I’m sure for a lot of you, you were diagnosed with PCOS as a teen or in your twenties. It’s a crazy time in your life anyway - moving to a new city, starting off in your career, going to university and meeting new people. It comes with a whole lot of new challenges in itself but dealing with all of these new changes while you’re in the throws of dealing with your PCOS - with no real guidance on how you should be managing it - that’s a whole new level of tough.

So many of us have been there (myself included) and it’s like trying to save a sinking ship. 

You’re trying to not only get used to this new normal but you’re also trying to deal with your body going haywire and not to mention being at university or in a new job is a breeding ground for comparison. 

In this episode, I’m chatting with the lovely Phoebe - fellow cyster and kiwi, who I had the pleasure of chatting with in person (don’t worry, we recorded this before COVID!) about her journey with PCOS which totally aligns with what I’ve said above.

Like me (and I’m sure a lot of you), Phoebe headed off to study and was adjusting to the changes that come along with it but was also dealing with a bunch of horrific PCOS symptoms - with no real answer as to why. 

She was seeing what everyone else around her was doing (ie. eating plenty of pizza and chocolate and guzzling down RTD’s like water) and yet she seemed to be the only one gaining any weight. In fact, the fresher 5kg was more like the fresher 30kg (in three months) for Phoebe, and she knew that there was more to it given she was exercising regularly, tracking her calories to a tee, eating healthy food and rarely drinking any alcohol.

After years of struggling with this stubborn weight gain, dealing with trauma, being put on the Pill and metformin then told there’s not really much else she can do, Phoebe started to learn more about her PCOS and realised that it’s not ‘just the way and the weight she is’. 

I can not stress this enough - it’s not all down to a lack of self control and calories, there’s so much more to it. So in this episode I speak to Phoebe all about dealing with a change of environment and how that affected her symptoms, dealing with comparison, stubborn weight that won’t budge, weight loss challenges (eeek), chronic dieting and a whole lot more.

I know weight loss is such a big thing for so many of you with PCOS, so I hope that you take some awesome nuggets of wisdom from Phoebe’s episode regardless of your age. She makes some fantastic points and I know so many of you will resonate with feeling like absolutely nothing works for you - but trust me, there is, it’s just a matter of understanding YOUR body and finding the best lifestyle changes to match.

This episode is for you if:

• Gaining a lot of weight in a very short amount of time
• You’ve got bad acne
• No amount of exercise is shifting the scales
• Personal trainers and health professionals aren’t believing that you’re diligently following all of the rules because you aren’t losing weight
• You have brain fog
• You get hangry, jittery and shaky really quickly after a meal

Some things we cover in this episode:

• Gaining A LOT of weight in a short period of time
• Calorie equation and why it’s not the be all end all
• Lifestyle changes and their effect on PCOS
• Dealing with bad acne
• Chronic dieting
• Why you aren’t losing weight when you’re doing a whole lot of exercise and counting your calories - and you’re monitoring it all to a tee
• Why you shouldn’t weigh yourself
• Binge Eating Disorder (BED)

Links to our programs:

• The PCOS Protocol
• Eggducated