Hello everyone, we have so many new people coming to us through Twitter and Facebook, asking what our diet and exercise recommendations are, and then when they come, they are faced with a tremendous task of plowing through hundreds of blog posts I promise I will better organize in 2012…I thought I would summarize what we stand for and what we don't stand for.
If you ever hear differently from anyone in our network, I do need to know. The goal of building a network is to know what our non-negotiables are that we all stand for, and then let each individual network member use their creative talents to make it happen in your life.
Here goes.
1. We do not believe in a one-size-fits-all diet, exercise, or lifestyle prescription for PCOS. That means that while some of you may learn that you are gluten intolerant, we do not recommend that all women with PCOS refrain from eating gluten. While some of you may benefit from running, others may find that another form of activity is going to work better. We believe in creating a set of recommendations that are personally relevant to your own situation, biochemistry, likes, and dislikes. We are not out to create an army of Stepford cysters!
2. We do not advocate for any one type of diet. We choose to honor your own personal food religion, be it vegan, Paleo, low glycemic, raw…whatever…and assist you with understanding what choices you need to make that honor both your food religion and your biochemical nutritional needs. It's about how to be complete, not which is the best way to be complete. Only you know what works best for you.
3. Put another way, we do not advocate for eliminating large categories of foods (gluten-containing, dairy, meat, cooked) unless we see that there is a genuine, medically-indicated reason for doing so.
4. We believe that PCOS does not respond to extremes of any kind. Extreme calorie restriction, extreme exercise participation, extreme dependence on medication, extreme dependence on supplements. Managing your PCOS is entirely about balance in all of those departments. Our job is to show you how to achieve that balance.
5. We believe that nutrition and exercise can be as counterproductive to your health as not pursuing them. Overzealous dieting and overtraining are as harmful to your hormone balance as are overeating and not exercising. Anyone who tells you that you're simply not dieting hard enough or not exercising hard enough…has not taken the time to study what PCOS is about, and they are running the risk of encouraging you to layer yet another inflammatory condition on top of the tangled hormone web that is already in place. We will never endorse that approach.
6. Some things we do know: Women with PCOS tend to be vitamin D deficient, they tend to have an imbalance in dietary omega-6's and omega-3's, and they often have food sensitivities. But those are factors that can be clinically tested. Your physician can do the vitamin D testing. The omega-3 balance is a home-administered test we can set you up with at inCYST. Food sensitivities can be tested as well, through one of the many inCYSTers who is also LEAP-certified.
7. We believe that PCOS is a generalized inflammatory syndrome. But each woman's core source of inflammation is completely unique and different than every other woman's. We encourage that you invest in a comprehensive consultation to help determine what factors are most important for you. If you try to follow every piece of advice that every person on the Internet tries to give you…you're going to be able to follow it for about 3 days before you run out of money, time, and energy. We're here to help you sort through the information and decide which is relevant to your personal situation.
8. We believe that the main issue is not that there is not information to help your case, but that for whatever reason, you've given up on believing that it can work for you. We're committed, through our research institute, to understanding the physiology and psychology of that resignation so we can work to break through it and motivate you to try things that actually work. (We've knocked a lot of women up! I promise!)
I know there's no secret recipe here, but that is because everyone's recipe is different. Just like my mother's potato salad has bacon and mayonnaise in it, and I adjust mine to include turkey bacon and Greek yogurt…you each are going to have your own recipe for success. To settle for a blanket recommendation, is to accept that you are not unique and special. We simply do not believe that.
Hope this helps, and I hope you take advantage of the incredible knowledge and expertise of the experts who have taken the time to learn as much as they can about PCOS so they can help you chart your course through the haze and maze.