The BEST Diet For PCOS

It's really important with what and when you're eating. It's really common for women with PCOS to not actually have an appetite and to not feel like eating full size meals. They often are in a dysfunctional eating pattern because they not only develop insulin resistance, but they get this resulting hypoglycemia. So your blood sugar can drop lower than a lot of people because you have to make extra insulin, because like I said, those cells don't hear the insulin signals. So you make extra insulin and then all that extra insulin floods your system and it can drop your blood sugar too low. You go from these big, high, high levels of blood sugar to too low of levels. Whereas someone without this polycystic ovarian syndrome, they don't have as big of elevations or drops. You're more on a roller coaster with your blood sugar. So it's more common for women to struggle with hypoglycemia and feel hangry, feel shaky, feel like they have to eat every couple hours to maintain their blood sugar, and for a long time that it's actually awful. Recommendations that was told that's what you should do, is to eat every couple hours to maintain your blood sugar. But that's not actually fixing the problem, it's actually making it much, much worse because you continue to drive that insulin resistance. So normally a fasting insulin level should be around 5 or less. And what we see is levels of 10, 15, 20, or even greater than that. And that is telling me that your cells aren't listening to the insulin and you're having to make too much to do the same job. So it's really important to figure out how can I get off of that vicious blood sugar cycle. The other piece of it is leptin. So leptin is our satiety hormone. It tells us to stop eating because we're full. But unfortunately, the more weight we carry, the more fat cells we have, the more leptin we end up making. And we can actually get leptin resistance just like insulin resistance, and we stop feeling satisfied or full. So a lot of women will get stuck in this situation of never feeling full or satisfied, continuing to have cravings and continuing to overeat because they're not feeling full if you're not eating healthy food, which is often the case with these cravings, because you're craving immediate blood sugar relief. So simple carbohydrates, processed foods, things like that, that are very high in carbohydrates to give you relief that's driving the process and making it worse. And those don't actually have a lot of nutrit value. They don't have a lot of protein or healthy fats or vitamins or minerals. And so your body never feels satisfied. And that further drives the leptin resistance. So you're stuck in this vicious cycle. What do you do? You literally need to do time restricted feeding. And that can start with just getting rid of your snacks, really focusing on eating three nutrient dense meals a day. And that means getting 30 or 40 grams of protein in that meal. Getting probably 30 or 40% of healthy fats like grass fed butter or ghee, olives, olive oil, avocados, eggs, all these good healthy fats along with lean clean proteins, you know, grass fed beef, free range chicken, that type of thing. And minimal carbohydrates. They should be actually from vegetables. You should have a lot of fiber in your carbohydrates because that causes your blood sugar to not be so elevated. It's the simple carbohydrates that elevate your blood sugar. Like plain white rice, bread, pasta, things like that. So stay away from the white foods. And if you can really figure out how to get three nutrient dense meals a day and stop eating snacks during the day, that's step one. Step two is to get into a time restricted window. So stop eating at least three hours before bedtime. I would say most of us want to snack between dinner and bedtime and that drives major insulin resistance and drinking, drinking alcohol, it all gets metabolized into sugar. So really refrain from drinking and eating after dinner. So if you can go from dinner until breakfast the next morning, you're on the right track. Intermittent fasting and time restricted feeding is a practice that you need to learn how to do. You can't just wake up one day and do a 16 hour fast necessarily, especially if you have metabolic issues like pcos. So it's something you work at and you, you know, you get to that level by small incremental changes over time. So you get rid of the snacks, you eat the healthier meals, then you shrink your eating window to 10 hours and then to eight hours, and then you can eventually start to go for the longer fasts if that's the direction you want to go in. But that will improve the sensitivity at the cellular level. So it's super important.