You feel like you know what you need to be doing for your health, but at the same time, as you get started, you keep having to start or feeling like you’re getting tripped up, not because you don’t know enough, but because you’re getting in your own way somehow. In today’s episode, we are going to explore all the ways that we, as smart women who are aware of what we need to be doing is sabotaging ourselves and getting in our own way on our journey to PCOS Health.

You’re listening to the PCOS Repair podcast, where we explore the ins and outs of PCOS and how to repair the imbalances in your hormones naturally with a little medical help sprinkled in. Hi, I’m Ashlene Korcek, and with many years of medical and personal experience with polycystic ovarian syndrome, it is my joy to watch women reverse their PCOS as they learn to nourish their body in a whole new way. With the power of our beliefs, our mindset, our environment, and the understanding of our genetics, we can heal at the root cause.

Welcome back to the PCOS Repair podcast, where today we’re going to be talking about how we get in our own way when it comes to creating the PCOS-healthy lifestyle that we’re working so hard towards. The funny thing is that I know that if you’re listening to this podcast, you are smart enough to realize that there are better options out there, and that there’s things that you can do that your body is struggling. You’re aware of all these things. It’s not that you don’t know what’s going on. You’re living in your body, you’re feeling your symptoms, and you’re smart enough to know that you need to figure out what’s going on and that there are things that you can do to improve your PCOS. Now, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you have actually a lot of the information that you need, and you’ve probably been starting to implement it. But the momentum, the consistency, the motivation, these are all words that I hear over and over and over that women say that they are lacking and that they feel like they keep getting started and then drifting back to where the way they used to do things and then trying to start again and then drifting back to where they used to be,  and then they tweak this or they try a different approach or they try to incorporate what they’re learning in a different way and it feels like there’s a lot of false starts. What is going on there? What are we doing that creates this sense in ourselves that we can’t gain momentum, we can’t gain traction? Have you ever felt that way? I know I did when I was early on in my PCOS journey where I felt like if someone could just give me a boost, if I could just take a break and only focus on this, maybe I could gain some momentum to where this wouldn’t be so hard. That’s what we are going to be talking about in this episode. So I think the first thing that we have to admit is that we can’t do it all. That’s a hard one for me, I have this internal just, I guess it’s like a fire. I get really fired up when someone tells me I can’t do something or when I am struggling to figure out how it’s all going to fit together, and it’s not just in my health, this is something where I’m like, okay, if this is happening and then this other thing is happening, and how is this all going to work together?

I need to be over here, and I need to be over here, and this person needs this, and that person needs that, and I need to do that. Where is it that… I know there’s a way, there’s got to be a way to make all this work. I have this deeply in me where if you tell me that dinner needs to be ready at five and I’m going to be across town, then I’ll figure out a dinner that I can have in the time bake and have ready beforehand, and when I’m going to do it, I like to problem solve, I like the puzzle of it. But it’s taken me years to realize that although I have that deeply in me, I still only have 24 hours in my day, I still only have so much energy, and I still need to make time for me to have balanced meals. I still need to have enough hours to sleep at night, and I have to pace myself on a 24-hour day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year. Sometimes it’s easy to think I can do it all and I can’t, and so I want you to start with just realizing we can’t do it all and we’re not supposed to.

That’s not what we’re here to do. We’re here to create a lovely life that we can be proud of, that we can enjoy, where we have energy left to give to others because that feels good, but also to protect our energy so that we don’t allow others to burn us out. If we can just remind ourselves, we don’t have to do it all. It’s okay to say no, it’s okay to say, oh, that’s going to have to wait until later. That goes into over-committing, I tend to be one where I like to say yes, I don’t like to tell people no, I’m not someone who has a problem saying no, I just would prefer to say yes. And some of you that’s going to be harder for than others, some people really struggle with the no. One of the things that I always try to remind myself of is when you say yes to something, you’re saying no to something else. It really comes down to what are the things that need to happen for you, and then the other things need to be either put on hold, need to be told no, or need to be told later.

And the funny thing is that when you say no to something, it’s amazing. If it was important, it’ll happen by somebody else, it’ll take care of itself. But we tend to think that like, oh, someone’s asking me, I guess it’s my job to do this and we feel like we have to say yes. Remind yourself next time that you’re tempted to say yes, that when you say yes when you agree, you are saying no to something else. Okay, the other one, and this is where I really tend to yo-yo and see if this resonates with you. I will get really excited about something in my health or outside of my health, but I’ll get really excited, I will because I’m very type A. I’ll get it all figured out, I’ll get it all planned out, and I get over-excited about it and I think that I, again, can do it all. I know that I would love to go and have a longer workout. I would love to be able to go hiking and do this and do that and all these things and then eat this healthy food. But I have to remember, I still have to find the time to actually do this.

And I have other commitments to my family, to my work, all those things as well. So finding that balance of being excited, being enthusiastic, but at the same time realistic so that you don’t set yourself up for the fail. When we get over excited and we’re like, Oh, I bet I could do this workout in the morning and then go and do this, and then I’m going to eat this healthy breakfast, and between this and that, I’m going to go for a little hike in town. And then I’m going to… You see what it’s like? That sounds great and if it happened, it’s a great thing, there’s nothing wrong with it it’s a beautiful idea. But it might be a bit much because I got a little over-excited. And so I’m setting myself up to be disappointed in myself when I don’t follow through with what I wrote in my planner. So instead, if we can funnel our excitement and our enthusiasm for the things that we’re learning and the things that we are excited to try into a realistic plan where we don’t try to change too much, too fast, where we leave ourselves room, especially at the beginning, to explore and to try and to not be proficient at it yet.

Think about a recipe that you’ve cooked a million times, you can do it with your eyes closed, you can be thinking about other things. It just comes together somehow. You just have the things in your cupboard, it’s things that you know that when they’re running low, you just replenish and you just can create it on the fly. Eventually, your PCOS-healthy lifestyle will become like that. But at the beginning, I invite you to give yourself a little more space with each of the things that you’re trying to learn. Even things as simple as making sure you drink more water in the day, take extra thought and planning. Did you bring your water bottle? Do you have access to your water bottle? Did you forget to bring your water bottle and leave it in the car? These are all things where every step of the way it has to become a habit. Over time, what you’ll learn is that, Oh, this bag that I take with me, if it’s my water bottle right here, it just stays there. I refill it all the time. I know where the water refill stations are, and I know how many of these water bottles I need to have so I can run them through the dishwasher at night.

You just get in this flow of it just happens, you don’t have to think about it so hard. But in the beginning, even making sure you get enough water in your day creates an extra burden on your mind and on the steps of things that you’re doing throughout the day. So that also touches on that I want to just point out, we tend to try to do too much, too fast. Slow way down. Okay? Now, ideally, we eat three lovely, whole-food balanced meals a day with plenty of protein in them, lots of veggies, and lots of fresh things that we’re getting all that vibrant color in our produce. That takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of work to get to the grocery store to have things on hand that are ripe and ready and not really ripe or not quite ripe yet. They need to be washed, they need to be cut, and they need to be prepared. It’s a lot more work than grabbing a protein bar, but it’s a lot better for you. However, as you get started with this, thinking that you’re going to go with three meals a day is fantastic and if you can, awesome. But if you’re so far from doing that because you’ve been eating pre-prepared or take-out meals almost exclusively, start with one meal and then try to choose healthier grab-and-go options for the other two. So that might look like instead of grabbing a McDonald’s meal at lunch, you at the grocery store, grab a pre-made salad with some chicken or protein with it. And for dinner, you focus on what can you make healthy for dinner, and for breakfast, you try to have a couple of, again, some easy things that you can grab that are healthier that start your day off with protein. So take a look at what can you change effortlessly. And then what is the one thing you’re going to focus on currently as you create that adjustment? Remembering again that you’re going to create a new habit there. It’s going to become effortless, but it’s not going to be effortless for a couple of weeks. So focus on the one thing, set yourself up for the success of not taking on and diving in too much, too fast. And then lastly, I invite you to be a little selfish when it comes to your health.

I think especially as women, we tend to try to put others first, our spouses, if you have children, family members, friends, and coworkers. But when your health is struggling, and if you’re listening to this and you’re trying to figure out how to repair your PCOS, I really invite you to be a little bit selfish, not even just a little, a lot selfish when it comes to your health. Your health is so, so, so important how you feel, the energy that you have, all of those things are so important that they deserve to be cared for, they deserve to be valued, and you deserve to be a little bit selfish. Again, a lot selfish when it comes to your health. This means it’s okay to say no, like we talked about, it’s okay to make yourself a priority before folding someone else’s laundry, before worrying about what someone else is going to eat as you eat a little bit differently. As you care for yourself, as you regain your health, you will actually have more energy and more to be able to give back to the people that you care about, but always maintain that space to put your health first.

your oxygen mask on first. Again, I really strongly invite you to be selfish when it comes to what you need for your health. Getting to bed on time, getting enough water, getting healthy, real, whole foods every day into your body, and to get some time to move and exercise and work out, get that blood flow, build your muscles, feel good, create that natural energy that we get when we exercise and work out. So there you have it, my friend. These are things that we all know, I’m sure you’ve heard all of these things before in one way or another, but I hope this brings it back to realizing how we get in our own way when we’re trying to create health in our bodies, happiness in our day, and to create a life where we can thrive and feel good and have the energy to engage in all the things that we love and want to do. With that, if you’ve enjoyed this episode, I hope you subscribe to the PCOS Repair podcast so that you get notified each and every week when our next topic of PCOS health support becomes available.

And until next time, I would love to connect with you over on Instagram. I would love to hear what you’re going to do a little bit differently to get out of your way to make it easier for you to create health on your journey to PCOS hormone repair. And until next time, bye for now.

Did you know that studies of PCOS epigenetics have shown that our environment can either worsen or completely reverse our PCOS symptoms? I believe that although PCOS makes us sensitive to our environment, it also makes us powerful. When we learn what our body needs and commit to providing those needs, not only do we gain back our health, but we grow in power just by showing up for ourselves. This is why I’ve created a guide for you to get started. My PCOS fertility meal guide can be found in the show notes below. I want to show you how to create an environment that promotes healing while still being able to live a life that you enjoy. This guide is completely free, so go get your copy now so that you can step into the vision that you have for your life and for your health.

Have you ever gotten tired of all the don’ts and shoulds and avoid this and don’t eat that and then do more of this that comes with creating PCOS health? I know that I have and sometimes it comes up still on occasion when what would be convenient and easy and less expensive, or go down all the list of things that kind of can block us when it comes to staying positive on our journey to create ideal PCOS health. This is why this episode is going to be so important as we talk about this mindset shift that we can make that will make creating PCOS health so much more fun and easy and effortless on your journey to creating healthy hormones.

You’re listening to the PCOS Repair podcast, where we explore the ins and outs of PCOS and how to repair the imbalances in your hormones naturally with a little medical help sprinkled in. Hi, I’m Ashleen Korcek and with many years of medical and personal experience with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, it is my joy to watch women reverse their PCOS as they learn to nourish their body in a whole new way. With the power of our beliefs, our mindset, and our environment and the understanding of our genetics, we can heal at the root cause.

Welcome back to the PCOS Repair Podcast, where today we’re going to be talking about how to create an outlook in our minds by the way that we think and talk to ourselves and the way that we approach creating PCOS health that is going to allow it to be more fun, more easy, effortless, less heavy, less frustrating, and ultimately lead to a lot more success. Because when we’re enjoying ourselves, we tend to stick with something a lot better than when something feels heavy and frustrating, and cumbersome. First of all, I want you to take a step back and think about how do you want to feel on a day to day. Not even PCOS related for me, I want to be excited about my day, I want to have enough energy and I want my body to feel good and then on a bigger scale, I want my body to be capable of the things that I want to do. So if I want to get out and go backpacking or exploring or do anything that’s at all physically active, I want my body to be able to do that without question, like, I want to be at a level where I’m able to say yes to the things that come into my life that I want to do, that I’m interested in, without being like, oh, I would like to do that, but I’m just going to make a fool of myself or I’m going to be the one that’s too slow.

I don’t want to feel that way. I want to feel like my body is capable and I’m confident in it and it’s not that things aren’t necessarily a struggle at times or where I have to train or put the effort in, but I don’t want it to feel like, well, that’s not an option for me. Okay, so that’s how I want to feel. I want you to take a minute, pause this episode if you need to, and just think about it or even jot down how you want to feel on a given day. What kind of attitude, energy, and outlook do you want on a given day? And overall, on a bigger picture, what do you want your body to be capable of physically, emotionally, all of those things, like, how do you want to be? I’m guessing you didn’t write it down or you didn’t think, I want to feel stuck, hopeless, frustrated and angry at the fact that I have to do things a certain way because I have PCOS. But we’ve all felt that way, at least I have. I have definitely felt that way, where it’s like, I can’t just eat what I want because I have PCOS.

Exercise doesn’t come easy for me because I’m prone to inflammation, fatigue, and energy slumps. Whatever the things are that you feel stuck about a lot of times, those are the things that consume our thoughts and how we approach what we’re doing in every day. On a small boat that can just even be like I don’t have time to meal prep this week, and I’m not going to be able to eat the way I want to if I don’t have time to meal prep. Have you ever felt like that? I think I felt like that last week because it was a busy week and so these things come up for us, and yet you’re like, but I really am trying to I’m doing all the right things, and then I have this hard week and it just throws everything out the window. Okay, so those frustrations, what we’re going to be talking about in this episode is how to take those frustrations and how to change the way we talk about them in our minds, how the way we think about them, and the way that we talk to ourselves about these frustrations and then because we always want to be able to take action, what to actually do about that once we’ve created that shift in our mindset.

So the second step after we have thought out how do we want to feel is to actually rewrite and reword the way that we think and talk to ourselves when we say things to ourselves. Say, we’re walking through the grocery store and we’re like, that looks good, but I can’t eat that. What if we thought instead, I have all these amazing things on my list in my grocery cart? This is what I want to be eating so that I can feel good, so I can have the energy I want and kind of pump myself up and get excited about why you’re buying the good foods that you’re buying and then depending on how you feel about that thing you just saw that looks really good, that you just told yourself, I can’t eat that because I have PCOS. What if you took that instead and said, hey, you know, I forgot how much I enjoy those, I’m going to use that as my next planned indulgence. When I fill in the blank, you can see kind of where I’m going with this, where when we have those thoughts of, oh, I can’t have that. If we can instead think about where it would fit into our lives, do we want it to fit into our lives?

And what are we choosing to put in our lives instead? It could be food, it could be time management, things, all the different things that come up for us when we’re trying to create a healthy lifestyle and change our habits. Changing habits is hard, we’re going to have an episode all about habits and things coming up, but for now, just acknowledge to yourself that it is uncomfortable and weird when we’re changing our habits and there are going to be new things that aren’t as familiar and comfortable to us that we are adding into our lives. And so some of the things that we used to do that felt easy, convenient, like a reward may be calling to us, and we can really reframe how we think about not being able to have those versus the positive of what we are adding and maybe where some of those other things would fit in in a more moderate manner that would still allow us to not feel deprived. All right, and then third, I want you to remember the big picture, it is so easy to get stuck in this thought of like all or nothing. I have PCOS, I want better health, I have to do all the right things all the time and we can get ourselves really caught up into I need a meal plan, I need to meal prep, I need to eat the perfect breakfast and we almost get ourselves spinning in circles over trying to do all the right things that we’ve lost sight of the bigger picture, now we are creating more stress in our lives and we’re not really creating something that we are thriving in, and so where do we need to adjust that? Okay, so always remember that when things are feeling hard when you’re feeling frustrated when you’re feeling like it’s too much, take that step back and look at the entirety of what your healthy lifestyle changes are creating in your day-to-day. And then four kinds of plays into that last one we talked about is how do we catch ourselves in choosing to be angry, frustrated, stuck, and helpless when we want to create better health in our PCOS as compared to creating a mindset of feeling curious and positive. So curious is one of my favorite words when it comes to this mindset shift because when you’re feeling like I’m doing all these things I need to meal prep a meal plan.

Like we were saying, it gets creating this extra stress in your life to try to do all the right things for your PCOS help. This is the time to, in this fourth step, recognize to catch ourselves choosing frustration, busy, stress, whatever that feeling comes up for you when we’re choosing that and we might even feel like we’re choosing it, but we are because watch this, we can shift this. If we take an approach of curiosity, well, how could I make meal planning or prepping so that I get my healthy options, so that I’m nourishing my body the way that I want to, but still acknowledging that I only have 24 hours in my day? The curiosity here is we’re asking ourselves, how can I make this more doable for myself? Because this is leading to frustration and stress. Well, can we get some of the things that are already prepped for us? Today at the market, I bought a container of already prepared boneless roasted chicken breast. Well, that’s going to make it a whole lot easier. Now really all I need is a bag of lettuce and some healthy dressing and I have a decent lunch.

Is it the fanciest salad ever? No, but it will fill me up. It will taste good because I’ll choose one of my favorite healthy dressings from Primal Kitchen and I will not be hungry, not be craving, I will be satisfied and I have other meals during the week that I can be fancier and I will enjoy the fact that I am no longer stressed about my meal planning, meal prepping, and what I’m going to eat. I’m not going starving because I couldn’t get my act together to pack a lunch for the day and I was going to be out. Do you see how all of a sudden it’s like, sure, if I just looked at what I ate for lunch it wasn’t the most amazing thing ever, but it took me from a place of feeling stuck and frustrated and just wishing I could just go through the drive through and grab some fast food, but not really wanting to do that because of all the hard work that I’m doing to create health and to feel good and to have better energy and to not have stomach pain and Bloating, I don’t want to go through the drive through, I want the convenience of it. And yes, I know that food tastes good and I want to not feel stressed and rushed and I have so many things that I need to do. So I’m stepping back, looking at the bigger picture, and becoming curious of what are the things that would address where you are feeling overwhelmed, where you are feeling negative energy, where you are feeling frustrated. That is where curiosity comes in, and it’s amazing when we create our own curiosity. Now, when someone else tries to tell us the answers to our problem, oftentimes we still put up some resistance but when we approach something with curiosity, it’s amazing what solutions we can find that create a really positive situation on many levels of what was going on in our day and in our week. Another example of this could be when you’re trying to get your daily movement in. If you’re biting off more than you can chew both time-wise for your schedule, realistically for where do you need to be? Do you need to get to the gym? Or is it something that you can do at home? Are you biting off more than you can chew physically when it feels hard, heavy, and not working for you?

On the bigger picture, now, it’s okay to have it feel like, okay, this is pushing my physical abilities while you’re doing it, but is it not meshing with what you’re trying to do during your week? That’s when it’s time to take a step back, look at that bigger picture, and see what is it that you can change. Sometimes it’s how or what kind of workout you’re doing. Sometimes it’s everything around it that’s not giving you the space for your workout. So those are ways that we want to step back when we feel the frustration when we feel this like it’s not smooth and we have to balance that with the fact that we have a three-year-old side that just doesn’t want to do what we have to do in our day and what we ultimately want to do, but is it really not being a good fit. That’s what we’re looking for there and then taking that step back and approaching it with curiosity and a positive outlook of, hey, I can figure this out. There’s got to be a way where I can come up with a solution that I don’t have to live in this, like, frustrated and not enjoying the way of life, where I can move it into a way that I enjoy it.

How can I make this more fun? How can I make this something that I look forward to? So how can I make this something that works for me? And then the fifth step is really about remembering that this is not something that we have to do all at once. As we create this positive outlook with our curiosity, if we can release the pressure, sometimes it’s hard to be curious and creative, and have an outlook of this could be fun. Like, I can make this so that it’s enjoyable and I can make this work for me. I can find a way even make it, but there’s a way that I can set this up to where I can actually enjoy my PCOS healthy journey, but it doesn’t happen overnight, and when we release that pressure of needing to figure out our meal planning, our meal prepping this week, I need to do it perfect this week when we can release that and be like, okay, I’m going to do my best this week. We’ll see what happens. Okay, this worked. This didn’t. I liked this. I didn’t like that. When we approach it with, I am trying this out, I’m in practice mode, I am moving in the right direction.

First of all, if you’re moving in the right direction, your body is going to benefit, right? And two, your mental outlook, your enjoyment, your day-to-day happiness is going to be so much greater when we can take the pressure off of, I have to have this perfect today. I have to have this figured out today. My PCOS health needs to be all under control by the end of the week. One, it’s not exactly realistic, and two, that kind of pressure actually holds us back because finding our unique way of creating a PCOS-healthy lifestyle takes creativity, and creativity gets completely squashed and that fire of curiosity and creativeness just gets dampened by pressure. So allow yourself to learn and discover and try new things and find what you do and do not enjoy along your own personal journey of PCOS help. That may sound like it’s going to take longer, but I actually promise you if you take that approach, you will actually be surprised at how much quicker you start to see progress and how much quicker you start to build momentum in creating that health that you want. Well, there you have it, my friend.

I hope you can see and feel that energy shift in you even as you think about the things that you’re running up against. It’s different for everybody. These are just examples that I have run up against, examples of how I have reframed my mindset to create a place of curiosity and positivity, even when it feels like it’s so much that I have to figure out or so much that I have to do, but this is a huge skill and when you learn this skill, every time life throws a new curveball at you, you’re going to be ready because you’re going to have this skill of being able to approach and problem solve with curiosity and creativity from a place of positivity. Anyway, if you’ve enjoyed this episode, I hope you hit the subscribe button so that you get notified each and every week as a new topic of PCOS health becomes available until next week. I would love to connect with you over on Instagram, it’s the best place to send me a message or drop a comment in the post so that we can continue this conversation of creating a healthy mindset and positive mindset so that you actually enjoy your day to day and that you can actually enjoy and have fun on your journey to finding PCOS health.

And until next time, bye for now.

Did you know that studies of PCOS epigenetics have shown that our environment can either worsen or completely reverse our PCOS symptoms? I believe that although PCOS makes us sensitive to our environment, it also makes us powerful. When we learn what our body needs and commit to providing those needs, not only do we gain back our health, but we grow in power just by showing up for ourselves. This is why I’ve created a guide for you to get started. My PCOS fertility Meal Guide can be found in the show notes below. I want to show you how to create an environment that promotes healing while still being able to live a life that you enjoy. This guide is completely free, so go get your copy now so that you can step into the vision that you have for your life and for your health.