I never like my monthly visitor, but with it's arrival yesterday (yes, on Valentine's morning), it means more than it's normal inconvenience. It means water weight gain and probably the breaks on the great weight loss I've been having the last two weeks. Of course, I will keep up everything. I'll exercise, eat right and so on, but I expect to see lots of stalling on the scale. After I lose this water weight gain. I could feel I was really bloated last night because my normally very nicely fitting size 18 pants were feeling snug in the abdomen. Only good thing about water weight gain, is that you know it's temporary.
While I'm totally over this whole monthly cycle thing and find it extremely inconvenient and annoying, I'm glad I still get a regular monthly period. Everything is still like clockwork and with seeing those shifts in my metabolism midcycle, I can see I'm still ovulating, which is also very good for my overall health. The longer I'm ovulating, the better it is for the health of my bones. As annoying as the month cycle is, hormone swings and all, it's good to still have it.
My mother was completely through menopause sometime while she was 42 years old - early 42 I think. So, there's another thing for me to fear about the age 42. While yes, it sounds great to never have to deal with it again, it's a bit scary with the fear of osteoporosis when you go through menopause so early. And I was getting worried, last year I was beginning to get hot flashes around the time of ovulation. Besides being a bit embarrassing to turn red for no apparent reason, it also scared me. At 40 and getting hot flashes? A little early for all that business.
But, since I've been taking my thyroid medicine, I believe it has stopped. I haven't noticed any hot flashes the last couple cycles. An under active thyroid can produce menopause like symptoms or even early menopause. With that under control, maybe I can stretch out these last few years of my fertility a bit longer for the health of my bones.
Oh, and why am I so frank about my bodily functions? Well, starting in college I was a health education peer educator for sexual awareness and sexual assault prevention. And in recent years I teach an Our Whole Lives class (a modern, more in depth sex ed class for teens) every few years. I believe it's important that we not be so hush-hush about normal body functions. Women are 50% of the population and most have menstruated, are menstruating or will menstruate and the men in our lives aren't and shouldn't be in the dark either. Hello? They have to live with our mood swings and deserve at least a head's up, right?
Anyway, that's that. I actually got a good night's sleep despite having a cold, and my head feels better this morning, so maybe my body will be fighting this one off quickly. That would be VERY nice. Wasn't thrilled with seeing the water weight gain this morning, but knew it would be there.
Stats for 2/15/11:
Beginning Weight: 255.6 Now: 243.8 (up 1.2 pounds in the last two days)
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