Episode #40: Get Healthy Today, Not Discouraged!

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.