August 2019 - Your Nutrition Partner, LLC

Diets, Weight Loss, and PCOS

August 20, 2019 / Intuitive Eating / Leave a Comment

finding peace and freedom from dieting — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Most people I talk to who have PCOS are interested in losing weight. That is why they are looking to talk to a dietitian. They may have been told by a doctor to lose weight. They probably have tried many different diets to lose weight.

I understand the desire to lose weight. We live in a culture where dieting and being a certain size or weight is seen as the answer to all of our mental and physical problems. People with PCOS are particularly vulnerable to these messages since weight is blamed as a root cause for PCOS and losing weight is seen as a solution. Many women in larger bodies who have trouble with fertility, even beyond PCOS, are told to lose weight.

What’s the problem with dieting to lose weight? It doesn’t work 80-95% of the time. The biggest predictor of weight gain over time is dieting. You may say that a certain diet “worked” for you, but if you ended up gaining the weight back and more, how did this diet work for you?

We also know that weight cycling or “yo-yo dieting” puts you at greater risk for heart disease and diabetes than if you had never lost the initial weight. Stress from body dissatisfaction, food restriction, overexercise, and weight stigma can also increase your risk for these metabolic conditions.

So if dieting is not the answer to improving PCOS symptoms, what is the answer?

The answer is learning how to be an intuitive eater. The 10 principles of Intuitive Eating, by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, have been around since 1995 and can help improve your health by learning how to listen to your body’s messages about what to eat and how much to eat. It is the answer to ending the diet cycle and making peace with food. Over 60 research studies have shown that Intuitive Eating helps people have lower rates of disordered eating including binge eating, increased well-being, improved blood sugar and cholesterol, reduced stress, and higher self esteem. Click here for a link to Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch’s website devoted to Intuitive eating.

With PCOS, you can learn how to eat intuitively, give yourself permission to eat all foods, and still work in some food strategies (gentle nutrition) to improve the metabolic and physical symptoms of PCOS.

Learning to become an intuitive eater can take some time, especially if you have been dieting for a long time. Getting support can be crucial as you take this journey since you will still be bombarded by diet culture in your everyday life. However, the rewards to making peace with food are immense. You will learn to truly enjoy food, notice how your body adjusts your intake based on what it needs, and feel like you don’t have to spend so much time being worried about what to eat. And this huge reduction in stress alone can help your symptoms of PCOS.

What are the Intuitive Eating Principles?

Reject the Diet Mentality
Honor Your Hunger
Make Peace with Food
Challenge the Food Police
Feel Your Fullness
Discover the Satisfaction Factor
Cope with Your Feelings Without Using Food
Respect Your Body
Exercise: Feel the Difference
Honor Your Health: Gentle Nutrition

Will I lose weight if I eat intuitively?

When you start to eat intuitively, you will either lose weight, have no weight change, or you may even gain weight. You have to fully nourish your body on a consistent basis before seeing if and how weight is impacted. Your body has a set point that it likes to be at and it is hard to know what your natural weight is before you let your body adjust with intuitive eating. The goal for learning to eat intuitively is not weight loss. The goal is to learn to trust your body to make food decisions without judgement. When you let your body be your guide, you will likely enjoy a large variety of foods and eat enough to satisfy your hunger without letting yourself get too uncomfortably hungry or full.

That sounds great, but what if I still want to lose weight?

It’s okay that you still want to lose weight. Most people can not undo a lifetime of negative thoughts about weight with the “flip of a switch”.

You can still start working on becoming an intuitive eater, even if you haven’t fully embraced it. This is a process, and for many people it’s a long process. Starting to work through the principles will likely benefit you. It’s not another diet where you have follow a set a rules. You can and probably should take baby steps.

As you know, PCOS can impact your whole body including mental health. It affects you throughout your entire life, not just when you are trying to get pregnant. It’s best to think about improving your physical and mental health for the long term. Quick fixes (diets for weight loss) will not serve you in the long run if they are leaving you hungry, tired, bored, and stressed.

If you would like some help with learning how intuitive eating can improve your PCOS symptoms, contact me to set up a time to talk and see if nutrition counseling is right for you!

What is Nutrition Counseling?

August 1, 2019 / Uncategorized / 1 Comment

Photo by Christina Morillo on Pexels.com

As you search online about what you can do to improve your diet and manage your PCOS symptoms, you are likely to encounter the term “nutrition counseling”. Since this is a term that dietitians use to describe our services, I thought I would explain a little more about what nutrition counseling and why you may want to consider it.

A lot of people are understandably nervous to make an appointment with a dietitian. You may think that you will be judged or “yelled at” for what you are doing or not doing. This could be because you’ve had another health professional judge or scold you in the past. You may also think that a dietitian will tell you to give up all of your favorite foods, eat a really low calorie diet, cook all of your foods from scratch, and work out 5 times a week. You also may think that dietitians eat a “perfect diet” with no chips or sugar, that we work out all the time, and/or we’ve never had any health problems before. (This is not true.)

So what does happen in an appointment with a dietitian?

In the first visit we ask a lot of questions and really try to get to know you. We want to know what you eat, but also how you sleep, what your schedule is like, who cooks and shops at home, what is your medical history, what medicines and supplements do you take, and what “diets” have you been on before. We ask about emotions and food, any symptoms or intolerances you feel with food, cravings, how hungry and satisfied you are with food, and what health goals you have. We need to find out a lot about you before we can begin to work on goals to change things. A lot of people say that it feels like they are going to a therapist when they talk to a dietitian, since we really do dive into a lot of aspects of your life when we talk about food.

Follow up appointments for PCOS

After gathering information about you, we can map out a plan for feeling better depending on where are at. I like to do some education about what PCOS is and why you have the symptoms that you do, depending on what your knowledge is. We will talk about strategies that may include modifying what you eat, modifying how you eat, adding in more movement, taking supplements, stopping to take some supplements, improving your sleep, and reducing your stress. We may talk about adding in more food since you are not eating enough. Which strategies we do depends on what your goals are and where you are starting from. We typically will meet every week or every other week for around 5-6 sessions depending on how things are going. It works best to make a few small changes each visit instead of a lot of unsustainable changes from the beginning.

My goal for all clients

No matter what other goals you have for your health, my goal is for you to enjoy eating and eat the foods you love. You may not think this is something you need to work on, but if you are someone who has been on a lot of restrictive diets in the past you may not find much joy from food. Eating and thinking of what to eat may make you feel stressed or guilty. You can have a positive relationship with food again, and making peace with food will make your health improve.

Dietitians are people

Finding the right fit with the right person for you will help you to get the best care. This also goes for therapists and maybe even doctors. Nutrition counseling works when both the client and dietitian are fully engaged and communicate well with each other. We all have different personalities so sometimes you need to find the right person who works best with your personality and is aligned with your health goals.

So if you are a woman with PCOS who wants to decrease your symptoms, end diet cycling, improve fertility, increase your energy levels, and learn to trust your body with food, I may be the dietitian you are looking for. Click on nutrition counseling to contact me to set up a discovery call.