Now that you know where I stand on that, let's get to the issue of how to live and deal with it.
Today is a huge milestone in my PCOS journey. I was able to announce that I have lost 25 lbs over the last year. Yes, you read that correctly. It took me an entire year to lose 25 lbs. Losing weight should be a simple equation; just burn more calories than you consume. For every 3500 extra calories you burn, that's 1 lb lost. Easy, right?
The problem with that is that with PCOS, it's more like trying to simultaneously solve quadratic equations and the Riemann hypothesis....while juggling. Because of our insulin resistance, it is actually possible to consume fewer calories than use and still GAIN weight.
What? How is that fair?
The first doctor that I saw listened to my symptoms, said she thought it was PCOS, and wrote me a prescription for birth control pills. I was going through a divorce and not trying to get pregnant, so apparently my reproductive health didn't matter that much. Let's just throw a pill at the problem. I had so much other stress in my life that I didn't think to question the course of treatment and lack of testing. I just said thank you and went on with life.
Unfortunately, this kept most of the symptoms under control but didn't fix anything. Meanwhile, my insides were getting further and further out of whack.
Fast forward a few years....
I'm now married to the love of my life and the question of whether or not we will have any children that don't have 4 legs and fur becomes an issue. By this time, even the birth control pills are not working. I see another doctor who is appalled that the first doctor did no testing to find out what my hormone levels were before starting medication. She tells me to stop the pills because she can't get accurate test results until I've been off them for several months.
More waiting and no answers.
Meanwhile, my regular doctor says that I'm pre-diabetic and starts me on 500 mg of Metformin. I've heard this is an effective treatment for PCOS and helps with weight loss, so I'm looking forward to some relief. Imagine my surprise when I continue to gain weight. A year later, I had gained another 20 lbs and was ready to give up.
The last straw came last summer when we had family pictures done. I knew that I had gained weight, but oh my goodness. I sat and cried when I got them back. It had happened so gradually that I didn't realize exactly how bad things had gotten.
My doctor recommended an app called My Fitness Pal. What a lifesaver! It does all the counting for you. All you have to do is make sure that you enter everything that you consume. It even compensates for the exercise that you enter so that you know how many calories you used and still have for the day. I made my entries religiously, every single day.
Still no weight loss.
When I told the doctor this at my next appointment, she asked me if I was sure that I was entering everything that I ate. I stopped seeing her, but kept using the app.
Finally, I found that I could make adjustments to what the app was counting for me. I decided to add sodium to the list because I also have high blood pressure.
Here's where the tide starts to turn.
By tracking my sodium intake, I realized how much crap I was eating in the form of processed food. I'm not a teetotaller, but we definitely made significant cuts to the things that came into our kitchen in boxes or cans. That left me mostly with proteins and fresh fruits and veggies, which is exactly what I should be eating.
I still eat carbs - our bodies need them, but they need to be in balance with the rest of our plate. I still eat sweets - but very sparingly and I try to avoid high fructose corn syrup like the plague. Seriously, do a Google search about HFCS and PCOS. I'm not saying that it is bad for everyone, but we PCOS girls find it nearly impossible to process HFCS. It just doesn't compute.
The biggest piece of the puzzle has come in the last few months since I've been seeing my current doctors.
I had been in excruciating pain for nearly 2 months when I made an appointment to see Nurse Practitioner Withem. I told her that I had been taking 500 mg of Metformin per day and she laughed. I'm not kidding. She actually laughed when she told me I should be taking at least 2000 mg per day. That's right - four times the amount I had been prescribed.
I had been struggling for 4 months to maintain the 20 lb loss that I had achieved by Christmas. Instead of celebrating a new victory, I had to make do with, "Well, at least I didn't gain anything." Since I've started the correct dose of Metformin, had surgery to remove endometriosis and drain the ovarian cysts, and stopped being in pain every day of my life, I've not only maintained the 20 lb loss but added another 5 in the last 2 months.
So that's it. No magic answers to how I lost 25 lbs. I still eat junk sometimes. I still drink soda sometimes. Most days there's not much room for it, though, by the time I eat all the protein, fiber, fruits and veggies I'm supposed to eat. By cutting out the processed, chemical-laden convenience foods that filled my cabinet and learning how toxic HFCS is to my system - and finding the right doctor who gave me the right medication and ran the right tests and did the right surgery - I am on my way to being a much healthier me.
