Blog Disclaimer: I will be discussing girl issues in this post - I will try to not go into too much detail
I've been toying with the idea of writing this post for months now. Obviously, it mostly comes to me around the time that I am PMSing, but then I question myself...do I really want people to know THAT much about my life?? So then I think I'll write it on a week that I'm not affected so it will throw people off and they won't necessarily know when I am/am not PMSing...but, it's not something I really think about if it's not currently happening. But, over the last two weeks it has had a significant impact on me - more so than usual. So, I thought that it was well past time for me to broach this sensitive topic.
It's widely known and understood that men lose weight faster than women. Sometimes it can be a struggle for me - comparing my weight loss to those of my male co-workers sometimes makes me feel like I'm not doing as well as I should be. I know that it isn't a fair comparison, that it shouldn't get me down, and that I am doing quite well for myself. I know all of these things, but that doesn't stop me from getting frustrated sometimes. Some of you may have noticed that I didn't post last week - I promise that that was more out of lack of time than it was because my week didn't go well (though it didn't).
For any of my male readers who don't know, every woman's PMS is different...in fact, every month is different! For me, it's usually that I'm excessively tired, I want to be by myself, sometimes there's cramping, I want to eat just about everything in sight, and the worst of all (in my book) is that my boobs hurt...way bad. Like I said, each month is different so I don't experience all of those things every month. I would say that the two most common for me are the tiredness and the sore boobs. And I'm sure that you can understand why those two things can be quite detrimental to my weight loss. Being tired, it's obviously more difficult to motivate myself to exercise...and even if I do, it makes it more difficult to accomplish! The tender boobs is much worse than it sounds. Not only does it just make you uncomfortable most of the time, can you imagine running or dancing when it hurts to even touch them?? I mean, I think just about any woman would agree that one of the best feelings in the world is taking off your bra at the end of the day - but even THAT hurts! And, most of symptoms of PMS can be helped by taking something along the lines of Midol or Pamprin - but tiredness and sore boobs are not covered.
One of the other symptoms, that I USUALLY don't have a major problem with, is water weight. Note, I said major. You can probably track most of my minor weight gains to being in the vicinity of my week of PMS. But, I've been fortunate that since I started in January, I've not really had much of a gain more than a pound at a time...so it clearly hasn't been a major problem...until now. This is probably TMI, but I don't care, I think it's important that people understand - last week I started my period on Monday...I weigh in on Tuesday...and the first two days are usually the worst. I knew that it wasn't going to be a great week so when I stepped on the scale and she told me I gained, I wasn't surprised - and I told her "yeah...I'm having a girl week". I was, however, not prepared for watching her write +3.2 in my tracker. When I expressed my shock at the number, she told me that the average weight gain for a woman during PMS is 2-4 pounds. That's an average of a 2-4 pound gain EVERY MONTH for some women!
Even though I knew that the primary reason was because of the PMS, it was still pretty disheartening. I knew that I needed to do better to get back on track - and I did do better, but still probably not as well as I should have.
On the positive side, I realized that it's been a couple of weeks since my foot hurt AND my awesome friend asked me to do the 2014 Disney marathon with her and two other women! It's in January 2014 so I have a little over a year to get myself in top running shape! After I realized that my foot hadn't hurt in quite a while, and that I hadn't been working out nearly as much as I should, I decided to go for another run. This time, I was a little smarter. I did another four miles, but instead of run/walk/run/walk I did walk/run/walk/run. After I walked the first mile, I stopped and stretched (paying good attention to my feet), then I ran mile number two. Mile three was another walk, but it was split in half by my trip inside CVS (ironically, I went to CVS to renew my allergy meds lol). Mile four was probably the hardest of all...it was almost entirely uphill. There was one point that I needed to stop and walk - but I allowed myself and didn't feel bad for it. I walked about .15 mile, but once I got on level ground again, I started running again and made sure that I actually ran a whole mile despite my stop. Then I was sure to stretch again...also making sure to take care of my feet. And good news - they didn't hurt today!! Now, my legs were a bit sore - but that's to be expected when you consider that yesterday was exactly one month from my last run (which I didn't know until after I'd done it, but was pretty serendipitous).
The good news is that when I weighed in today, I'd lost my water weight from last week...quite the weight off of my shoulders! (no pun intended) But, it was quite the scare that I needed to get myself back on track. I know that I need to start recording my food again, I need to make sure that I'm getting in my exercise, and I need to start making myself a priority again. Especially at the beginning of the year, it's so easy to get wrapped up in work and lost track of what's important to ME. As selfish as it may feel, I have to make me a priority again.
Initial weight: 257.2
Week 35: +3.2
Week 36: -3.4
Total weight loss: -52.6
Current weight: 204.6
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