Dear blog readers,
I received a comment over the weekend, questioning my lack of enthusiasm for high fructose corn syrup that ended with,"My RD would be proud of me." It sounded like our reader was feeling a little bit caught between two different dietitians with two different ways of interpreting information. No one looking for help with their PCOS should ever feel like they need to choose between one advice giver or another. No one reading this blog has to do anything for us. We're just here to provide information in a way we hope is helpful. As long as we get blog hits, we figure that is exactly what we're doing.
I figured it was best to clarify why I do what I do and how you're best going to benefit from visits to this blog.
1. I am a pretty obsessive reader of research. When I read research, I find a lot of information that either has not been presented to women with PCOS at all, or it's not been presented in a way that benefits women with PCOS. So I compose my conclusions and post them here, in hopes of helping people who haven't had access to that viewpoint. It's my viewpoint, and my viewpoint only. It's not ever going to be anything that makes 100% of people who read this blog happy. I never set out to do that. But what I do provide, when possible, is references from peer-reviewed research that shows you where I got my facts and how I connected the dots.
2. If you've read my writing, and you've also connected dots in a different way, I respect and support that. Like I said, I'm not here to make you think like me or do like me. I'm hoping to encourage you to do your own critical thinking and come to conclusions and choices that work best for YOU. You have enough personal and corporate interests trying to make you think one way or another. I don't want to make you think anything. I want to encourage you to think independently.
3. If you're working with another dietitian, I respect that. Any time anyone has EVER come to an inCYST event who has not been working with an inCYST network member, I make it absolutely clear from the beginning that we aim to enhance the experience with the other professional. We're not out to steal clients or make anyone look bad.
4. If for some reason you've brought any of our information in to your non-inCYST dietitian and the discussion has left you feeling caught in the middle, I don't want you to feel that way. All we're doing is presenting information that we have found to be helpful. And recently, we've grown into a fundraising entity designed to invest in scientific studies that can help add credibility to the paradigm we've been developing. It's super important at inCYST that we don't grow into a place where we just spout off about ideas, but that we pursue the ones we feel are valid, on behalf of women who live a life with less quality than they deserve. Even with that commitment, we know our way of doing things is not the only way of doing things. It's just our way of doing things. We work very hard to make it credible and verifiable. If it works for you, great, please benefit. If it's not consistent with what your dietitian is telling you, my biggest hope is that you would be empowered enough to be able to take the best of both sets of advice and chart your own course. If nothing that we offer here works for you, that's ok too. There are many paths to the same destination. Your best nutrition coach is not us, or anyone else, it is YOU.
5. We can respect the differences in philosophy that exist in the world of health care, but our primary focus with inCYST is to develop the paradigm and provide information to those who DO benefit from our information. It's not to defend ourselves with those who disagree. We respect the disagreement and hope that you achieve success with the information and choices that work best for you.
6. I believe our team does excellent work, but just because someone is not in our network, it doesn't mean we think they don't as well. The purpose of having a network is so that if you come to this blog and you like what you see, we have a team of people in a variety of places that you know you can go to, who will give you the same sort of approach one-on-one as you got here. You guys waste enough money trying do that on your own, and we wanted to stop the unproductive cash flow. We are very good at what we do, but we do not intend to say that others are not. That would be untrue, not to mention completely arrogant.
Thank you for visiting the blog, and I hope that once in awhile, it does provide information and inspiration that's helped you along your PCOS path.