I know that not all women gain weight due to period-related water retention, but a lot do. I typically gain a bit over four pounds myself and have since my teens. So I bet there are enough ladies here to have an opinion…
My question is this: can the pattern of where the temporary weight gain accumulates change over time, or am I just really unobservant?
What I mean is that all along my belly has been where I’ve noticed the extra weight, uh, settling. Waistbands of pants get tighter, and now that I’ve done work on toning my abs I can see that my belly looks more bloated though fortunately it doesn’t look so obvious dressed.
But three years or so I noticed that during my period my bras didn’t seem to fit right either. On a whim I got out my cloth measuring tape, and measured myself. 1.5" difference in bust circumference from normal, so that explains that. It’s been pretty consistent month to month since then, too.
What do you think, did something change after age 30, or did I just fail to notice the phenomena for a decade and a half? The latter sounds ridiculous, but I don’t discount it because it’s not at all out of character for me to completely fail to connect physical causes and effects. (ftr I’ve heard that starting to take birth control pills can cause a change in breast, but I’ve never taken them)
If I’m not just clueless, have you noticed similar changes yourself?
And, since I know that some guys are reading this despite the thread title and usually have good breast observation skills, have you noticed a similar change over time in your wives/live-in significant others? Not just that she gains there at all, but that she didn’t used to and then began to.
I’m inclined to think your body has changed, rather than your perception of your body has changed. Because that’s what’s happened to me.
Have you noticed other PMS symptoms changing over time?
When I was a teenager, I had agonizing menstrual cramps – at 33, I rarely have cramps, and they’re not at all bad when I do. I didn’t get the depression/irritability symptoms until I was in my early 20s.** I didn’t start bloating until I was in my late 20s. And just a few months ago, I started noticing that my breasts hurt during PMS time.
**I used to think the mood swings people talked about were a result of, you know, it kind of sucks to be bleeding and and in pain for a week. It wasn’t until I started to experience actual changes to my thinking and feeling patterns that I realized, no, mood swings during PMS are due to your hormones and brain chemistry changing. So that definitely was a change in my body that occurred after a certain point in time…not a perception issue.
I’ve never noticed any weight fluctuation in myself…well, at all, really. My clothes fit the same and I’ve never noticed anything different on the scale (back when I was in the habit of weighing myself, anyway). I’m not sure if that’s normal or not.
Every time I think “damnit, I’m growing a belly, I really need to do something about that”, my period comes the next day. The weight gain is about 5lb, which go away in 24h.
But both my period’s frequency and my premenstrual symptoms changed about age 30 and again at 36; my mother’s did too. Gyne just seems to be one of those fields where the “standard” is anything but.
I take those water pills (Diurex I think is the name)to help with water retention at the time of the month. I’m 5’4" and in good shape but JESUS it looks like I’m 2 months pregnant at the start of every time of the month.
So I started taking them 2, 3 months ago and they really help. Most importantly, I feel better.
My boobs have always gotten a little larger in the two weeks between ovulation and period. It’s very common, some women have to have different sizes of bras to wear depending on the time of the month. I had a lot of breast tenderness/pain, too, ages 14-24. Not any more thankfully.
Abdominal water retention, weight changes, and bloating no longer happen to me at all, since I changed my diet hugely a couple years ago. I used to get so bloated in the week before my period, I really did look pregnant.
I’ve never been on hormonal birth control and I’ve been tracking my cycle in some detail for many years now (and read about the subject quite a bit) - IMO it’s totally normal for most women to see pretty big changes throughout their lives in PMS symptoms, cycle length, etc.
