STOP doing this if your client has PCOS

This post is for fitness coaches who have clients with PCOS (poly cystic ovarian syndrome) and want to know how to support them with PCOS specific fitness, nutrition, and supplements. So that is what we're gonna cover in this lesson today. If you are excited for this content that helps personal trainers optimize their client's hormones, like this video, subscribe to this channel for more hormone optimization education for personal trainers optimization. That's how you say that that really helps spread free hormone optimization education when you do all that. So if you're new here, hello, my name is Omega Zumpano. I am an exercise scientist, menstrual cycle educator, and founder of the confident menstrual cycle coach academy, where I teach personal trainers how to optimize their client's hormones. And if you want to know more about that, you can click this link where you'll be taken to an application page to apply for the academy. If you’ve watched my youtube videos or read these posts, you know that I use to suffer from PCOS too. But this post is not about my story, but more about scientific ways you can support your clients in managing their PCOS with fitness, nutrition, and lifestyle choices.

PCOS is the most common endocrine disorder. And if your client comes to you and says that she has PCOS, the doctor has likely identified one of the three following things, oligomenorrhea, or irregular periods, excess androgens, that's darkening of facial hair, lip, chin, and even baldness and polycystic ovarian cysts. And these are on the ovaries, and they can be very painful, especially during ovulation or even during your client's period. So if your client does have a confirmed case of PCOS, that puts them at risk for things like cardiovascular disease dyslipidemia, which is an increase in cholesterol, fatty liver, depression, anxiety, infertility, sleep apnea, and blood sugar dysregulation, not fun. So blood sugar dysregulation is actually one of the really important things to discuss as fitness coaches with normal blood sugar insulin spikes, after a sugary meal, taking the sugar into the cells, but with a lot of people with PCOS insulin, let's just call them vehicles cannot be delivered to the muscle and the liver to be stored for later, use this results in adipogenesis and that is more creation of fat cells. And this is what a lot of people with PCOS are up against.

If they start working with you, oftentimes people with PCOS myself included once a time, we just wanna find a comfortable weight. So we'll start with exercise…since people with PCOS have high androgens, doing high intensity exercise with them frequently leads to more stress, more stress, hormone cortisol, which is ultimately going to work against weight loss in the long run.

A good rule to keep for exercising with PCOS is keep the workout under 60 minutes. So don't do any long strenuous workouts for them. Slow pace workouts actually tend to be better for people with PCOS versus high intensity or high impact exercise. For reasons I mentioned before cortisol, and this can look like increasing time under tension, the eccentric load, or doing less, more intentional reps. So there's a lot of ways to work around that. If your client is someone who has irregular periods, this study can give you some hope about restoring hormone balance. This meta-analysis showed that 30 to 60 minutes is associated with resumption of ovulation, and that comes out to at least 120 minutes of exercise per week. This study also showed that people with PCOS have better hormonal markers and better symptoms with moderate exercise.

So increasing lean muscle mass also helps insulin resistance, which is a key factor for people with PCOS. So if you can focus, focus on the workouts, being strength, training workouts that help build lean muscle mass, you will probably be doing your clients a huge favor in the long run. So focus on helping them build muscle mass, please. I don't know if you can hear our rooster down there. Okay. So now nutrition for  PCOS number one rule don't do a calorie deficit, different PCOS means different severity. And just, I want you to keep this in mind, cuz I do a lot of research just because one research study shows that it worked for a group of people doesn't mean that it's gonna work with everybody, cuz we're still learning a lot about PCOS. Okay. So just keep that in mind, there are lots of different types of PCOS and not everything is gonna work for everyone. So people with PCOS are sometimes overweight and might have a lot of questions about diet and how they should be eating to lose weight. That was a huge thing for me. And the best thing that we can do as trainers is to let them know that no one diet is better than another,

Almost all diets result in caloric or nutrient restriction, which is not good. We don't want that caloric restriction could actually increase stress hormone, which could increase androgens. And if your client has androgen dominant, P C O S calorie restriction can and will make their symptoms worse over time. So don't do that. This popular YouTuber with PCOS swears by removing gluten and dairy for PCOS. And what I found out when I had PCOS was the same thing. I actually had better symptoms when I removed gluten and dairy, but I can't find any research on PCOS and gluten. However, there is some research done on the negative effects of dairy on ovulatory function, but please take that with a grain of salt. Now let's look at supplements. Supplements are, and key nutrients are really important for people with PCOS.

So helping your PCOS client develop healthy gut bacteria can be helpful for their goals. Healthy gut bacteria can actually help us burn more fat too. And that's true across the board for all people. So getting your clients on a probiotic and increasing their fiber intake can be the one of the best ways to do that. And then there's this supplement Ovasitol. It is a well known supplement for people with PCOS and is actually shown to help regulate blood sugar, which is one of the things that most people with PCOS struggle with. And you can find a research article to Ovasitol right here. So how do you know PCOS is improving in your clients? What I teach in the confident menstrual cycle coach academy is the ABC method to assess for hormone balance.

That stands for actual body cues. The ABCs to look out for, with your clients with PCOS that show that their PCOS is improving, include the following a regular period, regular ovulation, a pain free period slash ovulation, and a decrease in unwanted hair growth, and perhaps an increase in wanted hair growth and weight loss. So if you are a personal trainer who wants to know how to help your clients with, and without hormone irregularities, like PCOS apply for the confident menstrual cycle coach academy in the academy, you'll become confident in assessing, addressing and correcting hormone balance in your clients. And you'll be able to help more women in your fitness coaching business. So you can apply for the confident menstrual cycle coach academy using the link in the description below. Thank you so much for watching. Please share this post with a fitness coach so you know so that we can spread FREE hormone optimization education!