Understanding your menstrual cycle means better understanding yourself: your feelings, your body changes, and your cravings as they shift throughout the ~month. When you understand your rage, tears, paranoia, sensitivities, energy levels and hunger are at least in part influenced by hormones, it becomes easier to detach from judging yourself or believing everything you think and feel is true. This is especially helpful if you suffer from PMS (premenstrual syndrome), as I do.
You can make more rational decisions to override feelings and urges when you recognize a significant portion of their intensity is driven by shifting hormones and not your character or your “spirit” or personality or whatever you want to call “the real you”.
Food cravings are one of the more mundane physical symptoms I get when I’m PMSing. I want to EAT more than at other times of the month. Salty comfort foods for me, like french fries and gravy. Stuff like that.
I’ve learned to be kinder to myself about this and put it into perspective; the problem isn’t going to last forever. I probably do not have an actual nutritional need for what I’m craving (especially not in the quantities I want it) and giving into the craving could actually make my PMS symptoms worse (salty comfort foods = MORE BLOATING and breast tenderness).
Still, I am on the fence about whether to use this PMS awareness to give into the food cravings or to resist.
If the latter, I can tell myself “make healthier choices for a couple days in spite of how much you want the salt ‘n vinegar chips NOW and you will feel better next week”.
If the former, I can tell myself “oh my fucking god this bag full of junk food eaten in bed is going to taste so motherfucking good; an evening or two of decadence is not going to kill you (and if you hunker down in bed with the food and a movie it will help you not act or feel like you’re going to kill someone else), and is a way to celebrate this taxing roller-coaster of bullshit your body is going through – fucking EAT WHAT YOU WANT AND ENJOY EVERY FUCKING SECOND OF IT”.
I tend to opt for giving in, especially as my PMS doesn’t last as long these days and I probably will not even have this particular problem too much longer. So excited to be able to get specific HRT (hormone replacement therapy) instead of using birth control for that, and fine tune it to my preferences.
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