May 22, 2021 • 24 mins
The typical recommendation for PCOS is to “lose weight” but after losing the weight, Eleni was still left with the symptoms and clinical markers of PCOS. It was then she learned that health is not what you look like, but dependent on your behaviors, and she took control of her health by learning how to listen + honor her needs (even if that meant gaining the weight back). We learn what a weight-inclusive dietitian can do for you. Content Warning: Eleni discusses her personal weight loss journey and its impact (or lack thereof) on her PCOS.
Content Warning: Eleni discusses her personal weight loss journey and it’s impact (or lack there of) on her PCOS.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I won't lend my body out be out weigh everything
that I'm made do. Won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning a love who I am, I get I'm strong,
I feel free, I know who every part of me
it is beautiful and I will always out way if
(00:23):
you feel it with your hands in the air, She'll
some love to the boy. Get there, say good day
and time did you and die out? Welcome back to Outweigh.
We're joined again by a Lenny, the amazing weight inclusive
dietitian that we had on two weeks ago talking about
what a weight inclusive dietitian is, um how eating disorders
(00:47):
can exist within larger bodies, and so many other amazing
conversations about how people in bigger bodies can take their
power back by unlearning so much of what has been ingrained. So,
like I said in that episode, we are really excited
to have a Lenny back because she has a really
interesting story that involves PCOS and even her own weight
(01:10):
loss journey and then pivoting into becoming a weight inclusive dietitian.
That being said, we want to put a trigger warning
out there now that we are going to be talking
about her weight lost journey in the context of what
doctors told her to do and what happened. If that
doesn't feel good for you at this time, go ahead
and skip this episode, but we just want to let
(01:32):
you know, so welcome back to Lenny. We're so excited
to have you. Thank you so much for having me back.
I'm so excited to have this conversation because PCOS is
something that a lot of people don't really know a
lot about. A lot of healthcare practitioners don't really know about,
a lot of dietitians don't know a lot about. And
there's a lot of misinformation and not such good information
(01:53):
being perpetuated on social media. Um, there are very large
accounts pushing narratives just that are not healthy mentally or
physically for women or girls with PCOS, and so I
think that this is really important, especially in the context
of disordered eating and eating disorders, which it is very
prevalent in this population. So let's kind of start from
(02:15):
the basics of what PCOS is. When you were diagnosed,
who diagnosed you? PCs is polycystic ovary syndrome. And what
makes it difficult is that there are no definite, concrete symptoms.
Everyone is kind of different. UM. I call it kind
of like a spectrum. Some people have it not so
seriously and other people haven't much more seriously. Some of
(02:36):
the symptoms include elevated androgen levels in your lab values,
So women with pcos who have this symptom um have
a lot of excess hair growth, male pattern baldness, things
like that. Another kinds of tell tale is really bad.
Acne is another symptom. High body weight is considered a
(02:59):
symptom as a result of the insulin resistance, which is
something that is experienced with women with PCOS and most
characteristically is not having your mental cycle or not having
it frequently enough. So what were your symptoms specifically at
the beginning. UM, I basically have had PCs my whole life,
but I was not diagnosed until I was twenty by
(03:22):
the dietitian that I started to see. She kind of
took down all my symptoms and everything, and at that
point I was over three hundred pounds and I had
been essentially dieting my whole life since I was in
third grade, and that's as young as I could remember.
I had done like every single diet possible, and so
my whole life, I was just searching for shrinking myself
(03:45):
and it just kind of made it worse, Like it
just kind of compounded, and that's how I ended up
where I was. And so I would argue that at
that point I was not in tune with myself. I
was not in tune with my body. I didn't even
know how to listen to my body. And so I
had found this diet titian who inspired me to become
a dietitian. Um. I was pre med at the time.
I was in my junior year of college as a
(04:07):
bio major cam miner. It was just, you know, it's
difficult time. And so I had met her and I
had told her I tried everything and like everyone was
telling me, like you have to lose weight. And she
was like, I think based on like your symptoms and
just hearing about like your history, like you have something
called PCOS And I was like, what is that. I
had never heard of that before, and so she was
the first person to tell me about it. And when
(04:28):
I had gone to the guy in the collegist that
I was seeing at the time and I told him,
he was like, oh, no, that's crazy, you don't have it.
He didn't even test me or anything. And so, like
I said, it's difficult because certain lab values may or
may not be within normal range. Some women with pcos
have cysts on their ovaries, others don't. I personally do
not have cysts on my ovaries. So it's it's a
(04:49):
little bit difficult because sometimes it's not really diagnosed. And
so not having your period is definitely one of those things, um,
that I experienced. And I was just put on the pill.
No one even thought like, Okay, what's going on underneath that.
So you lost your period, that was a symptom. But
like you said, you were so out of tune with
your body at that point. The medical professional just said,
(05:11):
go on the pill. Problem solved, period came back, didn't
die further correct. And so I had started to see
this dietitian and I had started to lose weight working
with her. I never counted calories or anything like that.
It was just like increasing the fiber that I ate
throughout the day. But in this process of losing weight,
because I had probably lost over a hundred pounds, I
(05:33):
don't count, I don't weigh myself. Um. She would just
tell me how much I had lost at the time,
I developed much more severe disordered eating patterns where I
became afraid of eating carbohydrates. I would restrict carbohydrates and
then binge on them. And so in the process of
doing something that I was being congratulated for because you
have PCOS and now you're losing weight and it's going
(05:55):
to fix everything, because that's kind of how healthcare practitioners approach.
I mean, even like research focuses on what's the best
diet to control weight in PCOS. And so when I
did my mass just thesis, I focused on this because
I was like, no one knows what's going on, Like
all the studies were inconclusive, and that should just tell
us that there is no one diet that's going to
(06:18):
help every single person or every single woman with PCOS.
And so the reason why I wanted to talk about
my experience as far as weight loss goes, is because
I did lose the weight. And when I finally did
get diagnosed by like an actual great kind ofcologists, my
hormone levels were all over the place, and you know,
I was still on the pill, so I didn't even
(06:38):
know if my cycles were regular, but I didn't know
that I felt like, Okay, well I lost all this weight,
like I should be finding now, you know, that's kind
of how I thought it was supposed to be UM,
and it just wasn't the case. And you know, I
think it's important to highlight that if someone comes to
me and they're pre diabetic and they are of a
normal sized body or a larger sete body, recommendations are
(07:01):
the same. So I do have specific recommendations for PCUS,
generally depending on the client. UM. I do find that
including more fiber rich foods are good, but also I
find that for most individuals in general. But it just
monitoring what your symptoms are and trying to address them
is really more important than focusing on weight loss, which
(07:21):
is why I don't encourage it. Our promote intentional weight loss.
So to back up for a second, you started seeing
a registered dietitian, you were losing weight, you were being
congratulated by people. You assumed that you must be improving
your health because all the doctors and medical professionals said
(07:41):
to improve symptoms of PCOS, lose weight. That will just,
you know, blanket take care of all of your problems.
At the same time, we kind of left off our
last episode kind of talking about this. You were binging
and restricting. You had a messed up relationship to carbohydrates
because PCOS is a disorder that messes with ability to
(08:02):
manage blood sugar, So your relationship to food, specifically carbohydrates
is kind of messed up. You're binging, you're restricting, you're
thinking about food all the time. But you're getting applauded
and you assume that you're improving your health. Yeah, a
hundred percent. That's confusing. Yeah, And like the thing is
is that even though sciencests so advanced, especially when it
(08:24):
comes to PCOS, there is just so much about the
hormonal levels and how it influences so many different things
that we just don't really know yet. And that's why
women with PCs are more likely to have depression and
anxiety and then disordered eating and eating disorders because a
lot of the times you see women that lost a
(08:46):
lot of weight made and instagram to talk about it,
and then they're doing keto and low carbon all these things,
and at the end of the day, disordered eating like
kind of overtakes it, and then these women just end
up in worse positions than they were before. So it
could be very dangerous because this is a medical condition
that impacts your insulin and your you know, blood sugar
(09:09):
levels and all sorts of things like that. So yeah,
so I thought that that's what I was supposed to do.
And you know, I had already not had a great
relationship with food. But when you received the literal praise
that I was receiving on a daily basis from everyone
in my life, people that I worked with, my professors
in college, like, it's very overwhelming. And so to get
(09:29):
to a point where I started to gain weight back
because I was over restricting and then overeating, and just
I didn't know how to listen to my body. I
didn't think that my body could be trusted because look
at how it made me over three hundred pounds. Like
I vilified myself because that's what society and health professionals
told me. You know, obese is bad. It means that
(09:51):
you're not in control. But me trying to put myself
under control was what had got me there in the
first place. For you, it just must be such a
tumultuous journey from being on a diet when you're in
third grade to dealing with this your entire life, to
finally losing a significant amount of weight to arriving at
(10:12):
this point where all of your I'm going to call
it hard work. I don't know if that's how I
feel about that word, or if that's how you describe it,
but I'm sure at the time it felt like an accomplishment,
whether it was or was not, because everybody was congratulating you,
only to then, you know, find out that your health
markers still haven't improved, you still have to learn how
to manage PCOS. Is a little bit of a mind fork,
(10:36):
I'll call it, for sure. And the crazy part is
is that I was just so desperate to lose weight
that like it wasn't even I mean I was, you know,
much younger at the time. This was about ten years ago,
but you know, I was just still so hung up
on the fact that, like I had to lose weight
because that's all people would talk about, and that's what
(10:58):
people would concert and me asked me, like, what's your goal?
Like how much do you more do you want to lose?
And I was just like, I don't know, Like I
did have a part of me that was like, well,
whatever it is, is what it will be, and I
don't have a plan, but I just kept chasing this
idea and so in the pursuit of health, I made
my relationship with food even worse and my hormones didn't
(11:20):
even get better. So I was kind of like, oh no,
like what was the point of all of this, you know.
And to explain this to people who are who have
pcdos or just in general who are in larger sized
bodies who are being told like you have to lose
weight for your health, I mean, it's just such a
negative way that people look at themselves because of this,
(11:42):
and it's so ingrained that I didn't even realize how
much it impacted me. And to get to a point,
like I said last episode, to say like I had
gained weight back, and I don't know how much it was,
but I was just so like I just felt like something,
I mean, was like I can't keep doing this anymore,
Like I have to do something else. And one of
(12:03):
the fear foods that I had was oatmeal. I know
that sounds crazy, but oatmeal is just carves, it's and
it's not even high in fiber. Like I just remember
hearing myself in my head saying that, and I ended
up starting to eat oatmeal in the morning every single
day for breakfast because I enjoyed it. It was convenient,
and I like added things like ground flax seed and
peanut butter and cocoun nibs and strawberries, and it was, like,
(12:26):
you know, it was slowly how I healed my relationship
with food, reintroducing foods that I was afraid of. In
the process, my weight has come down. I don't know
how much or whatever, but I could tell by how
things were fitting me, and essentially, like my body has
maintained where I am with working out and everything. Maybe
it continues to go down a little bit more or
(12:48):
maybe it goes up. I'm not sure, but like I
go to the gynecologists every six months, I look at
my labs um one of the telltale signs of knowing
that what I've been eating and act being more intuitive
with what I'm eating and listening to my body. I
didn't have cysts on my ovaries. I had enlarged ovaries,
(13:08):
and over the years and over time, my ovaries actually
came back down to like a normal size range. So
like that was a way of me knowing that this
was something that was good and so something that I
think is important to highlight is just because I don't
promote intentional weight loss and I don't promote diets doesn't
mean that I can't use like gentle nutrition and like
(13:31):
principles that we know that do impact like lab values.
For example, So if you have you know, a high
your your blood sugar control isn't good and you have
PCUS or if you're pre diabetic or diabetic, there are
things that we could do that can like kind of
help balance out your blood sugar that still can eat intuitively.
And there are studies that are being done that to
(13:51):
not look at PCUS, but diabetics in general and looking
at blood sugar control while intuitive eating, and it has
been shown that there are some benefits to it. I mean,
these studies are not very in depth, and you know,
as with most studies, you know, more studies need to
be done. But there is a way to help heal
your pcos or whatever it may be while still healing
(14:13):
your relationship with food. And like you said, your relationship
to food and your lab values started to improve when
you brought the things in that you couldn't eat, when
you made food fun. Adding peanut butter accounted like what
a positive approach to nutrition essentially, which is I think
is kind of like what you're about. And I just
(14:33):
want to touch on one thing you said earlier, which
you said science is advanced, and it is, but the
most humbling thing that I always returned to is that
nutrition and science is actually young. No matter how advanced
it is, it's always going to be young, and we
need to stay humble and recognize that everything we know,
(14:54):
the more we know over time, we still only understand
a fraction of it all because we're only human beings
trying to solve the most complex, you know, puzzle of
all time, many of which the variables are always changing
as a result of nature and and the life that
we do live. In a post that you wrote, you said,
(15:15):
lowering your weight will improve your health outcomes possibly, but
for healthy long term goals to be reached, the behaviors
need to be suitable for your body. And I love
that sentence because in medicine we see, or we're trained
to be told that if we just fix the number,
(15:35):
the lab values will improve. And I think, like you said,
that sends a lot of people who don't have that
wake up call like you did on a lifelong journey
of painful dieting, because dieting is not just eating a
certain way, it's living a certain way, it's thinking a
certain way. It's losing your life to something else externally
(15:59):
under the guys of health. So I think it's it's
so interesting to really pay attention to yourself, not just
at a three month marker of being on a diet
or a year, but the long term outcomes and lift
up what's under the hood. So even if your doctor's
congratulating you and your lab values are improved, there are
(16:19):
people who are going to lose weight and they're you know,
their blood sugar is going to improve, or maybe their
PCOS symptoms will improve. It will be because of a
lot of other things. But they'll chalk it up to
the weight. So how can we get people to look
under the hood and say, am I really okay? Even
though everyone seems to think I'm okay? Yeah, And that's
(16:39):
a good point to look under the hood. And for me,
what I realized just as a practitioner that I had
clients that improved their lab values. There are weight didn't
really change, but they started to have their their mind
still psychle more regular, which means that their hormones were
kind of balanceding out. So using weight in general just
(17:03):
isn't my I'm not a fan of. And I've had
many conversations with physicians of my clients about this, specifically,
like we're not going to weigh this patient. This patient
doesn't want to be weighed, Like, please don't weigh this
patient because then, you know, for some people it's very triggering,
you know, like I feel great, my lab values are great,
but like the scale hasn't moved, and you know, so
(17:25):
I don't weigh my clients. Um, I don't encourage them
to be weighed. You're looking under the hood. I mean,
you're asking them how they feel, you're getting the lab values,
You're making sure that they're good without them being thrown
off by this external variable. And I think it's important
to realize, like when you talk about health, what does
that actually mean? It's different for everyone. So let's say
(17:46):
you have PCs, and like I said, it's like a spectrum.
And one of the studies that I looked at in
my thesis from when I was doing my masters was
that regardless of weight status, women with pcos experience insulin resistance.
So even in a normal quote unquote normal weighted women
with PCUS still exhibited insulin resistance whether they were overweight, obese,
(18:09):
or regular sized. And so to me, that's like very telling, Like, well,
so someone comes to they have abnormal lab values but
they're of a normal weight, what do you recommend? You
don't recommend weight loss? You like, you know, you figure
out what depending on what the lab value is and
what nutritionally we can actually do. But again, it also
depends on where you are in your relationship with food.
(18:31):
If you have a poor relationship with food and you've
been dieting and you're exhibiting disordered eating habits, I don't
care about anything else. We need to work on that first.
And so it just really depends on the situation. So
the last question I have for you is you're obviously
a weight inclusive dietitian now and you're really helping people
prioritize their health condition. A lot of us out there
(18:51):
work with the generalized population of disordered eating, but to
take it a step further and help people that oftentimes
need more gentle nutrition shin or maybe less gentle they
need more coaching on how to I just call it
nutrition education. Really, like they need to learn how to eat,
to manage their blood sugar or things like that. It's
so important that we have people like you in the
(19:12):
field to do so. So I'd love to kind of
just I know we're kind of going backwards here, but
what is a weight inclusive dietitian and what made you
pivot into becoming one? Like I said on the last episode,
I was noticing a lot of these disordered habits and
clients that came to me in a larger body size
(19:32):
that came to me because they wanted to lose weight.
And when I explained to them that these habits are
disordered and this is not a healthy way to live,
it was kind of like eye opening. But they're like,
but I'm, you know, overweight, Like how can I have
disordered eating or you know, and eating disorder? And I
was like, this is what the habits mean, and you
deserve to heal your relationship with food before we do
(19:56):
anything else. And even women in larger sized bodies could
have very just sort of relationships with movement and exercise.
And there are patients of mine that are in larger
sized bodies that we're working on hearing their relationship with food,
and I don't recommend for them to exercise because they
have such a disordered relationship, meaning that they try to
subconsciously burn a certain amount of calories. They have the
(20:18):
Apple Watch, and now the big thing with the peloton,
how it like ranks you and you know all these things.
So I love my peloton. I have no idea how
to even like know what the rankings are, which I
guess I don't even know what the numbers mean. So
it's funny to me that people are getting so roped
up into this, but especially during the past year when
(20:41):
it's like the Year of the Peloton, Like I even
was like, should I get a peloton even though like
I hate bicycling, Like this's just know everyone's different and
so but like if that's what you like, and then
a percent, that's amazing. But I a lot of people
don't realize, like, just because you're in a large sized
body doesn't mean you need to force yourself to move
your move your body needs to lose weight or to
(21:01):
earn food or to earn off the food that you're
eating later. And a lot of these thoughts are so
subconscious that people didn't even realize that this is what
they were experiencing, so I realized that I was doing
a disservice to let them. Like, helping someone lose weight,
for the most part, is really not hard, but the
idea of what's maintainable and what's actually healthy that's the
(21:24):
hard part. And so like I explained to my clients,
when someone first comes to me, their intention maybe to
lose weight, and I explained him that is not what
I do. Like, you may lose weight while this you
are going on this journey, but you may not. You
may gain weight, may stay exactly the same. But feeling
free around food is like the most liberating thing when
(21:46):
you don't even think about it. It's freedom period, because
I mean, food is happening multiple times a day, and
food jail, you're in jail. And I didn't even realize
that when I was going through my apparance, like how
my habits were so disordered when friends of mine stf
like we would go out to eat and I would
be so specific about what I would order, and they
(22:08):
would be like, I couldn't go to a fond restaurant
because of whatever reason, or I didn't want to order
dessert for whatever reason. And I thought I was doing
it in the name of health. But if you think
about it, how healthy is that? Really? Like you should
be able to eat what makes you feel good, and
sometimes some foods make you feel good and sometimes some
foods don't make you feel good. But actually getting to
(22:29):
decide what that Maybe the healthiness is not in whether
you're eating it or not. It's in the trust of
yourself to be president in that moment, trust the feedback
of your body, whether it's this chocolate fond for like,
you know, like that example tastes good, or this chocolate
fondu is too sweet, or or just it's fun to
eat fond with my friends. You know exactly when I
(22:51):
decided that that is the message that I wanted to promote.
I wanted people to recognize me as a weight inclusive
dietitian is because your weight has nothing to do with
the work that we do together. It's just they're just
like the skies. They're just like you know, your cars there,
whatever is in front of you. It's just something that's there.
But for most of your life having such a tumultuous,
(23:14):
as you explained, relationship with food, to be able to
pull someone out of that and for them to realize
really how like out of tune they are with their bodies,
and then for them to be able to get back
to that center where they're like able to be in
tune with their bodies and to listen to what their
bodies are telling them is like the most amazing feeling
(23:35):
for someone to feel. And so that's why I always
highlight on like what the habits are and what what
habits actually improve your health. And that's what's important. Yeah,
And I think I hope that everybody listening really here's
that there is a place where you can go to
talk about nutrition and talk about your health where your
(23:57):
weight will not be the focus and you or emotional
needs as well as your health behaviors will be prioritized.
And I think you know, Lenny, your voice just shines
through as such a compassionate place where you know you
don't just work with pcos right, anybody could work with you.
So we'll put all of your information below your wonderful resource.
(24:19):
And I thank you so much for being on not
just one, but two episodes. If you missed our last episode,
go back and check that out. Both of them were
really a great mix I feel like of your personal
story as well as your professional path. So thank you
so much, Thank you so much for having me. It's
been really great, and I hope that people who are
(24:40):
listening find this useful and helpful. They will for sure.
Thanks so much and we'll see you soon.
I won't lend my body out be out weigh everything
that I'm made do. Won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning a love who I am, I get I'm strong,
I feel free, I know who every part of me
it is beautiful and I will always out way if
(00:23):
you feel it with your hands in the air, She'll
some love to the boy. Get there, say good day
and time did you and die out? Welcome back to Outweigh.
We're joined again by a Lenny, the amazing weight inclusive
dietitian that we had on two weeks ago talking about
what a weight inclusive dietitian is, um how eating disorders
(00:47):
can exist within larger bodies, and so many other amazing
conversations about how people in bigger bodies can take their
power back by unlearning so much of what has been ingrained. So,
like I said in that episode, we are really excited
to have a Lenny back because she has a really
interesting story that involves PCOS and even her own weight
(01:10):
loss journey and then pivoting into becoming a weight inclusive dietitian.
That being said, we want to put a trigger warning
out there now that we are going to be talking
about her weight lost journey in the context of what
doctors told her to do and what happened. If that
doesn't feel good for you at this time, go ahead
and skip this episode, but we just want to let
(01:32):
you know, so welcome back to Lenny. We're so excited
to have you. Thank you so much for having me back.
I'm so excited to have this conversation because PCOS is
something that a lot of people don't really know a
lot about. A lot of healthcare practitioners don't really know about,
a lot of dietitians don't know a lot about. And
there's a lot of misinformation and not such good information
(01:53):
being perpetuated on social media. Um, there are very large
accounts pushing narratives just that are not healthy mentally or
physically for women or girls with PCOS, and so I
think that this is really important, especially in the context
of disordered eating and eating disorders, which it is very
prevalent in this population. So let's kind of start from
(02:15):
the basics of what PCOS is. When you were diagnosed,
who diagnosed you? PCs is polycystic ovary syndrome. And what
makes it difficult is that there are no definite, concrete symptoms.
Everyone is kind of different. UM. I call it kind
of like a spectrum. Some people have it not so
seriously and other people haven't much more seriously. Some of
(02:36):
the symptoms include elevated androgen levels in your lab values,
So women with pcos who have this symptom um have
a lot of excess hair growth, male pattern baldness, things
like that. Another kinds of tell tale is really bad.
Acne is another symptom. High body weight is considered a
(02:59):
symptom as a result of the insulin resistance, which is
something that is experienced with women with PCOS and most
characteristically is not having your mental cycle or not having
it frequently enough. So what were your symptoms specifically at
the beginning. UM, I basically have had PCs my whole life,
but I was not diagnosed until I was twenty by
(03:22):
the dietitian that I started to see. She kind of
took down all my symptoms and everything, and at that
point I was over three hundred pounds and I had
been essentially dieting my whole life since I was in
third grade, and that's as young as I could remember.
I had done like every single diet possible, and so
my whole life, I was just searching for shrinking myself
(03:45):
and it just kind of made it worse, Like it
just kind of compounded, and that's how I ended up
where I was. And so I would argue that at
that point I was not in tune with myself. I
was not in tune with my body. I didn't even
know how to listen to my body. And so I
had found this diet titian who inspired me to become
a dietitian. Um. I was pre med at the time.
I was in my junior year of college as a
(04:07):
bio major cam miner. It was just, you know, it's
difficult time. And so I had met her and I
had told her I tried everything and like everyone was
telling me, like you have to lose weight. And she
was like, I think based on like your symptoms and
just hearing about like your history, like you have something
called PCOS And I was like, what is that. I
had never heard of that before, and so she was
the first person to tell me about it. And when
(04:28):
I had gone to the guy in the collegist that
I was seeing at the time and I told him,
he was like, oh, no, that's crazy, you don't have it.
He didn't even test me or anything. And so, like
I said, it's difficult because certain lab values may or
may not be within normal range. Some women with pcos
have cysts on their ovaries, others don't. I personally do
not have cysts on my ovaries. So it's it's a
(04:49):
little bit difficult because sometimes it's not really diagnosed. And
so not having your period is definitely one of those things, um,
that I experienced. And I was just put on the pill.
No one even thought like, Okay, what's going on underneath that.
So you lost your period, that was a symptom. But
like you said, you were so out of tune with
your body at that point. The medical professional just said,
(05:11):
go on the pill. Problem solved, period came back, didn't
die further correct. And so I had started to see
this dietitian and I had started to lose weight working
with her. I never counted calories or anything like that.
It was just like increasing the fiber that I ate
throughout the day. But in this process of losing weight,
because I had probably lost over a hundred pounds, I
(05:33):
don't count, I don't weigh myself. Um. She would just
tell me how much I had lost at the time,
I developed much more severe disordered eating patterns where I
became afraid of eating carbohydrates. I would restrict carbohydrates and
then binge on them. And so in the process of
doing something that I was being congratulated for because you
have PCOS and now you're losing weight and it's going
(05:55):
to fix everything, because that's kind of how healthcare practitioners approach.
I mean, even like research focuses on what's the best
diet to control weight in PCOS. And so when I
did my mass just thesis, I focused on this because
I was like, no one knows what's going on, Like
all the studies were inconclusive, and that should just tell
us that there is no one diet that's going to
(06:18):
help every single person or every single woman with PCOS.
And so the reason why I wanted to talk about
my experience as far as weight loss goes, is because
I did lose the weight. And when I finally did
get diagnosed by like an actual great kind ofcologists, my
hormone levels were all over the place, and you know,
I was still on the pill, so I didn't even
(06:38):
know if my cycles were regular, but I didn't know
that I felt like, Okay, well I lost all this weight,
like I should be finding now, you know, that's kind
of how I thought it was supposed to be UM,
and it just wasn't the case. And you know, I
think it's important to highlight that if someone comes to
me and they're pre diabetic and they are of a
normal sized body or a larger sete body, recommendations are
(07:01):
the same. So I do have specific recommendations for PCUS,
generally depending on the client. UM. I do find that
including more fiber rich foods are good, but also I
find that for most individuals in general. But it just
monitoring what your symptoms are and trying to address them
is really more important than focusing on weight loss, which
(07:21):
is why I don't encourage it. Our promote intentional weight loss.
So to back up for a second, you started seeing
a registered dietitian, you were losing weight, you were being
congratulated by people. You assumed that you must be improving
your health because all the doctors and medical professionals said
(07:41):
to improve symptoms of PCOS, lose weight. That will just,
you know, blanket take care of all of your problems.
At the same time, we kind of left off our
last episode kind of talking about this. You were binging
and restricting. You had a messed up relationship to carbohydrates
because PCOS is a disorder that messes with ability to
(08:02):
manage blood sugar, So your relationship to food, specifically carbohydrates
is kind of messed up. You're binging, you're restricting, you're
thinking about food all the time. But you're getting applauded
and you assume that you're improving your health. Yeah, a
hundred percent. That's confusing. Yeah, And like the thing is
is that even though sciencests so advanced, especially when it
(08:24):
comes to PCOS, there is just so much about the
hormonal levels and how it influences so many different things
that we just don't really know yet. And that's why
women with PCs are more likely to have depression and
anxiety and then disordered eating and eating disorders because a
lot of the times you see women that lost a
(08:46):
lot of weight made and instagram to talk about it,
and then they're doing keto and low carbon all these things,
and at the end of the day, disordered eating like
kind of overtakes it, and then these women just end
up in worse positions than they were before. So it
could be very dangerous because this is a medical condition
that impacts your insulin and your you know, blood sugar
(09:09):
levels and all sorts of things like that. So yeah,
so I thought that that's what I was supposed to do.
And you know, I had already not had a great
relationship with food. But when you received the literal praise
that I was receiving on a daily basis from everyone
in my life, people that I worked with, my professors
in college, like, it's very overwhelming. And so to get
(09:29):
to a point where I started to gain weight back
because I was over restricting and then overeating, and just
I didn't know how to listen to my body. I
didn't think that my body could be trusted because look
at how it made me over three hundred pounds. Like
I vilified myself because that's what society and health professionals
told me. You know, obese is bad. It means that
(09:51):
you're not in control. But me trying to put myself
under control was what had got me there in the
first place. For you, it just must be such a
tumultuous journey from being on a diet when you're in
third grade to dealing with this your entire life, to
finally losing a significant amount of weight to arriving at
(10:12):
this point where all of your I'm going to call
it hard work. I don't know if that's how I
feel about that word, or if that's how you describe it,
but I'm sure at the time it felt like an accomplishment,
whether it was or was not, because everybody was congratulating you,
only to then, you know, find out that your health
markers still haven't improved, you still have to learn how
to manage PCOS. Is a little bit of a mind fork,
(10:36):
I'll call it, for sure. And the crazy part is
is that I was just so desperate to lose weight
that like it wasn't even I mean I was, you know,
much younger at the time. This was about ten years ago,
but you know, I was just still so hung up
on the fact that, like I had to lose weight
because that's all people would talk about, and that's what
(10:58):
people would concert and me asked me, like, what's your goal?
Like how much do you more do you want to lose?
And I was just like, I don't know, Like I
did have a part of me that was like, well,
whatever it is, is what it will be, and I
don't have a plan, but I just kept chasing this
idea and so in the pursuit of health, I made
my relationship with food even worse and my hormones didn't
(11:20):
even get better. So I was kind of like, oh no,
like what was the point of all of this, you know.
And to explain this to people who are who have
pcdos or just in general who are in larger sized
bodies who are being told like you have to lose
weight for your health, I mean, it's just such a
negative way that people look at themselves because of this,
(11:42):
and it's so ingrained that I didn't even realize how
much it impacted me. And to get to a point,
like I said last episode, to say like I had
gained weight back, and I don't know how much it was,
but I was just so like I just felt like something,
I mean, was like I can't keep doing this anymore,
Like I have to do something else. And one of
(12:03):
the fear foods that I had was oatmeal. I know
that sounds crazy, but oatmeal is just carves, it's and
it's not even high in fiber. Like I just remember
hearing myself in my head saying that, and I ended
up starting to eat oatmeal in the morning every single
day for breakfast because I enjoyed it. It was convenient,
and I like added things like ground flax seed and
peanut butter and cocoun nibs and strawberries, and it was, like,
(12:26):
you know, it was slowly how I healed my relationship
with food, reintroducing foods that I was afraid of. In
the process, my weight has come down. I don't know
how much or whatever, but I could tell by how
things were fitting me, and essentially, like my body has
maintained where I am with working out and everything. Maybe
it continues to go down a little bit more or
(12:48):
maybe it goes up. I'm not sure, but like I
go to the gynecologists every six months, I look at
my labs um one of the telltale signs of knowing
that what I've been eating and act being more intuitive
with what I'm eating and listening to my body. I
didn't have cysts on my ovaries. I had enlarged ovaries,
(13:08):
and over the years and over time, my ovaries actually
came back down to like a normal size range. So
like that was a way of me knowing that this
was something that was good and so something that I
think is important to highlight is just because I don't
promote intentional weight loss and I don't promote diets doesn't
mean that I can't use like gentle nutrition and like
(13:31):
principles that we know that do impact like lab values.
For example, So if you have you know, a high
your your blood sugar control isn't good and you have
PCUS or if you're pre diabetic or diabetic, there are
things that we could do that can like kind of
help balance out your blood sugar that still can eat intuitively.
And there are studies that are being done that to
(13:51):
not look at PCUS, but diabetics in general and looking
at blood sugar control while intuitive eating, and it has
been shown that there are some benefits to it. I mean,
these studies are not very in depth, and you know,
as with most studies, you know, more studies need to
be done. But there is a way to help heal
your pcos or whatever it may be while still healing
(14:13):
your relationship with food. And like you said, your relationship
to food and your lab values started to improve when
you brought the things in that you couldn't eat, when
you made food fun. Adding peanut butter accounted like what
a positive approach to nutrition essentially, which is I think
is kind of like what you're about. And I just
(14:33):
want to touch on one thing you said earlier, which
you said science is advanced, and it is, but the
most humbling thing that I always returned to is that
nutrition and science is actually young. No matter how advanced
it is, it's always going to be young, and we
need to stay humble and recognize that everything we know,
(14:54):
the more we know over time, we still only understand
a fraction of it all because we're only human beings
trying to solve the most complex, you know, puzzle of
all time, many of which the variables are always changing
as a result of nature and and the life that
we do live. In a post that you wrote, you said,
(15:15):
lowering your weight will improve your health outcomes possibly, but
for healthy long term goals to be reached, the behaviors
need to be suitable for your body. And I love
that sentence because in medicine we see, or we're trained
to be told that if we just fix the number,
(15:35):
the lab values will improve. And I think, like you said,
that sends a lot of people who don't have that
wake up call like you did on a lifelong journey
of painful dieting, because dieting is not just eating a
certain way, it's living a certain way, it's thinking a
certain way. It's losing your life to something else externally
(15:59):
under the guys of health. So I think it's it's
so interesting to really pay attention to yourself, not just
at a three month marker of being on a diet
or a year, but the long term outcomes and lift
up what's under the hood. So even if your doctor's
congratulating you and your lab values are improved, there are
(16:19):
people who are going to lose weight and they're you know,
their blood sugar is going to improve, or maybe their
PCOS symptoms will improve. It will be because of a
lot of other things. But they'll chalk it up to
the weight. So how can we get people to look
under the hood and say, am I really okay? Even
though everyone seems to think I'm okay? Yeah, And that's
(16:39):
a good point to look under the hood. And for me,
what I realized just as a practitioner that I had
clients that improved their lab values. There are weight didn't
really change, but they started to have their their mind
still psychle more regular, which means that their hormones were
kind of balanceding out. So using weight in general just
(17:03):
isn't my I'm not a fan of. And I've had
many conversations with physicians of my clients about this, specifically,
like we're not going to weigh this patient. This patient
doesn't want to be weighed, Like, please don't weigh this
patient because then, you know, for some people it's very triggering,
you know, like I feel great, my lab values are great,
but like the scale hasn't moved, and you know, so
(17:25):
I don't weigh my clients. Um, I don't encourage them
to be weighed. You're looking under the hood. I mean,
you're asking them how they feel, you're getting the lab values,
You're making sure that they're good without them being thrown
off by this external variable. And I think it's important
to realize, like when you talk about health, what does
that actually mean? It's different for everyone. So let's say
(17:46):
you have PCs, and like I said, it's like a spectrum.
And one of the studies that I looked at in
my thesis from when I was doing my masters was
that regardless of weight status, women with pcos experience insulin resistance.
So even in a normal quote unquote normal weighted women
with PCUS still exhibited insulin resistance whether they were overweight, obese,
(18:09):
or regular sized. And so to me, that's like very telling, Like, well,
so someone comes to they have abnormal lab values but
they're of a normal weight, what do you recommend? You
don't recommend weight loss? You like, you know, you figure
out what depending on what the lab value is and
what nutritionally we can actually do. But again, it also
depends on where you are in your relationship with food.
(18:31):
If you have a poor relationship with food and you've
been dieting and you're exhibiting disordered eating habits, I don't
care about anything else. We need to work on that first.
And so it just really depends on the situation. So
the last question I have for you is you're obviously
a weight inclusive dietitian now and you're really helping people
prioritize their health condition. A lot of us out there
(18:51):
work with the generalized population of disordered eating, but to
take it a step further and help people that oftentimes
need more gentle nutrition shin or maybe less gentle they
need more coaching on how to I just call it
nutrition education. Really, like they need to learn how to eat,
to manage their blood sugar or things like that. It's
so important that we have people like you in the
(19:12):
field to do so. So I'd love to kind of
just I know we're kind of going backwards here, but
what is a weight inclusive dietitian and what made you
pivot into becoming one? Like I said on the last episode,
I was noticing a lot of these disordered habits and
clients that came to me in a larger body size
(19:32):
that came to me because they wanted to lose weight.
And when I explained to them that these habits are
disordered and this is not a healthy way to live,
it was kind of like eye opening. But they're like,
but I'm, you know, overweight, Like how can I have
disordered eating or you know, and eating disorder? And I
was like, this is what the habits mean, and you
deserve to heal your relationship with food before we do
(19:56):
anything else. And even women in larger sized bodies could
have very just sort of relationships with movement and exercise.
And there are patients of mine that are in larger
sized bodies that we're working on hearing their relationship with food,
and I don't recommend for them to exercise because they
have such a disordered relationship, meaning that they try to
subconsciously burn a certain amount of calories. They have the
(20:18):
Apple Watch, and now the big thing with the peloton,
how it like ranks you and you know all these things.
So I love my peloton. I have no idea how
to even like know what the rankings are, which I
guess I don't even know what the numbers mean. So
it's funny to me that people are getting so roped
up into this, but especially during the past year when
(20:41):
it's like the Year of the Peloton, Like I even
was like, should I get a peloton even though like
I hate bicycling, Like this's just know everyone's different and
so but like if that's what you like, and then
a percent, that's amazing. But I a lot of people
don't realize, like, just because you're in a large sized
body doesn't mean you need to force yourself to move
your move your body needs to lose weight or to
(21:01):
earn food or to earn off the food that you're
eating later. And a lot of these thoughts are so
subconscious that people didn't even realize that this is what
they were experiencing, so I realized that I was doing
a disservice to let them. Like, helping someone lose weight,
for the most part, is really not hard, but the
idea of what's maintainable and what's actually healthy that's the
(21:24):
hard part. And so like I explained to my clients,
when someone first comes to me, their intention maybe to
lose weight, and I explained him that is not what
I do. Like, you may lose weight while this you
are going on this journey, but you may not. You
may gain weight, may stay exactly the same. But feeling
free around food is like the most liberating thing when
(21:46):
you don't even think about it. It's freedom period, because
I mean, food is happening multiple times a day, and
food jail, you're in jail. And I didn't even realize
that when I was going through my apparance, like how
my habits were so disordered when friends of mine stf
like we would go out to eat and I would
be so specific about what I would order, and they
(22:08):
would be like, I couldn't go to a fond restaurant
because of whatever reason, or I didn't want to order
dessert for whatever reason. And I thought I was doing
it in the name of health. But if you think
about it, how healthy is that? Really? Like you should
be able to eat what makes you feel good, and
sometimes some foods make you feel good and sometimes some
foods don't make you feel good. But actually getting to
(22:29):
decide what that Maybe the healthiness is not in whether
you're eating it or not. It's in the trust of
yourself to be president in that moment, trust the feedback
of your body, whether it's this chocolate fond for like,
you know, like that example tastes good, or this chocolate
fondu is too sweet, or or just it's fun to
eat fond with my friends. You know exactly when I
(22:51):
decided that that is the message that I wanted to promote.
I wanted people to recognize me as a weight inclusive
dietitian is because your weight has nothing to do with
the work that we do together. It's just they're just
like the skies. They're just like you know, your cars there,
whatever is in front of you. It's just something that's there.
But for most of your life having such a tumultuous,
(23:14):
as you explained, relationship with food, to be able to
pull someone out of that and for them to realize
really how like out of tune they are with their bodies,
and then for them to be able to get back
to that center where they're like able to be in
tune with their bodies and to listen to what their
bodies are telling them is like the most amazing feeling
(23:35):
for someone to feel. And so that's why I always
highlight on like what the habits are and what what
habits actually improve your health. And that's what's important. Yeah,
And I think I hope that everybody listening really here's
that there is a place where you can go to
talk about nutrition and talk about your health where your
(23:57):
weight will not be the focus and you or emotional
needs as well as your health behaviors will be prioritized.
And I think you know, Lenny, your voice just shines
through as such a compassionate place where you know you
don't just work with pcos right, anybody could work with you.
So we'll put all of your information below your wonderful resource.
(24:19):
And I thank you so much for being on not
just one, but two episodes. If you missed our last episode,
go back and check that out. Both of them were
really a great mix I feel like of your personal
story as well as your professional path. So thank you
so much, Thank you so much for having me. It's
been really great, and I hope that people who are
(24:40):
listening find this useful and helpful. They will for sure.
Thanks so much and we'll see you soon.
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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