Feeling fat days and PMS

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I've just read this in the Telegraph and it kind of annoyed me. Mostly because there is no comment section on this article and I couldn't give the journalist a piece of my mind.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/women-need-to-call-bulls-on-fat-days---fast/

To me a feeling fat day isn't about a random day when you can't find anything to wear. To me a feeling fat day is when I am pre-menstrual and my body is retaining excess fluid which makes me feel very comfortable when I'm naked let alone when I try and squeeze my bloated body into clothes that do not fit me for one week of every month. I've learned to adapt and I have gone shopping on feeling fat day and have bought larger sized clothes that acccommodate my extra weight for this week. This means I have two sets of clothes in my wardrobe and two sets of bras. Sometimes the bloating is so bad even the extra sized bras aren't big enough and I'm like, man alive am I really going to have to buy a couple of larger bras now!

Plus the hot flushes. I will cancel going out if I feel bloated and sweaty and I'm getting hot flushes that cause me to be soaked through before I leave the house. This isn't a trivial matter that I can fix by pulling my socks up and just getting over it. Oh, I am so angry with this journalist!

Well, this journalist is extremely lucky that her body doesn't do this to her, but it does it to me. This is like when people who don't suffer from hormonal mood swings don't believe that pms exists because they have never experienced it (I used to be one of those people) then it started happening to me and I understood.

I've tried cutting down on caffiene, I've tried taking evening primrose oil, I've tried taking the full pill and as a last resort the dr gave me antidepressants. I was still premenstrual, just not as unhappy or angry about it.

I actually think that I have PMDD (premenstrual disphoria disorder)

Here's a good articl by Alice Roberts on premenstrual disorders

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/20/mood-swings-more-than-pms-contraceptive-pill-alice-roberts

I haven't tried this kind of "mini pill" yet. It's on my to-do list. I have other health problems I'm dealing with at the moment.

I've read up on PMDD and it seems the advice is to keep a symptom diary for 3 months so that I can explain to the dr what my sypmtoms actually are.

http://www.pms.org.uk/support/gettingthemostfromyourdoctor

Wow, that article is completely asinine. Sounds like the author is trying to say we shouldn't stress so much over appearance, but instead of being encouraging, it's dismissive, trivializing, and invalidating. She completely misses the point that's it's not all about thinking you look fat, it's about how we FEEL, physically. "Fat" in this context is usually shorthand for going through hormonal changes, PMS, etc.

And yes it can feel bad enough to make you want to stay home from work, call off social engagements and just stay in bed. But sounds like the author has never experienced that, so rather than relating what it feels like, she turns it into a semantic, logical argument that you can't possibly "feel" that way. Interesting lack of empathy on display there.

Then there's the hypocrisy of her saying that this is "ridiculous myth that hurts women." I think she's part of the problem here, not the solution. PMS symptoms and other female hormonal issues have long been treated as myth, not taken seriously, or worse used as a reason to not to take a woman's ideas or emotions seriously ("must be that time of the month" "she's just going through the change" etc.)

As a result, a lot of women probably don't even take their own symptoms seriously, at least not unless/until the symptoms get more severe. So instead of really noticing or elaborating on how they feel, and why they feel that way, it just gets verbalized vaguely as "I feel fat today" or "I feel moody" or "I feel out of sorts." And there's still enough of a taboo about menstruation, that no woman is going to say she's declining a social event because she has PMS. It's not like saying you have the flu, or a headache. That's why it gets phrased as something like "feeling fat."

I tend to think of this as an almost universal experience for women, granted some never experience the severity of symptoms that we do, but doesn't every menstruating woman know what it's like to feel fat? It's just mind boggling to me that the author, a woman, does not immediately understand and relate to that experience.

I've had problems with fluid retention since I was a teenager, and these days I stay bloated to some extent most of the time. My dad has a lot of trouble with it too, and doctors have never figured out exactly why. There's probably some underlying cause of it that we both have. At one point my dad was told he had congestive heart failure, but they retracted that later. In any case, bloating can be a symptom of a serious health problem, and should never be trivialized.

My fluid retention is probably not entirely caused by PMS, but definitely gets worse with PMS. With my cycle, I typically gain and lose an extra 5 pounds of fluid. Sometimes 10 pounds if it's an unusually long or difficult cycle. My breasts go up a cup size, and my belly gets so big it makes me look pregnant. Usually about the time I start my period, it gets purged out very suddenly. I also tend to bleed heavy for the first two days of my period, so it basically feels like my insides are falling out.

My cycles have become irregular so I can't predict them the way I used to. So sometimes it just gradually dawns on me that I'm getting PMS symptoms, and then if I have a longer cycle it can drag on for several weeks until I feel like a tick about to pop. I start WISHING I would just bleed already, and that is really saying something because my periods are horrible.

I know the more bloated I am, the closer I am to starting my period, and when it's getting close I don't want to go out anywhere I don't have to. Sometimes, strangely, I have an elated mood right before my period, and it will make me want to do all sorts of things. But if I overexert myself in the days before my period, I have more severe pain during my period. I have to rest, whether I feel like it or not, and I also don't want to be caught out somewhere away from home when I start (sorry for the mental image everyone) gushing fluid from every orifice.

Probably needless to say but I also understand the problems of trying to clothe a bloated body. This is part of why I basically gave up on pants years ago. It's much easier to just wear skirts with elastic waistbands. I try to get clothes that are soft and stretchy enough to accommodate a lot of changes in weight. But some things still won't fit, or just feel really uncomfortable on bloated skin. I have sensory problems with clothes anyway, and with PMS it's exponentially worse.

I've had mornings where I just keep trying on one thing after another and can't find anything that fits or feels okay. And when I get to that point in my cycle, I also start feeling more disoriented and spacey than usual. It's really a surreal feeling, almost like I can't recognize myself, like my body is something alien and out of control.

The author's advice just sounds so flippant and ignorant:

Curled up on the couch in pajamas all alone? That's not self flagellation--that's heaven!

The problem is that socializing is priority one for the author, along with the blanket assumption that it applies to all.

I don't have fat days, just nauseous /cramping/and my entire body aches days. It feels the same as early labor pains, which I found surprising.

I'd rather wear something cute, put on makeup and go somewhere. Wearing pajamas all day is boring.

Lucky for me there are some cute local shops not too far away as well as a some more popular places like Ulta, JCPenney, Maurices and Target. The malls are a bit too far to go to alot.