"You should lose weight for your PCOS" is by far the single most common piece of advice given to women with PCOS. Unfortunately, it is never followed up with “and here’s exactly how to lose weight with PCOS”. And therein lies the issue: if losing weight is so great for PCOS then why the heck is no one explaining to women with PCOS how to go about it?
The first reason is that PCOS is a medical diagnosis, meaning that the expert you’re dealing with is going to be a doctor, endocrinologist or gynaecologist. These professionals are experts at what they do (of course), but the issue is that PCOS weight loss has nothing to do with medicine.
The Benefits Of PCOS Weight Loss
The reason that you’ve been told to lose weight for your PCOS is because weight loss or more specifically, fat loss, should help to correct your hormonal imbalances. Importantly, the activities you must do in order to lose weight like eating healthily, exercising regularly should, too, help to balance your hormones thus improve PCOS symptoms.
I always state ‘should’ because PCOS weight loss may not help every woman to correct hormonal imbalances and/or improve PCOS symptoms. It ultimately comes down to your individual case and where your PCOS is rooted.
For some women, the root cause of their PCOS, or ‘PCOS type’, is not affecting or affected by their body weight. So losing weight for these women will not lead to any significant benefit for their PCOS.
Realistically, however, weight loss should help the majority of women with PCOS. Besides, even if you do happen to be in the minority, it is just optimal to be at a healthy body weight - whatever that is for you. Remember, everyone is different.
