For most women periods is a struggle, either hitting on your mood swings or showing its impact on your health and body. While every woman has a different mechanism in terms of how each one’s body functions.
For a few women, periods is just another natural phenomenon and does not hit on one’s health or moods and few women for through a tough time suffering this phase. Has it ever happened and you felt like you put on excessive weight? Give it a thought! You need to understand that gaining weight during periods is a part of the process and it is natural. It is not that you have to take it too much to your head and worry about it.
This article strives to educate every woman about what is periods weight gain, causes, prevention and how to lose this extra weight. Read about it so that you can take the right care of yourself every month.
What Is Periods Weight Gain?
An effect of the hormonal changes in the body during periods leads to a woman putting on about 5 pounds more. Therefore the process of putting on weight during periods is periods of weight gain.
It is common for your body to get bloated and look heavy when your bleeding starts. These signs of a weight gain are seen in women a few days before she gets her periods given the drastic changes she witnesses mentally, emotionally and physically.
Causes Of Periods Weight Gain
A woman’s body does not function unlike a man’s, women have to balance themselves all through the problems they go through every now and then.
Periods of weight gain is always noticed at a woman’s lower abdomen. It makes a woman’s abdomen look all expanded, here are the possible causes as to why this happens to women during periods. Take a look at it!
Cause No 1 – Your Hormones Get Disturbed
You need to understand two different concepts in order to relate it to how you gain weight during periods. First, you need to understand that you gain weight during periods because there is excess water stored in the body that causes swelling in the stomach and breasts.
Why and how does the excess water gets stored?
There is a hormonal change in your body before and during periods, during this phase the estrogen and progesterone levels in your body come down and if this happens it is certainly going to have some impact on your body isn’t it?
Estrogen levels generally keep a check and control of all the fluid in your body. Just imagine, so when estrogen comes down because of hormonal changes it gets incapable of managing the fluid in your body and that water gets accumulated causing issues such as bloating and you feel like you have gained weight.
Thus, every function is inter-related and you have to understand the connection, first, there are hormones responsible to take care of some task in the body. If one of the hormones get disturbed by increasing or decreasing it will impact the body. Same goes here, estrogen goes down and lets excess water stay in the body and that further causes problems like swelling and bloating.
Cause No 2 – The Nuisance Of Stomach Bloating
There are two reasons that cause the bloating in your stomach during periods and make you feel like you have excessively put on weight. Take a look
Reason No 1 – Gastric issues
As your hormones go haywire during periods there are chances that it could hit on your digesting causing gastric issues leaving your stomach bloated.
Reason No 2 – Effects Of Prostaglandins
There is a release of a chemical named Prostaglandins, it is released from the uterus and when this happens your uterus tends to contract to cause bloating as well as severe pain in your stomach.
Thus, your stomach gets bloated just because your hormones hit on your gastrointestinal tract and when prostaglandins is released it affects your uterus.
Cause No 3 – Disturbed Metabolism With Increased Cravings
Overeating is one of the reasons to hit on your body and lead to weight gain. That said, before and during your periods you tend to crave to eat too much and your appetite is disturbed because of the reaction of the hormones estrogen progesterone and serotonin in the body.
About a week before your periods, the progesterone shoots up in the body and that results in you wanting to eat more food.
There are two more hormones estrogen and serotonin that contribute here. As you are already aware that the estrogen levels decrease during periods, serotonin is another hormone that is released with the help of estrogen. If estrogen decreases even serotonin goes down. Serotonin is the hormone responsible to keep up your mood and decreases your appetite. If serotonin decreases it will have an opposite effect of increasing your appetite instead of decreasing it.
As you have understood that when serotonin comes down and your craving increases and so does your appetite increase, this leads to weight gain during periods. Thus, your metabolism is affected because there are so many kayos with your cravings and appetite.
Cause No 4 – Digestion Issues
There is so much happening around the hormones that your stomach is certainly targeted before and during periods. As you have already understood that the progesterone increases and affects your stomach causing gastric issues and this has an impact on the digestion process.
Apart from this, you are aware that prostaglandins are released during periods, because of this there is a disturbance in the fluids of your body as well and this directly affects you leaving you with problems like diarrhoea and constipation.
Cause No 5 – A Fall In The Magnesium Content In Your Body
In regards to weight gain during periods, there is a possibility that a deficiency of a nutrient can be the cause of weight gain too. How? Here is how
Magnesium is that nutrient that keeps your body hydrated as well as takes care of keeping food cravings in control, especially sugary foods. That said, if magnesium in your body goes down it won’t be able to control your craving and it is believed that when there is not enough hydration in the body, your body craves to eat more and causes weight gain.
Thus, keeping the magnesium levels in control won’t make you crave for sugary foods and won’t lead to you gaining weight during periods.
Cause No 6 – Ditching Exercising
Yes, it is absolutely tough to exercise during or before periods because the stomach starts to feel heavy and the progesterone and estrogen are fluctuating by showing an increase in the body. One of the causes of a woman putting on weight during periods is because she does not exercise and sits to overeat, that’s again because of the hormones.
Thus, every hormone has some reaction and your body responding to those reactions leads to weight gain during periods.
Symptoms of Troublesome Periods
As you are now aware of how periods are caused, take a look at some of its other symptoms that makes it problematic for a woman
- Breast feel delicate
- Severe cramps, constipation or diarrhoea
- Sensitivity in the back and severe pain
- Headache
- Weakness
- Pimples
- Uncontrollable mood swings, feeling sad and crying for no reason
- Quickly getting frustrated
- No interest in having sex
- Difficulty in concentrating
- A problem in going to sleep
For sure every woman experiences some of these symptoms and goes through this phase with a lot of difficulties every month.
How to Lose Weight in Periods?
You do not have to worry too sceptical about how would you lose weight in periods, all you need to do is to stay aware that all the bloating reduces when your periods is almost coming to an end.
Therefore, your answer to how long does a period of weight gain last is just a few days until your periods is on.
Now here are some ways of how you can lose weight during periods
Way No 1
See to it that you are hydrated throughout your periods, the more you drink water, the more you will urinate and the more all the dirt from your body will come out and keep your body cool and help in reducing weight during periods. Apart from this, you would also keep away all the water retention problems and there would seem a lesser probability for your body to bloat. Try having warm water, this could have better give you better health benefits.
Way No 2
Eat every two hours make sure to have nutritious food, and small meals, cut down on eating foods that have high fats and calories. This will help you lose weight during periods
Way no 3
Do not sit still at one place, even though you have your periods it is okay to do slow walking. Take enough rest when you have cramps but rest of the time when you feel better you can slowly walk. See to it that you do not strain your body too much either.
How To Prevent Weight Gain During Periods?
Natural ways of preventing and curing any health concern is the safest and one of the healthiest ways to do so. The behaviour of our hormones and what happens internally is partially not in our control.
That said, partially we can help our body resist the harsh treatment of periods by taking good care of ourselves in prior to be able to resist the changes. Here is what you should know about preventing weight gain during periods
1. Do Not Miss Exercising
This is one of the most effective ways of increasing stamina and bettering the stamina in your body.
Go for a brisk walk, run for about 15 minutes or hit the gym for about 30 minutes every day and you will see that when you get your periods you won’t feel weak and feel the cramps pain much.
Start doing this from the first day of the month so that by the time you near your periods date you are all fit and fine.
2. Drink Tons Of Water
Staying hydrated is the solution to every and any kind of problem. Start drinking at least 3 liters of water every day. By doing this you are keeping your system cool with water, you are getting saved from feeling sick and going through severe pain during periods and the fluids in your body are managed better.
3. Avoid Processed Foods
You need to understand why to limit yourself or avoid eating processed foods, now this is because processed foods have more salt in them and taking in too much salt tends to increase make your body feel dehydrated. Thus, eat salt in the right quantity. Do not overeat it.
4. Add Magnesium Foods In Your Diet
As you know that magnesium has the benefit of keeping your body in control in regards to the unwanted cravings, see to it that much before your period’s date you eat foods such as nuts, fish, whole wheat, spinach, black beans etc to keep the magnesium nutrient sufficient in your body. The right amount of magnesium is one way of saving your body from gaining weight.
5. Big No-No To Caffeine And Drinks
It is not that you should never have drinks or caffeine, you can have it occasionally. However, you must try and avoid it a few days before your period’s date. The good you will notice is that the bloating in your stomach will come down and your stomach won’t come out too much as it used to come out when you had caffeine and drinks.
6. Stay Away From Foods That Will Cause Gastric Trouble
Keep away for any kind of food that will cause gastric issues in your stomach. Adapt to this practice of keeping away from foods that cause gastric issues at least a 20 days before your periods start.
That said, you need to eat foods that keep your digestive tract cool so that it does not show any negative impact on your stomach during periods.
Therefore, you should have buttermilk and sabja seeds once in a day, ginger, fennel seeds, yogurt and oats. These foods can help in keeping your entire body cool and you will successfully be able to avoid gas in your stomach during periods.
Summary
You begin to put on weight probably a week before periods and this extra body weight is just until you finish your periods
Specifically, the causes for weight gain during periods is because of the hormonal changes, because of excessive eating, not making sure to have a movement in the body, gastric issues and insufficient management of fluids in the body (water retention).
The biggest symptom of periods is that your stomach gets bloated, you tend to have different body aches and your state of mind sort of goes for a toss. What can the maximum happen is that these symptoms can be taken care of.
One can prevent weight gain or lose weight during periods by keeping the body hydrated throughout, eating foods that are magnesium sufficient, staying away from caffeine and drinks and regularly exercising to keep the body healthy and good.
Ease out from the thought of weight gain during periods, eat right and do right to stay healthy!
