Four letters. An acronym. P.C.O.S. changed my life. I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in 2016. A few months before then I didn’t know what was going on with my body. Missed cycles. Weight gain. A whole week of feeling an extreme tiredness that I had never experienced in my life. Imagine waking up and already feeling like you had been up for 23 hours straight and sleep was only eluding you. This was how I felt. I had always slept on average about 4-5 hours a night and would never feel tired. But after that week of feeling exhausted, I needed answers.

I went to my Primary Care Physician and got all my testing completed. As the words P.C.O.S. slipped from his mouth to my ears I went from a level of happiness to know what was going on to a severe case of anxiety. The “what if’s” ran a marathon through my mind as he attempted to remind me that it was okay and that I would also be okay. I was the girl who played with her Barbie and Ken dolls as a child and knew I wanted to have a family. Now here I was a 30-something year old woman hearing that there may or may not be a chance of me having children.

I had work to do at this point. I had to learn what worked best for my body. My diet became super strict. I went from trying Vegan, Vegetarian, Paleo to dabbing in a Plant-Based Diet to Pescatarian to finally curating a plan that worked best for me. I chose to do mostly a combination of Pescatarian and Plant-Based Diet adding baked chicken (because yeah, I never ate a lot of fried chicken but baked was a staple growing up for me). One factor of P.C.O.S. is having insulin-resistance. I became more aware of how much sugar was in everything and was particularly stern on how much I would allow myself to intake.

I had a gym membership that I was paying for and had been under the impression would be ending soon only to find out I still had three months left on the contract. So I went to the gym four to six times a week, meal prepped, drank my water and did a lot of minding my business. The weight fell off. I lost over 25 lbs and all was well.

I learned with having P.C.O.S. that some days are a struggle more than others. I am back on my journey to lose about 15 lbs that I regained from stress, my work environment and toxic relationships. One thing is for sure, life happens but what we chose to do with ourselves along that journey is our decision. I’ve learned to control the controllable. Fix what can be fixed. Let go of what no longer serves you.

If you’re interested in learning more about P.C.O.S., click here.