"I Open at the Close"
I’m writing this because it’s probably going to be a time that I’ll want to remember, even though it doesn’t feel like it right now.
We just wrapped up the 2021 Open, and I’ll admit that I’m feeling pretty disappointed in myself. I didn’t perform anywhere near as well as I expected to, and actually fell significantly short of my own performance LAST year. Looking back, I can recognize now that I’ve been in a relative plateau for a while. I’ve certainly made progress in some areas (bar muscle-ups, handstand walks) — but most of my metcon benchmarks haven’t improved since 2019, and I’ve only had two or three barbell PRs throughout the entire past year.
And, yeah, not gonna lie, that all feels pretty fucking terrible to acknowledge. Because I pour my heart and soul into this sport; it is my highest priority; I structure my entire life in order to ensure that I can show up as well as possible — so this wakeup call STINGS, big time.
The good news, though, is that I’m finally (FINALLY) starting to acquire a few concrete tools with which to start productively moving past this. So I guess I’d rather have this recognizance NOW, at a point when I’m starting to feel like I have a sense of control again.
It’s been a minute since I updated the Internet on hormone health stuff, so we’ll start with the physical side of things. TL;DR, I first started noticing issues in summer 2019 (when I was 35) and started really digging into things in spring 2020. I experimented with a number of interventions over the course of the year; in the end, though, it was Lara Briden’s book The Hormone Repair Manual that brought the picture into focus. Turns out, I am super-early-perimenopausal at the age of 37 (lucky me) — and (after a fairly invasive ultrasound, thank you very much) it looks like I also have adenomyosis, which is the cause of the suddenly-incapacitating periods.
Perimenopause is a huge topic that doesn’t fit neatly into one paragraph. I recommend rereading my primer on the menstrual cycle if anyone needs a refresher on how we (ideally!) work on the inside — but the short version of perimenopause is: estrogen goes haywire while progesterone disappears. This is where the short cycles, skin issues, and mood changes come from.
An additional factor here is that, with the two ‘female’ hormones on the fritz, testosterone becomes a little more dominant than it should be, which leads to some low-level insulin resistance — EVEN IN ATHLETES. And unfortunately, it’s a vicious cycle; insulin resistance leads the ovaries to crank out more testosterone, and round and round we go. (This is where the midsection weight gain of perimenopause comes from.)
I made this connection in myself by accident. In February, I was several weeks into a weight cut — and everything suddenly IMPROVED. My skin cleared up almost completely, and my cycle went from 21 days to 24. I had no explanation for it, until I read the book linked above and realized what had happened. Calorie deficits increase our sensitivity to insulin. Things got better because I had unwittingly broken a negative feedback loop. (This was supported by lab work — a month after finishing my cut, my A1c was just two-tenths outside of prediabetic range — which means it’s probably a good thing that I don’t know what it was BEFORE the cut.)
Insulin is an anabolic hormone; we NEED it for muscle-building and repair. So my challenge now is to figure out how to STAY maximally insulin-sensitive while still getting the carbs I need / fueling training as well as possible.
So far, what that looks like is:
more of a focus on complex carbs (‘simple’ carbs only around training)
always pairing carbs with protein and/or fat
slightly lower carb intake compared to a younger athlete (I experimented with 400g for a while, but didn’t perceive any performance improvement past about 350g — and also didn’t find it to be a particularly ‘natural’ way for me to eat)
more protein and fat to make up the calorie difference (which also yields MANY more enjoyable food combinations overall).
Supplement-wise, I’m also taking:
ZMA (magnesium, zinc, B6)
B-complex
DIM (the ‘good stuff’ in cruciferous vegetables — helps clear excess estrogen)
chromium and turmeric/curcumin (may help regulate blood sugar / insulin sensitivity)
…plus my usual krill oil, VitD, probiotic.
I’ll retest in mid-June to see if I’ve made a dent. I unfortunately had a 19-day cycle (!) this time, which I’m blaming on the stress of the Open — but my skin continues to do pretty well and the scale hasn’t increased since the end of my cut, which are both good signs that we’re holding steady from an insulin standpoint.
And, other good things to come out of this physical health investigation: I’m not anemic, my thyroid is perfect, my cholesterol is SPARKLING, and besides the (extremely uncomfortable) adenomyosis, there’s nothing more ‘sinister’ wrong with my reproductive plumbing.
However, the other side of the coin is equally huge: MENTAL health. Which is certainly impacted by the above (ask anyone who’s ever lived with a woman: hormones impact mood!) — but also, there’s the small matter of being a burned-out healthcare provider in the fourteenth month of a global pandemic. I had assumed that I was managing this as well as could be expected — my work situation demands fewer hours than many others; surely I had no right to complain? The myriad of concerning behaviors I was overlooking were things that didn’t seem that abnormal during a pandemic. Social withdrawal. Intense jumpiness. Inability to get basic household chores done. Crying on the way to work. The fact that I’d never recovered my appetite after my cut and that the scale was continuing to drift downward.
But this is the part that the Open really brought into focus for me. When I needed to ‘turn it up’ and bring my 101% effort, it turned out that I simply… couldn’t. There just wasn’t anything left to give.
And therein lies the conundrum. In training, all throughout 2020, I was consistently giving all I had. Which meant I continued to feel proud of myself and continued to assume that I must be improving — because it always FELT like maximal effort.
In hindsight, I realize now that I HAVEN’T truly been doing as much as I’m capable of — because there are times when our brain chemistry acts as a physical governor. In other words, it was taking so much energy for me just to go through the motions of work and life that I had silently drained all my reserve.
And if I haven’t been TRAINING as maximally as I could be, well, then is it any surprise that I’m not able to COMPETE at that intensity?
Until now, I never could have imagined reaching the point of being willing to try medication. But — as with most things in life — it turned out that I knew when I was ready, and that the decision was obvious.
I’m only eight days in; we aren’t ‘optimized’ yet. But I can already say that my house is a little bit cleaner, that my training feels a little bit stronger, that I’m starting to recover a small semblance of appetite, and that my poor little sympathetic nervous system is so relieved to be OFF overdrive. I no longer get huge jolts of adrenaline when I drop something on the floor or when someone taps on my door at work. For the first few days, there was even a pleasant drowsiness in the afternoons, almost like (throw it back to pre-COVID with me here) — like when you’ve been working hard for a long time and then go on vacation, and your days are suddenly so much more relaxed that you find yourself taking lazy naps in the afternoons. It felt like THAT. Like a weird kind of battery-recharging after a long stressful period.
The medication does seem to cause sleep to be a bit more disrupted, but my overall strain level runs significantly lower (resting heart rate is back where it was during my marathon days!).
I’m also noticing an increased ability to “put my thoughts where I want them to be,” which is a huge weight off my shoulders. Not only do I NOT have to fight the feeling of constantly wanting to quit my metcons (again: did not fully realize that was happening until it suddenly WASN’T happening), but also, it’s so much easier to keep the perspective that I WANT to have. Because I don’t LIKE constantly comparing myself to other people, and I don’t WANT to feel worthless inside myself — and although I have the insight to look past those feelings and know what I ‘should’ believe and practice and focus on, the medicine gives me a little bit of extra control over nudging my brain more naturally down that path. It feels like a slow ‘recovery’ of myself.
There are a lot of invisible demons to slay in this upcoming year, and I’ve really only just begun. This competitive season brought them ALL out into the light — which is uncomfortable and disappointing, but which also (in the long run) is a GREAT thing. I stole a Harry Potter quote — “I open at the close” — for the title of this post for the sake of the double pun: we just finished the Open, and it was the “close” (final week) of competition that started to bring this all into focus.
It’s like I always say: two steps forward, one step back, six to the side. Right now I’m on the “one step back,” which isn’t a fun place to be.
But this is part of the game. There will always be setbacks; there will always be bumps in the road; there will always be fears to confront; there will always be new and humbling things to learn about myself.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.