Appropriately, I spent the entire first day of the (annual) Vegan Month of Food cooking. My pal Katie Jane came over this afternoon and drank hot toddies with me as I hurled myself around the kitchen, knocking out seven different Thanksgiving-ish dishes from my upcoming potluck zine. She then took photos of the food and then—finally!—we ate! I’m pretty sure that I could eat Thanksgiving foods every Thursday of the month and never get tired of them, although our plates were hurting for some green.

While Katie was here, I told her about the most recent revelation in my diet, which is that I’ve come to decide that I need to lay way off the soy.

I’ve had killer menstrual cramps every month for as long as I can remember, but it seems as if the pain intensified and the duration lengthened in my early 20s and hasn’t let off since. When I say killer cramps, I’m talking about: occasional vomiting from pain, having to take at least one day off of work every month to lay in bed with the heating pad, popping maximum strength ibuprofen like candy just to take the edge off. I’ve gone through childbirth, and I can tell you that I was in active labor for hours before the contractions were worse than my standard monthly cramps.

A few years ago, I saw multiple doctors about the situation, and after several hundreds of dollars in co-pays and prescriptions, the diagnosis was a universal: It might be endometriosis, but it would take a lot more tests (money) to find out for sure, and even then, there wasn’t a whole lot they could do about it. Most likely the cramps would ease off after I had my first child.

Well, I had my first child, followed by eleven blissful months of no period at all. Then, last October, the period came back, and the cramps came with it, strong as ever. And now I’m desperate, because I have a son, and I feel really guilty if I spend two days every month unable to be a mother to him because I can barely get out of bed.

I’ve been doing a lot of research in the last week or so, and I’ve noticed that soy keeps popping up in lists of foods to avoid if you have bad menstrual cramps, because of the phytoestrogens. My soy intake is currently higher than I would like for it to be, and while it would be nearly impossible to completely eliminate it from my diet, it’s worth it to me to reduce it drastically for a month or two and see if I notice a difference. The plan is to finish up what we have in the house and then try to switch over to beans, nuts, seeds, grains, and seitan as our protein options.

Dudes, I’m cringing at the very idea of being a soy-free vegan. Soy is in everything; it’s like corn or peanuts. Damn.

Let me know if you’ve reduced or cut soy out of your diet, especially if you did it for the same reasons. I need some commiseration here!