The Bloody Truth

Even though I am female I get completely grossed out when women talk to me about periods. Yes I should probably grow up and get over it but there’s a reason I didn’t go to medical school and study gynaecology.

Here goes…Periods and exercise. The bloody truth.  So once a month females go through a brief spell of bleeding out of their vaginas. What’s worse than hearing about this is the fact that when you’re on your period all you want to do is tell people. Yes I’ll have a diet coke with that and my flow is ridiculously heavy this instant.

Throw your handbags at me if you want but I feel we use this as an excuse – own up how many times have you barked abuse at your partner then blamed it on being pre-menstrual. I actually threw a saucepan at an ex when he finished my maltesers. Fucker.  “But I’m not a crazy bitch I’m premenstrual." 

Weigh-in day at the Circuit Factory and the amount of females who say ‘my weight won’t have changed because I’m on my period’. Well the fact that your diet has been shit may be the underlying cause of your 2kg weight gain.

I worked at a Health Club in the UK and there was a lady who wanted to sign up with a discount for the 12 weeks of the year where she would not be able to use the gym due to menstruation. She classed this as her ‘disability’.

This is for those of you who have been kindly describing to me in great detail the life and times of your vagina.

So like an overconfident teenage boy – let’s break it down…

I've been bleeding for 7 days and I'm not dead yet

During your monthly cycle, the levels of Oestrogen in your body cause your uterus to thicken in preparation for ‘the egg’ becoming fertilized. When this doesn’t happen you shed the lining over 4 to 7 days, if timed poorly you ruin your best pair of white silk knickers along the way.

Why am I such a moody bitch?

4 – 5 days before your period your hormones are all over the place. Oestrogen levels rise and fall making you feel emotional, depressed, irritable, angry…

You may experience increased insulin resistance which means the glucose you eat is not able to enter your cells and stays in your blood –  your brain produces more insulin and you crave more sugars as your cells are not receiving the glucose.  These ups and downs in blood sugar levels will affect your mood as well as your energy levels.

Eat a balanced diet to stabilize blood sugar levels and avoid unnecessary spikes.

I’m pre-menstrual and all I want to do is eat mars bars – in fact I’d replace my tampons with a box of mars bars if that means I get my fix without compromising the diet.

Just before your period you go through what’s known as the ‘luteal phase’. Your Oestrogen levels drop (as you have an adequately lined uterus) as do your Serotonin levels.

Serotonin – other than sounding like a 80s pop band– is a neurotransmitter in the brain that regulates your mood. It controls your mood – it calms you down and makes you happy.

Your body craves high carb foods that promote serotonin production.

Chocolate – contains a chemical that releases serotonin in the body and also enhances secretion of endorphins – another feel good chemical.

It’s proven that women have a harder time than men replenishing serotonin levels - women think they have a harder time than men full stop.  This does not give you the green flag to roll around in baked goods. 2 squares of 70% cocoa dark chocolate will suffice.

It feels like I’ve been punched in the ovaries - I will punch you in the face if you make me run on the treadmill.

Endorphins are also released during exercise. Which is why exercise is actually recommended during your period.

Regular exercise limits PMS which helps with similar symptoms during your period. Getting the right amount of exercise should help to reduce period pain and ease cramps.

Will following the Gwyneth Paltrow Macrobiotic Twat Diet help?

There are all sorts of supplements claiming to help with PMS as they improve your mood.

B Vitamins – help your body to generate energy from food. They help form red blood cells – a deficiency can lead to anaemia which leaves a person tired and zombie like. But don’t get spending your pay pack down boots on supplements – if you eat a balanced diet rich in protein and leafy greens you should get all the essential vitamins and minerals your body needs.

I’ve gone up 5 pounds, therefore the diet isn’t working and I may as well sit at home eating biscuits

Some women retain water before their period. It’s not exactly known why but they do.  You can help by avoiding foods high in sodium that prevents your body ridding itself of excess water. Salty foods like tinned soups, condiments, soy sauce, processed food. 

Another great way to get rid of excess salt and water is to sweat it out with exercise.

I’ve been through 10 super sized tampons and am contemplating putting a mattress between my legs

Oestrogen is responsible for ensuring the lining of your uterus is thick ready for fertilization. The thicker the lining, the heavier your period.  Excess of oestrogen causes Menorrhegia (heavy bleeding).

Over exercise actually causes Amenorrhea which is when you stop having periods altogether as you have such little body fat.

Try taking NSAIDS like Ibuprofen which inhibit the hormone in the uterus that helps to shed the lining and also helps relieve cramps.

Tampons at the ready

If the Williams sisters can don their tennis whites and be filmed legs akimbo on the tennis courts mid flow then what’s stopping the rest of us. You wouldn’t find Rebecca Addlington dropping out of the 800m freestyle and forfeiting her Olympic Gold Medals due to her ‘monthlies’. Even a small issue like public urination won’t stop Paula Radcliffe in her tracks never mind a bit of period pain.

Try being proactive in this situation rather than dwelling on something you can’t change. Studies show that women who exercise regularly have lighter and shorter periods.

Do yourselves, your partners and any poor sod that catches you having an emotional moment a favour. Ditch the excuses and get to the gym instead of hugging your hot water bottle and gorging on chocolate. 

Why are women such stupid bitches?

Possibly the most frustrating topic I am confronted with on a daily basis – by BBM, on facebook, text message, email, sky writing – and always from a female - is weight.

What is weight or body mass? 

This is how much you - including anything that happens to be on the scales with you, whether that be your clothes, shoes,  ‘dense bones’, a stronger gravitational pull – yes some Ben and Jerry’s addict in denial came to this conclusion once.

One such common question that makes me want to dramatically punch a wall: “I weighed myself this morning and I’ve gained since last night…why?”

Well perhaps you suffer from sleep walking and are blissfully unaware that you are emptying the entire contents of the fridge down your gullet on a night? Err... probably not – but don’t rule it out.

What is this fascination with the number on the scales? 

This is the manifestation of obsessive behaviour for 99% of the female population.

When you weigh yourself you need to consider these things:

•         Have you just eaten a 6 lb steak?
•         Have you just necked 3 litres of water?
•         Perhaps you are retaining water; were you drinking alcohol last night? have you eaten a lot of salt?
•         Are you big boned? Stop listening to your mother you sad bastard.
•         Is it that time of the month? If so please do tell me about it in the greatest possible detail.
•         Are you dehydrated – have you just trained? Have you been sat in the sauna for 3 hours?
•         Are you wearing the equal amount of bling to Mr. T?

Well ladies – and no I’m not being sexist because the fact is men just don’t give a shit (which is another thing you have to consider).

Personally I don’t weigh myself. Last time I did I had gained 4.5kg. Did this bother me? Did I feel the need to run into oncoming traffic on Sheikh Zayed Road and end it all there and then?

Not really. I hadn’t had to go out and buy a new wardrobe, all my clothes fitted me exactly the same. Probably better.

No I did not own a faulty pair of scales. I had recently changed my training and gained a lot of lean muscle. Muscle actually weighs more than fat. Throw a chicken breast and a fist full of fat into water and guess what?... the fat floats.

Not so handy if you are a chicken that can’t swim but does that make sense at least?

You can in fact change your body composition and gain weight without putting on size. 

Think of gaining muscle as being compact like a stone, and having fat being like a balloon – bigger but lighter.

BMI is a bitch. 

This is used by the likes of weight watchers and any equivalent fat fighters club. It’s a simplified way of showing you that if Jonny eats 5 digestive biscuits and Mary eats 23 then there will be no biscuits left and Mary is a fat slag.

BMI does work in some cases. If you are actually morbidly obese, your BMI will be over 30.

If you are a 6 foot solid rugby player with the body fat percentage of a lean stick then 1. Send me your number and 2. Your BMI will also be on the overweight to obese end of the scale.

So does this mean the majority of the England rugby team qualifies for a gastric band on the NHS? Probably, but that's not the issue.

BMI does not take into account body composition. Just like the scales it considers only the weight and not the matter.

On to my next point.

Every woman has an ideal weight. Usually one that is completely unrealistically obtainable. I have met women who have been under 7.5 stone before and still not happy with their bodies. In fact they looked ill and about 7 years old. Why this obsession over a number? This is where women are their own worst enemies. It’s those insecure mother f*ckers who have to be the skinniest or the lightest of have the biggest boobs or the biggest lips or the most exotic vajazzle.

With women it’s a competition like the cool group at school. You are only allowed in if you lose your virginity at 13 and can neck a whole bottle of white lightening in one go.

Even in this day and age where we have the privilege of modern technology and hundreds of years of scientific research, are women a slave to the scales.

This is sad. 

Thus justifying my belief that all women, including myself, are actually mental.

Perhaps it is time to review our role models. I like to think we saw past the Kate Moss painfully thin look when she started snorting cocaine with notorious drug addicts. This is not cool and it’s definitely not clever. 

More deserving and appropriate are the Jessica Ennis and Natalie Coughlin's of the world – female athletes with smoking hot bodies – real muscles formed by eating a healthy diet and  dedicating time and energy to some serious exercise. 

It’s the women who have these bodies that should be celebrated and put up on a pedestal, not emaciated idiots with the vitamin deficiency of a sailor from the 1600s.

Give me my 4.5 kg and a sexy squatters bum over underweight on the BMI with a bony behind. 

Now sod off with the compulsive weighing – if you eat clean and train hard and generally look after your health you can be happy and confident with peace of mind that you are mentally and physically respecting yourself.

Lifestyle vs Mortality

Why Do you Exercise?

Do you get called a ‘weirdo’ for getting up at 6 am for a run? Perhaps you have an unsupportive partner who questions the time you spend at the gym, choosing dumbbells over a night in with a chinese in front of the telly. Do your friends roll their eyes if you opt for a salad over steak? Tell them to BACK OFF.

The Facts

Keeping fit is a lifestyle choice. Personally, I want to have a long and prosperous life. As long and as healthy as possible. Now I can’t stop myself getting run over by a bus tomorrow- but there are other things that I can do to lower the risks of an early grave.

Consider natural disasters, poverty and famine where people lose their precious lives in the most unfair situation. How can we possibly put our own lives at risk with self inflicted poor health?

Depending on your religious views we each have one life and one body. Two main killers or causes of a shorter lifespan are Cardiovascular Diseases and Type 2 Diabetes. There are certain risk factors associated with each that you control, meaning  the way you live your lifestyle directly impacts your vulnerability to these diseases.

Dad – do you want to live to see your kids grow up or do you want a third pork pie?

Poor diet and low activity levels put you at a higher risk. The National Health Service recommends 20 mins of moderate exercise a day to combat this – what’s moderately walking to the fridge and back going to cure really? These are half hearted attempts to alert the public of the dangers of inactive lifestyles.

In 2006 in the UK a poll of 350,000 people showed that less than half did any activity or exercise. Even worse, 95% of the UK do not manage to achieve the recommended 20 mins of fridge hopping moderate activity per day. Scary.

Don’t just join a gym – join the longer life club.

I’m not just talking about fatties here. Being underweight is just as unhealthy. You can have a skinny person with ridiculously high cholesterol levels just as susceptible to a heart attack as someone who is morbidly obese.

Drugs

Never mind being off your tits on LSD. The UK health service has royally fucked this one.  For example, you have a young girl who is overweight. She goes to her doctor to tell him she is unhappy. Does he prescribe her a healthy dose of exercise and provide sensible dietary advice? Or does he make the drugs companies happy by dosing out Prozac by the sackful.

Sadly in many cases it is the latter.

The same goes for lowering cholesterol, blood pressure even diet pills that actually make you shit yourself if you eat fatty foods. Has modern society really been reduced to considering adult nappies rather than good old fashioned self control.

E is for Endorphins

Why is fitness important?

Believe it or not, some people actually enjoy exercise. For me going for a long run is therapeutic, it helps me clear my head, plan my day, it fills me with a sense of achievement and the endorphins I get are a natural high that sets me up for the day.  I feel good knowing I am doing good for my body – maintaining a high level of fitness and increasing my lifespan.

One of the important benefits of exercise is to lower both resting and exercise heart rate. Recent studies show that a lower resting heart has a direct impact on morbidity and mortality. There is now scientific proof that having a low resting heart rate, and subsequently a lower diastolic blood pressure, actually reduces the strain / damage to blood vessels  surrounding the heart due to relatively prolonging diastolic blood flow (flow in the circulation as the heart relaxes) versus systolic flow which is more turbulent. The calmer flow means less risk of damaging plaque and causing a heart attack or stroke. And what are the experts prescribing – a fucking pill.

Value your life – train hard and eat clean.

Carrots?

I’m not saying you have to live like a saint. I don’t exist on a diet of raw carrots. I enjoy the occasional drink – I just don’t have a pint with every meal . Moderation is key. If you lead a healthy lifestyle 80% of the time you can afford to relax 20 % of the time. The road to a healthier lifestyle especially with regard to weight loss is a longer process but once you are there you can afford to relax a bit more.

I work out.

Exercising is not just about vanity and looking good in lycra. It’s about bettering your quality of life. If getting off your arse means you get to live a longer life on earth then get moving.