I have not been officially diagnosed with PCOS because every doctor I have talked to doesn't believe me when I say that I eat well and exercise but still can't lose the weight, and I'm sick of trying to defend this to them. I hate to self diagnose but since my doctors have been utterly useless I don't really have much of a choice until I work up the nerve (and money) to go try other doctors. I have had nearly all of the symptoms of PCOS for 5 years. In those 5 years I would try to lose weight, nothing would happen, I would take extreme measures (less than 300 cal a day for months), recover, and repeat the process. This was making me very depressed so I decided to give it up and just eat a relatively healthy diet - meaning I was eating some fast food, some sweets, but trying not to overdo it and trying to include healthy options. (I still stand by this decision as it was necessary for my mental health and keeping me from short term anorexic tendencies.) If I lost weight like a normal person I would expect to be a little overweight on that diet but not morbidly obese like I am. In these 5 years I gained 150 pounds (on top of an already slightly overweight frame). I am just starting to eat a PCOS friendly diet and reading stories about slow losses has made me really nervous. I don't mind being diligent and losing slowly but I have a lot to lose and if I lose a pound a month, for example, it would take me 14 years to enter healthy weight territory, assuming no plateaus or mess ups which seems pretty unlikely. Not to mention the fact that my metabolism will worsen over that time, the fact that I will likely try to have children in that time, and other outlying factors. Less than a pound per month and I might not even be able to lose all of the weight in my lifetime.

I've just been getting scared reading all of the stories because it seems like most people were under 50 pounds overweight when they started. If their weight loss was so difficult I can't imagine what mine will be with 3 times as much weight to lose. I was hoping there might be some success stories of extreme weight loss with PCOS that people could share. Even if it did take a while, I just want evidence that extreme weight loss is possible. Thank you in advance!