If you didn’t start singing a 1995 Montell Jordan song after reading that title, are you even old enough to have PCOS? Just kidding. PCOS fat loss: This is how we do it.
We eat good food.
There are a lot of “okay foods” we’re going to tell you not to eat. It’s not that the foods are bad and off limits forever. They just aren’t very good at delivering weight loss. Most people want to have their cake and eat it too. Stop that. You shouldn’t want every crappy pre-packaged, super-processed keto protein bar just because the label is pretty and it will save you time. We aren’t choosing food because it doesn’t look ‘too bad.’ Let go of convenience. Weight loss is what we’re going for. So we’ll choose foods that are GOOD for our goal. All the rest fall on the treat food list.
We don’t overeat.
We’ve all spent years measuring our macros down to the gram so we would be eating the correct amount of proteins, carbs, and fats for weight loss. One of our colleagues made a math mistake once that lasted a whole year. Instead of eating in a deficit so she’d lose weight, she ate the exact number of calories that would keep her at the same weight she already was. To the last calorie! Over a year! When she figured it out, she wanted to throw the spreadsheet and her whole computer out the window. There were tears. But as Carl Jung says, ‘there is no coming to consciousness except through pain.’ She learned that lesson and many others the hard way. We have to eat fewer calories than we need to maintain our current weight or we will not lose. Full stop. We stopped counting macros and we insist you do the same thing while on this program. We will only count calories and protein grams. And just so we’re clear, not overeating does not mean we are going hungry. Quite the opposite.
We treat ourselves.
We will have a treat meal every week. In all the programs we’ve done over the years, only a few didn’t allow treat meals. And usually, the trainer revised that policy after a few years. We need treats. We need to have a strawberry Pop-Tart every once in a while just to remember what it tastes like. There are going to be times when you want to enjoy a company dinner or a special night out with a partner or a buttery popcorn at the movies. It is important that these joys stay in your life for your sanity. There’s nothing we want more than the things we believe we can’t have. So we’ll have them. But we’ll plan them in a way that doesn’t derail our weight loss progress. This is so important when you’re losing with PCOS.
We exercise.
‘How you look is 80% what you eat.’ That’s one of our favorite fitness quotes. Another is, ‘You can’t outtrain a bad diet.’ Both are true. Nutrition comes first. If we are failing the diet, there is zero incentive to run around the block. Our fat will stay firmly in place. But after we get the nutrition straight, our focus turns to resistance training and cardio, in that order. What’s the point of a lumpy, pear-shaped woman losing weight if she’s still going to look like a smaller, lumpy pear? Resistance training reshapes your body. It gives you strength for all you’ll need to do on this program and in life, improves bone density, helps prevent injury, makes you feel strong, and helps you lose fat. So lifting, whether it’s with dumbbells, resistance bands, or body weight is important. #1 Diet. #2 Resistance Training. #3 Cardio — If you have a lot of fat to lose, cardio can help expedite your results, as long as your nutrition is on point. And it is great at helping you maintain weight loss. But don’t think 30 minutes on the stepmill will burn off that candy bar. We all joke about it, but in reality it doesn’t work that way. Disconnect cardio from your diet in your mind. Cardio can help what you’re already doing in the kitchen, but it cannot bandage your nutrition failures.
This is the point where you might expect to see 5 more headings about balancing your hormones, reducing inflammation, meditation, the latest supplements, fertility, and, and, and… It’s true, there’s a lot to talk about with PCOS. Our perspective is that it’s complicated enough and if we attack every little aspect of this condition all at once you’ll be overwhelmed and won’t know where to put your energy. So for simplicity’s sake, let’s focus on the 4 things that are going to give you the biggest weight loss bang for your buck.
We eat good food.
We don’t overeat.
We treat ourselves.
We exercise.
We the PCOS
Here’s all you need to get started!
We want to help you learn to eat at a deficit without going hungry, to get enough protein for building lean muscle mass, to train your body for fat loss, to keep your head up, and to enjoy the process. Here are some helpful articles to that end to get you started on your journey:
Top 10 Reasons Women with PCOS have difficulty losing weight.
How to Fail or Succeed Spectacularly at PCOS Weight Loss.
How to Structure your Meals for PCOS Weight Loss.
How many calories are best for PCOS fat loss?
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