Female problem with Atkins: After 2 months doing Atkins, my periods have stopped.

[Louisea]

How can I restore my periods? I'm still waiting and it's now over 3 weeks late. I am going to come off Atkins to restore my cycle. I lost nearly a stone, and felt fabulous, but the high protein/high fat doesn't feel healthy to me I have to say, and now that I have this problem too I am really worried. Has this happened to anyone else female? What did you do?

[Georgiana]

Re: Female problem with Atkins: After 2 months doing Atkins, my periods have stopped.

How can I restore my periods? I'm still waiting and it's now over 3 weeks late. I am going to come off Atkins to restore my cycle. I lost nearly a stone, and felt fabulous, but the high protein/high fat doesn't feel healthy to me I have to say, and now that I have this problem too I am really worried. Has this happened to anyone else female? What did you do?

My advice: don't go off Atkins. I've seen other members that had the same problem at the beginning of their diet as you (but do talk to your doctor!). We are losing weight fast and estrogen is stored in fat cells. As those fat cells shrink, our hormones get screwed up and it takes some time to adjust.

Are you feeling good otherwise? As I've said, see your doctor, just to make sure it's all fine. But don't panic and change your diet (esp. if you feel good on it) without knowing what the cause of the problem is and whether you need to worry.

What are your stats (height, current weight, goal weight)?

[liv]

Re: Female problem with Atkins: After 2 months doing Atkins, my periods have stopped.

Losing periods are not a common effect with eating low carb. It is true that our cycles can be a little affected when we make rapid dietary changes. You have checked that you are not pregnant?
A stone is really impressive.
But you have to do something that is right for you for sure.

[Georgiana]

Re: Female problem with Atkins: After 2 months doing Atkins, my periods have stopped.

Oh, and if your problem is caused by rapid weight loss, the same would happen on any other diet that allows you to lose weight this fast, regardless of the carb intake.

You can slow down your weight loss by moving to OWL and finding your CCLL.

[Louisea]

Re: Female problem with Atkins: After 2 months doing Atkins, my periods have stopped.

Thanks Georgiana. I'm going to re-introduce more complex carbs into my diet in any case but I will keep an eye on my carbs as I return to a normal healthy diet. I feel there is definitely a link to high protein/fat content of an atkins diet to the fact that my period has stopped.

[liv]

Re: Female problem with Atkins: After 2 months doing Atkins, my periods have stopped.

Why do you think so? You just need to read a few more things on fat.
I recommend any book by the Eades
Any book by Atkins
Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes
Mary Enig, Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils and Cholesterol, (Bethesda Press, May 2000).
Or the book by Mary Enig and Sally Fallon Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats
Here is a good web site on the Enig and Fallon's ideas
The Skinny on Fats

I think avoiding sugars and unhealthy carbs is very healthy. It is what I do and I have no health problems.

[Louisea]

Re: Female problem with Atkins: After 2 months doing Atkins, my periods have stopped.

Thanks for the book titles, I'll have a look. I know there are healthy fats as well, and absolutely sugary carbs are not good. But even though I have lost weight, I don't feel it is healthy to be in a state of ketosis for too long. And re-introducing healthy carbs into my diet is making me feel whoozy and dehydrated too, just the feeling I had when I started induction. Does that stop? It's been going on for 3 days now. And I really want my period to come so my cycle goes back to normal.

[msanjelpie]

Re: Female problem with Atkins: After 2 months doing Atkins, my periods have stopped.

Losing weight and not having to deal with periods? Sounds like heaven to me...

[Ohbehave007]

Re: Female problem with Atkins: After 2 months doing Atkins, my periods have stopped.

Losing weight and not having to deal with periods? Sounds like heaven to me...

HAHA!

I've always had long cycles (40 days) and never had a problem with this diet effecting that. This isn't a high protein diet either, so maybe you need to adjust your numbers. It's high fat, medium protein, low carb. As others have said you should talk to your doctor about it.

After starting Atkins I discovered I had Endometriosis so my doctor put me back on the pill () so I now have to get use to having a period every month. Maybe your body is just adjusting to the new you.

I say give it time (and take a pregnancy test just to be sure). Periods can change for many reasons, diet is just one.

[shay85]

Re: Female problem with Atkins: After 2 months doing Atkins, my periods have stopped.

i had your problem.
last year i went on the atkins, and at first i noticed my period was delayed about 3 weeks. after that it got delayed 2 and a half months. so i stoped and went back to eat carbs.
evantually my period went back to normal, but i didnt end up gaining the wight back plus more.
iam back on the atkins this time around, and so far my period is on time. i guess the body needs to adjust to this way of eating.
hope that helps

[atkinsgal08]

Re: Female problem with Atkins: After 2 months doing Atkins, my periods have stopped.

>>as I return to a normal healthy diet>>

Atkins is a healthy diet!

It's also not "high protein".

J.

[Louisea]

Re: Female problem with Atkins: After 2 months doing Atkins, my periods have stopped.

Thanks, this is very interesting and reassuring to know. I stopped limiting my carb intake to 20g and re-introduced healthy carbs back into my diet. After 3 days of feeling nautious as my body readjusted, my period returned. So I do think that being in a state of ketosis is not good, for me anyway, because I don't favour anything that disrupts the regularity of my monthly cycle. I will proceed very carefully with my carb intake however, as I don't want to put the weight back on. This is something, however, that I consider should be included in the book and more widely on various websites about the side effects of doing atkins and how to deal with this. It's been a very worrying couple of weeks.

[Georgiana]

Re: Female problem with Atkins: After 2 months doing Atkins, my periods have stopped.

Thanks, this is very interesting and reassuring to know. I stopped limiting my carb intake to 20g and re-introduced healthy carbs back into my diet. After 3 days of feeling nautious as my body readjusted, my period returned. So I do think that being in a state of ketosis is not good, for me anyway, because I don't favour anything that disrupts the regularity of my monthly cycle. I will proceed very carefully with my carb intake however, as I don't want to put the weight back on. This is something, however, that I consider should be included in the book and more widely on various websites about the side effects of doing atkins and how to deal with this. It's been a very worrying couple of weeks.

I'd also like a section about TOM in DANDR. But again, a delayed period is not a side effect of doing Atkins, not even of doing the Induction phase of Atkins. The only instances where I've ever read about menstrual irregularities on a low carb diet that were not associated with weight/fat loss is in studies on subjects with epilepsy. However, the ketogenic diet used in controlling seizures is nothing like Atkins, but rather a very high fat, low protein, almost zero carbohydrate diet.

Since you've been doing Induction for two months now, you must either be very metabolically resistant or at least have a lot of weight to lose. What was your degree of metabolic resistance that you determine from the charts in DANDR?

[Georgiana]

Re: Female problem with Atkins: After 2 months doing Atkins, my periods have stopped.

i had your problem.
last year i went on the atkins, and at first i noticed my period was delayed about 3 weeks. after that it got delayed 2 and a half months. so i stoped and went back to eat carbs.
evantually my period went back to normal, but i didnt end up gaining the wight back plus more.
iam back on the atkins this time around, and so far my period is on time. i guess the body needs to adjust to this way of eating.
hope that helps

First of all, this gives people the wrong impression that we are not eating carbs on Atkins. So just to clarify it for newbies, on Atkins one never eats zero carbs, so one cannot go from Atkins "back to eating carbs".

Second, Shay, from your own posts, your body fat percentage is 15%:

thanx for you response missnikki!
i read that online as well, but i honestly dont feel nor look underweight. i still carey weight around my abdomen and hips, and im not by any means trying to be stick thin either.
i do find my body fat percentage alittle low-->(15%). but i dont think its low enough to make have delays in my paeriod...is it??

The average essential body fat percentage for women is 10-12%. The average body fat percentage of athletes (women) is 14-20%. You want to lose 17 lbs. To lose 17 lbs of fat, your body fat percentage would have to drop to 1.6%. Completely unrealistic! At this body fat percentage you'd be dead.

Trying to reduce your body fat percentage to some extreme value will cause reproductive problems, among a bunch of other severe health issues. It has absolutely nothing to do with Atkins, but rather with losing weight when weight loss is not healthy for your body.

[liv]

Re: Female problem with Atkins: After 2 months doing Atkins, my periods have stopped.

Thanks, this is very interesting and reassuring to know. I stopped limiting my carb intake to 20g and re-introduced healthy carbs back into my diet. After 3 days of feeling nautious as my body readjusted, my period returned. So I do think that being in a state of ketosis is not good, for me anyway, because I don't favour anything that disrupts the regularity of my monthly cycle. I will proceed very carefully with my carb intake however, as I don't want to put the weight back on. This is something, however, that I consider should be included in the book and more widely on various websites about the side effects of doing atkins and how to deal with this. It's been a very worrying couple of weeks.

Being late with a period once in a while is perfectly normal as is being early. The body does have hormonal hick ups and when we lose weight (as fat and estrogen are connected) we will see changes. Very overweight women sometimes do not get the period at all.

I have never done induction and 20 carbs for two months. I follow the book and it asks us to add more carbs after two weeks. So by the time you reach two monts if you did the programme correctly you may be eating loads of carbs.
Glad things are working our for you. To continue on a losing path you should follow OWL - it works well.
Good luck.