82: How to cope with the impacts of PCOS on your mood and anxiety

The PCOS Nutritionist Podcast

Whether you were diagnosed with PCOS yesterday or 10 years ago, figuring out what works for managing your symptoms can be a relentless battle. It’s like moving in quicksand. No matter how much you do, you seem to get nowhere. If anything, your symptoms seem to get worse.

You’re tired (in a literal and emotional sense), you can’t seem to manage your weight, you’re working, managing your family, trying to get in a bit of socialising and me time, your gut now seems to be going haywire at everything, your sleep is awful, maybe your hair is thinning or you’re dealing with hirsutism too. All of this makes it hard to keep a brave face.

You’re trying your best but your PCOS feels like it’s ruling your life and it’s taking a toll on your mood and stress levels.

If you’re nodding your head to the above, you’ll definitely resonate with Charlotte’s story. After being diagnosed in her 30s, struggling with insulin resistance, gut health issues, fatigue and being a mum to her gorgeous 1 year old, trying to manage her PCOS felt virtually impossible. She didn’t know what was driving her PCOS and it felt like every system in her body just wasn’t working how it should. It’s no surprise that this really took a toll on Charlotte’s mood and mental health.

Struggling with these symptoms day after day without any resolution really sent her anxiety on a field day.

It wasn’t until she understood more about WHY her body was reacting how it was and started to tweak her lifestyle to match her root cause that the uphill battle started to feel more like a level playing field. Not only that, but she started to see changes in the symptoms she didn’t even know were connected like her gut health and realised how much of an impact these symptoms were having on her mood and energy. We forget how interconnected all of the systems in our bodies are.

As she put so perfectly in the episode, the more you fight with your PCOS the more exhausted you’ll get. PCOS is always going to be a part of your life, so why not work with her rather than constantly butting heads with her every damn day!

This episode is for you if:

• Bloating, abdominal pain and other GI symptoms are something you struggle with alongside your PCOS
• You think you may have or do have insulin resistance
• You have lean PCOS
• You’re postpartum
• You are planning on having another baby and are TTC
• You deal with mood swings
• Fatigue is a major symptom for you

Some things we cover in this episode:

• Gut health issues and what connection they may have to PCOS
• Anxiety and how it may be connected to your root cause
• How PCOS can change in the fourth trimester (postpartum)
• Dealing with multiple symptoms
• How to work with your PCOS rather than against it
• Getting pregnant with PCOS
• Energy, stress and fatigue

Resources and References:

• My Book: Getting Pregnant with PCOS

Links to our programs:

• The PCOS Protocol
• 1:1 consults with Clare
• Eggducated