Episode #33: Finding Your PCOS Power

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Learn my PCOS mindset shift to get into a place of power so that you can take back control of your health and the goals that you have for your life.

What you’ll learn in this episode

PCOS has a way of making women feel stuck and powerless against the health struggles of fertility, weight, energy, and just good in their bodies. 

I’ve felt this way too, which is why in today’s episode let’s explore my 7-step process to take my power back and create the health I desire!

The PCOS Reality 

The genetics of PCOS leave us sensitive to our environment. I talk about how to understand your root cause a lot here on the podcast and how to start listening to and caring for your body BUT it all starts with this 7-step mindset shift in how we think about and approach our PCOS healing and long-term health. 

Finding Your PCOS Power

The thoughts we think give or take away our power. 

PCOS is a real bugger because it really does make everything feel impossible. I want to take a moment to acknowledge that. I’ve felt that way and definitely still have my moments where I feel like PCOS is limiting me which is why I know this episode is so important and I am excited to share my process of taking my power back.

Using Your Power to Heal 

So what is the practical application and appearance of this mindset shift for reversing PCOS?

Glad you asked! When we get stuck in frustration, and PCOS makes that too easy, we tend to stop taking action toward the things we want. Leaving us even more stuck and frustrated. 

However, we recognize this pattern and approach what’s not working for us with curiosity about what will work. It’s a whole lot easier and more fun to take action toward the things we want.

Go listen to this episode and learn how is use this mindset shift to create a nourishing environment bubble for my hormones to create the health I want.

Let’s Continue The Conversation

Do you have questions about this episode or other questions about PCOS? I would love to connect and chat on a more personal level over on Instagram. My DMs are my favorite place to chat more.

 

So go visit me on IG @nourishedtohealthy.com

 

Let’s Continue The Conversation

Do you have questions about this episode or other questions about PCOS? I would love to connect and chat on a more personal level over on Instagram. My DMs are my favorite place to chat more.

 

So go visit me on IG @nourishedtohealthy.com

 

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Read The Full Episode Transcript Here

[00:00:06.890] – Speaker 1

PCOS used to feel like doors just slamming in my face. I want to be a certain weight, but I can’t. I want to have a baby, but I couldn’t. I wanted to feel good about myself and I wanted to feel good and have energy and just like feel great in my body but I couldn’t. These are all very common, common thoughts and feelings for women with PCOS.

[00:00:27.120] – Speaker 1

And in this episode, you’re going to learn how to bust past these limitations and finally set yourself up to create the healthy and positive image of yourself that you want.

[00:00:43.070] – Speaker 1

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 the polycystic ovarian syndrome, it is my joy to watch women reverse their PCOS as they learn to nourish their bodies 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.

[00:01:18.810] – Speaker 1

Welcome back to the PCOS Repair Podcast, where today we’re diving into the mindset side of things and discovering how with some helpful actionable tips to reframe the way that we think about things and reframe the things that we are telling ourselves so that we can get our power back and move forward towards the health that we want. All right, so let’s get started. So first of all, we have to acknowledge the fact that there is a PCOS reality, we are sensitive to our environment, meaning our genes are what they are and our bodies tend to be sensitive to a list of things everyone has a slightly different variation in that but we tend to be more sensitive to some foods, we may be more sensitive to stressful situations, we may be more sensitive to not caring for our health, which is something that in today’s society is often kind of set on the back burner as we are a culture of being really busy and having all of this kind of quick fix mentalities. And so we are sensitive to our environment and we need to respect that, we need to realize that and work with it not against it if we want long-term success.

[00:02:33.310] – Speaker 1

The other part of this reality is that with the proper care of our body, we can feel great, we can achieve the weight loss or the fertility that we want, we can achieve the level of health that we desire, we talk about how to understand and listen to our bodies and discover our root causes and all of those things in a lot of other podcast episodes here on the PCOS Repair podcast. But, all of that starts with this mindset shift that we’re going to be talking about today. It’s an approach that sets us up to actually make all those changes that we talk about in other episodes. All right, so first of all, PCOS is a real bugger.

[00:03:12.120] – Speaker 1

It does make us feel like everything is impossible when it comes to our health and I want to take a moment and really acknowledge that I have definitely felt that way, I know most women that I talk to as they’re getting started on their PCOS health journey feel that way, and I definitely still have moments where I feel that way. Like, this isn’t a one-and-done, it’s a lifestyle.

[00:03:32.490] – Speaker 1

And so there are times where it feels like, wow, what was working for me a little while ago isn’t working for me again and it really comes back to tapping back into listening to what our body is needing from us in a given situation. And that’s why, as a side note, anyone who tells you this is how you reverse your PCOS, they’re not giving you the full story because it’s really not about following somebody’s quotes method, and what I teach women to do is not follow some cookie-cutter approach, but to actually get in tune with their body, understand the principles of health, and how to then adapt those to fit them, their body’s needs, and the lifestyle that they’re looking for. It’s really important to acknowledge that we have these moments when we have PCOS, of feeling limited, of feeling stuck, and of feeling hopeless, and that there’s really nothing that we can do about it.

[00:04:20.370] – Speaker 1

And that is why this episode is so important and why I’m so excited to share my process of taking my power back. Now, if you’ve listened to this podcast for any length of time, you’ve probably picked up on I’m an action person, not someone who sits around and does a whole lot of thinking or talking about things that kind of get right to the point of, okay, so what are we going to do about it? So, unlike some Mindset episodes, you may have heard from other people on other podcasts, the mind is going to be really actionable. That doesn’t mean that journaling and all the fields aren’t important. I just happen to be someone that tends to move through those quicker than some people, but I want you to take your time in them.

[00:05:00.910] – Speaker 1

So even though we’re going to move through the steps kind of quickly, each one of these steps will take a different amount of time for different people. And it’s not about rushing it. It’s just when you get to a certain place, you know you’re ready for the next step. Those thoughts that we think, give or take away our power. As an example, if I tell myself no matter what I eat, I just keep gaining weight, it doesn’t really matter.

[00:05:24.260] – Speaker 1

I’m just going to be overweight. And I don’t know how overweight I’m going to be, because no matter what I do, it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Or I have PCOS so my cycle is never going to be regular or I’m probably not even going to ovulate every month and there’s nothing I can do about it. Well, that may be currently true. I know those things have been currently true for me and my reality, and they may currently be true for you.

[00:05:47.300] – Speaker 1

Can you feel how those thoughts take away your ability to change your reality? They create this feeling of helplessness that no matter what you do, no matter how good you eat, and no matter how consistently you get your movement habit going, it won’t change your health. So that leads us to why do it? which leads us to start halfway doing it, which leads us to a self-fulfilling prophecy of, yeah, whatever effort we put in didn’t work. I’m not saying that it’s easy to change your health, but it is possible and it’s a lot more simple than most of us, including me at the time when I used to really have those thoughts all the time, realize when that place of giving our power away. So how do we shift from that kind of helplessness? It doesn’t matter what I do, I’m just going to be stuck like this. Mindset. The first step is acknowledgment.

[00:06:39.450] – Speaker 1

If I don’t acknowledge that I am feeling like no matter what I do, the scale will not budge in the direction that I want. It just keeps going up, up, up. Even after I did everything I thought I was supposed to do kind of day scale just kept ticking up. When we acknowledge that, it can bring us to a point of self-evaluation, am I really doing everything that I know that I should do?

[00:07:04.630] – Speaker 1

Do I even know what to do? Where do I need to start? Is this even important to me or did someone just tell me I need to do this? It allows us to evaluate what’s going on and get really clear. Step two is to create a project of curiosity.

[00:07:19.750] – Speaker 1

So when we acknowledge that we are tired of the scale running our lives and never being the weight that we want and our clothes never fitting the way we want, that’s acknowledging that there’s something that is bothering us and that’s pulling us down and that we feel helpless about. So the second step is to realize, I want to figure out how to fix that. So instead of feeling helpless about it, create a project of curiosity of how we fix that. And this takes a couple of steps. So first we’re going to take some action, and see if it works.

[00:07:47.940] – Speaker 1

We’re going to evaluate it, and see how we did what worked, not just for what yielded results, but what actually fit into our lifestyle. Like, I’m pretty sure that if I only ate chicken breast and raw vegetables and I ran 5 miles a day, forget about injuries and so forth, but if I did that, I’d probably be really fit and thin, right? But is that really how I want to live my life? So do you see how yeah, there are things that we know would work, but it doesn’t quite fit us. So we take some action, we evaluate.

[00:08:18.970] – Speaker 1

Is it yielding the results we want? Is it fitting into our lifestyle? Like, I have found the time of day that works well for me to get out. It’s quite early and I’ve played around with that. I have found that if I do it every single day of the week, it’s a little bit hard, but if I go to bed at a certain time, it works.

[00:08:34.420] – Speaker 1

And I really actually enjoy that, even though it’s a little bit of a struggle. So I can see that that actually does fit into my lifestyle. Just because it is a struggle doesn’t mean I have to throw it out. But it is something that then it’s like, okay, that matters to me. It’s actually something that I enjoy.

[00:08:47.160] – Speaker 1

It’s something that makes me feel good all day. It’s a priority of mine and it starts the day before, making sure I get to bed on time. So that is taking action, evaluating tweaking, taking more action, and re-evaluating. And basically, we just repeat this process, repeat this process, and dust off the negative thoughts that will creep in, because they will. And so those negative thoughts, they go right back through that cycle, acknowledge them, create the curiosity of, why am I having this thought?

[00:09:11.920] – Speaker 1

And how can I go about getting rid of it, getting past it, and creating something that works instead? And then again, repeat and repeat. Dust off and repeat. And this, over time, proves to yourself it’s not about reaching a goal. It’s about living in a way that’s pointed toward the goal.

[00:09:27.740] – Speaker 1

The goal isn’t when we celebrate, we celebrate. And we prove to ourselves in each one of these times that we dust ourselves off and we keep moving forward. That’s a huge mindset shift in and of itself. And that is where you create the power. It’s where you take your power back so that you can create the health that you want.

[00:09:45.760] – Speaker 1

So then how do you use this power that you just created, that you took back to heal your PCOS? Basically, what does that look like in real life? So I was going through some old things and I found an old journal entry of mine and I’m going to share the gist of it with you. This is from several years ago and it was after my first baby, so I did know and I had some belief that I could have a positive impact on my health. But I was back into this negative hormone cycle where I had about 20 lbs that I wanted to lose and everything that I thought I was doing right wasn’t working. And for me, my weight loss has less to do with how I look, although that’s important to me. It’s really more I actually have and I don’t know if any of you can let me know on Instagram give me a comment over there because I have found for me in my PCOS and I have seen this In many, many, many women, that there is a point at which and the scale is relatively within about 5 plus or -5 lbs that it’s repeatedly when we’re in this weight range, our symptoms are easier to handle or go away completely, or it’s where we feel the best. I know that I just feel the best.

[00:10:48.030] – Speaker 1

I have the most energy, I feel the most agile and strong and ready to take things on outside of nutrition and exercise. Like in my actual life, I’m living at a certain weight and so that’s where I like to be, I was after baby number one, I had some weight I wanted to lose and I say that because there’s not right weight.

[00:11:08.220] – Speaker 1

It’s like you find your own sweet spot and it’s unique to you and it’s not someone else saying like, oh, you need a BMI of whatever. It’s really you find your own sweet spot because this is really all about you listening to your body and where are you happy at. That’s the goal here, right? So I was feeling gross and bloated and low in energy and I felt like I was doing all the right things and I was getting frustrated and I was feeling helpless again with my PCOS, and I wrote, this is a quote from my journal.

[00:11:37.030] – Speaker 1

I just did my best day yesterday and I gained a freaking pound. What is wrong with me? I sat there and thought about that for several hours. That’s all I wrote in my journal that day. A lot of times I was a lot more prolific, but that day it was just like I was frustrated.

[00:11:50.010] – Speaker 1

I still showed up and wrote in my journal so that we can celebrate that. But I sat with those thoughts and feeling down about myself and I let myself sit with it and just kind of let the process flow. Then the shift kind of started and this is what it looks like when the shift starts that I knew I didn’t want this. I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want every single day to be about, am I happy with where my weight is at.

[00:12:13.640] – Speaker 1

I didn’t want every single day to be about, I don’t feel good and I can’t enjoy the things that I want and I was at the point where I was like, okay, I have got to get a hold of this. I have got to figure this out and I’m in it now for like this is going to be my project, this is going to be my priority for the next several weeks or months until I figure this out. I am putting my focus and my energy, I get all into it so clearly what I was doing wasn’t working.

[00:12:37.350] – Speaker 1

And so it was time to create that curiosity, that project of curiosity, to figure out what would work. So do you hear that shift that you can kind of hear that shift in there? It’s subtle. I hope you can hear it. If not, listen to it again because there’s a small shift in there going from this just isn’t going to work for me to okay, I just got to give it the priority, the focus, the energy to figure out how to make this work.

[00:12:59.260] – Speaker 1

And I created this curiosity project to figure out what my body needed then. And this is getting into a whole other mindset shift that I should record another episode about. But it’s not about getting down on yourself for anything that you do wrong. That’s not a curiosity project. The next step is to create a very caring nourishing bubble for yourself as you explore what your body needs.

[00:13:19.820] – Speaker 1

You’re going to explore things like what nutrition your body needs. Your body deals with stress and what it needs you to do differently, how you need to create boundaries of certain people or maybe how you need to create more time for socialness, how you need to adjust your movement. Are you making it happen but hating every bit of it? And how can you adjust that habit to where it becomes this place that’s awesome for you? So instead of I shouldn’t eat this or I shouldn’t do that, all of those thoughts make a negative feeling in us.

[00:13:47.980] – Speaker 1

They make us feel like a punishment like because I have PCOS, I have this punishment that I need to do. Because I have PCOS, I have to eat this way or I have to do this thing that I don’t like to do. Again, another mindset shift. Can we talk to ourselves in a way where I am going to give myself the gift of this nutritious meal because I know how it’s going to make me feel better and that’s what I want to create more of in my life.

[00:14:09.660] – Speaker 1

Or I am going to go and do this 30 minutes, 20 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever time you have movement and physical activity because I know it’s going to make me feel good, it’s going to help me get stronger and it’s going to assist me towards this way that I want to feel. So I’m going to give myself that gift. If we can think of it in that mindset, it’s amazing how much more we enjoy whatever it is we’re eating, whatever way we’re moving in that time that we give ourselves to do that, and how much less deprived we feel and wanting to then eat something else that wasn’t on our list of things that we wanted to eat that day. Well, there you have it, my friend. Do you feel more powerful already?

[00:14:45.980] – Speaker 1

Can you feel yourself taking back your power and adjusting the thoughts and shifting those thoughts in your mind? If so, leave me a comment on Instagram. You can find me over at Nourished to Healthy and let me know. I would love to hear how you’re going to take your power back as you approach your PCOS health. And if you have found this episode helpful, be sure to hit the subscribe button so that you can be notified each and every week when the next PCOS Health topic becomes available.

[00:15:11.220] – Speaker 1

And I would greatly appreciate you taking a moment of your time to rate and review the podcast. A good rating really helps spread awareness of PCOS and helps other women find this podcast that may need support and learn more about what their body needs. Until next time, if you have any questions about this episode or any of the other episodes of the PCOS Repair podcast, I would love to connect with you over on Instagram. Again, you can find me at Nourished to Healthy, and then we can continue this conversation further over there. Until next time. Bye for now.

[00:15:45.230] – Speaker 1

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.

[00:16:16.110] – Speaker 1

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.

Take The PCOS Root Cause Quiz

   What Do Your Symptoms Mean?

  Discover your current PCOS Root Cause

Start to reverse PCOS at the root cause. 

Results are not guaranteed. Please see Medical Disclaimer for more detail.

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About Show

Welcome to The PCOS Repair Podcast!

I’m Ashlene Korcek, and each week I’ll be sharing the latest findings on PCOS and how to make practical health changes to your lifestyle to repair your PCOS at the root cause.

If you’re struggling with PCOS, know that you’re not alone. In fact, it’s estimated that one in ten women have PCOS. But the good news is that there is a lot we can do to manage our symptoms and live healthy, happy lives.

So whether you’re looking for tips on nutrition, exercise, supplements, or mental health, you’ll find it all here on The PCOS Repair Podcast. Ready to get started? Hit subscribe now