I have food issues. It’s true.
While I believe my relationship with food is generally healthy (now), it’s still a work in progress.
I think about food way too much: what I’m putting into my body, why I’m putting it into my body, how each food makes me feel after I eat it, how meat makes me gag but my body craves it like nobody’s business, what I’m going to eat at my next meal, what my kids are going to eat, how much time I will need to allocate for food prep, what I’m going to do if we happen to be spontaneous and need something to bring for my bottomless pits I affectionately call my children.
Okay, perhaps my relationship is not as healthy as I would like to think. But it’s getting there, and it’s getting easier.
I have a long history of disordered eating. Food has not been very good to me, and in turn, I have not been very good to myself.
A recent email from a reader reminded me of this history. Paleo is much easier for me now, but it hasn’t always been.
[A] reason that I stopped Paleo for a while is because I started blaming myself for PCOS. Seriously. I got it in my head that my eating caused my PCOS. I would look at every morsel of food and worry so much that every little ounce would cause me to ruin my fertility. I kind of got obsessive and had to stop.
And you know what I say to this reader? Good for her for stopping. Sure, Paleo is likely going to bring her better physical health, but there comes a point where you have to put a stop to the crazy and revamp yourself.
I’ve gone through this phase. Several times.
I would never have all these problems and wouldn’t have passed on all of these health issues to my two innocent children if I hadn’t eaten all those _____ (fill in the blank; if it’s unhealthy and not illegal, I’m sure I ate it).
Is it true? Would I have been PCOS-free my entire life had I been on a strict Paleo diet from the beginning?
Maybe, maybe not. Who’s to know? Besides the nutritional problems of modern society, there are a whole host of other environmental factors that are out there beating up our bodies in several ways: stress, overworking, the sedentary lifestyle that is a true challenge to avoid, chemicals in our food/plastics/medicines/vaccinations/cleaning products/everything, food industry practices, the endless glow of electricity that messes up our internal clocks, etc etc etc etc etc.
Oh, and genetics. That’s sort of a big deal too.
And while I would love to know the why of PCOS, it’s so speculative right now. Some think it is solely diet; some believe it is purely genetic; some believe it is genetic and triggered by lifestyle factors; some don’t care and just want to pump as much Metformin in you as possible.
Chris Kresser recently posted a fantastic article that re-opened my eyes to the possibility that I didn’t cause my own disease (and even if I did, let’s put our energies elsewhere). In Reframing the obesity debate: cause/effect, genetics & robot clones, Kresser reminds us that “it’s essential to separate the causes and treatment of obesity.”
He goes on to say:
We know without a doubt that statins lower cholesterol. But does that mean high cholesterol is caused by a statin deficiency? If you break your arm, your doctor will probably put a cast on to help it heal. Does that mean we should all wear casts on our arms to make sure they don’t break?
I love this. Just because Paleo alleviates my PCOS symptoms does not implicate the Standard American Diet as the sole cause of my disease in the first place.
So did I cause my PCOS? Perhaps. And perhaps not. Right now all of the causes are unclear. I suppose all I can worry myself about right now is treating it. Which I am when I’m able to step back for a moment and stop blaming myself.
Tags: Paleo, PCOS, PCOS Cure, PCOS Diet, PCOS Nutrition, PCOS Symptoms, PCOS Treatment, PCOS Weight Loss, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome
I don’t think we caused it by our diet…I was diagnosed at 15! I think our diet can, however, relieve a bunch of the symptoms!
I agree that diet relieves a whole lot. I’m still on the fence about whether or not diet is the root cause…and how far that goes back. Is it just what you ate before being diagnosed? Does it trace back to mother’s health during pregnancy and the few years prior to conception? Does it go further back? I just don’t know. Thank goodness there’s a way to combat it (and largely without drugs) without knowing what caused it in the first place.
Thanks for this post Jennifer! The year that I tried (and failed) to treat my PCOS through lifestyle alone really got into my head. Every non-Paleo thing I ate plagued me with a huge sense of guilt. Even Paleo treats made me food nuts. Am I eating too many almonds?? too much fruit? eating too frequently?? Every time I heard a success story of how paleo “cured” someone’s PCOS, I felt like such a failure because it didn’t work for me.
I know that Paleo makes me feel 110% better and it does help to relieve my PCOS symptoms.
It’s important to have a good perspective about all of this. We may never know the “why” of our PCOS, but we can move forward and each day make decisions to better our health.
Amen, Johanna. It is so easy to blame ourselves. I don’t know about you, but it was a habit that I had already fallen into before I even knew what the PCOS was–the weight gain was all my fault. The infertility was all my fault. The fatigue was all my fault (or at least in my head). I was under the assumption that if I just exercised harder, ate more whole grains, and drank more water, all my problems would go away. So when Paleo brought about this miracle cure, it was pretty easy to blame any setbacks on myself. A lifetime of self-loathing is a hard habit to break.