I was very annoyed with this month's M+F Hers magazine. It featured a mini-article stating that "research shows" that the lack of energy experienced by many women during workouts around the pre-menstrual phase actually "has nothing to do with hormone fluctuations," i.e. ladies, find something else to blame your blahs on.
What a piece of crap! The article and research failed to take into account the age range of the women athletes they tested in their little experiment: they were all in their very young twenties. Well, excuse me but I think amongst women it is a well known fact that PMS gets much worse in your thirties, and that for many women, that is when it starts. I never had PMS in my twenties, so I have to conclude that the research data is heavily skewed.
Don't listen to them. I suffer terribly from PMS and yes, there are months when I feel so hideous, I cannot dig myself out of the pit of blackness into which PMS sinks me in order to work out. As another poster here remarked: recognizing the signals (for me, bloating and incredibly irritability) and understanding what the cause of the blahs is can be very helpful and powerful. I now know exactly what it is when it hits me and I either schedule an easier cardio or take the rest if I need it. I also sleep much more (like a 10 hour night) and I agree, it's hard to avoid eating the entire cupboard supply of anything with sugar in it. I do not have any strategies to cope with this except give in a little. I mean, it's inevitable, so I let myself eat the chocolate bar I crave if it stops me from eating the cookie packet first and then progressing to the choc, which is what I wanted anyway! What I have read elsewhere is that it's OK to give in to some of these cravings because our calorie need rises at this time and these munchings do not actually lead to weight gain, even though you may feel bloated at the time. That helps.
What I have found through experience is that if I try and push through it and insist on doing a tough cardio workout, it backfires on me, I feel like s**t, have hardly enough energy to finish and I get a horrible black mood because I get annoyed with my body and start to feel bloody useless, because I can't finish a workout I normally glide through. So, to avoid this scenario, I usually concentrate on weight training through this period because I find that, ironically, I can usually lift heavier at this time, even though I am reduced to a cardio weakling. So, accomplishing more with weights compensates for how yucky I feel generally at this time. It's a win-win situation for me. Try it!
Clare
So I've been on SSRI prozac and prozac-like drugs ever since. I'm currently taking Lexapro, and I'm not real sure it works as well for me as prozac did, but the prozac "pooped out" on me.