I’m spending the next half hour answering questions directly from our podcast listeners! Have a question you would like for me to answer on Pod in the future? You can submit that here

In this episode:

• The importance of nutrient timing for period recovery
• How fasting impacts female reproductive hormones
• The HA “spectrum” that can occur even if you do get a period
• The difference between HA and POI 
• Why we see diminished ovarian reserve is some women with HA 
• Will weight lifting prevent you from getting your period back?
• Best practices for alcohol use during HA recovery 

Connect with Lindsey Lusson: 

Instagram: @‌food.freedom.fertility
Website: www.foodfreedomandfertility.com/
Twitter: @LindseyLusson
Tiktok: @food.freedom.fertility

Transcript:

Lindsey Lusson  00:00

Our next listener question is from Katie. And Katie asked, will my period never come back if I keep weightlifting, even if I eat all the food? And Katie also asked, What does healthy eating look like after period recovery? 

Lindsey Lusson  00:12

So it’s definitely a possibility, Katie, that your period may not come back if you continue to lift weights. Even if you’re eating tons and tons and tons and tons of food. We’ve definitely worked with clients who are just really, really sensitive to exercise, despite eating in a calorie surplus and gaining weight. I will say, typically for those clients, there are other things other than just the exercise that is preventing them from cycling. But we have seen people see their cycles return quite quickly by taking a stricter approach with exercise.

Lindsey Lusson  00:42

Welcome to the Period Recovery and Fertility Podcast. Here, we discuss the challenging warning and life changing process of recovering your period and finding freedom with food and exercise. Whether you’re hoping to regain your cycle to get your health back on track or you’re ready to become a mama, this podcast is for you. While the recovery process isn’t always rainbows and butterflies, it’s my hope to bring you both information and inspiration during your own recovery journey. I’m your host, registered dietitian and fellow HA woman, Lindsey Lusson. 

Lindsey Lusson  01:14

All right, y’all we are making Period Recovery and Fertility Podcast history by recording the first ever listener questions episode. Now, I’ve taken a couple of y’all listener questions and added them to the end of a couple of episodes periodically. But what I found myself with is a gigantic list, a bank, a vault, if you will, of questions from you guys, some dating all the way back to 2023. So if you’ve ever submitted a question for me that I haven’t answered on the podcast, I see you. I still have your questions.

Lindsey Lusson  01:46

I’m going to see how this episode does. I might be doing more of these episodes if you guys really like them. So please be sure to let me know by leaving a review. And I am happy to answer more of these if you guys find it to be helpful. 

Lindsey Lusson  02:01

So I’m going to be pulling a couple of questions, like I said, from our listener questions vault. We’ll also go ahead and leave a link in the show notes of today’s episode in case you want to submit your questions for a future podcast. But I just know from the 300 plus clients that I’ve worked with on HA recovery and having gone through this myself almost, gosh, seven and a half, almost eight years ago at this point, and back then, there was not the information that there is today. There was one book, No period. Now what? Shout out Dr Nicholas Sykes, and thank you so much for writing that book, but that was kind of it. 

Lindsey Lusson  02:35

There was not a lot of information about hypothalamic amenorrhea. And I think that we’ve come a really long way in the past seven years. But there’s still pretty scant information. And a lot of the information on the internet is on like Reddit and blogs, and you know, I know that this is a podcast. So this isn’t a formal research paper or anything like that. But what I am saying is that the information that’s out there, like, may or may not be correct. So I want to be sure that as I’m answering these questions. I’m bringing in actual research combined with actual client experience to give you guys, hopefully, the best answers to your questions. Also understanding that I am a registered dietitian, but I am not your registered dietitian.

Lindsey Lusson  03:14

So if you are looking for very specific, individualized advice, please make sure that you are coordinating with your healthcare team. You’re reaching out to a registered dietitian who is eating disorder or ha recovery informed potentially considering working with our team. But at a minimum, making sure that you’re working with someone directly. And not taking the information that I share on this podcast as actual healthcare advice. 

Lindsey Lusson  03:38

With that little disclaimer out of the way, let’s go ahead and jump into some of your questions. So that we can all learn together and hopefully get you guys some more information on next steps in your own recovery journeys. 

Lindsey Lusson  03:49

Okay, so the first question I’m going to answer today is from listener, Colleen. And Colleen says I would really love to hear you talk about the timing of food for period recovery. I’m really struggling with that. Thanks. You’re the best.

Lindsey Lusson  04:01

Well, Colleen, I’m glad you asked this question. We’ve gotten this question a couple of different times when I do Q and A’s on my instagram with a question box. I will say that this concept of nutrient timing is foreign to a lot of people. And hard to explain and just like a little word blurb. So I’m glad that we’re bringing this into the podcast. So nutrient timing is basically referring to the times that you are eating. The times that certain nutrients are entering your body. And the way that that can impact digestion, the way that that can impact hormone signaling, etc. 

Lindsey Lusson  04:32

And honestly, nutrient timing is a pretty big gap that we see in a lot of our FFF clients. And I’ll give a couple of examples of what this has looked like from a kind of some common places where people are getting it wrong with nutrient timing. One of the biggest, most obvious ones is fasting. Or not really eating the first meal of the day until 10 or 11am. 

Lindsey Lusson  04:53

Sometimes this is done intentionally when people are doing intermittent fasting. I’ll talk a little bit more about that here in a second. But sometimes it’s done a little bit more unintentionally. And one of the more common scenarios is that people are maybe saving a lot of their calories for the end of the day. Which is another nutrient timing issue. And so they might be consuming a lot of food at, you know, 789, o’clock at night, snacking after dinner. So they’ve taken in a lot of energy, and their body has to utilize a lot of energy to digest that food at the end of the day.

Lindsey Lusson  05:27

 Food might be just sitting in their stomach all night. They’re not properly digesting all of the food. So when they wake up in the morning, they just have zero appetite. 

Lindsey Lusson  05:35

Now, there’s several strategies that we work through in our group coaching program to kind of overcome and undo this vicious cycle of, you know, not having appetite in the day. So then taking in majority of your calories at the end of the day, and then the cycle repeating because you have no appetite in the morning. There’s lots of ways that we can overcome that, but that’s a pretty big gap. 

Lindsey Lusson  05:55

A couple of other ones that we see in a lot of our clients, or the women that we’re working with, or women that we come across who are dealing with HA  is going really long durations in between meals or not having any snacks. So maybe you are eating, you know, ideally, within a couple of hours of waking up in the morning. You’re having lunch and you’re having dinner. But maybe you’ve got this gigantic gap where you’re eating lunch at noon or you’re not eating dinner until seven. Well, that is actually signaling to your body that we don’t have a lot of energy coming in. 

Lindsey Lusson  06:25

You know, time restricted eating, which I’ll talk about more in a second when I get into fasting. One of the biggest reasons why time restricted eating, whether it’s intentional or unintentional, is problematic, especially for ha recovery, is because it often leads to inadequate or low intake. So it’s just harder for the body to get enough energy and calories when you are not eating past or not eating before a certain hour. Not eating past a certain hour. That’s another one that we’ve seen with our clients, is not eating past 7pm. Which is just kind of a common food role. I think a lot of us Millennials maybe have heard growing up and adopted. Maybe even into adulthood and into our 30s.

Lindsey Lusson  07:06

Again, like if you’re listening to this podcast, I think you need to recognize that whatever advice that you’ve been doing probably isn’t working for you. Even if it happens to be working for somebody else. And so looking at things a little bit objectively here with your habits. Because the fact of the matter is, is that if you have all these food roles, or you have these, you know, ways that you like to structure your eating, and you aren’t getting a regular period and you aren’t ovulating, it’s not working for you. Otherwise, you know, if it were, your body would be communicating properly. And it would have the right energy availability to do those things. 

Lindsey Lusson  07:40

But beyond that, I want to talk a little bit about fasting and how fasting can actually be really stressful on the body and lead to not the best hormonal profile for women in particular. So a lot of the research that’s been done on fasting is done in men. And it doesn’t translate over directly to females. Our physiology is different. Our reproductive hormones or our reproductive organs are different. A lot of things are different about the male and female body. I don’t feel like I have to, like, argue that point too, too much. 

Lindsey Lusson  08:12

Women in particular just seem to be a little bit more sensitive to stress. And  prolonged fasting causes stress on the body. With any sort of prolonged stress, fasting included the hypothalamus, the kind of control center or area in the brain that’s responsible for a variety of body functions. But in particular, for the point that I’m driving home here, the control and release of hormones, the hypothalamus will turn down the production of reproductive hormones that are important for ovulation in a healthy menstrual cycle. 

Lindsey Lusson  08:45

I think I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, but I’ll bring it up again. HA can kind of exist on a spectrum where you don’t totally lose your period. You might notice that your periods are lighter than they used to be. Maybe you’re having a really hard time confirming ovulation. Maybe your luteal phase is less than 10 days, which is typically inadequate for pregnancy. And so even if you don’t totally lose your period stress and the stress that the body feels from fasting can have a effect on your reproductive hormones and your ability to get pregnant and stay pregnant. 

Lindsey Lusson  09:17

And so the hormones that are majorly impacted are estrogen and also progesterone. We have research that shows that there’s a steady decline in estrogen in progesterone with caloric restriction. Especially whenever calories are restricted in combination with exercise. So I think this is pretty applicable to HA and what a lot of people who are listening are probably experiencing. 

Lindsey Lusson  09:38

Interestingly enough, the research study that I’m kind of referencing here showed that the reproductive hormones are sensitive to that stress of fasting and just kind of caloric restriction. Even when weight is unchanged. And I know that a lot of people are listening to this podcast are thinking, you know, how could I possibly be under eating if my weight is the same or surely I’m eating enough because I’m not losing weight? That, unfortunately, just isn’t true. And your hormones, if you’re dealing with low estrogen, very low. LH, those are two pretty common low ones that we see with ha, that’s a sign of low energy availability. Nine times out of 10. That is like part of what’s going on, regardless of your what’s going on with you. 

Lindsey Lusson  10:20

And so just understanding that weight, for a variety of reasons, is not always the best indicator of your overall nutrient status and whether or not you’re fueling well. There was also evidence that showed that the greater the severity of the deficit, the bigger the decline in hormones. And this makes sense, right? You know, typically somebody who is overcoming an eating disorder. Or somebody who has a history of an eating disorder, they’re going to see those lower hormones versus somebody who just went on a diet for 12 weeks. Again, it does typically have to be a pretty severe deficit, usually with the combination of calorie restriction and exercise. 

Lindsey Lusson  10:57

And so fasting is a no no for anybody in Ha recovery. And typically not the best thing for females in general, especially females of reproductive age. Prolonged calorie restriction also impacts thyroid function. So we’re usually seeing this with t3. 

Lindsey Lusson  11:13

The last point that I want to drive home with fasting and energy availability and nutrient timing is that there was actually a pretty interesting study done in 2017 in Sweden that showed that athletes who experienced period loss with ha were in a energy deficit of about 300 calories for four hours longer than athletes that had periods. 

Lindsey Lusson  11:38

Now, let me unpack that a little bit, because I think the way that I said it’s a little confusing. I’m talking here about a within day energy deficit. So over the course of 24 hours, the athletes in this study who had periods were waking up in the morning. They were having breakfast. They were performing their exercise, they were doing really good post workout nutrition, they were having lunch. There was just a lot of really strategic fueling all throughout the day. Versus the ones who didn’t, who were maybe skipping breakfast, maybe skipping their post workout nutrition, maybe not eating enough carbs for lunch, etc, etc. 

Lindsey Lusson  12:15

And so the negative energy balance that these athletes bodies were in was actually preventing them from having enough energy to make hormones and to cycle and to be able to ovulate. Because it was basically having to tap into their actual energy stores for energy to just maintain more normal body functions. So that went pretty in depth, Colleen. But that is what I mean when I talk about timing of food for period recovery is thinking about not just am I eating enough overall calories. But am I eating these calories at the right time? And we didn’t get too far into this, into this question in particular. But it also too does matter the macronutrient breakdown. 

Lindsey Lusson  12:55

We’ve worked with several clients who come into our program who, on paper, like probably are eating enough calories. Maybe not relative to the amount of movement that they’re doing, or maybe it’s not enough for their individual body. But a huge gap that we see in a lot of our clients is inadequate carbohydrate intake. And when the body is low on carbohydrate intake, in some ways, it doesn’t really matter what the calorie intake is. Because the body can start to mimic low energy availability when carbohydrates are limited. 

Lindsey Lusson  13:22

So we really want to make sure that the macronutrients are there too. But nutrient timing in particular, really more referring to the times that you’re eating. The times that food may or may not be restricted, and making sure that the energy that’s coming in is spread out throughout the day and that ultimately you’re in that surplus. So I hope that that helps. 

Lindsey Lusson  13:42

All right, switching gears, I want to answer a question, does high FSH on a blood test? And she actually shares a result here. She said 53.3. Does high FSH on a blood test rule out HA? Are there cases where prolonged ha and history of anorexia leads to premature ovarian insufficiency or early menopause? And if that’s the case, have you ever seen it reverse? So I think in order to first answer this question and bring everyone up to speed, let’s define what premature ovarian insufficiency is. What early menopause is, and how those things are diagnosed. 

Lindsey Lusson  14:14

So premature ovarian insufficiency has been renamed. It was originally called premature ovarian failure. I’m glad that we’ve renamed it. Because just thinking about the idea of failure, I think just brings a lot about a lot of kind of guilt and shame, like your body isn’t working. But premature ovarian insufficiency is the idea that your body is basically prematurely running out of eggs. And it can have a dramatic impact on your fertility. Poi is not very common. It occurs in less than 1% of the population, but it can happen. 

Lindsey Lusson  14:47

If diagnosed when a woman has no period with low estrogen. Typically estrogen below 20 pico picograms per milliliter, low AMH. So lower than point five Nanograms per milliliter and an elevated FSH. And there’s a little bit of disagreement about what level of FSH would put somebody into the poi category. But the research study that I’m referencing said an elevated FSH of greater than 40 international units per liter confirmed at least twice over a four to six week period. 

Lindsey Lusson  15:24

So that is really high FSH ID, I think that the next step is to do some further testing. It would be curious to also look at your AMH, if you haven’t already. It would be curious to also look at your estrogen and to see if we’re getting high FSH twice in that four to six week period. So I think, at a minimum, retesting is a really good idea. And just looking into things a little bit further now elevated FSH alone doesn’t necessarily mean that somebody has poi. So I don’t want to, like, scare anybody into thinking, oh my gosh, my FSH, was, you know, about above a certain level. That means that I have poi. I think that always, always, always, we want to understand that hormones can fluctuate and change over time, and we want to look at patterns and trends. 

Lindsey Lusson  16:15

I’ve worked with clients who definitely have ha and have still been able to recover their periods and get pregnant naturally. Who have had FSH in the teens? I’ve worked with one client I know for a fact this time last year, we were working together, and her FSH was about 13. I’ve seen FSH about as high as 17 in people with ha. But I will say your more typical numbers with ha are going to be FSH of typically less than 10. 

Lindsey Lusson  16:40

Now, once we start to drift, probably over that range, sometimes I will hear doctors throughout the idea of premature menopause or diminished ovarian reserve. If somebody’s throwing around a diminished ovarian reserve diagnosis, I would highly, highly, highly recommend looking at both an AMH and an antral follicle count and continuing to work on period recovery. If the shoe fits, make sure that you really are addressing the under fueling, the weight restoration, the stress component, the over exercise thing. 

Lindsey Lusson  17:13

I think that regardless of what your diagnosis is, those things are really, really, really important to address, because they can still have an impact on your reproductive hormones, even if you are having something like diminished ovarian reserve or potentially a POI diagnosis. I still think that nutrition is a pretty crucial part. And if there’s been an eating disorder in the past, or there is still an eating disorder going on, I would just really want to advocate for you, getting support and working through that, regardless of what the actual diagnosis is. 

Lindsey Lusson  17:42

But I think that repeat blood work is always important. And if somebody’s throwing around the idea of premature menopause and having an FSH value of, you know, 12 or something like that. Even with a low AMH, and we’ve talked about this on another podcast episode. But even with a low AMH, sometimes AMH is low because you aren’t cycling and you aren’t ovulating. So AMH isn’t always the best predictor when somebody isn’t having a regular ovulatory cycle of what your fertility actually is. 

Lindsey Lusson  18:11

When you have  HA your body is kind of in this temporary state that can look like premature menopause. But I also want to bring in the fact here that the average age for menopause, at least in the United States, is 52. So the odds of your body actually going through premature menopause at say, you know, 27 or even 37 is really pretty rare. You probably have a greater likelihood, again, if the shoe fits, of having ha than actually having true premature menopause. 

Lindsey Lusson  18:40

So to kind of wrap this up and put a little bow on it is high. FSH, I do think that I would do some further testing to confirm that that truly is the diagnosis. I think at the end of the day, if there’s been a history of anorexia, we always want to make sure that we’re really working through and addressing that piece, regardless of the diagnosis. And if it is a true poi, understand that it can have roots in genetics, so it could totally not be your fault. It could totally be unrelated to the eating disorder.

The other place that you could kind of start looking with a true poi would be autoimmune conditions. So that’s kind of where I would go next, if you are doing the further blood work and you have confirmed that diagnosis and want to explore other options for improving your hormones and your fertility. 

Lindsey Lusson  19:25

Okay, our next listener question is from Katie, and Katie asked, Will my period never come back if I keep weightlifting, even if I eat all the food? And Katie also asked, What does healthy eating look like after period recovery? So it’s definitely a possibility, Katie, that your period may not come back if you continue to lift weights, even if you’re eating tons and tons and tons of food. We’ve definitely worked with clients who are just really, really sensitive to exercise, despite eating in a calorie surplus and gaining weight. 

Lindsey Lusson  19:54

I will say, typically, for those clients, there are other things other than just the exercise that is preventing them from cycling, but we have seen people see their cycles return quite quickly by taking a stricter approach with exercise. I typically, and this is not always, but typically, I don’t necessarily recommend continuing to do strength training while you’re working on getting your period back for a couple of different reasons. Number one, if you aren’t cycling, you aren’t getting your period, your body actually isn’t properly fueled or well nourished enough to reap the benefits of regular strength training, like increased muscular strength and endurance. Kind of the positive impact that we’ll see on building and maintaining bone mass and improvements in athletic performance. 

Lindsey Lusson  20:42

And I’ll pause on that one for a second, because we’ve definitely worked with clients who are severely under fueling and missing their period, who are winning races and PR ing and performing really, really well in their sport. And I think that that’s an unfortunate thing that does go on. What I would say back to that is your body can only do that for a finite amount of time before it starts to break down, before you have a stress fracture, before you have an overuse injury, before you know you’re you’re bonking and you’re hitting the wall and not able to finish the races. 

Lindsey Lusson  21:17

So again, if you are training at a elite level, performing really, really well. And you know you’re under fueling and you are missing your period, understand that that has an expiration date on it. And you can listen to several podcast episodes from clients that we’ve worked with where they do hit that time. If you can’t incorporate in proper rest, your body will eventually force you to. So that’s one reason why I recommend taking a step back, and I’ll expand upon that whole idea of your body forcing you into rest. And you know, asking right questions about that here in a second. 

Lindsey Lusson  21:50

But another reason why I don’t typically recommend continuing strength training during period recovery is because once you are eating enough, once you are eating in a calorie surplus, if you’re eating in a calorie surplus while continuing to do strength and resistance training, part of the weight that you’re gaining during recovery is going to be muscle, as opposed to fat. While gaining muscle isn’t a bad thing for the purpose of increasing hormones and helping the body to understand that it has the Right energy availability and the right fat mass to support optimal hormones and fertility and getting your period back, you actually do have to gain fat. 

Lindsey Lusson  22:28

It is a unpleasant truth, but it is the truth. So I’ll use a couple of numbers here to give an example. Let’s pretend that you are starting ha recovery at 10% body fat, and you start to eat a lot more, you’re continuing to exercise, and you gain 20 pounds. But because you’ve been engaging in resistance training, let’s say for a second that 50% of the weight that you gained was body fat, and 50% of the weight that you gained was muscle. Now you’ve gone from 10% body fat up to 15. And unfortunately, 15% body fat isn’t high enough for a lot of women to have a normal cycle. 

Lindsey Lusson  23:02

Yes, there are outliers. But realistically, being closer or over and above 20% body fat is kind of more ideal for healthy hormones and fertility. Now the last reason that I typically… And again, I’m saying typically don’t recommend strength training during ha recovery, is thinking a little bit more about kind of your relationship with exercise. And I’ll pause here for a second. Because I would say that I’m going to exclude collegiate and professional athletes, like, if it is your job to run to CrossFit, to whatever, like if that is your job, I think that’s a little bit different scenario. 

Lindsey Lusson  23:36

We’ve definitely worked with people in that situation. But if you are a little bit more of a weekend warrior or a recreational athlete or fitness as your hobby. This is more what I’m talking about right here. If you have a really, really, really hard time taking a break from strength training, I think that that’s an opportunity to lean in and get curious about why that that is. Some places that I see people get stuck is because they’re using exercise as a crutch for their body image issues. A lot of times, when somebody finds their way into ha the drastic under fueling and the drastic over exercise that has occurred is typically not done on accident. A lot of times people are pushing to reach certain goals. And sometimes they can have physique goals. 

Lindsey Lusson  24:20

And unfortunately, the physique that they’re probably trying to achieve may not be healthy for their individual body. So as you’re going through recovery, it’s not uncommon. As you’re eating more to then think that you need to exercise more to compensate or make up for it. Also, too, if exercise has traditionally been the way that you have coped with stress, I understand that. It can still have a place in Ha recovery. But I do want to invite in the idea that potentially, one of the reasons why you found yourself in Ha is because you’ve become overly dependent on exercise for stress management. 

Lindsey Lusson  24:54

There are major health benefits of being able to get out of this chronic high stress state moving more into our parasympathetic rest and digest state for digestion. If you have a lot of gut issues, I think that this is a place to address. And dig in for mood balance, for hormone balance. And just to circle back to the whole thing from earlier of people over training, performing really, really well, not getting a period, and thinking, Oh, well, you know, this is no big deal. Like, surely I’m fine because I’m, you know, winning the races, or I’m the strongest girl in the gym. You know, your body will force you to rest if you don’t allow an adequate rest. 

Lindsey Lusson  24:54

So it’s not about like a total, complete break from all exercise. But rather exploring other outlets and getting more tools in your tool belt. Because I think if we skip over this part, we’re setting ourselves up for success, for relapse. Or just kind of constantly living in quasi recovery if we’ve been struggling with an eating disorder or disordered eating. And then the last place lean into this, why is this so hard, is to kind of consider whether or not, you’re the type of person who’s just kind of addicted to remaining in this fight or flight state, to remaining in this go getter, have to be moving, have to be achieving, have to be producing. And why that is. 

Lindsey Lusson  26:10

And so to get above this, to get ahead of this, and to prevent, you know, injury and burnout is sometimes you have to force yourself to rest to break the cycle. I mean, we’ve worked with tons of clients who talk about their addiction to exercise. And how really the only way to get out of the cycle was to have that forced break. Especially if they’re kind of exercising for all the wrong reasons, trying to cope with body image, discomfort, etc. It can definitely turn into a crutch that can really stand in the way of you being able to achieve your long term goals of health and future fertility. 

Lindsey Lusson  26:42

So all that to say, whenever it comes to thinking about strength training during period recovery, I think that those are things to really think about and consider and understand that some people do have to kind of take that pause and take that right from exercise. But that’s okay, because it is something that we can get into in the future. 

Lindsey Lusson  27:04

And I know you asked the second question about like, hey, what does that look like in the future? And I’m going to pause for a second. Because I think that this is actually a place where people can get it wrong and really get stuck is when they’re kind of looking too far ahead in recovery. I’ve seen several clients get so hung up on what ifs basically of the future that they almost start to approach. Whether consciously or subconsciously, approach eating and exercise like they’re already there, like they’re already recovered. Instead of living in the reality of where they are, undernourished, depleted, exhausted, not cycling in desperate need of nutrient, repletion, rest and relaxation. 

Lindsey Lusson  27:41

So if you can put your blinders on for a second and focus first on recovery, understanding that there’s 100% going to be a time when we can get back to exercising at quite literally, whatever level you want to do. Do you want to run marathons? You want to run Ironmans? You want to do 100 mile races like you can 100% get back to those things and still maintain a normal, healthy cycle. But step one is making sure that we are getting the foundation down of the missing pieces to recover and regulate your cycle. 

Lindsey Lusson  28:12

So that would be my advice. Take it or leave it, and I hope that that’s helpful. 

Lindsey Lusson  28:18

All right, we’re going to wrap it up with one question from Holly. Holly said, How can alcohol affect period recovery? Is it fine to consume in moderation, or should it be avoided for any reason? I’d like to enjoy it responsibly while I can before pregnancy, but I don’t want to delay recovery either. It seems like it could be a nice way to get in some extra liquid calories. Thanks for all you do. Well, thanks so much, Holly, and thanks for asking this question. We actually get this one asked a lot in our group coaching program. 

Lindsey Lusson  28:47

So not totally surprised that it came up here. And you’re not totally wrong, Holly. About thinking about alcohol as the same as juice or soda or chocolate milk or any other liquid calories. And how that could actually kind of be like a beneficial compliment to your meals and snacks during ha recovery. Not necessarily hinder your progress. It could almost be kind of a beneficial thing. So that that line of thinking isn’t totally bad. The only kind of situation that I would encourage somebody to probably abstain from drinking alcohol during HA recovery would be in the case of dependence or potential substance abuse with alcohol.

Lindsey Lusson  29:26

Unfortunately, there is a pretty decent amount of overlap between eating disorders and substance abuse. So it’s something to just kind of make sure you’re asking the right questions about and examining. Some things that I’ve seen come up with clients in drinking alcohol during recovery, is drinking to kind of cope with uncomfortable feelings. Especially if there’s a lot of body discomfort that’s coming up. Or if you use alcohol as kind of a crutch to make you feel more confident in the moment. You know drinking to kind of distract yourself from the stress of infertility or distract yourself. From other bigger issues that might be going on. 

Lindsey Lusson  30:02

So just say that if you’re going to drink during HA recovery, it’ll always be examining your intentions with alcohol before you do. I’ll also say too, with the overlap between alcohol misuse and eating disorders, I would definitely make sure that you’re not trading calories from alcohol in place of food. Or kind of budgeting in that way. A lot of kind of bad things that could occur with alcohol over consumption and lack of calories. Or just kind of that whole line of thinking. 

Lindsey Lusson  30:33

So those are kind of the things that I would just make sure that you are being aware of and being having honest conversations with yourself or with loved ones as you’re approaching drinking alcohol while you’re trying to conceive. I usually tell clients during ha recovery that moderate consumption is totally fine if we don’t have concern for misuse. We’re kind of just oh well, like, I want a margarita with Mexican food, or I like to have a glass of wine with pasta. Those scenarios would be totally fine, and could potentially in the context of a ha recovery alone. If I can put that in a little box for a second. 

Lindsey Lusson  31:06

Like, to my knowledge, there’s no research that shows that alcohol is going to negatively impact hormone balance when somebody is trying to recover from Ha. So I usually tell my clients kind of moderate consumption. One drink a day is fine, but probably kind of the less the better. And because I know you mentioned pregnancy here and wanting to have alcohol while you can. Because obviously during pregnancy you’re not drinking. For fertility clients, I kind of backed that recommendation up just a little bit. And I know that the research is pretty mixed on whether or not alcohol impacts time to conception. 

Lindsey Lusson  31:41

There was an interesting study done recently where they showed that people who completely abstained from alcohol had a longer time trying to get pregnant. Versus those who drank in moderation. And I didn’t read the study and in its entirety, so I wonder if there’s some flaws there. But I think the bottom line is that alcohol is a toxin and it can impact our health. It can impact our gut health. It can impact our body’s natural detox system. If our body is… if our liver is spending all of its time detoxing from a big vendor on the weekend, it may not be able to be filtering out other toxins that it needs to to work properly. 

Lindsey Lusson  32:15

So there’s no general consensus about how much is okay to drink during fertility. But if you want to consume alcohol and you want to be pregnant sooner than later, it would be my recommendation of kind of sticking to just three drinks per week. No more than that, and consuming it with food. I think that again, the nature of how we’re using alcohol and whether or not we’re enjoying it socially. Or as part of a meal can be very telling of the use and the impact on the body. 

Lindsey Lusson  32:42

So I hope that that’s helpful. I hope that thope that these questions, these Q and A’s, were helpful for you guys. I’m definitely open to doing more in the future. So once again, if you found this episode to be enjoyable or helpful for you personally, please take the time to leave us a short review on Apple’s podcast. 

Lindsey Lusson  32:58

Reviews are so critical in helping us to reach more women. And empower them to take charge of their fertility and their health by getting their period back. 

Lindsey Lusson  33:05

So love you guys. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening. If you found this episode to be inspiring or helpful, please share on social media and tag me @food.freedom.fertility. Also don’t forget to leave a rating and a review.