75: Why am I not getting pregnant and improving my symptoms when I’m already leading a healthy lifestyle?

The PCOS Nutritionist Podcast

The pandemic meant a lot of us were not able to do the things we'd planned. For many women who have PCOS, it meant that their fertility treatment was put on hold. Something they've been waiting for and working towards, shut down and stopped until further notice - virtually overnight. Now for many women, the TTC journey with PCOS is a long, exhausting one so this kind of news is devastating.

This is exactly what happened to one of my patients from the Protocol - Sim. The day before she was supposed to go in and start her fertility treatment, COVID shut everything down. It felt like everything was working against her.

As a high achieving female who also worked in healthcare, Sim was already living a healthy lifestyle yet her fertility, weight, sugar cravings and energy levels weren’t budging, if anything they were going more haywire.

It’s not like she was eating McDonald’s 3 times a day, so how was nothing improving? Well, not everyone who has issues with insulin resistance and eventually develops Type 2 Diabetes is eating McDonalds and laying on the couch all day.

It’s something I see often - women living a healthy lifestyle by the books but still not getting anywhere.

The thing is, while you’re living a ‘healthy lifestyle’, these guidelines may not quite be healthy for you.

What seemed like a huge roadblock in her TTC journey ended up being a blessing in disguise because she learnt she could ovulate on her own and feel better overall by understanding her root cause - and ultimately 6 weeks into the changes her cycles started to regulate and she was able to conceive earlier this year!
Because I knew so many of you are TTC with PCOS, are living a healthy lifestyle already and would resonate with her journey, I wanted to bring her on to speak more about her PCOS journey.

This episode is for you if:

• You are already living a healthy lifestyle but still not seeing improvements in your symptoms
• You’re trying to get pregnant with PCOS
• COVID has meant your fertility journey has been altered / not gone to plan
• You have sugar cravings and hangry attacks
• Losing weight is a struggle for you
• You’re always tired and lack energy
• You aren’t (or don’t think) you’re ovulating
• You want to know more about your cycle and how to get pregnant with PCOS

Some things we cover in this episode:

• Why PCOS can impact ovulation and our cycles
• The importance of ‘doing less’ in order to improve your PCOS
• Why the scale shouldn’t be your go-to for weight loss
• Why healthy is relative to YOU

Resources and References:

• My Book: Getting Pregnant with PCOS
• Episode 8
• Episode 16
• Episode 20
• Episode 30

Links to our programs:

• The PCOS Protocol
• Eggducated