Reflections on PCOS #1

Howdy from Jaclyn in Aggieland!

This is a first in what may be a regular series of posts about my life with PCOS. My goal is not to give the medical background, but to tell my story so that people who don't know what PCOS is or don't have it will become aware of it, those with PCOS won't feel alone, and I can sort through, process, and deal with what I am learning. Each post will focus on one aspect of PCOS in my life.

We are going to take this back to my sophomore year of high school.

I am called into one of the counselor's office. I was not expecting the conversation we were about to have. She told me that someone was concerned about me and asked if I was pregnant. I left feeling mostly shocked and flabbergasted. Later that day, I was at basketball practice talking to my best friends about my visit to the counselor wondering out loud who would be crazy enough to think I was pregnant! After practice, the coach called me into the athletic trainer's office and explained to me that they were the ones worried I was pregnant. They had noticed that I had "gained some weight" around my middle and were concerned about me. If I wasn't pregnant, maybe I had a tumor. I left that meeting angry, hurt, appalled and with my first taste of being self-conscious about my body and the fact that it wasn't like my friends.

That was 14 years ago now. It ended up being the first of many times that I have been asked, one way or another, if I am pregnant. It has been very painful and frustrating. I wish I knew then what I am beginning to learn now. The reasons for my weight gain despite being an athlete who always pushed myself as hard as I could was not completely in my control. My body didn't seem to be with the program because I have PCOS - polycystic ovarian syndrome. I had no idea and am only now starting to learn about the chain reaction of events as well as their effect on my life for the last 14 years. Looking back, that day with the counselor, coach and athletic trainer should have been a clue. But hindsight is always 20/20.

I feel at this point in time, I have dug myself into a pretty deep hole because I didn't know or understand what was happening in and to my body. If my mother or I had understood what I had, if the doctors I went to in high school and college had recognized what it was, we may have been able to make lifestyle changes earlier where I might currently be in a better place. Maybe not. Unfortunately, I was officially diagnosed with PCOS only about a year ago (and before that, my mother suspected I had it, but I was in denial). This is not to say that I am in a hole I cannot get out of. However, it is something that is going to require difficult lifestyle changes and breaking habits I have had for as long as I can remember.

One of my symptoms is being overweight, particularly in my midsection. It isn't fully understood if weight gain triggers PCOS or if losing weight will ease the symptoms. From my own experience, I had PCOS before I became overweight and had a lot of my symptoms (looking back) in high school and college. As a sophomore in high school, I weighed maybe 130 pounds and was mostly muscle. There seem to be many factors that lead to a person with PCOS being overweight - hormones, insulin resistance, increased craving for sweets as compared to people who don't have PCOS, stress - and it seems to be different from person to person.

It also seems like obesity with PCOS contradicts science. If

calories burned > calories consumed, 

then you lose weight! That is true, but a lot of people with PCOS have a much lower rate of metabolism than other people. So we can't eat as much and we have to work harder. It is not impossible for me to keep my weight in check with diet and exercise, but it is very hard to do and requires me to make perfect choices all of the time (or at least, that is how I feel). My weight can easily fluctuate 5-10 pounds in a couple of days - and don't tell me it's just water weight. You can see how this can be discouraging and feel like an impossible thing to maintain.

So, how do I battle my weight? I haven't figured this out yet. So what do you do when you feel like you are making smart food choices and are living an active life, but aren't seeing results? It is easy to say eat less and work out more. But if you are going to have a diet you can maintain the rest of your life, the diet cannot be based on starvation or on not allowing you to ever eat a certain food. Also, if you have any kind of life at all - work, family, needy cats - spending hours a day at the gym often doesn't make sense. If I am going to get my symptoms under control, I have to deal with all of them. I can't give up on losing weight (but I might have to give up on ever being 145 lbs again).


I could use some gentle encouragement and gentle tips. From the research I have done so far, it seems as though (because of the tendency to insulin resistance) avoiding a high-carbohydrate diet is important. As with most people with PCOS, I love carbs! This makes me super sad...

Thanks and Gig 'Em!