In the Creating a Family community we tend to think of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome as primarily a cause for infertility or the reason why we can’t lose weight, but according to Dr. Sunita Kulshrestha with Shady Grove Fertility, in reality PCOS is a disease with many possible term health issues, including cardio vascular disease, diabetes, and even cancer. If you think you have the symptoms of PCOS you must get diagnosed in order to get treated, even if you aren’t trying to get pregnant.
While medications may be needed, your first line of attack should also include diet and lifestyle changes, such as exercise.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book The PCOS Diet Plan: A Natural Approach to Health for Women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome by Hillary Wright, Director of Nutrition Counseling for the Domar Center for Mind Body Health at Boston IVF, and along with Dr. Kulshrestha, a guest on this week’s Creating a Family Radio show on Diets that Work for PCOS. The PCOS Diet Plan is the right combination of practical, scientific, and ultimately doable.
We talked a lot on the show about the type of diet works for women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. You’ve probably heard some of this before, but Wright had a knack for explaining why it works.
Many of us know what and how we should eat, but it doesn’t seem to happen. I thought Hillary Wright had a good point, when she said in The PCOS Diet Plan that many women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome fall apart at the planning stage. We intend to eat well, but the devil is in the details.
We have to make eating a priority—or more to the point, make eating right a priority.
In order to make this happen we must take the following steps:
- If you want to eat well, you have to have some good food choices close at hand.
- To have those healthy foods as your default choices, you need to make time to prepare your meals and snacks. Pack them up if they are toing to work with you.
- To have healthy food to prepare and pack, you need to budget some time each week for hopping at the grocery story or farmers’ market, so that good food options are readily available for you.
- To have time available to shop, you need to decide how to plan the rest of your time to prioritize food shopping.
In short—planning and shopping for meals must be a priority.
Is meal planning a priority in your life? What are your fallback healthy meal choices?
My easy go-to if I don’t feel like what I’ve planned is an omelette with chopped up cherry tomatoes, baby spinach, sliced mushrooms, and MAYBE a smidgen of low-fat cheese if I’m feeling crave-y towards dairy.
I do one big shop each week, which means I have to plan properly. Staples include in-season fruit, all-natural orange juice with pulp, spinach leaves, white chia seeds and psyllium husks to make green smoothies every morning. We always have corn on the cob in the fridge, and broccoli or cauliflower. Having these as staples that I pick up on autopilot every week helps a lot.
Yummmm Ang K. I’d like to eat at your house.