Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Weigh In #9

My twelve year old daughter started her menses this last March. As she was gearing up to “D – day” it was like watching a scientific experiment. In the month before she was, of course, as nasty as could be. She talked back all the time, ran into her room to cry every day, told me that I probably didn’t really love her, and absolutely never helped around the house. I can’t tell you how unpleasant it was to be around her. She was also always hungry. Always. She’d have a full dinner of chicken and potatoes and salad and fruit and then thirty minutes after getting up from the table she’d be back in the kitchen trying to find something else to eat. I don’t keep junky food around the house but I sensed that this was exactly what she needed, so one day I bought this twelve pack of these little fruit pies. She ate them ALL in a matter of hours. I thought something was seriously wrong and I was starting to get worried about her. She’s not overweight at all (1,60 mt x 53 kg) but at the rate she was going I didn’t know where it was going to all go. And then her period started and everything went back to normal…until thirty days later!

I read once that in the week before your menstrual cycle your body needs approximately 250 calories more per day, which is why we feel hungrier and more on edge the week before. After watching my daughter I started to pay more attention to my own hunger needs in the week before
My period. I always used to try and tame my hunger, ignoring it or pretending it wasn’t around when in actuality my body was just asking for some clean fuel so that it could go about the task of popping that monthly egg out. This week I gave it cherries, cantaloupe, bananas and an occasional
Ice cream. When it finally arrived it decided to stick around for eight whole days (I’m pretty sure I’m headed toward perimenopause…) so I just kept feeding it that extra bit. Surprisingly ( or maybe not…) the extra that I ate always worked out to about 250 calories.

My weight stayed the same this week and I’m happy with that.

1 comment:

anji said...

Hello Julia!

Glad to see that a little bit of observation can go such a long way! :)

And - great job on maintaining and not gaining :D

Yay you!

angela