You might think you're at your peak fitness.

You're exercising regularly, maybe you're even competing or running marathons, you're strict on your nutrition and perhaps you've even lost weight, but your periods have gone.

This is a lot more common than you might think.

In fact, one study of regular exercising women found that half had menstrual cycle disturbances and over

a third had no period at all.

Anecdotally, one of the most common reasons women contact me directly is because they've

lost their period.

And while there are many reasons why someone might experience this, one of the most common

things in active females is a mismatch between energy intake and

energy output this is down to over-training under fueling training in a fasted state weight loss or having a

low body weight or restricting key macronutrients such as carbs well you might be might be thinking, it's just my period. I'm not

thinking about children yet or at all, but there are many health and performance effects of not

having a regular cycle. So if this is happening to you, then I'm advising you to seek medical

help first. It's also really important that we rule out other causes for why this

is happening. Assuming all of that's happening and you're on the road to recovery, I know it can be

quite a daunting thing to take on alone, but hopefully this episode will help. And it might even

prevent you going down that path in the first place.

So to help with this, I'm joined by Danielle Logue, who is currently working as a performance nutritionist within Sport Ireland Institute,

delivering nutritional services to high-performing athletes.

In 2019, she completed her PhD in the University College Dublin in collaboration with Sport Ireland Institute.

The area of her research was relative energy deficiency in sport and its relationship with injury, illness, health and performance.

Gentle reminder that the information provided in this episode should not be taken as medical advice

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