By: Jessica Clark
My mom took me to an OBGYN when I was 15 years old because I had not started mensurating. I was diagnosed with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome), and the doctor recommended I take birth control and metformin. My mom didn’t feel good about having me take metformin, but I did take birth control for 6 months.
Since PCOS can be associated with the development of type II diabetes, and my grandma had this disease, my mom and I also went to a doctor who specialized in diabetes management. He suggested I follow a low-carbohydrate diet.
While this doctor had good intentions, I found the advice difficult to follow. I learned to count carbohydrates but found it challenging to stick to the 30 g and 15 g recommendations for meals and snacks, respectively. I have always had a hearty appetite, and I wondered how I would ever be satisfied with this dietary recommendation. I discovered that meat, cheese, eggs, and peanut butter were all high-protein, low-carbohydrate foods, and I primarily relied on these foods to get full. I largely avoided fruit, as I believed it had too many carbohydrates.
The advice wasn’t all bad: I stopped eating most foods with refined sugar and increased my vegetable consumption. I ate lots of salads (all with animal protein), and most people said I had a healthy diet.
The diabetes doctor also recommended I engage in 30 minutes of intense exercise daily. I did some sports in high school but did not enjoy regular exercise out of season. Looking back, I realize I did not generally feel great or consistently have energy for regular, high-intensity exercise.
I went to a naturopath for several years, who reinforced the diabetes doctor’s recommendations to avoid sugar consumption. She also said my thyroid health was not optimal, although it was not bad enough to show problems on conventional blood tests (my thyroid labs were low and barely within the normal range). I believe this may have contributed to my general feelings of sluggishness. Between the naturopath and my efforts to consume a healthy diet, I did okay for many years.
While in college, I studied nursing. I remember one lecture discussing atherosclerosis (plaque buildup in the arteries). The teacher said this buildup could not occur if one didn’t eat fat.
His statement made me reexamine and reevaluate my diet. As mentioned, all the foods I relied on to get full and stay satisfied were high in protein, and I realized they were also high in fat. I thought it was weird that the diet I had been recommended for diabetes prevention (low carbohydrate) could be bad for heart health. Nevertheless, I stopped buying the blocks of Costco cheese and tried to eat more chicken instead of beef or pork. I also ate some legumes (beans and rice or split pea soup) because they were cheap, which I appreciated as a college student.