If you saw this post you’ll know that I went to the doctors last Thursday. The good thing is that my doctor was really understanding and that she said I didn’t have to go back to seeing the consultant which was my big worry. She actually told me that seeing the consultant is a waste of time because they won’t do anything unless you’re having fertility problems. I’m not at the stage where I want to have children so there is no point in me going to see them. I will be going to see the skin specialist but that’s not the reason for this post because until I get an appointment through i’ve no idea what is happening.
By taking control of my PCOS and doing something about it one of the things I need to do is lose weight. It will be really difficult to lose a lot of weight just because of how to help PCOS you need to lose weight but yet it makes you gain weight. I’ve got to the point where i’m fed up of being breathless climbing the stairs, or walking to the shop, i’ve started walking with a group of other people, and i’m going to start up Zumba again. This is one of the things I spoke to the doctor about and she’s prescribed me Orlistat to help me lose weight because the only other thing they can offer is joining a weight management group at the sports center but it only runs Monday to Friday during the working day, and I’d be unable to take time out of work to do it.
Orlistat stops the body from taking in all the fat from the food you eat, your body still absorbs some of the fat but not all of it, so when it is combined with exercise you start burning the old fat in your body because it hasn’t absorbed enough new fat to burn up. However because you’re not absorbing the fat it has to come back out and so that’s a side effect which isn’t nice but it works on encouraging you to avoid the foods high in fat because the side effect from eating them is not nice.
The idea is that you take 3 tablets a day one before each meal, however due to not knowing how they will effect me and my need to be rushing to the toilet, my doctor has recommended that I start with taking one in an evening at home. Once i’ve learnt how they effect me and which foods are better to eat i’ll be able to begin taking them with every meal. I have been prescribed a 3 month course which is the most they can prescribe you, and during the 3 months I have to have a monthly visit with the Health Care Assistant at the surgery, before seeing my doctor at the end of the 3 months and deciding what we should be doing next. During the 3 months I have to lose 5% of my body fat which is about 1.5lbs a week, which is a healthy rate to be losing weight, if it doesn’t work we’ll think of trying something else and if it does work then i’m not sure where we go from that. I assume that the idea is in the long term that i’ll be eating food with so little fat in that I don’t need to be taking the tablets, and that I can just continue with the healthy diet that I should develop.
I’ve decided that I will blog my journey taking these, because it may be something that someone else finds useful and i’ll make note of the changes I make to my diet too. I am also planning on writing a food diary so that I can clearly see the changes throughout the 3 months. I did think about adding a picture to this post, but I think there will be enough going up on the blog that it should be relatively easy to track any loss.
I don’t have a goal weight in mind for this but ideally i’d like to drop 2 dress sizes and get back to the size 18 I was at about 2 years ago.
