Diet And Health

Well, Mother’s Day was pretty rough for me. I mean, I have nothing against the day itself or the idea of the day and celebrating my own mom is great. But it is a very intense reminder of that one thing I don’t have that I so desperately want. And at my new job it’s hard because I am interacting with lots of customers who all want to wish me a happy Mother’s Day!

I hope that this time next year I’ll be celebrating my first Mother’s Day as a mom. Any thoughts, prayers, well wishes, etc. that you can send my way are appreciated.

As you know, I’ve been diagnosed with a condition called PCOS that is one of the major causes of infertility for women. There is no cure and doctors usually suggest work arounds like using powerful drugs to force ovulation. However, I have two friends with PCOS who conceived their children naturally without these drugs. They both knew before they started trying to have a family that they had PCOS and had been working on managing the symptoms for a long time.

One of these friends suggested a book to me written by a woman who has PCOS but has not had symptoms in fifteen years due to her system of feeding the body in a way that supports hormonal health. 

It’s called WomanCode (which kind of makes me roll my eyes).

But despite the name I decided to buy the Kindle version and give her methods a chance. It’s the only thing out there I’ve found that suggests you can have some control over this condition. And I realized that I was looking at spending thousands of dollars on fertility treatment, so why not spend $10 first to see if I could do it myself?

The fact is, I need to work on my blood sugar levels too. I’m one step away from pre-diabetes. It can be reversed but I have to be dedicated to eating in a way that really nourishes my body.

Based on the information in the book, I’ve been putting together meal plans and I wanted to share those with you in case anyone else reading this book wants help with that part of the program. She explains that to best support your body’s systems, you should be eating different foods at different points in your cycle. There’s a great chart in the book for all the types of foods for each of the four parts of the cycle and all the types of nutrients you should be getting to balance out the hormonal changes that are constantly going on within your body. The timing of each meal also matters to keep blood sugar levels consistent.

(If you need more information about the parts of your cycle and how to tell where you are, Taking Charge of Your Fertility is the classic and a must-read for every woman whether she wants to get pregnant or not.) With PCOS it can be difficult to tell what part of your cycle you are in since you almost never menstruate. I had to guess where I was to start but I think within a couple of months I should have a much clearer idea.

Using the chart from the book and some of her other principles (only complex carbs, limited sugar, bigger lunch than dinner, no carbs or sugar for dinner, etc.) I put together these meal ideas. I’m still modifying and expanding. The “afr” means it is from the cookbook Appetite for Reduction that a friend lent me.

Follical Phase (7-10 days)

Breakfast

Lunch

Snack

Dinner

Ovulatory Phase (3-4 days)

Breakfast

Lunch 

Snack

Dinner

Luteal Phase (10-14 days)

Breakfast

Lunch

Snack

Dinner

Menstrual Phase (3-7 days)

Breakfast 

Lunch

Snack

Dinner

Pinterest is a great source of recipes. You can type in whatever restrictions you have and Pinterest will bring up gorgeous pictures of food you can make!

The diet does seem to be helping by the only ways of measuring I have.