My WOE, or It Is Getting Personal
Since puberty, I've been plagued with all sorts of awful symptoms. I will spare you the details, but suffice to say that these symptoms have at times been embarrassing, often inconvenient, and at one point utterly devastating. I attribute our very difficult journey to fertility on some of these symptoms, and after recently consulting with an internal medicine specialist, I was finally referred to an endocrinologist.
Per the specialist, someone, somewhere along the way of my nearly three decades of seeing doctors should have picked up on the obvious: I very likely have a metabolic disorder called PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome). My symptoms are all suggestive of PCOS, which is basically an issue with hormones in the body being out of balance, and producing more (or less) than required; a symptom of this imbalance is in fact the formation of cysts on ovaries, although they can sometimes be very very small and are almost always benign. There is no treatment for this condition, only a treatment to reduce its symptoms. The best way to do so? Lose weight.
I've been through a few scans and tests since then, and while the results aren't very conclusive, it does appear that my situation is a fairly "mild" case of PCOS relative to many others out there who have a very hard time with this condition. I'm not insulin-resistant, I'm not 300 pounds, and with assistance, I have been successful in having a healthy pregnancy that resulted in a gorgeous little girl. However, for the sake of my health and to reduce the symptoms that I do endure, I have to lose weight. Have. To.
My endocrinologist has advised bariatric surgery to assist in my weight loss. I, however, am fairly afraid of scalpels and anaesthesia. The alternatives, then, are either medication (no thanks!) or losing the weight on my own. I've been placed on the waitlist for bariatric surgery, but it is about 12-18 months long, so if in the intervening time I am able to drop the weight on my own, it won't be an issue anymore, because I simply won't qualify for the procedure, *and* I should be seeing an overall reduction in my symptoms that would negate my need for such drastic measures.
Anyway, those are the boring details. What's not boring is that I have recently begun eating differently; I'm following a hybrid Keto/low-carb, high fat diet to help put my body into a ketosis and hopefully train it to feed on my very ample fat stores. It's a diet rich in meat and dairy and non-starchy veg, and low on breads and sugar and fruit. My WOE (way of eating) has taken nearly a month for me to get used to, and during those first four weeks I did nothing but choose low-carb options. I didn't track my calories or protein, nor did I exercise. Even so, from the time I had weighed in at the doc's office to the time that I started weighing myself, I had lost 10 pounds. Water weight, I think.
As of this past Monday, I began aggressively following this WOE; I've been tracking my calories, fat/protein/carbs, sodium and fibre, and I have been cooking like a settler woman from the 19th century.
In just a few days, I've lost 3 pounds.
I have many many more to go, and I expect I will probably have bad days when my calories or carbs exceed my limits, but for the most part, I am committed. I have to be, since my energy levels were tanking and I wasn't able to stay awake in the afternoons to play with Little L. That's pretty bad.
So what am I eating/drinking?
Lots of egg scrambles with sausage, pancetta, bacon bits and/or spinach
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Cheese and nuts and seaweed for my snacks
Chicken salad lunches
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Cauliflower cheese bread
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Fish and stir-fried ginger garlic cauliflower rice
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Low carb cream-cheese pound cake (it's the stuff that is cubed into little pieces):
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I have no idea why I decided to blog about this rather personal topic, but I guess since it is already creeping into my social media, I might as well come clean about eating clean :) Hopefully someone somewhere who needs a kick in the pants like I did will find this useful!
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