Melody Fairchild (a highschool distance running star from the 90s) when she said that the body of a female high school distance runner is “not a sustainable thing”. Sustainable might be my top word in my body-word-bank. Why? Because sustainable means DURABLE. It means TOUGH. (Also means eco-friendly, thanks thesaurus.com). But more importantly, sustainable means LASTING. And I hella need my body to last because I’m in this grind for the long run. And not getting your period is not sustainable for the long run. Getting your period is AWESOME.
PERIOD.
Resources!!
Run Fast. Eat Slow -Shalane Flanagan and Elyse Kopecky
Overcoming Amenorrhea : Get Your Period Back. Get Your Life Back. - Tina Muir
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