Some YAYs and some nays...

I do not have a scale at my aunts house where I am currently living and therefore I have not been able to track my progress, however I was home over the weekend and used my Mom's scale and discovered that in 10 days I had lost 4lbs. It has now been 13 days and I'm feeling pretty good. My arms are continuing to improve, once there's a noticeable difference via camera I'll post a picture. My hair loss seems to be diminishing and I finally figured out what has been triggering my IBS symptoms. I accidentally ate a processed food Sunday night, a hot dog, and I am still sick at 10am on Tuesday morning (the Nay part of this). Unfortunately it seems that the toxins in processed foods really do stick with us and I have felt a little sluggish today and yesterday therefore it appears that the foods we think are relatively okay, like a hot dog, really are not. Thankfully I've figured out that processed foods are definitely something I need to stay away from. I'll be interested to see what gluten free cookies with raw sugar taste like, hopefully good so I can at least have a treat here and there once this is over. For the time being I am having eggs although I'm really not supposed to. I'm sticking to it cooked because there's a gluten free bakery near my house and they have YUMMY pumpkin bread, my one yummy food I get to "sneak" but feel fine eating. I purchased some gluten free pizza dough and I'm excited to try making an interesting pizza with maybe some toasted nuts, squash and my dairy/gluten free butter with maybe some cinnemon and sage or something. It'll be another nice little treat. I'm already beginning to prepare material on the Clean program so that when I'm finished with the book (only 30 or so pages to go) I can just prepare everything I need and go. I'm planning on buying some incense and tracking down my yoga video, therefore I'll start doing yoga in the morning. I'll be able to turn up the heat in my room pretty high since it has it's own heating system separate from the rest of the house and be able to do my own version of bikram yoga and sweat and exercise like the book recommends, burn some incense, do my five minutes of meditation prior to doing yoga and start my day out the right way. I'll be excited to see how my body changes since my bloating seems to already be diminishing. Once I've lost a noticeable amount of weight I'll also post before and after pictures as well. As always I have to thank my best friend for potentially saving my life because I really think this is the answers to my symptoms. If I can grow back my gorgeous thick hair, have nice skin and be at my natural weight, this will all be worth it 10,000x's over!

Clean

I have to say I am absolutely in love with this book I'm reading called 'Clean' by Alejandro Junger M.D. In the past I've found it obnoxiously difficult to get excited about eating healthy, especially since to eat poorly serviced my cravings caused by the toxins in my body as well as the low blood sugar, which I'm sure has something to do with the toxins as well. I have been eating healthy for 6 days now and I feel amazing. Thankfully the book has made me so disgusted with the way Americans eat, I can't look at my old favorites the same way anymore. Even on the train yesterday when somebody had a big bag of McDonalds, usually my cravings would run mad with just the scent and I'd immediately become hungry, however with my new outlook, I actually felt sick to my stomach just catching a whiff of it. I am currently eating gluten free, dairy free products with no processed sugar, caffeine or alcohol. I already have more energy, my face has already slimmed down, my keratosis pelaris seems to be disappearing and my edema and bloating seems to have calmed down quite a bit. My fat rolls aren't nearly as bad when I sit, YAY! My vertigo seems to be dissipating which is HEAVEN and I haven't had any issues with low blood sugar despite the fact that I'm eating marginally less. My life no longer revolves around my food and what my cravings are telling me to go after next. This seems like something that will stick and I don't think I'll ever go back to how I used to eat, thankfully. The gluten free products aren't as horrible as I thought they'd be and almond milk is better than regular milk, something I never thought I'd say. Now as the dairy queen of the Northeast I thought I'd die without cheese but I have to say, now that my cravings seem to be washed from my body, I don't miss it. I'm actually looking forward to eating my roasted potatoes, beets and squash for lunch. Had it for dinner last night and it was YUMMY. I also thought I'd die without caffeine but I've found myself quite productive without it. It's amazing that I'm feeling this good already and I haven't even started the clean officially. These are just guidelines their support program in New York suggested to me. For all my PCOS ladies, I highly recommend this already and I'm not even close to being finished with it!

A Cheery Holiday Season Update

This 'Clean' program may just change my life and I'm very excited about it. Thankfully just in reading the book and being made aware of just how toxic the American diet is, I've already started to take measures to reverse my eating habits via the help of the people at Clean. I'm only a day and a half in but I can already see a difference. The edema that I tend to notice mostly in my stomach and hands seems to be disappating. Not that anyone really needs to know the following detail but my urine is almost clear almost every time I go to the bathroom which means my liver isn't processing toxins. I'm hoping to incorporate the garlic pills and one tablespoon of cold pressed olive oil a day over the weekend. In the past with most diets, I just have trouble sticking to them because who wants to give up all that yummy food? Certainly not me. After reading this book though and realizing how much of the food we in the USA eat is actually not supposed to enter our bodies because we were never meant to ingest such things is disturbing. Reading about what these toxins do to our bodies and what they cause is making me never want a french fry ever again. I think more than anything I'm just looking forward to losing that last stubborn 15-20 pounds that apparently the toxins won't let me lose as well as having a baby face no more! I want to look young and beautiful but I'd actually like to look 25 and not 17, I know, strange but it annoys me when I get carded at a rated R movie sometimes still. I suppose on top of all that, I'm looking forward to being rid of my symptoms forever. To have asthma, keratosis pelaris and alopecia be a thing of a past would be such an amazing thing, it's hard to imagine such a life...

Before, Current Progress, and A Cleanse

This is me at my heaviest. I was a freshman in college celebrating my brothers graduation. My best friend had just died one month before and I decided to eat my feelings. At the time I weighed 185lbs, the heaviest I've ever weighed and I have the stretch marks to prove it. I'm not proud of it, but it certainly keeps me motivated to never get there again.

Thanks to a good friend of mine I recently came across 'The Clean' by Alejandro Junger M.D. I'm not very far into just yet, just the introduction and two pages further than that but I'm already excited to attempt this cleanse. It claims right in the introduction that it helps with Autoimmune disorders, insomnia, breathing, etc, which is fantastic for PCOS because it's all Autoimmune related. If this cleanse is as good as it claims to be, I could be turning my life around in just three weeks and if not all problems, hopefully most will be helped by this.

I have been better about working out for the last week and I plan on starting this cleanse after Thanksgiving so by Christmas my body is free again because this can be the worst time of the year for your body because of all the rich food we put into it. If anyone does look into this, please make sure you read the book cover to cover prior to starting it so you fully understand what you're getting into. Also, depending on the medication you're on, it may affect your health, so please check with a doctor prior to doing so.

So far I have lost 25lbs and I plan on losing at least 15-20lbs if not more. One of my friends who didn't have much to lose lost 15lbs alone doing  the cleanse and I'm hoping I get just as big, if not bigger results than she did. Here's to hoping I finally found my 'Aha!' moment, thanks to my best friend.

Helpless

<p>You wake up on a Sunday morning after a day of complete and utter couch potato-ness and you say to yourself, "It's been a month since I picked up the weights, if I don't start today it could be another month before you feel like trying again." So you get up, put on your yoga pants and your favorite pink under armour shirt and your matching pink asics. As you walk by the candy bowl that you were so found of yesterday, you proudly walk by and say, "Nuh uh, you're not sucking me in today." So you put on your favorite pandora station and start grooving. It's a little tough after a month but you don't care cause you're determined. You get nine minutes in and you start to feel the shakes but you try to push through. You start to feel light headed but nope you keep trying to push cause you're halfway through. And then it comes, the feeling you hate the most because you know you have to reach for that candy bar now not because you want to but because it's the only thing that'll keep you from running to the porcelain express with a ghost white face that makes Mischa Barton in the Sixth sense look like a teddy bear. The sad thing is it's the one time a fat kid can't even force a candy bar down because your blood sugars telling your stomach it wants out not in. Now you're lying on the cold bathroom floor praying it either stops or just comes already. You're lying in a pool of sweat but you can't tell if it's from your body freaking out because of your blood sugar or if it's from your workout. Eventually you get youself to sit up and try to dry heave a few times and then finally your body realizes that you just put chocolate in you and then all is well because your sugar is back up. You stand up, walk back to your workout area &amp; you keep pushing but your body isn't ready. You try to lift the weights but your body hasn't regained it's full strength yet but you try to keep going. The weights are shaking so much you can barely hold onto them but you finish your set. Then the feeling comes back and you collapse on the floor right then and there because after all that you refuse to put another candy bar in your mouth. Then you start to think, "Well, the disease got to me yesterday because of the cravings and making me run down. Today the disease got me down because I tried to workout without knowing my blood sugar was low. I can't win." And that's when the self pity creeps in because on a daily basis you feel so helpless. Between the food, looks, weight, forced exhaustion and cravings, you can't win! And then you have to ask yourself, when are doctors going to care? When are they going to wake up and realize that it's painful, causes obesity and cancer and that it's overall detrimental to a lot of womens health in general. And then you remember that they don't care and neither to the insurance companies because to them, it's just cosmetic, to them it doesn't affect 1 in 10 women, it isn't directly related to heart disease, or ovarian cancer or breast cancer. Miraculously to them, they could give two shits that it's going untreated and probably killing a lot of women.

I HAVE SHOULDERS

Weight: 160
Size: Still at 2" loss
Construction Status: First Floor

Sorry I've been MIA, I started a new position at a furniture consulting firm in Boston and have barely had time to eat dinner before falling into bed, which means since I haven't had time for this, I haven't really worked out for the last two weeks. Thankfully I started up again last night, but thanks to Metformin, the hard work I had done in the weekd preceeding did not get washed away! I noticed this morning upon looking in the mirror that I had shoulders for the first time, something that since hitting puberty I don't think I've had. I'm sure it has something to do with the disapperance of the lovely fat deposit us women get between the breast and shoulder. I'm excited for a party in New York this weekend because I have a sleeveless shirt to wear. It will probably be the first time in a long time I won't  be embarassed to show off my arms or shoulders. I will hopefully be moving to the Boston area and have a good excuse to go for walks along the water in addition to my 30 Day Shred workout. I'm not a big fan of walking in Worcester because it's not as interesting.

The lactose intolerance test has proven true. I have tried to integrate certain things that contain lactose into my diet and the moment I do, some part of my face breaks out horribly and I can't get rid of the spots for weeks. I actually had a spot on my chin for a month and it has now turned into a keloid, on my face, no thank you. Definitely staying away from lactose products. I am curious to see if the lactose pills will help but I'm going to wait to be seen by a doctor prior to attempting in the even that my face does erupt yet again.

I'm trying to psych myself up about eating healthy by recreating crazy yummy sandwiches. Borrowed some ideas from the Nordstrom Bistro on sandwich ideas that involves fat free mayo with Craisins and some raw green beans. We'll see!

SUCCESS!

Weight: 160 (Total weight loss of 5 lbs)
Size: Lost 2"
Status: Concrete is dry mannnn

Sorry I've been MIA for a good 15 days but life's been a little crazy. Got a new position at work, I've been trying to save money to pay off some credit cards (woe is the constant tale of this economic bull), save up to have major work done on my car and eventually move back to Boston and get a little black French Bulldog Terrier named Pepe.

So far, even without really dieting (minus the whole lactose free tune) I've lost 5lbs and 2" in just 3 weeks being back on Metformin (only for a week) and doing Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred for a little less than a month. The fat deposit that you get between your breast and your arm, totally gone (strapless anything will look sexy now), my arms are no longer shameful and actually have definition (YAY!), my back rolls (aka my backside boobs) are disappearing and the cellulite on my buttox and thighs is slowly turning into muscle. All for just a workout that only takes 17 minutes a day! No one can make up an excuse to not take 20 mins out of their day to do something, it's so easy and now that I know it by heart I just do it to music instead of following the video. I'm going to try to stay away from sugar cause I slipped up a little bit and it seemed to make the dark spots around my neck return even with the Metformin, so I'm trying to stick to the low carb, low sugar, high protein, lactose free diet. So basically anything from the ground and all whole wheat if I'm having carbs. I'll keep you all updated and let you know how I do. If I stick to the diet for once, combined with the Metformin and how well I'm doing with the exercise, I could be skinny by my birthday (October 30th)! Once it becomes more noticeable, I'll be sure to post pictures, of both the weight loss AND my skin. The lactose free does seem to be working but the best thing I've discovered in the last couple of weeks is this makeupalley.com. I've already found one fantastic trick for a toner and it's completely annihilated my black heads. I do half Apple Cider Vinegar and half water in a small measuring cup for measuring medicine (aka a shot glass size) and doing it twice a day, my skin's never looked better! The website rates all kinds of stuff, discovered it thanks to my fantastic friend/hairdresser Miss Jessica, and I've already discovered two things I love from it (the other being MAC's mascara Primer... loveeee). If you suffer from bad skin, it's definitely a great place to get ideas for what to buy. It's all consumer reviewed. Check it out! That's all for now ladies, fearless leader signing off.

A Lacstose Update

Day 7
Weight: No change
Size: No Change
Exercise: Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred

So far I've gone cold turkey since last Saturday and have yet to have anything that has lactose in it... or so I thought. A good friend of mine made a good point that we are supposed to be Lactose Intolerant by nature. She stated that we are the only animal that drinks the milk of another. I had also discussed with her that I couldn't eat dairy, including eggs but she wasn't sure if that was something that had lactose in, turns out it's not (which is good cause I love me some eggs) However, turns out there's a lot of food I thought I could eat that I can't. Bottom line it's going to be more important now more than ever to pay attention to labels. I will say though that even after just six days of pretty much no lactose, my arms are already starting to clear up. The Keratosis Pilaris seems to be abating. I will start taking pictures to keep a documentation of how it clears up. My face is still fairly broken out but seems to slowly be healing. I still have some decent blockage in my T-zone but I'm assuming that will take the longest to clear up.

Thanks to the advice of my dear friend Kelli, I finally called and set up my mail order prescriptions and will be receiving my Metformin next week. I'll get right back on my regiment of taking it properly in the hopes that my stomach will shrink to it's normal size.

You Are Beautiful, Cysts, Hair Loss and All...

Day 3
Weight: No Change
 Size: No Change
Exercise: Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred
Construction Status: Laying the Concrete

For the married women, you've already been lucky enough to find a someone who accepts you for you, for all us single gals, I know it's a constant worry. For my symptoms, I suffer from hair loss (I've lost about 75% of my hair), cysts (when I have them I look about 6 months pregnant), and I have bad skin. Therefore, on my worst days I feel like an ugly 6 month pregnant (yes ugly cause you don't get the benefit of having the glow when there's just a cyst growing in there), balding chick with volcanoes all over her face. And even though no one else may notice it, you do and it certainly affects your confidence level on a daily basis. I'm only going to be happy and have a wonderful level of self esteem if I figure this out and that's what this is all about. Wouldn't it be wonderful to just work hard on your diet and exercise and then one day wake up and look in the mirror and see a normal person, not someone who has every unattractive feature possible staring back? You'd want to celebrate! Have a photo shoot, get dolled up, wear your sexiest dress and go out and go dancing with your girls. My hope for you all is that you find the right beat for you. We're are all beautiful on the inside and we deserve to be happy and have that beauty show on the outside.

An Ode to Dairy

Day 2
Construction Status: Foundation
Weight: No Change
Size: No Change

Yesterday, finding out that I'm probably Lactose Intolerant finally hit me. No cheese, yogurt, milk, ice cream, nuts, eggs, etc. Things like pizza, Greek yogurt, eggs, breakfast sandwiches, milk (I usually drink a LARGE glass of milk almost every day and have cereal for breakfast), ice cream with fresh fruit and chocolate hard top, anything Delmonico, anything chocolate, ohhhhh chocolate!

On the flip side though, the benefit is actually having skin! If this works, if the fact that I'm Lactose Intolerant proves to be true then it means I'll actually have beautiful skin. One thing that doctors always seem to call this disorder is cosmetic. We can never get health insurance coverage on the proper medications, etc because insurance doesn't cover anything cosmetic related. I probably could have gotten laser treatment or something to get rid of the bumps that cover 75% of my body but insurance definitely will not cover it, just like they refused to cover the proper medication for my hair loss but said that once I went bald they do cover wigs, HAH! I would rather look good, have my skin, have my hair, have my natural body weight and feel a little sicker than I do now, than look the way I do. If this was my fault, if I was a true fat kid and I didn't exercise or eat fairly healthy, naturally I would be disappointed in myself and try to change it but the most frustrating thing about this disease is that it's very hard to find a balance for what works to change your body. Now to add taking out pretty much all of my favorite foods just so my skin can look normal, it's upsetting.

The thing that bothers me more than anything is the fact that doctors are willing to help but at the same time they seem to have an 'oh well' attitude towards it. No one, except for MAYBE Australia has tried to do a study on it, which boggles my mind because it's directly related to heart health. If this is true, heart disease is the number one killer of women. Who knows if a lot of the women who have died from it had PCOS? How many lives would have been saved if doctors actually paid attention and looked into this disorder more. This disorder is constantly surrounded by frustration on all sides. They should just say right upfront that there probably won't be any real progress regarding the disorder in your lifetime and if there is, it'll probably be when you're far past your prime. Sorry we've screwed with your happiness for the better part of your life, but hey we found a solution now. Everyone deserves a full and happy life as a carefree gorgeous woman, and this disorder really puts a damper in all of it. People can tell you you're gorgeous but besides my face, I've never really felt it. We all deserve to feel it. If the cruise comes to be, I've decided we need to take tons of pictures in which we ALL look hellah sexy! Until next time my cysters.

my story. inspiration. inception.

In the Spring of 2003, life took a turn for the difficult. I was playing a Munchkin in the Wizard of Oz in a high school musical and overnight it seemed I gained 20 pounds, I looked like a chipmunk and I had gorgeous white stretch marks to prove it. Where one chocolate chip cookie would have sufficed, I found myself stuffing my face with numerous small homemade cookies (brought in on a daily basis by a friends mother who was cooking for the theater crew) and when I got home from school the frenzy didn't end. Ramen noodles became my afternoon snack addiction, with at least one if not two packages consumed prior to dinner. Before I knew it I was at the tailors having the dress I purchased for my aunts wedding two years earlier being let out up to two sizes for my Junior Prom... I looked like the Feather duster from Beauty & the Beast because they had to add elastic to the top of the dress and put a ruffle in to hide it. What hit home even more so was the fact that my date didn't even dance with me the entire night, in fact I think he only talked to me on the ride there and ride back. How could I blame him though? He probably thought he was going to Junior Prom with the cute, petite girl he remembered from the year prior.

One day while flipping through my Seventeen Magazine, I stumbled across a story about a girl, not unlike myself, who seemed to have all the same symptoms I had. I always knew something was wrong with me more than just common teen problems and an eating disorder which is exactly what my family chalked it up to be. On a daily basis both my brother and father were yelling me, saying I was fat and that I should stop eating. Everything I put in my mouth was a grenade, it only fueled the problems on both the inside and the outside. When I confided in my mother, she thought it was me simply acting like a teenager, being sensitive, moody and crying all the time. I knew even before I read the article that what I was experiencing was completely abnormal. After reading the article I knew I wasn't crazy, I knew the way I felt wasn't just my imagination. After one trip to the ob/gyn diagnosed with a simple blood test, it was confirmed that I had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. It was frustrating because I presented all the generic symptoms of the disorder to my physician, of course what I hadn't realized is that 1 in 10 women have it and don't even know it. It's in the top 10 of most undiagnosed diseases in the world, second to HIV.

Thanks to a sweetheart talking about hair loss and weight gain in the hallways of my college one day, I was inspired to create a group on Facebook. Not thinking about it for quite sometime, I went back and glanced at it one day and realized it had almost 2,000 women troubled with the same disorder as I did. This inspired me even more to do research and find out as much as I could about it to help them. Today that group that started with just me has grown to almost 6,000 women, thanks in large part to my awesome co-captain Miss Kelli. My original plan was just to find others and learn more about it but over the last two years it's grown into something more. I've been inspired and want to return the favor, but how can inspire when I'm sitting on my butt doing nothing and eating whatever I want... Here, now, I am making this promise to my fellow PCOSers, to the women on my site, I have created this blog to inspire you all. I have so far lost 25 pounds simply by watching what I eat and taking metformin but I am still 20-30lbs overweight. I'm at a breaking point where I either need to get on or accept defeat but for those who know me, you know I don't accept defeat.

The Plan: I am going to keep track of my diet & exercise, post all about it, post about my struggles, what symptomatic nuisance I am dealing with that day and keep you all posted on it. Maybe in some way, with my struggles and hopefully with my triumphant ending to all of this I will inspire you to GET ON instead of giving up. All we do is whine, doctors don't know what to do, so it's in our hands to figure it out. Well here goes nothing...

Day 1:
Weight- 165lbs
Size- 10 to 12
Construction status- planning stages!
Symptoms-Realized I'm most likely Lactose Intolerant, staying away from dairy, starting immediately. Haven't been on Metformin for a couple of months now due to insurance difficulties, etc and after talking to Kelli, realized that my stomach is growing despite my exercise and eating better, coming to the end conclusion that I need to get back on Metformin, STAT!