Supermarket meatballs and processed parmesan

The true test of any diet is always, always the point at which a woman gets her period.

Sorry if anyone reading this is uncomfortable reading this next part, but you’ll just have to deal with it because I refuse to cave in to the mullahs who say that a woman’s period is never to be mentioned. If it’s pertinent, I will mention it, out loud. I will even call it what it is: a period. I may even use its technical, medical name: menstruation. I know, it’s revolutionary.

I have already lost just under six pounds in two weeks and I plan to keep going until the holidays when I will reward myself with a trip to some place warm, where I will sunbathe and show off my new , even hotter body. But back to the topic of monthly bleeding from your vagina, or getting your period.

As anyone whose ever been a woman, or met a woman, or who is currently a woman with a working uterus will confirm, the duration of menstruation is an interesting 5-7 days. Once a month from the ages of roughly 13 to 50, a woman’s body decides it wants to kill her. Accurately, it decides to start the potential baby-making processes from the woman end of things; every month your uterus gets all excited that maybe today, maybe this is the day, actually the few days when you might decide to reproduce.

In preparation for this, each of your two ovaries decides to release an egg. These eggs meander to the fallopian tubes, then roll down your tubes and implant themselves in the uterus – if they get fertilised by a sperm, of course, and only one of them can. There they glory in their newfound home and start growing into half a version of yourself and use the build-up of coagulated blood and nutrients in your uterine lining – which has been building thanks to hormones and such for the past few weeks or so – for sustenance as they evolve. Sounds rather alien-like. Creepy, right?

If they don’t meet up with a member of the spermatozoa persuasion they just, I don’t know…go away. Melt, disintegrate, like sugar in the rain. And this, along with the raw meat-like insides they were supposed to munch on (the uterine lining) spend the next week making you feel like you want to die. The uterus wants to get the gross stuff out so it causes cramping of the muscle. There are chemical processes that go on involving Science which cause nausea, constipation, bloating, vomiting, headaches and leprosy. Well, maybe not leprosy. It just feels like that.

Let’s not say leprosy. Let’s say…INCREDIBLE, UNDENIABLE AND IRRESISTIBLE FOOD CRAVINGS, the likes of which you’ve never had before. You can be the kind of person who can easily go without eating chocolate, or chips or pasta for 25 days a month. You could be a punk rock vegan who weeps thinking about the exploitation of bees or a strict vegetarian yogi for whom “eating clean” is your personal mantra. You could be a person who prefers to eat all organic, free range eggs and who wouldn’t touch a meat product who you weren’t on a first name basis with.

Once your period hits, its going to take more than an inversion or a show to get your mind off the primal urge you have to stick your face in a  bowl of gluten filled spaghetti, covered in canned pasta sauce, and drowning yourself in supermarket meatballs and processed parmesan.

I have become a completely irrational person when it comes to my period in a way that almost scares me. If it wasn’t temporary, this momentary madness where certain foods were concerned, I would think I had a serious problem. Once those cravings hit, cravings I feel absolutely driven by, I have to exhibit superwoman strength to keep myself on an even keel. One side of the boat is the pasta, the other side of the boat is a triple layer fudge cake with fudge filling and fudge icing garnished with fudge. I could eat an entire pot of pasta for lunch and an entire chocolate cake for dinner. And I actually have done.

Five days in every month my body needs carbs and fat and sugar for the mythical baby it thinks I may be gestating. It has a NEED TO FEED. It wants to make sure this non-existent zygote has food. It wants to ensure the literally fantastic embryo is well-supplied. It is fighting against all biology to try to stave off those urges. I tell you, you have to work really hard not to just become a Great White in human form…quietly salivating, roving the aisles of your local supermarket, teeth barely covered, hunting the corners of the local shop, grabbing boxes of macaroni and cheese and snatching the last box of eclairs from a horrified old lady.

So this week, my period should start. And with it there will be a sacrifice demanded. Will I be able to hold off? We shall see. Fuck the diet. I’m going to eat a whole wheel of cheese now. I’m going to own this shit.

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