Straight up bacon bits and other terrible things I ate during my period this month
Welcome to the first installment of the HelloGiggles PMS Diaries, where I talk all about the most insane things I’ve done, I’ve eaten, or I’ve cried about while I’ve been in the throes of my period, from days before it starts, to the day it arrives (P-day), to all the way to the end. While I’m happy to let you in on my period probz, it’s all fun and games until someone eats a whole pizza (like me!), and then has to run an extra hour and a half the next day. But sometimes it’s better to just say our truths. To document our PMS struggles — you know, for posterity.
Every month, I’ll document the best and the worst of my PMS calamities and offer a little expert insight into why our bodies do what they do, need what they need, and what we can do about it.
Two days before P-Day: Can’t. Stop. Won’t. Stop peanut butter pieing.
I got up from my couch at midnight on a weekday to go to 24-hour market to buy the ingredients for a peanut butter pie that I usually only eat (or even think about) at Thanksgiving. I made that Thanksgiving pie in the middle of the night, all by myself, on a Wednesday.
This pie is so creamy, mousse-y, and rich, that you can only eat one slice before succumbing to the sugar sweats. It’s the kind of pie that makes you feel the literal sugar rush overtaking you, then the bottomless pit of the crash moments later. I’ve had to pause on Thanksgiving to go lie down after trying to eat a second slice.
I ate the whole pie in 36 hours. Which is to say, I ate the first piece off a proper plate, with a proper fork, but all subsequent pieces were consumed standing in front of the refrigerator, using my bare fingers to break off pieces and cram them into my mouth.
Luckily, shoving my dirty little paws directly into the pie discouraged anyone else from wanting a piece. Unluckily for me, I did get the sugar sweats and they lasted for two days. I can never eat peanut butter pie again. Well, maybe.
P-Day: Bacon — the universal solvent.
I did it to myself: I watched the Grey’s Anatomy finale on the same day I got my period, and I cried myself into dehydration. But I wasn’t going to let my rebelling body keep me from what I needed to soothe my spirits: bacon. However, there was no actual bacon in the house, so I resorted to turning up the Baco’s container and shaking the bits directly into my mouth. I blame Grey’s.
Who am I kidding? I can’t blame Grey’s, (well, maybe a little). I have to blame the bacon, because doesn’t bacon just solve everything? For a person who consistently eats her feelings, the trifecta of greasy, fatty, salty that is a strip of bacon makes everything better. For the moment of consumption, that bacon is solving my problems. Besides, everybody loves bacon. It’s science. false
Day 3: It’s Turkey, ok?!?!!
In an attempt to eat away the fight I had with my boyfriend earlier in the day, I grabbed the turkey sausage out of the fridge to make a turkey/lettuce wrap. However, as my emotional eating got the best of me, I stood over the frying pan, spooning scalding hot sausage into my mouth. Yes, it was so hot I could barely keep it in my mouth, but I persevered, and I ate the entire half pound of ground turkey sausage, shoveling into my mouth, trying not to burn my tongue, through tears, while standing over the stove.
But you don’t have to worry about my heart health, okay? It was just turkey.
Instead of blaming bacon, or Thanksgiving, or my clueless boyfriend, it’s really my hormones that make me do these things to myself.
Amanda Bontempo a nutritionist, author of the website Spill The Beans, and an ambulatory oncology dietitian at New York University Langone Medical Center, told Woman’s Health Magazine that during your period, the stress hormone cortisol skyrockets, while the hormone responsible for all the good feels, serotonin, takes a dive.
This is probably why I feel completely overwhelmed and upset when my Amazon package doesn’t arrive by 8 p.m. (Because they SAID it would!!!!).
Dr. Bontempo explains, “This fluctuation makes your body crave foods with lots of sugar and fat because they boost levels of serotonin and combat cortisol production, making you feel happier and more relaxed.”
That is, until you crash from all the gross stuff you put in your body. What I didn’t tell you about the peanut butter episode was that I had a major stomach ache for two days and thought I might be suffering from cream cheese poisoning. It was rough.
I’d love to hear your PMS confessions. Tell me about the times having a period was the best and the worst.