Episode 58: Elena Kunicki
Get your period back by fixing your relationship to food and fitness
In this episode, we cover:
🔹the vicious cycle of trying to “eat healthy” then bingeing uncontrollably
🔹the red flags that tell Elena someone has disordered eating
🔹the myth that you have to be incredibly thin for your menstrual cycle to stop
🔹the first steps she takes with her clients
🔹the negative health consequences of not menstruating
🔹does going on the pill solve your problem?
🔹why do we have such complex relationships to food?
🔹Elena’s message to every woman missing their period because of diet and exercise
‘I looked back on the past four years and was like, “What the hell have I been doing?”’
If your efforts to get "healthy” have led to the loss of your period… that isn’t healthy.
It’s the reason registered dietitian Elena Kunicki does what she does.
Clients come to Elena when “their lives are being so negatively impacted” that they “can't do it anymore”
Look at her Instagram account and you’ll see her devotion to helping women quit self-imposed rules around eating, stop over-exercising, and realize that losing their period is a wake-up call.
She’s got a lot of personal experience to throw into the mix too.
After losing weight at the end of her high school years, on what she stresses was an “insanely restrictive diet” - she felt like she was on a high.
“I proved to myself that I could override my hunger cues,” she told me in episode 58.
“I felt like I was the hot girl. I was no longer the chubby girl in the friend group. People were giving me attention and praise.”
Then things got bad.
“I was so terrified of losing that, that when I went to college, I was willing to do anything to maintain this weight. And I mean anything.”
Elena became even more restrictive with her eating. She lost more weight, her period disappeared, and her obsession with food (including a vicious cycle of restricting then bingeing) dominated the following years.
At graduate school, she realized something had to change.
“I looked back at the last four years and I was like, ‘What the hell have I been doing?’” she told me.
“I had low blood pressure and nutrient deficiencies and I was like, ‘I’m not happy. I'm not healthy. What is this all for?’”
Elena attributes disordered eating to body image issues, which are “so prevalent among women,” she said
After finding a more intuitive approach to eating, her recovery began.
Now as a women’s health coach and dietitian, she helps clients fix their relationships to food and fitness so they can get their monthly period back - without going on the pill.
Prescribing of the contraceptive pill in order to “regulate” a woman’s menstrual cycle is something that makes Elena’s hair stand on end, she told me. Watch episode 58 to find out why.
Elena attributes disordered eating to body image issues, which are “so prevalent among women,” she said.
“We put our worth and importance on our looks… we equate those two things. And every woman deals with this. If you don't think you're dealing with this, I would think again. Unless you've done the work to unlearn that - we are all impacted by it,” she told me.
While someone might not have anorexia or bulimia, that doesn’t mean they don’t have unhelpful patterns and beliefs around eating.
“I kind of look at things already from the place of, ‘Okay, how can this be disordered?’ because I know it's so common.
“If a woman’s DM-ing me on Instagram, and she tells me ‘I lost my period’ and I say ‘Okay, how's your relationship with food?’ and they'll say, ‘Well, you know, I eat really healthy… I get vegetables and… I like to exercise in this way…’.”
“When someone says, ‘I eat really healthy,' I'm almost already skeptical. Not that it's not a fine thing to try to eat in a way that's healthy and prioritize vegetables… but, it so easily for women becomes disordered because so many of us are going at it from this place of a bad relationship to our bodies.”
Elena says almost none of her clients are clinically underweight
And by the way - it’s a myth that you have to be incredibly thin for your menstrual cycle to stop. Your reproductive hormones function best at a range of body-fat that’s unique to you. Even if - according to your mirror, doctor, friends and family - you don’t look underweight.
Elena says almost none of her clients are clinically underweight. “They may be underweight for their bodies, but they're not clinically underweight,” she told me.
So how does Elena convince a woman who’s built an entire identity - perhaps even a career - on being lean and superfit to give themselves permission to eat whatever they want, and rest as much as their body wants to in order to recover their period and fix their relationship to food?
“I don't convince them,” she said. “If you try to convince somebody who's in the depths of their disordered eating and is not ready to admit it to themselves, they will get mad at you.”
She explained that her clients come to her at a point when “their lives are being so negatively impacted by the disordered eating and by clinging on to this identity that's no longer serving them, that they can't do it anymore.”
If skipping a period every month sounds desirable - perhaps consider the potential negative health consequences.
“Several medical journals have actually categorized the menstrual cycle as a fifth vital sign because it is such a good marker of a woman's overall health,” Elena said.
“Issues in your health will often show up in your cycle - and this goes way beyond just losing a period or having late periods.”
Your bones may suffer. “If things get severe enough and your estrogen levels get low enough for long enough, you can get into the osteoporotic range and that can really become an issue long term.”
“There's risks to your heart health and your brain health. So higher risk of Alzheimer's [and] higher risk of heart disease long term from having a loss of period.”
Then there are the day-to-day effects that Elena said you may not even be aware of “whether it's libido, your sexual health, your skin health, your hair health, your digestive health - it is intricately involved with a lot of other systems in your body and you're going to feel better if your period is healthy,” she said.
For anyone who feels Elena’s story resonates, she suggests asking yourself questions about how you want to look back on your life one day.
“What are your goals and visions for how you want your life to look? And then how is your relationship with food, your health, your relationship to exercise [and] your body image holding you back from that?”
She also recommends finding support from other women working on similar issues.
“Whether you work with a dietitian or a therapist, whether you just read some books or listen to some podcasts - anything to actually start taking action to live more in alignment with your values and your goals and your vision of life.”
Follow Elena on Instagram.
Common sense caution: Anything you hear or see within healthHackers content should not be considered personal or medical advice. You’ve all heard it before, so you know the score - always talk to your own health provider about your concerns.
Thank you to the sponsors of this episode: GlycanAge. See my review of the biological age test with money off here.