EAT LOW CARB!stay away from carbs!:)
The diet specific for pcos by vitaline is amazing - it consists of eating every 15 minutes though. So for the first 2 weeks your alarm will ping/beep and drive you mad.
You have to reduce your daily calorie intake and do daily vigorous exercise. The fact you have PCOS wont always necessarily make it harder for you to lose weight but it can do. No diet will make any difference without exercise.The best thing you can do is ask the Dietitian to devise a meal plan for you, and then stick to it, with as I said above, daily exercise.As you would have been explained being overweight and having excess fat can make insulin resistance worse, which may then cause the level of insulin to rise even further. PCOS can also cause weight gain leading to obesity. This is because high levels of insulin can contribute to weight gain. Losing weight will help reduce testosterone.It can make it harder. But you have to watch the calorie intake too. What she has explained to you sounds more like a management plan than a weight loss diet. Weight loss is still a simple input and output balance, if you eat too many calories in a day, you will gain weight. To lose weight you need to reduce your intake, include the things she has told you in your diet, but overall you have to reduce your calorie daily intake.editTo the med student, no it is not inacurate; Insulin is a fat-storing hormone. Iinsulin lowers our blood s glucose levels as it is released into the blood. If there is excess sugar or fat in the blood, insulin will signal the body to store it in the body s fat cells. Insulin also tells these cells not to release their stored fat, making that fat unavailable for use by the body as energy. Since this stored fat cannot be released for use as energy, insulin very successfully prevents weight loss. The higher the body s insulin levels, the more effectively it prevents fat cells from releasing their stores, and the harder it becomes to lose weight.
Rhianna s answer is pretty good I would say, however it is a little inaccurate from the point of view that PCOS does not cause high levels of insulin (if this were the case, your blood sugar would be quite low). The current thinking is that PCOS is caused by a lack of insulin sensitivity. Insulin is primary hormone required to control blood sugar but it is also thought that it has a role in oestrogen metabolism and synthesis. This is why you have been prescribed the drug metformin. It is a drug commonly used to treat type II diabetes and acts to increase insulin sensitivityCurrent studies also show that reducing free fatty acids in the blood also increases your sensitivity to insulin therefore potentially making your condition a lot better.On the whole, insulin resistance is linked to diets high in saturated fats and high BMI which can lead to conditions such as diabetes. So albeit your OBGYN may have been harsh and disheartened you, you would do well to listen to her advice because the pills may make some difference but you will see a much larger difference if you are able to lose weight.With regards to this, you would be best of speaking to your dietician because this is their area of expertise. The things I can tell you about the diet she has recommended is that wholegran carbs are complex and take longer to digest so that your not as hungry.Eating a diet higher in protein also helps lose weight but eat white meats such as chicken and fish. Also try to eat at the same time, because surprisingly eating patterns and in particular eating at regular times can also help to reduce weight.On a finishing note, the reason your dietician may not have mentioned calory intake initially is because sudden changes in calory intake can have an adverse effect upon weight particularly if you drastically reduce calory intake. This is because the high supply your body is used to is suddenly taken away and your body reacts by going into starvation mode . This is why starving yourself to lose weight is not a great idea or suddenly decreasing calory intake as you may find your weight increases!It would be a good idea to gradually decrease calory intake, but it would probably be best if you can concentrate on controlling your sugar and fat intake first
