IR/PCOS Codex 2 – Clarity

IR/PCOS also takes its toll on explicitly thin women, but the hormonal disorder is especially popular among women who put on more muscle mass than necessary. Even more devastating is the proportion among women who subject their bodies to extreme training loads for extended periods. This is one of the reasons why I follow with particular interest the process, inexplicable to me, by which the view that a woman becomes attractive if she is as muscular as possible, if her biceps are defined, if a six-pack appears on her stomach, and if her thighs are so strong that one could chop wood on them, is becoming increasingly widespread.

This trend, incidentally, became popular in direct proportion to the spread of crossfit, and the term "skinny fat" was born, with which women who do not live according to Spartan values and corresponding workouts were casually denigrated. Of course, I understand that this "Strong the New Skinny" approach can be very effective, and tearing up the upholstery in crossfit gyms with cries of "ponies are for bitches," but you'd better believe me that the female body is absolutely not prepared for this nonsense before you experience for yourselves that I was indeed right all along.

Proclaiming Andrea Brazier as a role model is a huge mistake. And not just because, in the eyes of a certain subculture, real women begin with fitness models and end with the physique category, but because these women, almost with 100% certainty, struggle with serious metabolic and hormonal problems.

Extreme training loads, extremely applied diets, radical reduction of body fat percentage. This pretty much summarizes the factors that are the most beautiful sounding buzzwords to the ears of IR/PCOS, because where elite sports begin, health ends, as they say. This is doubly true for female bodybuilders, whose hormone balance most likely shows conditions similar to that of the city of Dresden after the bombings in 1945. What these women do to themselves is incredible, and then they are declared beauty ideals and examples for other women, even though these women do not really exist. More precisely, for a few hours, for the duration of a stage pose, yes, and then they collapse backstage after the competition.

So these girls are really beautiful, but somehow everyone forgets to mention the disadvantages that come with this lifestyle. Reducing a woman's body fat percentage below 18% is incredibly irresponsible and unjustified. Lower a woman's body fat percentage below 18%, and her metabolism will be disrupted. Keep it below 18% long-term, and her contraception will be solved automatically, because she won't produce any cycle resembling fertility, damn it. Real women don't start below 18%.

By now, it's clear how sensitive the female body is; you can't just mess with it without consequences. No one said being a woman is easy, because there really is a lot to pay attention to. Living as a real woman in everyday life is not simple, but living in a way that the female body also demands is perhaps even harder. In recent decades, the bodies of billions of women have been torn apart and destroyed by extreme training loads and endlessly stupid or just plain competition diets. Now, however, the time has come to fix this. Not immediately, but slowly, step by step. You know, that's the only way it's worth it.

Perhaps we are at the dawn of a new era where women do not accept themselves with an extra 30 kilograms, and where the body ideal remains grounded in reality. If this happens, the era of darkness will end, and thanks to the health shock of recent years, a conscious consumer base may also be emerging, I cannot know this. But one thing is certain: the more LifeTILT, the less IR/PCOS.

 

The Basics of the IR/PCOS Lifestyle

Welcome to the world of IR/PCOS. I'm not saying it will be easy to live like this, especially at the beginning, but it's still easier than for diabetics, who really got the short end of the stick. Speaking of diabetes: if you, as someone with IR, start messing around now and don't take the problem seriously, you will also become diabetic. Now, that's another pleasant disease with its nasty complications. That's all I thought for an introduction, and now let's get to the point.

• You need to start a new life. You're not dieting, you're eating. You're not eating this way occasionally, but ALWAYS now.
• Establish a daily routine. Planning your daily diet, sourcing raw materials, preparing them, planning your workouts.
• You need to learn the basics. Calorie requirements, glycemic and insulin index, protein and fat ratios, slow and fast absorbing carbohydrates.

The rest of the post will be about these calculations, which will be just as boring to read as they were to write. One thing comforts me: I don't have to learn them anymore.

1 kg of fat loss = –7000 kcal…

This is it, this is the basic equation! This is the alpha and omega of every method that works in reality and is based on fat loss. So if you want to lose or gain weight, you have to count with this number. It is generally accepted that a calorie intake 500 calories less than the daily energy requirement for a week means a deficit of 3500 kcal, which results in a 0.5 kg fat loss. This seems little compared to how many calories we cut from ourselves every day… but if we consider that diseases often associated with obesity – hypertension, elevated blood lipid levels, and altered glucose tolerance or diabetes – significantly improve even with a 10-15% weight loss, then the situation is not so hopeless. The "slow" weight loss also argues that only a nutritional system, or more precisely a lifestyle system, can be effective and permanently successful if it can be maintained in the long term. This must appear in two dimensions: physiological and psychological aspects.

Physiologically, sustainability means that your lifestyle must provide everything necessary for optimal functioning, physical, mental, and spiritual health.

In psychological terms, it means that the nutritional and other characteristics of the new lifestyle introduced should not be sustainable through self-deprivation, because then it is impossible that you will be able to endure it in the long term.

Every dieter or hard-core dieter reaches a point when the body has had enough. Whether your will or your body gives up first is irrelevant to the outcome. You must develop a nutrition and exercise plan that may currently require you to lose weight, but with minor modifications, you can maintain it long-term without feeling like self-deprivation or one-sided. The key to sustainability is not to go on a temporary diet, but to change your lifestyle. For this, you first need to be mentally prepared. If you are unfit for this, you are unfit for life. If you are unable to change for yourself or your future, then quietly vegetate for another 30-40 years and hope, really strongly, that in your next life you will have some human qualities, perhaps even ambition. If you have decided that you are capable of this, then read on. If not, then the world of intellectually disabled women's magazines awaits you with open arms, where they will surely pat you on the head for only eating 1 bar of chocolate instead of 3 today. Yes, in some ways, this is also an achievement. I'm sure someone finds comfort in this thought.

Your weight loss will always be fast and spectacular at the beginning. One reason for this is that glycogen stores (the body's carbohydrate stores) are quickly depleted. 1g of glycogen binds 3g of water in the body. So, first, your body releases the water bound by carbohydrates. This means you'll lose hardly any fat at first, but your weight loss will still be fast and spectacular. The other reason: as body mass decreases, energy needs become proportionally smaller, so the energy content of the initial diet will eventually be greater than what is needed. The third reason is that resting metabolism decreases, which consequently reduces the rate of daily total energy expenditure.

Incidentally, it's not advisable to aim for too rapid weight loss, because in such cases, weight loss primarily breaks down your muscles rather than your fat stores. You know, the ones that give you shape and whose existence is essential for the proper functioning of the body, on a human scale, of course. To prevent excessively rapid weight loss, you must consciously adopt a slow and effective weight loss lifestyle, based on the principle that thorough work takes time.

Including the previous post, we're not even a quarter of the way through, but those who are more receptive might have already realized how complex and multifaceted this whole lifestyle thing is, especially if we want to achieve results. How much attention we need to pay to the nutrient content of foods and their proper distribution. It's always the food that matters, that initiates processes in your body, affects your insulin production, your hormone balance, and ultimately determines your metabolic processes.

Now, what do you think your metabolism will be like on a juice cleanse? Or on a 600-calorie diet? Your body needs a continuous supply of foods with the right nutrient content, so it absolutely doesn't fit to not eat after 6 PM and then only at 9 AM the next morning, 15 hours later. And what will happen to you, what will happen to your body, during those 15 hours? Your organs still function, you still breathe, your liver, kidneys, and heart still work, the hormones serving the proper functioning of female processes would be working, but they need energy, and nutrients, vitamins, and minerals for their operation.

If you understand that the quality of your diet determines everything, then after a while, you too will react to brain-dead diets the way I do, which is to say you’d ideally sue all the creators of shoddy diets for their crimes against humanity. And of course, not just them, but also those who spread it, because it’s harmful and destructive. It’s worth revisiting this from time to time, because it cannot be said enough. I will say it a few more times, don’t worry.