You know what’s scary about this age? You can’t even enjoy your down time. You’re socially convinced that every moment you’re spending not doing anything is wasted time. That you always should be working towards something. We forget that it’s okay to have a breather and simply take time to yourself.
You have no idea how much I needed to see this. Thank you.
– The reason you get extra hungry before and during your period is because your body is physically burning more calories, sometimes as many as 300 more per day for the duration of your period, with an elevated BMR (base metabolic rate) in the days before it starts. So no, you’re not being weird or gross or undisciplined if you want to eat a bunch of chocolate – your body is just burning the same amount of calories you’d expend in 25 minutes on a crosstrainer to shed your uterine lining.
– This is especially important to remember if you’re already, for whatever reason, eating fewer calories per day than it takes to maintain your current weight, which is about 2000 for an adult, though it can be dangerous to have much less than 1300 per day. Think of it like this: if you’re eating 1600 calories a day out of a potential healthy 2000, and your body suddenly wants an extra 300, you’re not craving 1900, but 2300, which is the difference between wanting a chocolate bar and a slice of toast, and wanting an entire extra meal. So, I say again: DO NOT feel bad about wanting to eat more during your period. Your body is working hard, and needs fuel!
– Paradoxically, despite the rate at which you’re burning calories, you’re also retaining water, which can make you both feel and weigh as heavier. Speaking personally, I’ve noticed my weight fluctuate by as much two kilos (4.5 pounds) before and after a period, rising before and during, then dropping sharply afterwards. So if you’re struggling with body image or weight issues, this is a suboptimal time at which to get on the scales: the result you’ll get will only reflect a temporary reality, not your actual progress, and is therefore unhelpful.
– If, for whatever reason, you’re self-conscious about easing your cramps with a hot water bottle where other people can see it, whether at home or work, consider using a plastic soft drink bottle filled with hot/boiling water. Even if you put it openly on your lap, instead of tucking it under a shirt or into a front hoodie pocket, it will just look like a regular bottle of water, and any relief is better than none!
– No, it’s not weird if you shit more during your period than usual, either. The hormones your body releases that make your uterus to contract and release sometimes end up in the bowel, particularly if you happen to produce a lot of them, which means that bowel contracts and releases, too.
– If anyone tries to make a dumbass sexist joke about your being more [insert stereotypically negative feminine quality here] while on your period, you can tell them that actually, menstruation raises testosterone levels, not oestrogen. (Telling them to go fuck themselves with an angry cactus can also be therapeutic.)
– The cramps and lower back pain often experienced during menstruation, when the uterus expels its contents and your hips shift slightly wider to accommodate it, are a microcosm of what happens during actual labour. So yeah: it can hurt!
– That being said, we’ve culturally accepted the idea of massive period pain as normative to such an extent that many people don’t realise their pain is a sign that something’s wrong. Despite how common they are, a lot of conditions like PCOS and endometriosis are poorly understood in terms of their etiology, which means it can be hard to get an accurate diagnosis. But if your periods regularly have you screaming, vomiting or totally incapacitated, get checked out: you shouldn’t have to just shut up and endure because it’s ‘meant’ to feel like that. It’s not, and there are ways to manage it.
– As well as being a form of birth control, you can take the pill to control or stop your period. When used to prevent menstruation, the pill tricks the body into thinking you’re already pregnant, which stalls your cycle (and stops you from actually getting pregnant). Though some people worry that it’s unnatural not to menstruate for long periods of time, or for your body to ‘feel’ pregnant for so long, it’s also important to remember that, after an actual pregnancy, especially if you breastfeed, your period won’t resume right away. This is called
lactational amenorrhea, which can work as a form (though not, I hasten to add, a 100% reliable form) of natural birth control. Basically, it means your body is focussed on producing milk for an existing child, such that you can’t easily conceive another one until the first child is weaned. While this varies from person to person, the important thing to remember is that there’s ample biological precedent for stopping menstruation for long periods of time whether you’re pregnant or not, and that choosing to do so via the pill doesn’t make you unnatural, nor does it cause your body to do something it otherwise wouldn’t or couldn’t.
In conclusion: periods suck, but knowing how and why they work and how best to manage them can make them suck slightly less. So go ye forth, and be educated!
As someone who had to have a uterus removed for severe endometriosis, I will always reblog this sort of information. Don’t sit and endure, and don’t listen to the twatwaffles who insist that the pain is normal or you’re just overreacting. It isn’t just in your head and you are in legitimate pain.
Also!!!! From personal experience: if you find you get really unbearably tired/physically exhausted and depressed for no discernible reason right before/during the heaviest part of of your period, consider asking your doctor about getting your blood checked!!
I assumed for years that being exhausted and depressed to the point of barely being able to move from bed or focus on anything during my period was just part of the normal suffering, and then when I mentioned it to my doctor while troubleshooting for possible depression she said “Hmm… that’s uh, not normal.” and made me get a test to check for blood disorders. Turns out my blood iron levels were at like, critical rock-bottom (aka I now had severe anemia) due to me having pretty heavy periods for such a small person! I was basically living a week of my life every month like a person dying of severe blood loss, exhausted because my cells weren’t getting the oxygen they needed to make energy. She said it probably had been that way for a long while and getting worse over time, and I had no idea, because nobody in health class or anywhere else had ever told me it was a thing that might happen!
Trying to get birth control sorted out such that it minimizes/eliminates my period is still a work in progress, but in the meantime I’ve also been on (relatively inexpensive, like $10 buys 105 of them) daily over-the-counter oral iron supplements which in six months brought my blood back to healthy iron levels and allowed me to function with something more like a normal human level of energy again, no matter what time of the month it is!
If your period is causing side effects that are severely interfering with your ability to live your life, even if you think that might be “normal” please talk to a healthcare expert about it if you can! There are more options to help with this stuff than you might think, and way way more layers to the subject than anyone ever taught you in middle school sex ed.
Being able to sleep in almost any situation or position
Irresistible urge to chase squirrels and rabbits
Hating the vacuum cleaner
Wanting to do everything with friends
Loudly and repeatedly announcing to housemates that someone is at the door
Long, shouted conversations to other werewolves across the neighborhood (bonus points at 2am)
Taking advantage of any and all free food
Werewolf-vampire solidarity
Fighting any animal that trespasses into the backyard
Boundless energy
Too much energy
Eating out of the trash if it smells tasty
Being bad at sports because you don’t want to let anyone else take the ball from you. Then destroying the ball in front of everyone because you want to make a point
Trying to fight things 10x your size like a fucking idiot
Being unable to hold a grudge for more than a few hours
Trying to make people feel bad for you over mundane things that aren’t actually that bad. And somehow succeeding.
Snoring
Needing to try a bit of your friends’ food, even if you’ve tried it 5645674 times before and have never once liked it
Getting way too friendly with random strangers
Being in a love-hate relationship with water
Digging. For no reason.
Thinking you’re a badass despite being a hyperactive ball of emotions and hedonism
Loud sobbing while pressing yourself up against the sliding glass door at your friends who locked you out because they were tired of your bullshit and wanted some goddamn peace and quiet
Okay this one is a gem:
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Loudly and repeatedly announcing to housemates that someone is at the door
So most of these are very dog oriented, which makes sense to me, since dogs are just wolves that have co-evolved with us for thousands and thousands of years BUT I wanted to add a few that are wild wolf based:
Multigenerational households!
Kids get really excited when someone comes home with groceries
“I can HELP put away the food!” “Oh, and have you whisk away the ice cream like last week? I’m fine, dear.”
Love to travel and follow food trends
Mostly very social and must have roommates/family/significant other/kids/friends around
However, not uncommon to travel alone for periods of time, especially after leaving home
Big friendly communal meals with lots of ritual around who gets served in what order
“Let grandma take her pick of the turkey first. It’s respectful, and she won’t take kindly to you cutting the line.”
Full pantries, stocking up on basics, the kind of people who always have extra oatmeal, or batteries, or a jump cable
Can hold conversations using body language and eye contact without saying a word
Cuddlers, especially with the social group
Yelling to get everyone to gather, and phone chains for anyone who lives further away
Lots of singing, the pack has a bunch of favorite songs that everyone knows by heart, and some may be song writers
“Can you smell this? Does this smell weird? Does this smell good?”
Lots of candles and incense with unusual scents
Passing houses and farms and land down through generations
Love home renovation
Communal child care and sometimes communal nursing
Kids are all really into wrestling and being outside
When someone is ready to leave the household, the younger they leave the further they tend to travel. Someone who leaves at 18 might go to another country, but someone who leaves at 26 might just move a town away.
Whether someone moves far or close to home, it’s not unusual to move back in at home a few times before settling down
“You know the futon is always open for you. Your cousins are in your old bedroom, but you’re always welcome!”
Kinda grumpy about neighbors pushing property boundaries
“Why do they have to let the damn mulberry tree hang over OUR driveway?”
Good endurance runners
Late walks at night, naps in the middle of the day
Really playful, especially with kids
Lots of rough housing and board game nights!
I’ve been looking for the one with the wolf-aspects added for a while and I found it again! Reblogging for A+ extra wolfy content!
i love the friendships between terry and charles and jake and i feel like their interactions highlight the fact that jake legit crushes on dudes because how he responds to them is different
this
is different
than this:
the second to last gif is Jake looking at Amy. there is a lot of softness and awe when Jake is looking at someone he Like likes
With his male friends, Jake is affectionate and emotional and doesn’t shy away from physical contact. I love how them men on this show deconstruct toxic masculinity.
But this isn’t how Jake responds to all his male friends. He doesn’t have crushes on Charles and Terry. (maybe a little bit on Terry, but it’s small enough it doesn’t interfere with anything. Terry is just so STRONG). It’s in the small stuff, it’s how he looks at guys and responds to guys. One of my favorite scenes is when Pimento is describing the guy who is following him as “classically good looking…is that a weird thing to notice about a guy?”. The expressions on Terry and Charles’ faces clearly says “yeah, a little,” but Jake is all in with “no, I don’t think so? Nah. That’s normal.” (which, incidentally, is the internal monologue of some people who don’t realize they’re bi–sometimes you just assume that’s how everyone feels about their gender! and then later you realize that isn’t how straight people feel at all. )
anyway. what I’m getting at is the show, in giving us healthy, loving, nontoxic male friendships, also inadvertently showed us what the difference is in male friendships vs. male attraction/crushes looks like, particularly on screen, and you can show both and you can have such great bi guy representation and i just
i know that Jake isn’t canonically bi (yet) but I just really appreciate this show for showing us such great queer characters that have so much depth and warmth and goodness and it doesn’t hypersexualize them or make them a joke. (Jake’s attraction to men is never treated as a punch line; or if it is, I think the humor comes more from the fact that he just thinks everyone is like that, and his friends are kind of sitting there going “wait what”) and this isn’t coherent but i just. wanted to point out the differences there
I have no doubt that Millie Bobby Brown doesn’t see anything wrong with her friendship with Drake, and because of that I get why she has come out to defend him. However. We need to remember that as poised and wordly-wise as she may come across, Brown is still a girl of fourteen and likely has not grasped exactly why the world has reacted with raised eyebrows to her revelation that a 31 year old man texts her saying that he misses her.
Her statements do not and should not exonerate Drake. A 31 year old man has no reason to be texting such personal things to a 14 year old girl outside of a familial relationship (and even then…..best not to) and he is the one who needs to come out and make a statement explaining this away. But he won’t. Too busy with his recently turned 18 girlfriend.
Do not make this a situation where we blame the little girl. Because that’s what she is: a child. We don’t ask why she keeps talking to him, we don’t ask why she “won’t listen to reason”, we don’t ask why she “doesn’t see the signs”. We ask why the grown-ass man can’t leave little girls alone.
fadeslikewhispers 