Losing weight with PCOS

I'm sorry, I don't have PCOS advice - no experience.

A few comments on your other questions below.

StaceyyLorraine wrote: »

I have been struggling with my weight and health the past few years, it's an on and off relationship, but I am really trying to start 2024 focusing on my weight and health. I have PCOS and I believe that is why I struggle, besides not being self disciplined. I do enjoy hiking, and going to the gym and I love a good workout and how I feel afterwards, especially lifting free weights. If anyone has any tips/advice/recommendations on what I should be doing to start out, that would be great.

Actually, having exercise you enjoy is a good start toward fitness and health all on its own.

For weight loss, generically the key thing is the right calorie level: Eating less than we burn, but not so little that our energy tanks, we have bad health consequences, or we find it too hard to stick with and give up. Good overall nutrition is a bonus for health, of course.

The right ("best") eating style and schedule is more personal, and quite a few different approaches will foster reasonable nutrition and good health. Your PCOS may be relevant there, not sure.

In general, I'd exercise caution for anyone who says there's one universal best way to achieve good nutrition and health . . . I've been around MFP for quite a while, and it sure seems like people take many different paths to success, in terms of eating style, timing, and exercise routine. I think I've even seen some threads where women with PCOS succeeded with different eating styles from one another.

I also LOVE to cook new recipes, but would like to know how to really count portions of foods I make and add them into my calorie counting/macros correctly.

Get a food scale if you don't have one. (That's assuming you don't think using one would be stressful or obsessive for you.) Weighing food is not only more accurate, it's quicker and easier than cups/spoons. Eyeballing works unless/until it doesn't, and works all the way for some people, but weighing is IME simple and quick.

You need a couple of tricks for best efficiency, for example: If weighing something like mayo or peanut butter, put the jar on the scale, zero the scale, dip out the amount you want, and read the negative number on the scale. That's the amount you took out. Quick, accurate, no extra utensils to wash.

For foods you cook at home and share with family or space over several days, the most accurate way is to put the ingredients in the MFP recipe builder, check that it matched things accurately.
Weigh the cooked food, set the number of servings to the total number of gralems in the whole recipe. (MFP will give you an "are you sure" kind of message, but let you go on.) When you eat the food, put your plate/bowl on the scale, zero it, put your serving on it, and log that number of grams/servings of the recipe. Easy and accurate.

Check MFP database entries against the food package for accuracy the first time you log something, or check an authoritative source like the USDA Food Data Central database (https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/). The MFP database is crowd-sourced (entered by regular MFP users, and not all of them are accurate when they do it). Once you find and log an accurate entry, it will stay in your recent/frequent foods lists and come up first when you search for foods, as long as you keep using it regularly. You won't need to be laboriously checking everything forever!

Also, any workout routines that are a must would be great to see,

There are no specific workouts that are a must. For general health, the basic recommendation is to work up to a minimum 150 minutes per week of moderate cardio (or 75 of more intense cardio, or a proportionate combination), ideally spread over at least 5 days; and to do at least two days a week of strength exercise.

If relatively unfit to start, phase up to that gradually, because getting exhausted and dragging through one's day is counterproductive for weight loss and for health. Long run, more is fine, too, if it fits into your life with good life balance. (Good life balance means enough time and energy for job, home, family, and anything else important to you.)

For overall fitness (broader than health), it can also be good to include some challenges to flexibility, mobility, and balance in the mix, and maybe a few other factors depending on personal goals.

For cardio, anything reasonably fun (or at least tolerable/practical) is ideal.

and I would like to know what are the best foods to eat in the AM before AND after a workout are.

Again, this is personal. Some people find working out fasted to be ideal. Others (including me) don't do well working out fasted.

If you prefer to eat before workouts, anything that doesn't cause digestive distress during the workout is fine. For some people, it will be helpful to have some quick carbs, especially before the workout, but maybe also some carbs after (quick ones less important then). Post-workout, getting good nutrition including adequate protein through the day is most important for results, but timing some protein soon after a strength workout may be helpful, especially for older folks (say 50+).

Despite common mythology, breakfast is not the most important meal of the day, doesn't universally rev metabolism, etc. Some people do better eating a solid breakfast (I do). Some people do better skipping breakfast because they're not hungry first thing, and like having more calories later in the day.

None of this needs to be an exact formula, as if it were a universal magic spell that guarantees results. Personal experience/preference really matters, and in general getting close to nutritional goals on average over a day or few is fine. It doesn't need to be exactly exact to get good results. In that light, I think we can relax a little, vs. thinking that if things aren't perfect, we've failed. It's not that strict, honestly.

Best wishes!

Hi Stacey, I'm Marlene. I have PCOS as well and it's been a struggle for many years. I just recently restarted my health journey so I don't have a lot to share yet. I've been learning to listen to the rhythms of my body. For me it looks like realizing that although I enjoy breakfast foods, I'm very rarely hungry before 11am. So I'll either have breakfast or wait a little to have lunch. I also thought that I wouldn't like doing a workout before eating my first meal of the day and now I know that I enjoy a quick workout in the morning and another one at night.
I found some videos on YouTube that I've enjoyed doing almost every morning and evenings. If you want the recommendation, send me a message and I'll forward you the links.

Anyways, good luck! Add me if you want- I think I sent you a friend request!