Thanks for sharing this. I listened to it. It’s refreshing that people are more comfortable discussing these topics openly but even more so that male voices are included. I’m sorry if you identified with anything mentioned in this episode.
Anna has shown for years that recovering her period is not a priority. She knows what amenorrhea is as well as its effects. She knows that being on HRT at her age is not normal. She knows that her relationship with food and exercise is not normal. I think she knows her current condition affects her mood and academics.
I have tried a number of times to explain here why restoring menses is essential, and I am not convinced that I can effect change. Anna has put herself in a situation conducive to perpetuating the situation; she lives extremely far from her family, where she can avoid her mother’s comments on the missing period, and she actively posts on this male-dominated forum, whose audience might not grasp the issue so well. Not to mention the cherrypicking from the logs of other people whose bodies, lifestyles, and mental health are the total opposite of hers. I know Anna at some point worked with professionals, but I have a strong feeling that she did that to appease those here who advised her to do so more than because she wanted to change. I also doubt she was fully open with them.
It is very painful to watch someone go through something like this, and I can only imagine how her family and friends feel. I am not a medical doctor and know that these things are not a one-size-fits-all, but as someone who suffered from amenorrhea for a few years and overcame it, I know what it takes to recover, and what Anna more or less continues to do is probably the farthest thing from that. But I also understand that she is currently not interested in getting better. Only she can decide that for herself, and if she ever does, I suspect it would require being 100% honest with an experienced professional. She would have to go all in. It takes ages for obese people to reach that state and, if they choose, to become healthy. Anna has destroyed her body for many years, and restoring menses would not happen overnight. Not that she has ever really tried. Sounds harsh, but I don’t think she has found a reason compelling enough to recover her period even though it would improve her athletic and academic performance, which points to a different yet related issue.
Anna lives her life in a very robotic and compulsive way that makes sense to no one but her. She seems to want nothing but to work herself to death and remains set in her black-and-white ways, as shown by her responses to helpful posters here who recognize her potential and want her to get healthy. There’s always some reason why a suggestion does not fit her narrative. Again, I am not a doctor, but I would not be surprised if there were some underlying cause to this that we don’t know. Maybe Anna does not even entirely understand. Eating disorders usually stem from issues with control, and I know that was the case for me. I think it would be very helpful for Anna to pursue not only someone who specializes in eating disorders but also someone who can peel back the root issue and help her explore her emotions. All of her comments on this forum suggest that she is a living machine, yet I still like to think otherwise. Might take a lot of digging.
The sad reality is that it might not click for Anna until it is too late. Not to get political, but it very much reminds me of people this year who refused a vaccine offered to them for free despite knowing some of the consequences and ended up on a hospital bed, or worse, their death bed. I sincerely hope that is not the case here. I must say it sort of weirds me out when people still offer programming advice to Anna, because, realistically, she will not be training much longer at this rate.
