One of the biggest fears and frustrations of a PCOS health journey is what about failure? What about when I can’t keep up with it? What happens when I screw it all up? Am I doing all of this work and I’m not actually going to be able to achieve the results that I want? So in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how I jump back on my PCOS health path and how there is no failure involved, and how to really swap that mindset out for creating a lifestyle and creating a journey that really leaves that diet mentality in the past and allows us to have the freedom to live a full and all encompassing life to create a lifestyle that we fully want. With that, let’s go ahead and get started.

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, 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 jumping back into your health journey to re-commit to your health journey and how to have that all set up for yourself so that you don’t have to scrape yourself off the floor and force yourself back into something where you can miss a beat and then just jump right back in because, guys, that’s life. Remember, this is not a diet. This isn’t something where we see how long we can be perfect for because ultimately at some point we all know that’s going to fall apart and then we look for the next best thing or the next thing, the next thing that’s going to work for us because that didn’t. First of all, I always want to start every single one of these episodes with just a reminder that this is a lifestyle, this isn’t an all or nothing, give yourself grace along the way and basically all of those are just cliche ways of saying, look, life is going to happen, there’s going to be busy days, there’s going to be days where you did everything right and then you left your lunch sitting on the counter and drove off without it and that’s okay. The real goal here, I mean, yes, you want to eat healthy food and have a good mood movement routine and all these things. But really, it all boils down to learning how to roll with it, learning how to keep a mindset where your mind is in the game, and allowing yourself space to be you, space to do the things that you need to do, and creating that grown-up side of you that says, Okay, we got to keep this in balance, though. Yes, we need to be able to go out and eat at our favorite restaurant, and we need to be able to go on vacation and let loose a little bit. But then we also need to pull it back in so that I can continue to feel good and function and live the way that I want to live because it all works together in balance to create the life that we want. That comes down to the goal here, in my opinion, is to create lasting health, lasting health so that we can feel good day to day, so that we can remove those frustrations and roadblocks that make things not as fun, so that when we get dressed in the morning, our clothes fit well, we’re excited about our day, we have enough energy to do it, enjoy the things we want to do in our day. We have enough energy to do the things that we need to do that we may not want to do, so we can just get them done, crossed off ,and move on from them and in order to do this, it really boils down to creating sustainable habits. Now, creating a sustainable habit takes time and so we will focus on one habit at a time and add to it until we are really a well-oiled machine of working smoothly within our healthy lifestyle so that we can get out there and enjoy and do the things that we want to do, so that our body is capable of functioning and doing the things that we want to do and create and have in our life, and also so that it’s not draining every bit of our energy to keep our bodies up anymore because they’ve become our new autopilot, because they’ve become our new habit, and they’re just the way we roll. Then, of course, a lot of the things that we learn here on the PCOS Repair podcast that I work with clients on and things like that is, well, what are those habits that I need to create, to create and maintain and foster that metabolic root cause health so that I’m not constantly struggling with my weight, so that my fertility isn’t holding me back, so that I have the energy and I feel good in my body so that I can get out there and live the life that I want.

Those are all the pieces that we want to look at, the habits, making them sustainable, easy, and just part of our norm, and then making sure that those habits reflect back on our specific situations with our specific PCOS health, which again is unique to each and every person, and so that we’re creating that environment that we can feel amazing and thrive and go out and do the things we want to do. First of all, this is obvious when we say it out loud, but it’s not obvious in our minds as we go through our day-to-day. Life will have ups and downs. There will be days that we do better and days that we do worse and those really aren’t… I say it like that, but let’s really try to move away from labeling them as a good day or a bad day. Oftentimes, say you’re trying to lose 15 pounds, whatever the number is and if you’re not, just go with me on this example. Normal weight loss, just like a normal health journey, just like anything that we are trying to improve in our life. We could be trying to improve a relationship, we could be trying to improve how much TV we watch, we could be trying to improve a hobby that we’re working on or something at work or really anything in life that we want to grow as a person. It is not a linear path. It is very much a two steps forward, one step back. But the problem is that instead of focusing on celebrating that two steps forward, we tend to get all over ourselves for that one step back. I know this when I’ve been trying to drop a few pounds or commit to being a little bit healthier if I went through a phase where I had other focuses or just life for after each kid, there was always lots of pounds to lose after each kid. I remember there would be times in this journey where I would get on a roll. Every few days, I would see more and more and more progress, my clothes would be fitting better, I would be gaining energy as I just felt inflammation in the bloat and everything just shedding and then there would be a day where typically after something that I could pinpoint, like maybe my husband and I went on a date night and we ate at a fancy restaurant and we ordered some food that was outside of our normal and the next day, the scale would be up, I would feel inflamed and bloated and heavy and my clothes didn’t feel like they fit and I just felt like my energy had tanked a little bit. I was like, I blew it, all of it’s ruined like all that hard work I did and here I ruined it. Well, I could just throw it out and be like, Well, what I was doing wasn’t working or I could look at the fact that you know what? I’ve made tremendous progress and this is that little one step back. Several ways of looking at that specific scenario, and I’ll use this as an example, but one, to not get so in our heads about it because extra salt at restaurants is going to create a bloating, a feeling heavy the next day if we’re going to take on water. Eating just at night, eating a big meal at night is going to make us feel that way. Maybe we stayed out later than we normally would and got to bed later than we normally would. Maybe we had a drink and that upsets our sleep. So realizing that all of these things are the reason for the reason I’m feeling today.

And if I jump right back into my healthy living as I was doing all the way up until I went to dinner the night before, and as I was doing all the week before that, if I just went right back into it, I honestly could just completely ignore the fact that there was a small step back. The problem is that when we get in our heads about it, and now it’s like, Well, I already did that, or I already felt icky, so I might as well just not have a healthy breakfast, or we start to tend to cycle downward with that one step back. Instead, if we looked at it like, Look, when I go out to dinner on a date night and we have a lovely time and we connect with friends or we connect with each other and we do other aspects of our life to keep our entire life in balance, to enjoy our entire life and make it all… Why are we doing all this for our health? Well, it’s to go out and enjoy our friends and family, right? To do the things that we love so when we do those things, if it sets us back a little bit, it’s really about finding that sweet spot of, Well, how much can I indulge at a restaurant?

How often can I do that? and I want to have plenty of time with my friends and spouse, but maybe only some of the times am I going to end up actually eating whatever I want on the menu, maybe sometimes I keep it a little bit healthier. You’re finding your own balance so that you’re taking only one step back and then getting back to your two steps forward. But you can see where it takes us taking a step back, taking a more practical, logical, grown-up view of the situation and looking at ourselves in the mirror and saying, hey, look, you had an awesome time, you were doing the right thing yesterday, getting out and enjoying the people in your life. Maybe next time you’ll choose either to have the drink or the entree or have less of both or choose a slightly different entree or however it is that you want to balance that so that you can continue to do the things in your life that you love. Also realizing that our health progress comes in stages. There will be a point at which you reach the body composition that you want, where you’re happy at, that your body feels the most vibrant at.

I know for me, I have a zone where if I’m in that zone, that’s where I feel the best. That’s where I have less back pain, that’s where I have less headaches. It’s where I sleep better. It’s where I have less stomach pain. It’s where I just feel funds more energy. That’s the zone that I want to live in. If I start to creep out of that zone, yeah, I’m going to have a couple of weeks of being a little bit more strict and a little bit more held back on what I order at a restaurant. Or I might say this isn’t a great week. I’m going to avoid going to a restaurant this week. But ultimately, when we achieve where we want to go, where we want to be, we don’t have to be as strict all the time and so it’s realizing that when we realize that, it all of a sudden can become so much less heavy and scary and frustrating and we just blew it because in reality, two steps forward, one step back. Let’s get back to the two steps forward and jump right back onto our PCOS health plan.

Okay. So one of the ways that I have found extremely helpful is that I have an outlined day of what I do when I feel like I have drifted and it actually starts the night before, making sure that I have my workout clothes ready, that I have the right foods in the refrigerator and you can have a couple of variations of it, you can have one plan but ultimately, it boils down to I drink enough water, I get out for some movement, and I just load my body up with nutritious food, and that just resets me. There is not necessarily a calorie count, there is not necessarily a movement like it has to be for this long, it has to be this intense, it’s like, no, I will get my movement in that day, and I’m going to drink X amount of water, my water bottle is ready, I know exactly how many of those I need to have, and I might even have a post note on it that I can check off each time I’ve refilled it so that I know I’ve hit that goal by the end of the day. That is what it would look like to have this is my refocus myself on my health plan, jump back on that health path, just in your back pocket, ready to use at any point.

The other aspect of that is so now you have this just in your pocket plan is to create the habits all along because habits will trump motivation every day. So if you’re trying to psych yourself up to do some diet, ultimately you’re going to lose interest, ultimately it’s going to become too hard, and ultimately you’re going to stop doing it and then we create this pattern in ourselves where I can’t stick with it, I’m just not disciplined enough, it just doesn’t work for me, we start telling ourselves these stories and so the next step of this is really to discover those habits that need to be in place. It’s great to be moving along in a healthy PCOS plan to have it mapped out in front of you. It’s really great to have that perfect day, that plan of like, this is my get back on track plan in your back pocket and then ultimately, we want to be every day cultivating those habits that are going to make it possible for us to sustain this. What do we eat for breakfast? How do we make sure that breakfast is prepared? How do we make sure we have the food on hand to prepare it? How do we make sure that we have it with us when we need it? All of those habits, we break them down into what are our grocery shopping habits? Do we have the right containers? What is our evening prep plan? What do we do in the morning to make sure that we’re set for the day? All of those are simple habits that if one or two of them is missing, the whole thing can fall apart and we don’t know, well, I just can’t seem to get my act together. As we build those habits, it takes time. The first step is to discover the habits, give ourselves grace as we develop them, and allow them to be tweaked and evolved as we go to work for us. We don’t work for the habit, the habit works for us. But ultimately, those habits are what’s going to give us the progress because no one can be motivated 24/7. Then at some point, something doesn’t quite go right or whatever, then you grab that. This is my simple day of doing what I need to do from your back pocket. You have it outlined, you know what you need to do. You do it over and over and over enough times that it just becomes really easy for you and you just jump back into it. It’s actually a really good one to do. I do it when I’ve been on vacation because it’s easy to come home. There’s like, laundry, you’re behind at work, you have personal things you need to work on, like trash maybe hasn’t gone out for a little while, you have bills you may need to pay, you have appointments and phone calls and friends that need to be contacted and then you have just the unpacking, and there’s just a lot that when you first get home, there’s a lot to settle back into your life and it can take a couple of days to get back into your normal PCOS healthy routine. When you have this plan in your back pocket, you’re able to create it in a way where it’s so simple that even when you get home, you make that a priority. Even if the laundry is piled up, you still get a small workout in. Even when you don’t have any food in the house, this is something that you can very easily still follow this little outline that you have for yourself, and you’re able to just jump right back into it so that you don’t feel like, I’m straying, it’s getting further and further away. You can just jump right back in and keep moving forward, knowing that you are allowed to enjoy the time that you were on vacation, that you were allowed to enjoy the aspects of your life that weren’t 100 % in line with your PCUS health plan. Because ultimately, life will take us in so many directions that we want to be open to being able to live our lives fully and have that security of knowing that we’ve gotten our health taken care of. Whether we’re in maintenance mode, whether we’re in trying to be in progress mode, that is something that we will be able to take care of no matter what.

So as a quick recap, habits are immensely important. They will take time to build so be patient with yourself, add them in slowly, take them in bite sized pieces. Noticing where things are easy for you, noticing where things feel like there’s resistance. Those are how you find the areas where you may need to find an easier routine, where you may need to simplify something, where you may need to adjust your habits so that it becomes smooth and effortless over time, smooth and effortless does not happen all at once. This definitely doesn’t happen the first time you try it. So being patient with yourself and giving yourself grace as you develop those habits so that you’re no longer relying on the motivation to stick with your health plan and then having a day outlined where you have an easy, doable, anywhere doable workout, where you remind yourself to go to bed early and to get that sleep, where you have some food options outlined that are easy to get from the grocery store quickly if you just got home and your house is empty of food, or something that you stock normally on hand so that you can quickly jump back into nourishing your body and making sure that your body is getting all of the good foods that it needs to thrive, and then also just being okay with letting it take a few days to fully get back into your plan and reminding yourself in the mindset that it is 100 % normal and okay to be on a progression of health where you have two steps forward and one step back and one step back can be its own form of balance of creating a lifestyle that you fully enjoy.

With that, my friend, I hope you found this episode helpful and that you will subscribe to the podcast so that you are notified each and every week that a new PCOS health topic becomes available for continued support and encouragement along your PCOS health journey. And until next time, I would love to connect with you over on Instagram. I would love to hear what are your go to days. You just take a moment and write it all out and you can DM it to me over on Instagram, I’d love to cheer you on from there. 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.