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Are you wondering if exercise can help treat PCOS? Exercise can seem overwhelming when you are dealing with a chronic disease like PCOS. You want to make sure that you are working smarter and not harder!

Tune into this video as I go over what types of exercise you should include & what to avoid. I will also discuss ways to improve your insulin resistance.

Transcription:

Hi, my name is Michele Riechman and I have my doctorate in physical therapy. I'm a personal trainer and a health coach, and I help moms who have put themselves on the back burner finally, lose that weight, get in shape, fit back into their clothes, and fix their metabolism so that they can have energy and get through their day all without dieting. Learn more about my Wellness Breakthrough Program here!

PCOS & Benefits of Exercise

So today I'm gonna be talking about PCOS and exercise. Exercise is a great tool to use if you have PCOS. So it is a piece of the puzzle. It's not the complete answer.

It's one piece of the puzzle, but it can definitely help with your symptoms and how your body is functioning. So when you have PCOS you want to avoid any additional stress because any stress on your body is gonna affect the way your hormones and your body work.

So this also includes exercise. So if you over-exercise and if you're doing too much exercise, that can actually stress your body.

If you like to do cardio, you might find that it actually stresses your body. And leaves you hungry and craving more foods. But on the flip side, if you are not moving or exercising at all, that can actually be a stress on your body because our bodies are meant to move.

Our muscles are made to move. We're not meant to sit in a chair all day. So there are two sides to this coin. So you want to make sure that you're not doing too much and you're not doing too little. So we're gonna break this down a little bit more as we go through this video.

Insulin resistance & PCOS

So this is very common in PCOS. So this is where your body is not responding to insulin as well. So exercise can be a great way to combat this a little bit. Doctors have connected that a lack of physical activity can contribute to insulin resistance. So this is a great place where you can start, and it's something you can do something about.

Start small with exercise

So you can control whether you get some movement and whether you get some exercise. So when you're thinking about how much exercise to do, I want you to start small, going back to that first thing I said, you don't want to stress your body anymore. So we want to find that goldie lock zone of exercise, that just right zone.

So if you haven't been exercising, I want you to start small. So this might just be five to 10 minutes, and eventually, I want you to work your way up to 30. But start small. And if five or 10 or 15 minutes is all you can do and all you can stay consistent with that's okay. You can stay right there because doing that is better than not doing anything at all.

Exercise Intensity for PCOS

So I also want you to think of intensity here. So I want you to start your intensity small. So especially if you're one who gets sore really easily or just really struggles to exercise, I want you to think almost like that was a little too easy. That seems a little too easy, and then you're just gonna build on there each week and eventually work that intensely.

But if you start with something super hard or you go really hard, your muscles are gonna get really sore. You're not gonna wanna work out the next day and you're not going to enjoy exercise. So it doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing thing where you have to be all in and you have to go out at hard.

Get more movement in

You have to do it a lot. That's not the way it works and that's not the best way for your body to function. So another great thing to start with that isn’t even exercised is just what I consider movement. So this is getting your steps in. This is just walking. And when I'm talking about walking here, I'm not talking about the walking where you're breathing heavily.

This is just moving. This is cleaning. This is going to the grocery store. So if you can bump up the amount of movement you get in each day, this can really help. So one, it helps with metabolism. So the more movement you get in throughout the day the helps to boost your metabolism. But this movement can also help with insulin resistance.

So especially after you eat, if you get up and do some movement, this can help your body to use that energy you just ate. So those muscles start to contract and it uses that energy. You just ate because food is ultimately energy. This has that double whammy of walking. So we got the help to our metabolism and the help to insulin resistance.

So if you don't even want to exercise, just think about walking and moving more. And again, it doesn't have to be the kind of walking where you're huffing and puffing. This can just be gentle walking, but really trying to get a lot of movement in throughout the.

Strength Training for PCOS

So going on to my favorite type of exercise, it's going to be strength training.

And this is, cause it just generally gets the best effect for most people. So when you're doing strength training, you are building your muscle. So I wanna compare this to cardio real quick. So when you are doing cardio, you get that really big calorie burn at once. And then when you're done calorie burn ends.

And typically for most people, when they do a lot of cardio, they're gonna feel really hungry after they might have more cravings. And this is because you just created a big calorie deficit and your metabolism doesn't really like that, especially if it's not used to it. So it's gonna bump up you feeling hungry.

So if you notice this connected with cardio, you might wanna dial that cardio back or figure out a way that you can still do a little bit of cardio, but not increase your hunger and cravings, because this is actually going to slow your metabolism down and you don't want to do that.

You wanna keep that metabolism strong and working well. So you don't want your body to think that it's going into starvation. So when you do strength training, it is going to build your muscle. So you're gonna burn a few calories while you do it, not nearly as much as cardio, but afterward, as your muscles repair and rebuild, your body is gonna continue burning calories to do that.

So with strength training, you're gonna get this longer calorie burn lasting up to 48. And so that's where a really good benefit can come in. And the nice thing with strength training is it typically doesn't leave you really hungry or really craving food after that because you didn't burn a bunch of calories at once.

So that has a double benefit there. So again, when you're starting with strength, training starts small, you don't have to start big. So I have a five-day exercise challenge that is free and it includes strength, training, and yoga-based strength training. And it's just a really great way to get started. And you can repeat the challenge as many times as you want.

FREE 5 DAY EXERCISE CHALLENGE

And it starts with just 15 minutes a day. So it starts really simple and easy and doable because we can all devote 15 minutes. I know, sometimes it may seem like you don't have 15 minutes, but if we just invest a little bit into our health and ourselves, we can start seeing those results and we can just start feeling better.

Michele’s Favorite workout items!

Yoga for PCOS

So that leads me to yoga. So yoga can be another great thing for strength training. So when it comes to yoga, I like to sort of think of two categories here. So we have yoga that is more relaxation based. So it might be called gentle yoga. There are lots of different names. And that can be great, especially when your stress is high.

So as we talked about at the beginning you don't want to overstress your body with exercise stress in general, you don't wanna overstress your body either because that raises those stress hormones and all those other things that we don't want. Because we want our bodies to function well. So if your stress is just super high, doing that relaxation or gentle yoga can be a great place to start.

But when you're ready doing yoga, that has strength training added can give you that double whammy benefit. So you're gonna get the strength, training benefit, those muscles burning, but you're also going to incorporate breathing and stress relief, and you sort of get all that done at once. So that is one of the great things about yoga when you're doing the right.

Check out this quick 10 minute yoga workout to strengthen & de-stress!

When I'm talking about strength training here, I want your muscles to burn. So you wanna feel those muscles working and that signals you, that your muscles are gonna repair and rebuild later, but again, you don't want to over do it. So you feel so sore the next day. You want to find that just right zone.

Start easier and make it seem like your not really doing anything. That's okay. If you start like that. And then as the weeks go on, just bump up that intensity. So these are some great ways that you can get started with exercise and movement. So you can get your body, your hormones, your insulin, & everything, just functioning a little bit better.