My Food Binge Every Month, Premenstrual Bingeing

Every month for about 3-5 days I will binge on food. Here’s what one day of binge eating was like for me this week.

1st. Meal I start off with a bowl of cinnamon raisin oatmeal. I also do a big helping of it because I’m starving from the moment I wake up.

2nd. Meal An hour later I’m still hungry so I will scramble some eggs to tide me over until lunch.

3rd. Meal Need to satisfy my craving for a big bowl of Vietnamese Noodle Soup so I pick up the girls from after school and we head to our favorite Pho restaurant. By now I’m starting to feel discomfort, my stomach feels a little tight and I’m sluggish. Yet I order a Taro and boba shake to go for the ride home.

4th Meal I need a snack before dinner and it needs to be something starchy, salty and fried. Too lazy to go buy french fries I raid my pantry and find the hidden bag of Cheddar Sour Cream Ruffles and mindlessly snack of it and wash it down with a soda.

5th Meal Finally it’s dinner time and I’m starving! Problem is I’m too tired and lazy to cook so I send my husband out for In-N- Out burger.

6th Meal Midnight snack before bed will 6 Oreos and milk

I try every month not to fall into this spiral of junk food, but I fail 9 of 10 times. I also spend the rest of the month making up for it by eating really clean and working out. It’s the strangest feeling to have an insatiable appetite. I will eat and eat until my stomach is full, yet I’m still feeling hungry. This is also the time where I crave foods that I typically would not eat, like fast food and process junk. I hate soda, yet I drink it at this time.

I asked my doctor a few years back about why my body goes to this process every month right before my period, and he didn’t really have a real answer for me. He did suggest to eat more protein when this happens because it takes longer to digest and I will feel fuller longer. That helped a little bit, but not by much.

I did my own research on it and found out that what I go through and what many women go through is sometimes called premenstrual bingeing. It’s of course all to do with our hormones. You see a women’s body is ovulating 12-14 days before her period and estrogen and progesterone trigger a hunger response. It’s mother’s natures way of telling you that you  need this extra energy because your body might go through a pregnancy. Then right before period our bodies go into overdrive increasing our basal metabolic rate up to 15% to fuel the process of menstruation, thus requiring more calories.

Here is my simple take on all this. We’re hungry during ovulation because our bodies are preparing for the possibility of pregnancy, we’re even hungrier if we don’t get pregnant and our body are hard at work building endometrium lining, then we bleed out for another 5 days, and  lets not mention the weird cravings during our period too! So my estimation, women only feel normal about one week of the month! Just lovely!

There are a lot of advice on how help with cravings like snacking on fruit when you have sweet tooth, but honestly when I’m really craving something there is no substitute until I satisfy it. I do feel like it is starting to catch up on me and I’ve put on a few pounds. It was a lot easier to work out the problem in my twenties than now in my thirties. So I will try to do some more research on this and find a better solution to this monthly problem.

Here’s one of my epic food bingeing that cost me about $250. It was last year for our 10 Year Anniversary. We went to Ruth Chris, a fancy steak house restaurant. For just the two of us, we ordered the 40oz porterhouse steak, lobster mac & cheese, sweet potato casserole, cream of spinach and not pictured is my crab cake appetizer, salad and dessert.

And some more note worthy binge fest meals