Three days before your period, a bag of chips is not a snack, it's a mission. You've eaten dinner. You're still standing in the kitchen. And somewhere in the back of your head a voice says you should have more self-control. That voice is wrong about the biology, and we'd like to retire it.
Why period cravings happen
Two things are going on, and only one of them is hormonal.
First, you're actually hungrier. A 2024 meta-analysis in Nutrition Reviews pooled 15 datasets and found that women eat about 168 more calories a day in the luteal phase, the roughly two weeks between ovulation and a period, than in the first half of the cycle. Part of that is your body burning more: a 2020 study in Physiological Reports measured nine young women in a metabolic chamber and found their metabolic rate during sleep was 6.9% higher in the luteal phase. Cleveland Clinic puts it plainly: your resting energy needs increase before your period, your blood sugar becomes less stable, and serotonin tends to dip in the five to ten days before bleeding. Carbohydrates help your brain make serotonin, which is a fair explanation for why the craving is for bread, chocolate and ice cream rather than for celery.
Second, the specific thing you crave is partly learned. In a 2017 study in PLOS ONE, 275 women of different backgrounds were asked about menstrual chocolate craving. Among women born outside the US, 17% reported it. Among women born in the US to US-born parents, 33% did, and among second-generation immigrants, 41%. Same hormones, different cultures, different cravings. An earlier survey of 280 women across menopause found chocolate craving dropped by only about 13% after menopause, far less than a hormone-only explanation would predict. And a 1999 study that tracked 44 women with cyclic chocolate craving for six cycles found the premenstrual progesterone drop didn't line up with the craving at all.
So: the hunger is real and hormonal. The chocolate is real and partly a story we've been told. Neither is a character flaw.
The one rule: eat the thing
We're not going to give you a list of "healthy swaps" for a craving, because a rice cake does not satisfy a chocolate craving, it just delays it until 10 pm when the standards are lower. If you want chocolate, have good chocolate, sit down, and eat it. What helps is having snacks around that are genuinely satisfying, so the craving is met by one thing rather than by a tour of the whole kitchen. If the sugar side of this is your main problem, we wrote about it in sugar cravings before your period, explained.
7 snacks that satisfy period cravings
1. Dark chocolate, the real kind. 70% or higher. USDA data puts it at about 228 mg of magnesium per 100 g, so a 35 g portion carries around 80 mg, a quarter of a day's need. It also tastes like what you wanted, which the alternatives don't.
2. Salted roasted pumpkin seeds. An ounce has 156 mg of magnesium per the NIH, more than almost any other common snack. Salty, crunchy, and they answer the chip craving surprisingly well.
3. Peanut butter on toast with banana. Carbohydrate for the serotonin lift, fat and protein so it lasts past 20 minutes. ACOG's PMS guidance points to complex carbohydrates for mood symptoms and food cravings; a slice of whole grain toast is the low-effort version.
4. Greek yogurt with berries and honey. Cold, sweet, and it counts towards the calcium ACOG suggests adding during PMS. Full-fat, if you like it. This is not a diet.
5. Popcorn with real butter and salt. Volume, crunch, salt. A bowl of it is a whole grain, which we mention only because it's true, not because it matters. It's the movie snack that happens to be fine.
6. Hummus and chips. For the salt craving specifically. Chickpeas bring protein and a bit of magnesium, the chips bring the salt, and the combination stops you eating the chips alone at speed.
7. A proper hot chocolate. Cocoa, real milk, a spoon of sugar, warm. It's a magnesium-carrying, hand-warming, slow-to-drink way to have the thing. Our period snack recipes has the version we make on day one.
What we make, since we're on the subject. Girl Chocolate is a dark chocolate bar made for the days around your period, with magnesium and other functional ingredients, sold as a pouch of 8 bars so one pouch covers one cycle. It's item one on this list in a form you can keep in a drawer for exactly this craving, and it supports PMS relief* in the small, one-snack-among-seven way everything above does. Here's the bar. If you'd like to know which days the cravings tend to land for you, the Period Type quiz takes two minutes.
What didn't work for us
Sugar-free chocolate. We bought it in a virtuous mood on day 10 and threw it away on day 25 after eating the good stuff anyway. The craving is for the food, not for the idea of the food. We've stopped buying substitutes. The other thing that didn't work was skipping lunch to "save room" for the evening craving; Cleveland Clinic's advice to eat regular, balanced meals turned out to be the whole answer to the 9 pm kitchen tour.
Print our free PMS week meal plan: five days of meals built from calcium and magnesium foods, plus a grocery list. 1 page, PDF, no email needed.
Download the PDFSources
- Nutrition Reviews 2024, The effect of the menstrual cycle on energy intake: systematic review and meta-analysis
- Zhang et al 2020, Changes in sleeping energy metabolism and thermoregulation during menstrual cycle (Physiological Reports)
- Cleveland Clinic, Cause of period cravings and how to manage them
- Hormes and Niemiec 2017, Does culture create craving? Evidence from the case of menstrual chocolate craving (PLOS ONE)
- Hormes and Rozin 2009, Perimenstrual chocolate craving: what happens after menopause? (Appetite)
- NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, Magnesium fact sheet
When to talk to a doctor
Cravings are ordinary. See a doctor if you have any of these:
- pain that stops you doing daily life, even with painkillers
- bleeding through a pad or tampon every hour
- pain that suddenly got much worse, or changed its pattern
- pain with a fever
* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
