The Never-Ending Quest For A Period – And A Hiatus

*If you’re feeling particularly vulnerable or at the height of disordered thinking, you may not want to read this as it features small amounts of information about weight and food. It’ll still be here when you’re feeling better <3*

I took a pregnancy test a week ago. It was negative, and I was gutted. Not because I want a baby right now. The man who lives upstairs wakes me up almost every night with the gurgling of his shisha pipe, and, most months, I spend the majority of my wages on artificial flowers and pre-made cocktail mix, and I killed a £60 house plant literally yesterday. Current me would not be good news for a baby. Also: pandemic. As many of you will know, I’ve spent the past five years trying to plaster over the crevices in my mind and body, ones that remain from my two year descent into anorexia. For, I’d say, the last two to three years, I’ve been 90% there, with one, giant gap remaining: my periods. Or lack there of. But I am now more than a healthy weight (yes, quite significantly above our trusty friend BMI 18.5), my bras don’t do that gape-y thing at the front anymore and my arse is, well, it’s fucking good. Also, my boobs have started hurting a bit, which can be a sign of ovulation. So, I reasoned that maybe I had been due to come on, but maybe that one morning I wasn’t entirely careful with the old contraception had swooped in and knocked me up instead. That can happen, right? Well, it didn’t. Alas, another reminder that, despite galloping over a million hurdles to rid myself of this disease, I still haven’t quite managed it.  The message from my organs was loud and clear: ‘hahahaha you thought you were ready? Not so fast, idiot.’

Over the past few years, I’ve sought countless opinions on my menstruating problem – both professional and, well, anyone who would listen to be honest. You know when you’re really worried about something so you treat everyone like some mysterious code-breaker who could actually hold the information you need? In fact, everyone said pretty much the same thing: you need to eat more. Technically speaking, my sports dietician friend Renee McGregor told me, my hypothalamus – the little nub in the centre of my brain – was not releasing enough reproductive hormones to trigger the release of other reproductive hormones, which maintain a healthy menstrual cycle including the release of an egg. Why? Several articles later I’ve come to the conclusion that, we don’t really know. Some gynecologists believe it’s to do with the amount of body fat – fat cells send signals to the hypothalamus, sparking the cascade of fertility juices. Others say it’s more to do with the amount of energy from food, specifically carbohydrates, that the brain needs to commence ‘non-essential’ functions.  Most say it’s probably a mixture of both.

There’s been many occasions over the past two years when I’d pledged that ‘now was the time’ for me to commence a do-not-pass-go route to regaining my periods. I bought calorific cereal bars, outlandish flavours of Ben and Jerry’s, family-sized tubs of peanut butter. I spent weekends making ‘the world’s chewiest cookies ever,’ according to Pinterest, and stopped buying low fat humous. Some weeks I gained weight, but others I lost it. And still, no period.  I was convinced my body was destined to stay in a ‘recovered, but only kinda’ state forever, however hard I fought it. But there were some barriers remaining, which I only realise now I think about it.  I refused my fiancee’s incessant requests for regular steak nights (I stopped eating red meat pre-ED, at University, because it was ‘bloating’ despite regularly enjoying steak frites at Café Rouge as a teenager). I rarely ate sandwiches for lunch, even though I knew they were calorie-dense, so good for weight gain. I took up running, despite my life-long pathological aversion to exercise, and the fact I loathed every second of it. If I ran out of my weight gain supplies, I’d wait at least two weeks before replenishing the stock. None of these behaviours were conscious. And I was, as I say, 90% there. But only 90%.

But since last summer, I can genuinely say things have been different. There were small, subtle signs. We went to Italy and for the first time since I was in my late teens, I ate lunch on holiday. Like many of my female friends, I never classed it as disordered. It’s hot, you’re lying on the beach all day, you’re not hungry, big deal?  This summer I realised something: of course I got hungry at lunchtime – I’m not a table. I simply chose to ignore it, because it was convenient. So far, not so abnormal, or surprising for a young woman. But this time, when faced with a smiling Italian shopkeeper offering me a tub of locally smoked buffalo mozzarella, without even thinking, my instincts kicked in, forcing me to do what any human with eyes would: ‘yes please, thank you very much’. And just like, there goes a habit of half a lifetime. So, the next day I had another lunch and the next day another, and, well, you know how it goes. I came home to three pairs of jeans that wouldn’t zip up, and an extra fold of skin under my bra wire. How did I feel about it? Here comes another millimeter of progress I didn’t know I needed: I, quite frankly, couldn’t give a shit. I’d said this for months – but this time, I really felt it, deep in my bones. Perhaps more than ever, even pre-anorexia.

In Italy, and healthy. Probably post sandwich

In the last two months I really have, genuinely, given it all I’ve got. This was largely helped by the acquisition of a Costco card, which afforded me not one, but two, enormous birthday cakes (the birthday girl had one slice, myself and my fiancée took care of the rest over the course of a week), industrial-sized tubs of this very delicious sugar nut bark thing and a carton of minced meat to make twice-weekly spag bol until I get my freedom pass. What else? Oh, steak nights happened, as did tuna steak nights and swordfish steak nights, but definitely not cauliflower steak nights. I appreciate this menu is somewhat ostentatious and perhaps unattainable for most, but we were in lockdown and, as we’ve already established, I am highly irresponsible with money. I cannot tell you what, if any, chemical reaction happened to make all of this feel normal again.  It’s the result of a series of minuscule acts of discomfort, daring to veer from the usual, the safe, the familiar.  It happens over days, months, years and requires a small army of people who want nothing more than to be in the company of you, dazzlingly happy (it helps if they like to eat a lot). Also, if you happen to live with someone who over-estimates the quantity of olive oil in any given recipe, it’s a head start. It takes a fair amount of weeknight drinking, feminist literature and, oh, a global pandemic. I’ll level with you: the healthiest state of your body – periods and all – is not compatible with just about everything you’ve ever learned about ‘healthy eating’. Nor is it possible to achieve whilst also striving to look like 90% of young women with more than 100,000 followers on Instagram. It is almost impossible to have abs and periods, because the low level of body fat they require to ‘pop’ tells your reproductive system you are not healthy. No healthy, no baby.

So, given my distinct lack of abs and commendable efforts, you can imagine how I felt staring at that depressing red line this week, my convoluted pregnancy theory shot to shit. But then, I thought of when I got my first ever period, aged 14. I was thrilled it’d finally arrived (my over-developed friends got theirs in year 7, while I couldn’t fill out a bra until sixth form) but I remember another feeling too.  Every month, I stood in front of the mirror, staring at my protruding period gut and willing it to deflate before PE class.  I’d often change sitting on the bench whilst changing in a bid to hide it from the other girls. The others, you see, had flatter stomachs, whilst mine was cumbersome; my school skirt sat uncomfortably beneath the muffin top, denting the skin slightly– period or no period.  Now, I recognise that same muffin top in the mirror. But I’m struck by none of the same feelings.  I’d be lying if I said I love having to pull my pants up to hip-height so they don’t dig into my belly fat. But I don’t hate it. I don’t feel anything, really.  It is, as they say, what it is. And I figure: this is the so-called normal we should all be aiming for.

For this reason (and sorry it’s taken me a 1,400 words to get to it) I feel my role at Not Plant Based is now, sadly, somewhat limited. Not because I’m ‘over it’, or whatever. A unique understanding of these illogical illnesses – and a deep devotion to making others hear and see those who suffer them – is something I will never be rid of. Nor would I want to be. The traumas and turmoil of hospital admissions, panic attacks in supermarkets, bone scans, heart scans, therapy, is not something I’d ever forget.  Likewise, the boundless love, support and understanding from all of you over the past four years – and everything you’ve taught me about myself, and this complex disease – is a privilege that I’ll never stop feeling grateful for.  But I feel strongly that true support for eating disorders is not about reaching down to pull someone out of the pothole, but sitting in it with them. My voice is no longer of the value it once was. More importantly, I know there are millions of others, worth their weight in gold, who don’t need another speaker to talk over them, purely for the sake of it. So, I’ll be here, of course, if and when you need me. And I’ll continue to expose all the diet BS we hate in my pages of The Mail on Sunday every week, as well as taking every opportunity I can to protect the lives or those with eating disorders. The content on Not Plant Based will remain for years to come – probably until I’m dead and buried because I CBA for the admin needed to delete it – so I hope you’ll revisit when you’re feeling wobbly, and perhaps it’ll offer familiar comfort.  Lastly: thank you for saving me, many times over, and for serving as a constant reminder that yes, what I have to say is worth listening to.

On Friday morning I went to the toilet at work and, without warning, there it was. I’d come on my period. It was heavy, which was unfortunate given that I was wearing white, silk trousers. At lunchtime, I went to Boots and, for the first time in five and a half years, I bought a box of tampons. And would you believe, they still fit.