Hi. I am 16 years old and have been struggling PCOS for 2 years. I am currently 280 pounds(my biggest) and am only getting bigger. I am fairly active, playing on my club volleyball team, practicing 3-4 times a week, but I can't lose weight. I don't know what to do.anymore. I have tried countless diet and exercise plans with hardly any results. I am so.selfconcious and depressed, all I can ever think about is food; what I eat, how much I eat, when I should eat, what I should eat, etc. It's exhausting and frustrating. I just wish I wasn't so fat. It's pretty much come down to me accepting that I'm going to be fat for the rest of my life, not that I want to be, I just can't find a solution. My senior year is this upcoming year and I desperately want to lose at least 100 pounds before then, I want to do all of the senior activities that my class does and feel confident. I also want to look good in pictures can someone who knows what I am going through give me some advice, sources that helped them, etc.? I am to the point of begging.
Thanks, Abbi

Hi Abbi, good luck with your weight loss. I was also overweight in high school (well my whole life) and it was definitely tough.

It's hard for me to tell you what's going to work as everybody's body is different and certain things work for some people and not others. What I will tell you to do is keep at it. After 'dieting' on and off for 15 years (I'm 27), I'm finally losing weight because I haven't quit. I found something that works for me and almost 5 months later I'm still at it and almost 30 pounds lighter.

I will also tell you in these 5 months I've hardly exercised. I know this isn't great advice, but your diet is so much more important than exercise when trying to lose weight. I think I've read somewhere it's a 70-30 split. I'm still superbly out of shape and unhealthy now because I don't and I'm hoping to start incorporate some now that the weather is nicer.

Now I'll tell you what I do, I count every single calorie. I use Myfitnesspal.com which gives you a total you should be at depending on your lifestyle and I stick to it. In 5 month's I've probably gone over 7 times. It takes a bit of time to plug in what you've eaten but I figure in the long run it's worth the 5 minutes a day.

Hopefully some other people will tell you what works for them and you can try a couple things to see what works for you.

I'm with Changergirl. I count calories. I also count carbs, because it helps with my Insulin Resistance (something many of us with PCOS struggle with), and I can be more satisfied and less ravenous with fewer cravings when I'm in the low-carb "sweet spot" (which for me is about 30 carbs/day, mostly from vegetables).

My overall framework for eating, though, especially if I'm eating carbs, is the IR Diet. I borrowed it from my library, or you could find it on Amazon.

It basically teaches you three rules that are easy to remember and very flexible for eating out and such:

• LINK: When/if you eat carbs, always eat it with protein.
• BALANCE: For every serving (15 grams) of carb, eat at least one serving (9 grams) of protein.
• LIMIT: Do not eat more than 30 grams (2 servings) of carb in any meal (or three -hour period)

If you eat carbs alone it can lead to high insulin in the blood stream in those of us who are IR, and that leads to fat cells "holding tight" to their fat and not releasing it as they should.

If you eat too much carb in a sitting, the insulin will actually start pushing fat into your cells for storage rather than allowing it to be pulled out for fuel.

It's a pretty simple framework, and easy to remember if you're not close to a calorie/carb counting software or book. If you follow this plan you can eat up to 120 carbs/day -- 30/meal x 3 and 15/snack x 2. That's pretty moderate in carbs compared to what most Americans eat.

So, for instance, I could have a sandwich, or a burger on a bun as part of my meal. The sandwich/bun has two slices of bread, so I already have my two servings of carb. That means I can't also have chips, fries, or fruit with that sandwich/burger. If I eat the sandwich/burger filling but not the bun/bread, then I can have fries. But not both.

I find the IR Diet framework really easy to remember and follow, once you have a good feeling for what 30 grams of carb looks like in the foods you usually eat. The book has some great lists, if I remember.

Personally, I now eat much lower carb than this. But it is still my overall framework for how I deal with the carbs that I do eat.