Overcoming Weight Loss Resistance in PCOS

Coming off of birth control with acne-prone skin

Losing weight is no walk in the park. Unfortunately for women with PCOS, weight loss becomes even more of a challenge. If you have PCOS, there’s a good chance you’re strictly exercising, restricting your diet, and doing everything ‘right’, without obtaining your desired results. It’s an incredibly frustrating and demoralizing position to find yourself in.

I like to call PCOS the ‘perfect storm’ for weight loss resistance. This condition doesn’t just impact our ovaries and reproductive health, but also hugely disrupts many processes in our body that are involved in maintaining a healthy weight. This means the traditional model of calories in and calories out, is likely not going to work for you.

Losing weight with PCOS means simultaneously working on multiple systems to regain control of your entire body. Here we’ll review the biggest obstacles to consider when trying to lose weight with PCOS, so you can try again - the right way.

Checking Blood Sugar & Insulin

First and foremost, we need to understand how your body responds to sugar influx. When we eat sugar (also known as carbohydrates), insulin is released, which signals your cells to absorb sugar and utilize them as fuel.

In PCOS, your body doesn’t respond to these insulin signals properly, so more insulin is needed to bring sugar into your cells. This is problematic when trying to lose weight for several reasons:

Your body thinks it’s starving, so it stops releasing a very important hormone called leptin. Leptin is a hormone that tells your brain that you’re full. If leptin isn’t released, we start feeling hungry all the time. This leads to increased snacking, increased meal sizes, and increase cravings for sugar.
Since you’re ‘starving’ your body also starts storing fat and sugar at much higher rates. This means you begin to gain weight faster, and it becomes harder to lose weight when you try.

So how do we get this under control? We run a blood test, called an insulin glucose challenge, that shows us exactly how your body responds to sugar. From there, we can customize your treatment as needed. Diet, exercise, and targeted supplementation all play a role in getting this in check.

Checking Your Thyroid

An underactive thyroid can also contribute to weight loss difficulties. Our thyroid hormones are responsible for regulating metabolism, growth, and development. So when our thyroid is underactive, we don’t burn calories as quickly, making it a lot harder to lose weight and easier to gain weight.

This is important to consider in PCOS-related weight difficulties because a significant percentage of women with PCOS also have hypothyroidism. In addition, these two conditions have been shown to worsen each other. If you’re struggling with PCOS, and weight loss resistance, and you haven’t checked your thyroid - it’s time to do so. This could truly be what makes the difference for you in your weight loss journey.

Checking your thyroid health is simple. Managing thyroid health is a bit more nuanced, and requires the care of a Naturopathic or Medical Doctor who can properly monitor your treatment.

Checking Your Digestion

I will say this time and again - your gut is the foundation of lasting health. Our gut bacteria are massive regulators of both metabolism and hormones. When our gut bacteria are not balanced, this can also contribute to weight loss resistance.

New research is coming out every week showing the link between PCOS, digestion, and how it relates to weight loss resistance. Here are some quick highlights:

Increased intestinal permeability (AKA leaky gut) has been shown to be significantly higher in women with PCOS. Increased intestinal permeability has also been linked to obesity.
Women with PCOS were found to have less diversity of their gut bacteria. For reference, having a diverse microbiome is a good thing. Research has linked a less diverse microbiome to increased weight gain.
In another study that compared probiotics to metformin in PCOS, probiotics were shown to have a similar impact on the major symptoms of the condition, and significant changes were seen in blood sugar regulation, and lipid parameters.

Testing digestive function and the microbiome is difficult, unreliable, and not well validated according to the most recent research. Working with a GastroANP Naturopathic Doctor to understand how digestion is impacting your health, may be a good place to start instead of paying for expensive testing.

Checking Your Adrenal Health

Last but not least - we need to talk about stress and weight, because they are definitely related. So here’s what happens when we stress:

Our body releases a hormone called cortisol.
Cortisol helps us ‘fight off’ or ‘flee from’ our stressor.
It does this by activating our sympathetic nervous systems, shutting down unnecessary body systems (such as digestion and reproduction), and mobilizing our fuel sources AKA sugars into our bloodstream.

Unfortunately, women with PCOS have been found to be much more sensitive to the effects of cortisol, and this directly relates to weight difficulties.

Remember that cortisol causes sugar to be mobilized into our bloodstream, and we can only get sugar out of our bloodstream and into our cells with insulin.
The more we stress, the more sugar we release, the more insulin we release, and the more resistant our body becomes to insulin signals. Think of it like the boy who cried wolf - if you’re always releasing insulin, your cells start to tune it out.

Effectively managing stress is a mainstay of treating weight loss resistance in PCOS. If you notice you are constantly anxious, have trouble sleeping at night, crave sugar in the evenings, or often feel tired and wired all at once - this is probably something to consider.

You can get this tested with a Naturopathic Doctor, or you can start with these proven tips for stress reduction right now!

Next Steps

Losing weight with PCOS doesn’t need to be a struggle. You just need the right mindset, the right information, and the right care from a doctor who understands the complexities of PCOS.

If you’re struggling with weight loss resistance and you have PCOS, we will be launching a PCOS program to help you live your life optimally with PCOS very soon. We also offer one-on-one customized support and comprehensive lab testing through our naturopathic services.

If you want to learn more, book a complimentary consult or call the clinic for more information. Remember - you can achieve anything you put your mind to, including losing weight with PCOS.

If you want to learn more about how Naturopathic Medicine can support PCOS, click here.