Fighting PCOS Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome

I did find a low glycemic diet a few weeks ago. I was searching the internet for one when the first site I went to mentioned that the South Beach Diet is a low glycemic diet. It is! I was stunned. I bought that book years and didn’t realize it was low glycemic! I have the book in my basement so I ran downstairs, grabbed it off the shelf and actually read it this time.

I was shocked I had a low glycemic diet book right in my house the entire time without knowing. Plus I was really unhappy with myself for the same reason! So the South Beach Diet was made by a heart doctor worried about his cardiac patients. He wanted a diet to get their insulin and cholesterol better. A side effect was weight loss. So many that weren’t his patients, but related to his patients, wanted to follow the diet too as people were losing weight and it looked like they were eating some good food too!

I can say that the South Beach Diet is the easiest diet I’ve ever followed. And it doesn’t seem like a diet either. All my meals are really tasty, I’m happy eating them, I’m full and I lost weight without realizing it!

I lost 5 pounds the first week and 3 pounds the second week. Both weeks I was on phase 1. Then on phase 2 I lost 1 pound each week. So the weight loss slowed down pretty bad, but I still lost weight! To those of you that have tried and tried to lose weight even 1 pound a week is a miracle.

I really wish all nutritionists, endocrinologists basically anyone that deals with people with insulin resistance, pcos would all tell their patients to not stress and just follow the South Beach Diet. I wouldn’t have wasted years trying to figure out what to eat if I had known about that diet.

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I had the worst time trying to figure out how many carbs I was eating each meal. I finally just quit. I don’t have the time to try and rigidly stick to counting things. I need to eat and then move on to do things! Plus there were no recipes. I don’t want to eat bland food, I think that’s why I’ve failed a lot of diets. It was horrible food and I couldn’t wait to eat real food again.

I bought a diabetic cookbook that also had carb counts by each recipe. But the recipes I think were for cooks with a lot of time or money. Some of the ingredients I hadn’t heard of! I just want normal food, that I can make fast, tastes good and is low glycemic! Is that too much to ask?

low glycemic, diabetic cookbook, carb counts, worst time, real food, carbs, cooks, diets, tastes, recipes, money

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When I was diagnosed with insulin resistance syndrome by my endocrinologist I then met with a dietitian to find out how to battle it. Of course my health insurance wouldn’t cover it! Why won’t health insurance cover things that are supposed to help keep you well? It makes no sense.

Anyway the meeting was completely confusing as instead of just avoiding sugar, she said you really need to count all carbs. Now with diabetes I thought they had to avoid sugar, but new findings or maybe not so new, are that you need to avoid high glycemic carbs. She only told me to count carbs but from my own research, you need to eat a low glycemic diet.

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For a long time I had known about Syndrome X which had all these medical conditions occurring together so therefore it was called a syndrome. Then we finally had a name for Syndrome X, insulin resistance syndrome. It’s a precursor to diabetes really. It means your body ignores insulin and so more insulin is put out and the body ignores it more, etc.

Well I’ve been told my cholesterol has issues, I have insulin resistance syndrome, I have quite a few cysts on both my ovaries but no one ever put these together and said “you probably or might have PCOS”. Nope. It’s hard to get a doctor that sees all your tests when you’re going to a gynecologist, an endocrinologist for the insulin issues and a dermatologist for the acne. I had to find out that there even was a syndrome like this. And that happened when I got a mailing for a PCOS treatment trial at a local hospital. The pamphlet was for the previous occupant but it sure opened my eyes.

There was a list of symptoms of PCOS on the outside of the pamphlet.

Common symptoms of PCOS include

• * Oligomenorrhea, amenorrhea — irregular, few, or absent menstrual periods; cycles that do occur may be heavy (heavy bleeding is also an early warning sign of endometrial cancer(in post menopausal women), for which women with PCOS are at slightly higher risk)
• * Infertility, generally resulting from chronic anovulation (lack of ovulation)
• * Elevated serum (blood) levels of androgens (male hormones), specifically testosterone, androstenedione, and dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS), causing hirsutism and occasionally masculinization
• * Central obesity — “apple-shaped” obesity centered around the lower half of the torso
• * Dyspareunia Pain during sexual intercourse
• * Androgenic alopecia (male-pattern baldness)
• * Acne, oily skin, seborrhea
• * Acanthosis nigricans (dark patches of skin, tan to dark brown or black, a sign of insulin resistance, which is associated with PCOS)
• * Acrochordons (skin tags) — tiny flaps of skin
• * Prolonged periods of PMS-like symptoms (bloating, mood swings, pelvic pain, backaches)
• * Sleep apnea

If you have at least 4 of these symptoms, get to your doctor and ask them if you may have PCOS. You need to change your diet and exercise and possibly go on diabetes medication. Especially if you are infertile. PCOS is the number one cause of infertility.

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