Not Losing and REALLY Trying

skorenfeld123

Hey all!

For the first time ever I am adding exercise to my weight loss efforts, and am seeing hardly any results. Although it varies by day, I do try to minimize carbs, and have been doing Couch to 5K regularly (highly recommended, btw). HELP! I'm not going to quit because I feel better overall--a victory in itself--but the weight needs to get movin!

Any advice would be awesome--my diary is open for your creeping!

OutsideCreativ

Same situation-- but I feel better and m clothing fits better... take those non-scale victories and run with them (no pun intended!)

Dragonwolf

1. Eat real food more consistently. There are days where basically all you've had is candy and cookies. That's not helping your cause. Neither does getting most of your calories from tortilla chips in some meals. There are days where your food is phenomenal. Then there are days where most of your calories come from junk. Try to get more of the former. For example, honey is great, but not when you're consuming a quarter cup of it at a time (also, favor wildflower over clover, raw over refined, and local over imported whenever possible, so that you retain the good stuff about honey, the store bought clover stuff is little more than liquid sugar). White pita and white rice in the same meal isn't a good idea, either. Also, try to get some more variety. There are a lot of habitual things in your diet, which isn't necessarily bad, but neither is lamb (that's not heavily processed into gyro meat) and beef. Make sure you're getting enough variety to get the nutrients you need (ideally from sources that don't require fortification).

2. 200g of carbs isn't "minimizing." Whether you do less than 50g is up to you, but what you're doing is not low carb, so stop fooling yourself. Also, most of your carbs are sugar or highly refined sources. Again, not helping your cause. Even if you consciously choose to eat 200g of carbs every day, get them from complex carbs - vegetables, tubers, etc. - and ditch the daily chips/cookies/pretzels.

3. If you're going to drop your carbs, increase your protein and fat intake. Fat is not the enemy, and MFP is notorious about defaulting to far too little protein and fat. Customize your goals and make sure you get about 1g/lb of lean body mass in protein, and at least .35g/lb of total bodyweight in fat. Fat is fuel as much as carbs, and is an arguably more valuable fuel source, because it also aids in hormone balance (!) and brain function.

4. Consider adding in strength training. Cardio is good, but strength training can help your hormones, and if nothing else, will help you maintain muscle, thereby keeping your metabolism up as you lose weight.

5. Talk to your doctor and get bloodwork done, and consider Metformin if you're not already on it, or consider increasing your dose if you are. If your doctor won't do bloodwork, then get a new doctor. Knowledge is power, and worst case scenario with the bloodwork, you find out that your fasting insulin is perfect and you don't need Metformin. If a doctor won't do that for you, then s/he isn't worth your time, and staying with them will very likely only lead to heartache. If your doctor is willing, make sure you get fasting insulin. This is different than glucose and your glucose number is independent of your insulin number (ie - the glucose number is not enough to know if you have elevated insulin levels).

I could go into quite a bit more detail about different things, but this ought to get you started. If you want to see more detail, just look through some of the other "help, I'm not losing weight" threads. In a nutshell, I recommend a whole foods diet with few (if any) grains and legumes (and no soy), and low sugar/carbs. However, right now, I think you just need to buckle down on the good foods vs junk foods and consistency before trying to get buried in the nuances of Omega fatty acid balance, anti-nutrients, and various other things that can be done to tweak your food and weight loss. Right now, though, I think you need to concentrate more on getting nutrients and avoiding too many (simple) carbs, especially by themselves (while the butter on the noodles is great and helps, a meal should not consist solely of buttered noodles).

alexandra83ae

Wow! Amazing answer and I agree 100%... I eat 50-70 g of carbs on average daily. The rest is proteins and fat. Most of my carbs are coming from vegs and milled flax seed, which i take a table spoon twice a day.
Trust me cutting on carbs means going to 50g or less, which is almost impossible. But 50-70g is doable for everyone. Carbs, sugar and PCOS are best friends.. and as long as they are together your PCOS will worsen and weightloss will not progress. I will not talk about losing weight, as for me it is more about recompositioning the body rather than losing pounds. But I lost almost 20cm in my waist in 3 months just by doing strength training alone 5 days a week, 1 spinning class weekly and one hour biking outdoor weekly. Hence working out 7 days a week and only 2 out of them are cardio days!

Msruizk

with PCOS women usually have higher testosterone levels than normal, so when exercising without the proper control of PCOS will only increase your weight because you tend to build muscle more rapidly. I had enough of dieting for 2 years and exercising to no avail. I was looking fitter but the scale wasn’t moving and I wasn’t burning much fat only gaining muscle which was making my already large body look manly.
so ive I gave in and I just did it i went to a weight loss clinic, i was so against these places because well they push the drugs on you.
but i really needed them, the PCOS was preventing me from losing any weight no matter how much i diet and exercise. the OB pointed out that the more i work out the high my testosteron levels went which ofcourse only made me gain weight (most muscle then fat) and also made my acne and facial hair worse.
so she put me on a bcp (to control pcos symptoms), and on spiro (for acne and male pattern hair growth a side effect of the pcos) this worked for a year.
i had already done accutane for acne - only did 4month it helped with the cystic acne which was heart wrenchingly painful so the 4month round was enough to settle down the deep embeded vessels that when they popped they looked like blood spatters from zombie movies
anyway so after the accutane the derm put me on spiro which was helping and the ob put me on Lo-Ogestrel (which is the generic of LO-Estrin) it worked wonders i was able to lose about 10lbs in the first 5 months more then i had lost in 4 years since i had my son.
but then i started gaining weight again.
in november 2013 i finally gave in and went to see a weight loss doc,
he put me on
phentermine 37.5
hydrochlorithiazine (water pill)
and chromium (supplement)
in combination with the spiro and bcp i was taking from november 17th to january 17th i went from tiping the scales at 259.9 to 237!!!
just under 20lbs
the medications went along with proper diet (low GI and high in protein and got my carbs(if any from the appropriate veggies, and I started consuming 3-4 liters of water a day)
i was estatic!!!
but then i missed my period in january and ( although i have pcos i did get pregnant with my first born at 17 while on a bcp) my weight loss was at a standstill and my period wasnt coming i figured i should stop because if i am pregnant i dont know what effect that could have on the fetus
so i stopped all the drugs, i am back at 244 mainly because i have also gone back to eating crap. but that stops today!
my ob has changed up my bcp to Yasmin (she thinks that the LO-ogestrel stunt the weight loss maybe my body had gotten used to it and she believes that changing it will help
the yasmin like the spiro is progesterin binding and decreses testosteron. so that will help me lose weight as well she recommended i go back to the phentermine but change my diet so i get used to the new diet and continue it once im off the phentermine.

Dragonwolf

with PCOS women usually have higher testosterone levels than normal, so when exercising without the proper control of PCOS will only increase your weight because you tend to build muscle more rapidly. I had enough of dieting for 2 years and exercising to no avail. I was looking fitter but the scale wasn’t moving and I wasn’t burning much fat only gaining muscle which was making my already large body look manly.
so ive I gave in and I just did it i went to a weight loss clinic, i was so against these places because well they push the drugs on you.
but i really needed them, the PCOS was preventing me from losing any weight no matter how much i diet and exercise. the OB pointed out that the more i work out the high my testosteron levels went which ofcourse only made me gain weight (most muscle then fat) and also made my acne and facial hair worse.
so she put me on a bcp (to control pcos symptoms), and on spiro (for acne and male pattern hair growth a side effect of the pcos) this worked for a year.
i had already done accutane for acne - only did 4month it helped with the cystic acne which was heart wrenchingly painful so the 4month round was enough to settle down the deep embeded vessels that when they popped they looked like blood spatters from zombie movies
anyway so after the accutane the derm put me on spiro which was helping and the ob put me on Lo-Ogestrel (which is the generic of LO-Estrin) it worked wonders i was able to lose about 10lbs in the first 5 months more then i had lost in 4 years since i had my son.
but then i started gaining weight again.
in november 2013 i finally gave in and went to see a weight loss doc,
he put me on
phentermine 37.5
hydrochlorithiazine (water pill)
and chromium (supplement)
in combination with the spiro and bcp i was taking from november 17th to january 17th i went from tiping the scales at 259.9 to 237!!!
just under 20lbs
the medications went along with proper diet (low GI and high in protein and got my carbs(if any from the appropriate veggies, and I started consuming 3-4 liters of water a day)
i was estatic!!!
but then i missed my period in january and ( although i have pcos i did get pregnant with my first born at 17 while on a bcp) my weight loss was at a standstill and my period wasnt coming i figured i should stop because if i am pregnant i dont know what effect that could have on the fetus
so i stopped all the drugs, i am back at 244 mainly because i have also gone back to eating crap. but that stops today!
my ob has changed up my bcp to Yasmin (she thinks that the LO-ogestrel stunt the weight loss maybe my body had gotten used to it and she believes that changing it will help
the yasmin like the spiro is progesterin binding and decreses testosteron. so that will help me lose weight as well she recommended i go back to the phentermine but change my diet so i get used to the new diet and continue it once im off the phentermine.

The testosterone thing isn't entirely accurate...well, not for everyone with PCOS. There are actually two types of PCOS - Type 1, or insulin resistant PCOS, which responds well to Metformin, and Type 2, or non-insulin resistant PCOS, which doesn't respond to Metformin (and is more likely to have the higher testosterone). Also, a woman with PCOS may not have high testosterone, but may be getting the acne and hair from too little estrogen (and have normal testosterone). As such, the excess muscle building that you experienced won't necessarily happen in other women (for example, I can't build muscle to save my life; on the upside, I don't seem to lose it easily, but I can't seem to gain any, either). It's all in the blood tests.

Also, not all exercise builds muscle. Endurance cardio is catabolic, meaning it will eat muscle (it's why Olympic long distance runners often look starved). Additionally, insulin is also a growth hormone (it's why casein - milk protein - is more insulinogenic than other proteins, and why people who are insulin resistant can't lose weight), so the effect of exercise will depend on your hormone levels (exercise increases insulin sensitivity, but temporarily raises testosterone).

That said, I don't really believe in pumping someone full of drugs in order to manage something like this (not in the long term, and not as a sole solution). As you saw, it doesn't really work in the long run. Birth control pills are some of the worst "treatments" for PCOS, too, because at best, it just covers up the problem (the monthly bleed is actually withdrawal bleed, not an actual period), and at worse, it exacerbates the issue by throwing the hormone balance even farther off.

Aside from diet (which should at least have enough fat in it to help hormone balance and nutrient absorption; and probably be low enough simple/starchy carb to moderate insulin levels especially for Type 1 PCOS), we can do a few other things to help our bodies:

- Supplement Vitamin D (we're often deficient; this is where the dietary fat comes into play, because cholesterol is require to make Vitamin D, and fat is required to absorb it)
- Supplement Iodine (promotes healthy ovulation)
- Supplement zinc and magnesium (helps modulate testosterone; magnesium also helps improve insulin sensitivity)
- Supplement chromium (improve insulin sensitivity)
- Supplement Resveratrol (improve insulin and leptin sensitivity)
- Avoid substances with BPA, which is a known hormone disruptor
- Use non-hormonal birth control measures
- Avoid xenoestrogen sources (such as soy; it may seem like a good idea to either "supplement" or try to use the xenoestrogen's weaker trigger to try to modulate estrogen, but it doesn't really work that way)
- Avoid cow milk (to help reduce acne and inflammation), or at the very least, make sure you're getting milk from A2 cows (A1 casein is the most common allergen protein in milk and is often the cause of people's milk allergies)

(For all supplements, I'm a big supporter of altering one's diet to ensure one gets enough of the nutrient to not require supplementation after "refilling" the body's stores.)

Here's a good run-down of the types of PCOS and how they differ - http://www.sensible-alternative.com.au/female-hormones/polycystic-ovarian-syndrome