Overcoming Hypothalamic Amenorrhea After 3 Years Without A Period (Episode 566)

Full Transcript: Episode 566

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: This is the Fertility Friday Podcast, episode number 566.

Today I’m sharing another brand new episode in our FAM Practitioner Series. So today I’m sharing an episode with one of our practitioners, Grace Parce. And it’s such an interesting conversation that we have. She shares a little bit about her history of losing her period for a period of three years. And she shares how she went from that place all the way to now having a strong, robust cycle with a healthy luteal phase. It obviously didn’t happen overnight. In our conversation, she talks about how many years it took her to get to this point. And we also got into a really interesting discussion of the dance world.

So Grace was part of the dance world — she was a dancer — and I can relate to that as well because I did ballet dancing for most of my young life when I was a little girl. I loved it. And although it’s a wonderful, fun, enjoyable experience, there are some challenges as many of us know because there is a higher percentage of girls in some of those artistic, especially those kind of dance world scenarios, who feel the pressure to have a certain body type and limit their food consumption. And the research shows that they have higher rates of menstrual cycle disruptions and are often put on the pill to quote regulate that kind of thing. So we do talk about some of those things. Very interesting episode.

So before we jump in today, I want to tell you a little bit about Grace. Grace Parce is a certified integrative nutritionist and fertility awareness educator dedicated to helping women find real solutions to health issues often dismissed or normalized. Through her business, OvaFreak, she empowers women to gain body literacy, address hormonal imbalances, and take control of their fertility and health. Her passion stems from personal struggles with amenorrhea, hormonal birth control, and PMDD, which inspired her to seek solutions beyond conventional approaches. Grace trained in nutrition through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and Fertility Awareness Methods through the FEM Institute, and of course now FAM. And she now helps women view the menstrual cycle as a vital sign and use their biomarkers to improve overall health. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and jump into today’s interview with Grace.

And I’m excited to be here today with you, Grace. Welcome to the show.

Grace Parce: Yeah, I’m so honored to be here. Thank you for having me.

Lisa: Well, I absolutely love these episodes and they selfishly give me an opportunity to have some additional time with you. And also, I find that when I do this type of format, an interview format, it’s very different to how you just talk to people because when you do an interview format and you ask these kind of open-ended questions, I find that I just get to learn so much more about your story. And I found that with every single time I’ve done these. So really excited to have you and to dive into your experience. So let’s go ahead and start with my favorite question — how old were you when you had your first period, and take us through a little bit of your reproductive history. If birth control was part of that, and essentially what led you to jumping into fertility awareness within the FAM program at this stage of your professional career.

Grace: So I would say this is a very meandering story, so stop me if I go too long with this, but I got my period the day before my 14th birthday. And I’ll remember that because it was the day before my 14th birthday. Most of my friends at that point, I feel like, had already had their period, so I was relatively anticipating it to some degree. But I also grew up in a house with three brothers, so it wasn’t necessarily a thing that we talked about a lot. I was a dancer growing up and so my first couple years of menarche were very — I didn’t have a lot of knowledge of my body. I honestly have no idea how often I got my period. I was pretty muscular and lean. I danced every day probably from the time I was 12 to 18.

By the time I was about 17, I was pretty far down that path of pursuing dance as a profession. I was dancing kind of part-time-ish with Carolina Ballet, as a student apprentice. I was planning on taking auditions, but I was also applying to colleges. And I kind of got this idea in my head — and up until that point, I had never had any body image issues or negative thoughts about my body. I think I always felt it was very functional and that’s all I really thought about it. But I got this idea that I was going to lose five pounds because I thought that it would improve my standings or make me look more appealing in the ballet world. And unfortunately, that was a very slippery slope, especially as a 17-year-old who knew nothing about nutrition. The ballet world more than 15 years ago was really different than it is now. And so anyway, there was a spiral and kind of a full-fledged eating disorder that arose out of that.

Eventually it became enough of an issue where I decided to leave the ballet world. I was going to go to college for dance and for music. That was a weird period of time because when I was in this — I was in an outpatient eating disorder facility at Duke Hospital, and it was my first introduction into nutrition as a subject matter. But they were very adamant that you eat everything and you don’t obviously have any restrictions, and there was a lot of oversight around eating. And I felt terrible. Once I went to college, there was kind of this condition of — okay, you’re going to stop dancing, you’re going to just pursue your degree in music, and you’ll do these check-ins, this whole contract with my doctors and my parents at the time.

So what ended up happening was I always kind of felt like a victim of my own body. I think my body was working against me. I had this cello teacher who said this thing to me often: “You just need to feed your donkey.” And he kind of became like a support and an advocate for me during that time. But it became this very transactional approach to eating and caring for my body and not this holistic acceptance and appreciation for the things that the female body can do.

As a young adult in my early teens basically until I was about 23, I went the more western medical approach. And especially when I was still really thin, I wasn’t having a period at that point. I probably didn’t have a period for a good three years. And then I had a doctor recommend that I go on birth control as a way to get my period back and regulate my hormones, as I’m sure you’ve heard people say many times. So I tried that — I think I was a sophomore in college — and I gained probably 25 pounds in a year. And I’m sure at that time I wasn’t producing enough hormones naturally. But yeah, it was pretty psychologically difficult for me coming from where I had come from.

I went off of it, I want to say two times where I would try something and decide — oh, this isn’t working — and try a different pill. And then the last attempt was I had a doctor recommend the Depo shot. Stopped getting my period immediately on that. And I think I did it twice and just decided — I’m not going back. We’re not doing this anymore.

So aside from that, I have always been prone to more depressing tendencies. When I was probably about 23 — I had been off birth control for probably a year — but I had become really inflamed and my skin was breaking out. My mom was just getting fed up with me because I was always kind of depressed and annoyed with my skin and all those things. And she was like, “Grace, you just need to go on birth control or I don’t want to hear about this anymore.” And she was very loving — my mom’s great — but she was kind of at her wit’s end with it. And so I did for one month. And then it just got so much worse and I was like, there has to be another way. And that’s when I found fertility awareness.

It was a very slow process for me and it has made me see how what we do with the FAM mentorship program is just so needed and important. Because I spent — it was probably more like eight years — a very long time trying to fix all my period problems. So at that point — and this was kind of like the other pinnacle — I had a doctor say that he thought that I was bipolar. I was really uncomfortable with that idea and going on any type of medication for it. So I started tracking everything and like the very type A human that I am would document — okay, I’m feeling this way on this day. And lo and behold, I found out it was cyclical. And so I sought out another doctor who kind of affirmed that and said, “Yeah, it’s called PMDD. It is possible that that’s what you have.” And I went down that rabbit hole of trying to fix it without antidepressants or birth control.

Yeah, it was a long journey. It took me about eight years to really get to a place where my cycles were in the normal parameters and also I didn’t have these terrible mood symptoms popping up for two weeks every month. So yeah, that’s kind of the story.

Lisa: Well, thank you so much for sharing that. I mean, every time I ask that question, we get a good insight into those early adult years. And you had just a variety of experiences. Some of the things that stood out to me — you said that you felt like you were a victim in your own body. And also, like many other women have experienced, when you would go to the medical establishment to seek help for this, you mentioned that you didn’t have a period for three years. And I know we’ve talked about this in class — very very common.

I was a ballet dancer as well for a period of time. The research on menstrual cycle disruption in aesthetic sports supports what we’re talking about here. You’re still in a leotard, you’re seeing everyone else’s body, and there was always kind of this background idea about perfection — especially in classical style. My teacher was incredible and very classically trained, but from that perspective you’re kind of — it’s not like these days where plenty of girls go to dance class just to have fun. When I was young, that was not the goal. And teachers would say things. I’ve said this probably before on the podcast because I am a Black woman and I do have a curvy body — from the dance world perspective, that means I have a big butt. My teacher never said “You have a big butt.” She said “You have a curved spine.” And I knew that’s what she meant.

So yeah, I feel like if one of the recommendations I could make for these sports, it would be to tackle it head-on — with the research background to say that the sports with an emphasis on aesthetic leanness — ballet, gymnastics, figure skating — have a much higher rate of menstrual cycle disruption. And educating parents on nutrition, because if you don’t tackle it head-on, it’s not good enough to just say “No one needs to lose more weight.” The parents have to be educated.

Grace: And when I think back to the beginning of the treatment where there was almost like this “you have to eat this, you have to eat that” — the things that I was given to eat, it wasn’t nutritious food. It was just about getting calories in. But prior to all of that, the amount of food that I consumed is almost funny. Like I would go to my friends’ houses when I was in probably freshman or sophomore year and just raid their snack cabinets because also we had four kids in our house, so there was never enough food. I was dancing for three, four hours a day at least. But also at that point, the only unit of measure that I knew anything about was calories because calories were such a huge focus in the 90s and early 2000s. Now I know so much more about all of this and I just have a different perspective.

When I have kids, I’m going to talk about it from the get-go — not to create food fear, but just so that they know: what is healthy eating, what does your body require, your menstrual cycle is a vital sign, and if something’s going wrong then it’s probably related to what you’re feeding yourself.

Lisa: You mentioned that you didn’t have a period for three years, and of course the response from the doctor was to get on the pill. And in the doctor’s defense — when you go into the research, that’s how they’re trained. But for anyone who’s not that familiar with HA — Lily and I went into this a lot in Real Food for Fertility, and I talked about it in The Fifth Vital Sign — when you lose your period for three years, it does have an effect on your bone development, especially because this is happening when you’re young, when we haven’t reached our full maximum bone density yet. And the debate in the research literature is that there is some evidence suggesting the pill might stop the bone problem — but it doesn’t, not really. Studies have shown that while the pill may slow bone density loss in one area of the body, it doesn’t really address other areas. At best it’s mixed. And it’s it’s crazy that that would even be the first suggestion.

Grace: Yes. I do wonder — I definitely grew into college. I probably didn’t stop growing until I was 22. And the shape of my hips changed pretty drastically when I was on birth control. I wonder now: was that how I would have developed had I not gone on birth control? I don’t know. But yeah, the birth control thing is always interesting. I always say there’s a time and a place, but I definitely prefer FAM.

Lisa: So you’re at a stage where you made a shift in your career, and that was one of the things that brought you to us. You came to us with a FEM certification, which we’ve had quite a few FAM practitioners come in with over the years. This is year four for FAM. We’ve had many dozens of practitioners go through, and we’ve had several that have had one form of fertility awareness certification training or another. I’d be really interested to hear about your transition — when you decided this is where you wanted to focus, and what your experience was coming out of the FEM program into FAMM.

Grace: I would say I really enjoyed the FEM training, but I found it to be very prescriptive — like “this is the way that we do it.” And from my experience, there’s so much gray area when you look at women’s charts. I wanted to know the why. I wanted to know: okay, I see that this chart looks this way. Now what? Because I had been able to do that for myself relatively successfully, but it had taken me so long. I wish I had detailed charts like I do now for my 25-year-old self.

The FEM approach had this medical management protocol where if you see three months of irregular cycles in some capacity, you’re supposed to refer to their medical management providers. And it’s great that there are people like that, but I wanted to offer so much more than that as a practitioner. So that’s why, when I heard another one of these interviews with a woman who had also been through FEM, I was like — oh, wow. I could do this, too. And I’m so glad that I made the jump.

I would say at this point in my career, I’m still kind of a baby in the entrepreneurial space. FAM has really been a kick in the butt in that — wow, you really are capable of doing this. Like you don’t need to go get another certification, go back to school. I think I struggled with feeling like I had enough credibility. But especially now in this program and just working with my practicum clients, I have felt so empowered because I’ve realized that I know this information, and I’m so aware of my body and in tune with taking care of it, making sure that my hormones are doing what they’re supposed to do. And I almost feel like — how do other people not know this? But I’ve realized that other people don’t know this information. And I think my whole mission with my business is knowledge and nourishment. That’s what I want to provide to my clients. And I feel like this program has really made me see both that I can do it and that I do have a lot to offer.

Lisa: Well, thank you so much for sharing that. I can really resonate with that because those were some of the thoughts going through my mind when I actually started the business aspect of this. When I was learning about fertility awareness, my initial few years of practice were at a grassroots nonprofit. And I’m older than you — old enough that I went through high school with no cell phone at all. When I was learning about fertility awareness, there was no social media. And when I was thinking about a career in my early 20s — the math didn’t math. Because I was like, where would I get enough clients for me to actually survive? Fast forward to when I started Fertility Friday specifically — that was when I had my first son and I was like, “Oh wow. Podcasts are a thing.” And I was like, anyone can start one. So that’s kind of how that happened.

One of the things I strive to do with FAM is to create the opposite experience that so many of us have had as women in the conventional medical system — where you go to the so-called expert, you throw your problems on their lap, you expect them to have all the answers, and then you’re supposed to just be a good patient and be fixed. Our conventional medical system is designed around allopathic medicine — the concept of a pill for every ill. The system is designed to find a solution to your symptoms: symptom management, symptom reduction, symptom elimination. Not necessarily identifying and addressing root cause. We suppress the symptoms. That’s the whole conversation we’ve been having for a decade on Fertility Friday about the birth control pill — it doesn’t actually fix the root cause. It just suppresses symptoms.

So from the perspective of FAM, we’re looking to be the opposite of that — where instead of the woman giving up all of her power, we’re trying to put the power back in her hands by empowering her with information and education so that she understands how her body works. We’re providing this framework of information and being informed by the cycle.

Grace: And even as a practitioner, it’s very humbling. You can come in with all your knowledge, but we really have to go with that flow — literally using that metaphor — because her cycle informs how effective our recommendations are. You could have two totally different clients with very similar situations, suggest two very similar approaches, and one client might see amazing shifts immediately while another doesn’t have that same experience. And that forces you to really dig with this individual person and find out what’s going to work for her.

Lisa: I also wanted to dial back into your story because you mentioned a couple of times that you worked on this issue independently. When you decided to independently track your cycle and try to identify when you were feeling these symptoms — and you figured out that it was cyclical. But then what you shared was that the journey wasn’t an instant thing. It took you said almost about a decade to really improve. My comment is — when you’re on your own without a mentor, without the information, trying to figure this out, it does take a long time. And that’s what FAM is striving to be for women so that it doesn’t have to take eight to ten years. But there’s also a lot of learning that takes place, and the lessons you learned over that long period of time can only be done that way. It’ll also help you to recognize that even though we’re giving our clients the shortcut to these problems, it’s still going to take whatever duration of time it takes for them to make those adjustments.

Grace: Yeah. The amount of trial and error I did in that time frame is insane to me. The amount of supplements and diet changes and exercise things. But honestly, I learned so much in the process. I’ve read every women’s health book that exists in literature. But also yeah, the exact reason I wanted to do this is because I don’t want other people to have to do what I did.

And sometimes I look back and think — if I had just been able to afford functional testing at the time, maybe it would have cut off a few of the years I spent doing this experiment on myself. But in that process I learned so much, and I’m grateful for that.

I always think about one of the biggest flips — something I tend to overlook — when I started dating my husband, so many of my symptoms went away. Like especially with my skin. When I look back on that, I think I just felt safe and supported for the first time in my adult life. Someone was on my team. I was very independent, trying to kind of make it for myself for so long. And the impact that things like that can have on your physical health — yeah. I wouldn’t have been able to experience that to the full extent had I gone a different route of just figuring out if my magnesium was too low or something.

Lisa: And that’s huge. And it shows us there’s just not just one thing that is playing a role.

So as we start wrapping up, I have a couple of questions. For anyone who’s listening who has had a similar experience — whether it be with disordered eating, losing their period, struggling with irregular cycles, exercising a lot and not eating as much as they should — they’re hearing you talk about how you went from having this really significant challenge and not having a period at all for three full years, and then recovering over this long period of time, but still having profoundly low progesterone. Which — now that we’re knee-deep in the FAM rabbit hole — I feel like there’s a pretty good explanation for that. You were likely still on that spectrum even though you had made amazing progress. But then you have a 15-day luteal phase now. So if you were to break down the top three things that you feel made the biggest difference for you — with the understanding that the journey obviously wasn’t just a rapid thing.

Grace: Oh man, this is a hard one. I think stress management, whatever that means to you — it could mean sleep, it could mean not overexercising. That I think is huge. And then I have made so many diet changes in the last couple of years. I was vegan for a really long time. And I think to some degree that helped certain things when I first started, but I got to a point where I was like — okay, we can’t really go any further here. Because I was probably still under stress. And what that really showed me was that it’s not so much what you eat, but the quality of the foods that you’re eating. Because when I was in grad school, I was still eating animal products, but I was eating such low quality food. And now I place a huge emphasis on that — when I do eat animal products, I try to get things from my farmers market. I think that has made a huge difference.

So stress, food quality, and — I know this is going to sound cheesy — but just slowing down. Looking at the sun. Things like that. I think especially one of the other things that came with meeting my husband was spending more time just being with other humans. I was so driven and trying to accomplish what is a very challenging goal — getting an orchestral job is very, very competitive. And I really secluded and isolated myself during that time. If there are other type A people like me listening — for me, really slowing down and taking the time to just experience life more. Getting in these really crazy headspaces of just go, go, go can absolutely elevate stress levels. But truly being in community with other people, and allowing myself to process things verbally — because I’m definitely a verbal processor — and just experiencing life alongside someone else. That has been huge.

Having a support system. I haven’t lived near my family since I was 18. And I also — my dad has brain cancer, and I think one thing I look at in him and see is that he was pretty isolated in his last few years of life and was very stressed for a lot of the years before that. And I think those two things played a huge impact in just disease and quality of life. The body is so resilient, but you have to give it human interaction, love, affection. Those things do place. They’re so important.

Lisa: I’m sorry to hear about your dad. We’re all thinking about him.

And I don’t think it sounds cheesy at all. There are studies that show isolation is actually really bad for your health. So not cheesy at all. Absolutely very very important and not always what we think of, because we’re so focused on this answer and the supplement or whatever — but we also have to look at the quality of our lives.

So a couple of last questions to wrap up. For someone who’s thinking about jumping into FAM, not really sure if this is the time — what would you want them to know?

Grace: You should just do it. When I decided to sign up, it was super last minute. I didn’t know if I should do it because I kind of had this weird imposter syndrome of — is this for me? I’m definitely kind of a baby in my business development. I remember I talked to a friend and she was just like, “Grace, you care about this so much. Why would you not do it? It sounds like such an amazing opportunity.”

And what I’ve loved so much about this program is that it has been better than I anticipated. Every certification that I’ve done up until this point — and I’ve done many — it’s been relatively hands-off. And I just love how much in-person contact there is, how we actually get to know each other and have a lot of hands-on interaction. Other things I’ve done have been very screens-off, nobody talks. And I love that that’s the case here — like you can ask as many questions as you want. It’s been probably the best part about this year for me.

Lisa: Oh, I love that so much. Because I always say — what woman over the age of 20 is just sitting around with nothing to do? Like come on. And yes, it is a big investment. But for me — if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this 100%.

So last question — for anyone who wants to learn more about you and what you do, let us know all the places.

Grace: Okay. So I’m launching — up until this point it’s been mostly word of mouth for me, which has been lovely because all my clients have been in person. But I’m launching online. My website is built, Instagram is ready to go. We’re launching in February. My company is called OvaFreak and it’s www.ovafreak.com and ovafreak on Instagram. My personal Instagram is just Grace Parce and you’ll mostly probably see cello and handstand videos on there — my two other things that I love so much.

Lisa: Amazing. Well, we will make sure to link to all the places when this episode comes out. Thank you so much, Grace, for being here. This has been just so much fun chatting with you.

Grace: This was great. I was so nervous, but this was so much fun.

Lisa: I will see you next week because we still have several weeks or months left in the program. So looking forward to seeing you a lot more.

Grace: Thank you, Lisa.

Lisa: Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share with a friend. You’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at fertilityfriday.com/566.

I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode with Grace. I always love these episodes because I get a chance to dig deeper into the stories. And I know I often say that, but it really is fascinating to me that I can be in class with many of our clients and practitioners for quite a while, and then every single time I do these episodes — because of the interview format and the long-ended questions — I do get a lot more background about their story.

And we touched on so many important issues. We touched on the issue of PMDD, the challenges that Grace had with her cycle to the point that her doctors were wanting to diagnose her with bipolar disorder. But what was lacking was that additional knowledge about how this could be related to the menstrual cycle and potentially related to her long-standing habit of undernourishing herself. And it wasn’t an easy process by any means. It was also not a quick process as Grace described, but certainly she did through trial and error significantly improve her cycles and her symptoms, and she did it without heavy medication. It is really a testament to that. It doesn’t mean that everyone’s going to have the same experience, and it doesn’t mean that there’s never a need for stronger medication. But I do think it really poses the question of — when we have somebody experiencing some of these distressing symptoms, why are we not looking at potentially the cycle and the hormonal approach, especially in women, first? And also looking at their foundational factors.

Having that understanding that if you have somebody who’s not even having a menstrual cycle, or having a very irregular disrupted menstrual cycle due to undernutrition, then that could be contributing to these emotional factors. This is a known thing because we know that PMDD — the cyclical emotional disturbances around the menstrual cycle — are heavily related to an imbalance of progesterone and estrogen production.

So much great information in today’s episode and again very inspiring that Grace’s experiences led her to actually switch careers and move into a completely different direction so that she can work towards helping other women not have to experience the same thing. Huge thank you again to Grace and all the other participants of the FAM Practitioner Series for sharing their stories and experiences.

If you’re listening in real time, we are starting in March of 2025. If you’re wanting to join us, you can find details over at fertilityfriday.com/fammlive. And if you are listening in the future, you can still head over to that page to see what we have going on, or you can head over to fertilityfriday.com/fammwl — FAM WL for waiting list — and jump on the waiting list to be notified first when we open registration next time. I hope you have a wonderful week, whenever you’re tuning into the show. And of course, as always, until next time, be well and happy charting.