113: How to know if you’re ‘overdoing’ your healthy lifestyle

The PCOS Nutritionist Podcast

One of the main recommendations in conventional medicine aside from the Pill for PCOS is to maintain a healthy lifestyle and manage your caloric intake.

I can hear you all laughing already because we all do this! Improving our lifestyle is one of those things we can work on ourselves to improve our symptoms. But because our symptoms can get so bad, we put SO many changes on our plates and can quite often fall into overdoing it. I can confidently say that about 99% of the people that I work with struggle with this.

I think a lot of this comes down to the type of personality we have, we are just “go getter” women. We want to do everything. But when it comes to our health, that's not always the best way. This is something that I really had to work on myself — because I thought that if something wasn't working, I needed to do more of it to make it work. For example, when I was training a huge amount and running wasn't helping to control my weight, I thought I had to do more of it to lose weight (hint: that didn’t help either).

But when the symptoms you’re getting don’t make sense for the lifestyle that you are leading, that's a red flag for me to go "hold on, there's something here that the body is telling us, that it's not working optimally." If we can actually work out what that is, then we can also improve the other symptoms that you might be struggling with — like hangry attacks, severe sugar cravings, missing/irregular periods, hirsutism, acne, hair growth, hair loss and other symptoms as well.

So I really want you to understand that if what you are doing now is not working, then doing more of that or doing it more like 100% is certainly going to work either. One of my patients who I met in the PCOS Protocol, Natalie, is absolutely one of these people. Not only does she have PCOS, but she also has endometriosis, which about 10% of people with PCOS also have. Because of this, she felt like there was so much that she had to do to try to get on top of her symptoms for both. But like I said, more isn’t always better.

So hearing it from someone else — what they're doing to try and address both PCOS and endo — can be really helpful. In this episode we talk all about how she got her periods back by addressing her root cause, working to start not overdoing it and other little parts of the health puzzle that she hadn't identified previously.

This episode is for you if:

• You have endometriosis or think you might have endometriosis
• Irregular periods are one of your main symptoms
• You’re a Type A kind of person with a tendency to go ‘all or nothing’
• Trying to conceive is on your radar or you’re already trying

Some things we cover in this episode:

• Doing more isn’t always better
• The connection between endometriosis and PCOS
• Struggling with a perfectionist mindset
• How to find balance and practical tips for an 80/20 approach to your lifestyle

Resources and References:

• 10: Part 1: Why period pain is not a symptom of PCOS and all things Endometriosis with Dr. Lara Briden
• 11: Part 2: PCOS and Endometriosis with Dr Lara Briden
• 107: How to manage PCOS, autoimmune conditions and changing habits successfully
• My Book: Getting Pregnant with PCOS

Links to our programs:

• The PCOS Protocol