PCOS Percentages

mrsleescott

Hi! I'm trying to get my goals squared away to fit me and I was wondering if yall would share your percentages on carb/protein/sugar? I would also love to know what everyone's calorie setting is! Please help! I want to get my settings right so that I can follow it closely!

Also, any suggestions on high protein, low cal-low carb and preferably low cholesterol foods would be EXTREMELY appreciated! (Especially anything that yall can just buy at the store and heat up {soups, freezer meals, etc.}

Have a fantastic and healthy day!

KnitOrMiss

I just posted this under another topic...

My endocrinologist told me to START with 25% carbs, 35-55% fat, and the balance in protein - then adjust down from there. However, my own research has shown that I should be at 60-85% fats, 25-10% protein, and 15%-5% carbs for best results of what I want to do (closer to keto than LCHF). There is an awesome low carb forum you might want to check out for more information.

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/394-low-carber-daily-forum-the-lcd-group

My current favorite is bacon and eggs. (Eggs are pretty much nature's perfect food!) I do cheese and nuts. And cream cheese clouds/fat bombs. Aside from that, I don't know of much you can buy ready to go other than jerky, etc. I'm new to LCHF, so I'm not much help. And you don't want low cholesterol foods - those make your body create cholesterol if it doesn't get enough from food sources, and it generally ends up as the bad kind. Eating cholesterol has little effect on your numbers, but avoiding it will make your numbers go up. You also don't want high protein unless you've been recommended by doctors to eat it, because your body can use two things for fuel - fat and carbs. Excess protein gets converted to sugar and such. Your body can only use certain amounts. Check out the other forum for a ton more information.

mrsleescott

Okay, thank you so much!!!

I was "diagnosed" with high cholesterol and all my Doctor told me was to change my diet. I just assumed that meant eating less cholesterol. I have been taking fish oil in hopes of bringing it down.

Dragonwolf

mrsleescott wrote: »

Okay, thank you so much!!!

I was "diagnosed" with high cholesterol and all my Doctor told me was to change my diet. I just assumed that meant eating less cholesterol. I have been taking fish oil in hopes of bringing it down.

The recommendation to reduce fats then supplement with fish oil (or any of the other oil supplements) always cracks me up. Let's supplement with the very things we're cutting out!

There are a number of things that doctors tend to get wrong when it comes to conveying cholesterol numbers:

1. Total cholesterol is only a tiny fraction of the picture. If they only told you your total cholesterol, then press for more information or get a new doctor. Like everything else in this world, not all cholesterol is bad, and high total cholesterol isn't necessarily bad.
2. Dietary cholesterol and fat have little bearing on serum lipids and heart disease risk. This has been shown in hundreds of studies, with hundreds of thousands of subjects.
3. HDL and triglyceride numbers are more important than total cholesterol, and LDL particle size is more important than the standard LDL number. A "high" LDL with the large fluffy type of particles is a lower risk than a "normal" LDL with the small dense type of particles.
4. Low fat diets contribute to heart disease more than high fat diets.
5. High cholesterol is also indicative of systemic inflammation, as cholesterol is used to repair the body. Chronically high cholesterol is the canary in the coal mine for something else, not the disorder itself.

Your high cholesterol is very likely part of symptoms of your PCOS. It's considered a "co-morbid" condition (that is, not considered a symptom, but often occurs in tandem with PCOS), but in my research on the causes of "bad" cholesterol numbers, I've found it to have the same root causes as PCOS and the same remedies, and might as well be considered a symptom as well.

Simply put, most women with PCOS don't metabolize carbohydrates as well as we should. As a result, we are insulin resistant and have "bad" cholesterol numbers, as our body converts the non-glucose sugars to triglycerides to be stored in the fat stores. The USDA recommendations exacerbate this issue, because they recommend a diet high in grains and carbohydrates, which will raise LDL (and make the particles small and dense) and lower HDL even in otherwise healthy people.

Like KnitOrMiss, I follow a LCHF/keto way of eating. My percentages generally fall around 70% fat, 20% protein, 10% carbs. At some point before I started doing this way of eating, my cholesterol was often "high" enough to warrant finger-shaking and warnings to get it down (though not high enough for anyone to actually be able to do anything, medically). Since going LCHF, my numbers have been in the "normal"/"healthy" and even "optimal" ranges.

I highly recommend checking out Dr. Peter Attia's work on the matter. If you have an hour, this talk is phenomenal to listen to/watch -- https://player.vimeo.com/video/45485034

NurseSassy76

High cholesterol is actually diagnostic of PCOS. What that means is you don't have cholesteterol because you are eating too much it's how your body is processing stuff. Stick with low carb consistently and see how your numers drop the next time....