When Your Period Disappears: Why Missing Your Menstrual Cycle Is a Sign Your Body Needs Care
By Dr. Colleen Reichmann, founder and clinical director of Wildflower Therapy
When I was in college, I stopped getting my period. I recall being both concerned, but markedly not concerned. After all- one of my doctors said that it was just a “runner’s thing.” My gynocolgist simply suggested birth control to jump start it back up. The professionals in my life didn’t seem overly concerned. The message seemed to be that losing your period was normal for active women and that there are pretty easy ways to address it.
But it wasn’t normal. My body wasn’t thriving with my running and “clean eating” regimen. It was struggling.
What I know now, as a psychologist who specializes in eating disorder treatment in Philadelphia, is that losing your period (a condition called amenorrhea) is never something to ignore. It’s not a badge of fitness, or a harmless side effect of “being healthy.” It’s a warning sign that your body is under stress.
Your body isn’t broken-it’s trying to protect you.
At Wildflower Therapy in Philadelphia, we see many people who come to therapy worried about their missing period, or about the way their body feels “off.” They often don’t fully recognize that what’s happening is most often connected to restrictive eating and overexercising.
So let’s talk about it: what’s really happening when your period disappears, and how to help your body find balance again.
When Your Period Goes Missing: What’s Actually Happening
Your menstrual cycle is basically a reflection of your body’s internal safety system. It’s a sign that your body has the resources it needs to function well (ie adequate energy, balanced hormones, and a sense of stability.)
When your body isn’t getting enough fuel or rest, it starts to conserve energy for survival. Reproduction is not essential for immediate survival, so your body just goes ahead and shuts it down. This is what’s happening in hypothalamic amenorrhea (HA), a condition where the brain stops signaling the hormones that regulate your cycle due to energy deficiency.
In other words:
Your body doesn’t stop your period because it’s “strong.”
It stops your period because it’s trying to keep you alive.
Even if you’re eating what looks like “enough” from the outside, or if your BMI is within the “normal” range, your body may still be in an energy deficit if you’re underfueling compared to your activity level.
This is one of the many reasons eating disorders and disordered eating are often invisible. Your body can look “healthy” on the outside (and health professionals may collude with this idea) while struggling internally.
Common Causes of a Missing Period
There are a few common patterns we see among people who experience amenorrhea. While everyone’s situation is unique, these are often intertwined:
Underfueling (intentional or unintentional)
Missed periods are often the result of hormone imbalances, yes- but what frequently causes these? Restriction! Undereating is so often culprit, that it is always worthy of intense investigation in our opinion (look for horses, not zebras!) Sometimes this comes from overt restriction-counting calories, cutting out food groups, or skipping meals. Other times it’s more subtle-replacing meals with coffee, being “too busy” to eat, or following rigid wellness rules that keep you from getting enough calories and nutrients.Overexercise or chronic movement without rest
Intense exercise, especially without adequate fuel, signals stress to the body. Over time, your body reads this as danger, not health. But-most of the time, we see that intense exercise causes ammenorrhea because of underfueling in relation to this exercise (ie: see number 1)Stress and perfectionism
High stress-whether from academics, work, family pressure, or trauma-can elevate cortisol and impact the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian (HPO) axis, leading to disrupted menstrual cycles.Restrictive eating disorders or disordered eating patterns
Amenorrhea is extremely common among individuals with restrictive eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa or atypical anorexia. It can also appear in those with orthorexia, chronic dieting, or other restrictive patterns masked as “clean eating” or “fitness.” But again- at the end of the day, the restrictive patterns cause undereating, which then leads us back to- you guessed it! Number one of this list.PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome): PCOS is another common culprit of missing periods (and one that doesnt have to due with undereating!) This is due to the fact that it can include hormonal imbalance, and cysts (abnormal pockets of fluid) that form on the ovaries and cause ovulation to stop.
When your period goes missing, your body is communicating that something is off balance. The absence of a cycle isn’t a small detail-it’s a message from your body saying, Please listen.
Why Losing Your Period Matters
It’s easy to minimize amenorrhea, especially when the world around you praises thinness, discipline, and “healthy lifestyles.” But losing your period isn’t just about fertility. It affects nearly every system in your body.
When your period disappears due to underfueling, it often means your estrogen levels have dropped too low. Over time, this can lead to:
Bone loss (osteopenia or osteoporosis)
Heart complications
Increased injury risk
Brain fog and fatigue
Low libido
Mood changes, depression, and anxiety
Digestive disruptions
Sleep difficulties
Many are shocked to learn that amenorrhea can cause long-term bone damage, even in their twenties. The same body that you’re pushing to perform through exercise or restriction is the body that’s quietly asking for nourishment and rest.
Please lean in close for this part. Hear us when we say, your body doesn’t need to be punished into health. It needs to be fed.
How Underfueling and Overexercising Connect to Restrictive Eating Disorders
For many people, losing their period happens in the context of “healthy habits” that slowly become more rigid. It might start with a goal to eat better, move more, or get in shape, and somewhere along the way, it becomes harder and harder to stop.
You may feel proud of your discipline. You may tell yourself that pushing through hunger or exhaustion means you’re strong. But what’s actually happening is that your body is falling deeper into energy deficit, and that your mind is falling deeper into a restrictive eating disorder.
Restrictive eating disorders can thave many symptoms:
Tracking calories or macros with anxiety about going “over”
Avoiding social events that involve food
Exercising to “earn” or “burn off” meals
Feeling guilt or panic around rest days
A constant mental preoccupation with food, body, and performance
You may not think of it as an eating disorder, especially if you’ve been praised for your habits or appearance. But when your period disappears, your body is offering a truth your mind may not want to face: this way of living is hurting me.
What Healing Looks Like: Steps Toward Getting Your Period (and Trust) Back
If your period has stopped due to underfueling or overexercise, the goal is not just to “get your period back,” it’s to heal your relationship with your body, your food, and your sense of safety.
Here are a few steps that can help:
1. Eat more, and more often.
Most people need significantly more energy than they realize, especially when healing from restrictive patterns. This means eating regularly throughout the day, including carbohydrates, protein, and fats at every meal.
Fats are especially critical for hormone production.
Your body needs consistent nourishment to rebuild trust with you.
2. Reduce exercise (or rest completely, for a time).
This can be one of the hardest steps emotionally, especially if exercise has been a coping mechanism. But recovery often requires rest.
Your body needs to feel safe again, and that means reducing high-intensity or long-duration exercise, especially while increasing nutrition. Gentle movement like walking, stretching, or yoga may be appropriate later, but first, your body needs energy to repair.
Anecdotally, we can tell you that, if giving up exercise all together feels too scary, people can sometimes feel benefit from simply stopping fasted workouts. (We theorize that this may be due to some correlation between our bodies not being willing to turn back on reproduction mechanisms when it feels unsafe because it is regularly being made to endure intense movement without being give adequate energy.)
But please-consider the full movement break. Think of rest not as giving up, but as giving back.
3. Work with an eating disorder therapist.
Healing from hypothalamic amenorrhea isn’t just about changing behaviors, it’s about exploring what’s underneath them.
At Wildflower Therapy in Philadelphia, our team of eating disorder therapists helps clients understand the deeper roots of their restriction (the perfectionism, anxiety, trauma, or control that may be driving it.) We specialize in eating disorder and body image therapy in Philadelphia and across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Florida, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Ohio, and Massechusetts- and help individuals rebuild a peaceful relationship with food and body.
If you’ve lost your period, we can help you develop a compassionate recovery plan, often in collaboration with medical and nutrition providers.
4. Get medical support.
It’s important to work with a healthcare provider familiar with hypothalamic amenorrhea and eating disorders. Not all physicians recognize how serious HA can be, or how it differs from PCOS or other causes of missed periods.
A provider knowledgeable about eating disorders can assess your hormone levels, bone health, and overall well-being while coordinating care with your therapy team.
5. Practice body listening.
Instead of seeing your body as something to control, begin viewing it as something to partner with.
Notice hunger, fullness, energy levels, emotions, and sensations. These are your body’s ways of communicating with you. When your body trusts that you will listen and respond, your period (and your sense of connection) can begin to return.
Recovery Is About So Much More Than a Period
Getting your period back is about more than hormones. It’s about coming home to your body after years of ignoring its needs.
When your body feels safe again (fed, rested, and respected) it begins to trust you. And that trust ripples out: your mood stabilizes, your energy returns, your brain clears, your relationships soften.
Healing your relationship with your body is not quick or linear, but it is deeply possible.
Your body has never stopped fighting for you. Even in the silence of a missing period, it’s been trying to speak: please, take care of me.
You can answer that call now.
If You’re Ready to Begin Healing
If you’ve lost your period or if you’re realizing that your eating or exercise patterns may be harming your body, please know that you’re not alone. At Wildflower Therapy, our team specializes in:
Eating disorder treatment in Villanova, Ardmore, and Wayne
Eating disorder therapy in Philadelphia
Eating disorder treatment in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Florida, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Ohio, and Massechusetts
Therapy for anxiety, depression, and OCD
Therapy for mothers, and those going through infertility or loss.
We help clients reconnect with their bodies, rebuild body trust, and rediscover a sense of peace with food.
You deserve a life where your body feels like an ally, not an adversary.
You deserve nourishment, rest, and the full rhythm of your cycle- inside and out.
Reach out today for your free consult call.