Help! PCOS and frustrated!

RebelJD

Can anyone look at my diary and tell me what I'm doing wrong?
I have PCOS but my blood sugars have all been in normal levels (I started checking again this past week.)
I have stalled in the last week or two.
I am pretty meticulous about logging everything, I make all of my own meals and I really don't cheat. (My BF is out of town for work so I really don't have any temptations to stray from my plan.)
I was prescribed metformin by my GYN but haven't been able to take it for the past few months because it was given me TERRIBLE GI issues.
Would it make sense to see an endocrinologist? If so, what should I have them look at?

KnitOrMiss

The two things that jump out at me, @RebelJD, is that your sodium is CRAZY LOW. That alone makes me retain water like mad. In conjunction with that, I don't know what your water consumption is like, but I'm hoping 80-100 oz minimum.

The second thing is that you have relatively huge carb swings. From one day to the next, your carbs might double, while they're low, that can really affect your insulin levels, which makes you switch to fat storing instead of fat burning.

I ALWAYSALWAYSALWAYS recommend a endocrinologist, and it's good to make sure you and that person see eye to eye on most things. They run far more labs and have a lot more "technical" expertise in this matter than the average gynecologist. Generally speaking. But find one who's not afraid to listen to your research, or try odd things to see what works FOR YOU.

For me, Metformin was the devil incarnate. I had to either carb load starchy things or drop my carbs to the level you have - AND I had to avoid any and all dairy 4 hours on either side of my extended release dosage, which made eating low carb crazy frustrating for me. I convinced my endo to run labs after I stopped taking my Met for a bit, and I dropped my fasting glucose and insulin numbers better with low carbing that with the med. Personally, unless your insulin levels are CRAZY HIGH/out of control, I personally don't feel Met is worth the side effects - but it's a godsend for some, too.

Also, if you've had your cholesterol checked and your trigs are high at all, you need to get some extensive testing done on your thyroid function. It's my experience that these things often go hand in hand.

That being said, 2 weeks is not a stall (I'm sure you know that and are just using this term to represent the scale not moving for now). If you have not been taking pictures and measurements regularly, this is critical. For me, when the scale moves, the inches do not, and vice versa. Knowing the scale (the lying liarpants it is) isn't moving but inches are going is a bigger success in my book anyway.

I had pictures a while back that showed a 14 pound loss in 14 months. It looked like 60 plus pounds because all the weight seemed to come off from my middle!!!! So it's all about perspective.

And because of all these factors, I think holding to your course is the best option, looking into the carb swings and upping the sodium (and other electrolytes with it - magnesium and potassium), as well as the water... Weight loss is not a straight downward line. My line tends to look like a heart attack patient wearing an EKG monitor during a heart attack... I maintain that if I keep my dietary consumption and activity in line, my body will catch up eventually.

And good for you with your meticulous logging and staying firmly on track!

KnitOrMiss

Oh, and did you check your calorie goal to make sure the deficit isn't too high?

http://keto-calculator.ankerl.com/
http://www.flexibleketogenic.com/

Dragonwolf

Make sure you're not eating too little. Use http://keto-calculator.ankerl.com/ as a cross-reference. Too few calories can be just as stalling as too many. Other than that, you're not doing anything "wrong," per se. Generally speaking, not losing for 1 or even 2 weeks is not really a stall. Weight loss is not linear even in the best of circumstances.

PCOS is, unfortunately, a complex disorder, so it's a good idea to get in with a good endocrinologist. They're going to be best equipped to help you out, and the most understanding of low carb diets, even if they are just there to help you monitor things. Mine monitors my insulin and C-Peptide, which are better indicators of pancreatic health and PCOS management than blood sugar (to compare, my blood sugar has always been "normal" even when my insulin was well over the upper threshold of "normal"). She also periodically tests androgen, estrogen, and progesterone levels to ensure they're in range.

As for weight loss, there are a number of things that could be the case.

For one, your body might be healing the damage caused by the PCOS (since it often comes with metabolic syndrome). Healing the liver and pancreas, reducing fat around the liver, correcting hormone levels, etc. These things take time and don't show on the scale.

Two, you might be very sensitive to carbs and need to reduce carbs down even further. For example, I actually have to go to meat only in order to see actual weight loss. However, once I did that, all of my numbers normalized very quickly. My blood sugar is better than it has ever been, my insulin is down into the middle of the "healthy" range, my C-Peptide went from above the top cutoff of "normal" to below it.

Three, weight loss isn't linear. As I mentioned, 1 or even 2 weeks isn't actually a stall. Even in the best of circumstances, the scale doesn't reflect my weight loss on a weekly basis, but rather on a monthly basis. When I first went carnivore, I dropped about 7lb almost immediately. Then, the next week, I went up 1 or 2lb, stayed the same for two weeks, then on week 4 (one month after starting), dropped 4-5lb. This left me with a 1lb/week rate of loss if we assume the first week was water weight. The moral of this story is that you need to stick with it for at least a month. Otherwise, you might not see the effect of what you're doing.

RebelJD

Thanks for all your help! For some reason, nothing alerted me that I had responses to my post! I have realized that my sodium needs to go up. Historically, I never cook with salt and have never really put salt on foods. This is going to be one of the biggest challenges for me. My friend (who also has PCOS and just had thyroid cancer) gave me her awesome endocrinologist whom she absolutely loves. I will just have to stay with it. As impatient and frustrated as I am.

Sunny_Bunny_

RebelJD wrote: »

Thanks for all your help! For some reason, nothing alerted me that I had responses to my post! I have realized that my sodium needs to go up. Historically, I never cook with salt and have never really put salt on foods. This is going to be one of the biggest challenges for me. My friend (who also has PCOS and just had thyroid cancer) gave me her awesome endocrinologist whom she absolutely loves. I will just have to stay with it. As impatient and frustrated as I am.

If you find it difficult to just eat more salt, especially since it's A LOT of salt that you need, you may be better off to get the sodium chloride tablets at the pharmacy and just take it like a supplement.