PCOS sufferer wants weight loss advice

I am 24 years old and I am suffering from PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome). Last month I went to the doctor and was put on medication, including Regestrone.

I read online that Regestrone will cause me to be overweight. Already I am 70 kgs (about 154 lbs) and I need to reduce my weight seriously, because in a year I am going to get married. Nowadays, I am looking so weird while wearing clothes, so I need to reduce the weight in my belly and my breast. Please give me some solutions.

In a way you are trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea, so to speak. You want to fix your PCOS situation with medication, and at the same time, you want to maintain your weight.

As you would know, PCOS is one of the most common female endocrine problems and it is linked to both genes and environmental conditions. Obesity caused by poor dietary choices and physical inability worsens the condition in certain individuals and so I understand your concerns about weight gain.

The Weight-Loss Lie You Tell Yourself

Excuses, excuses. If you think you’ve been good in the past, you allow yourself to behave badly in the future, finds new research in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

In other words, if you skipped out on that double bacon cheeseburger for dinner in favor of a salad, you believe it’s OK to have six beers tonight because it could have been worse. When study participants wrote down all the unhealthy things they could have done in the past week but decided not to, they didn’t work as hard to meet their weight-loss goals the next week.

“When people reflect on the unhealthy road not taken, they feel like they’ve proven that they’ve done a good job,” says study author Daniel Effron, Ph.D., of Northwestern University. “When they feel like they made progress, they think it gives them license to indulge in short-term pleasures.”

Cash rewards provide weight loss incentives

NEW YORK — Can cash rewards help people lose weight at work? A new study finds it can, but it’s even better when employees compete for the money.

Starr Lynch lost nearly 30 pounds thanks to peer pressure from fellow nurses.

“What was really neat was my coworkers watched it coming off which was exciting,” said Starr Lynch, a participant in the study.

She and other employees at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia took part in a study about how much weight people can lose when offered money as a reward. Those in the study lost three times as much weight when awards were based on the group’s performance — not just their own.

“No question, hands down the individuals in the group incentive did much better,” said Dr. David Asch of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “They lost about 10 pounds, little more than ten pounds on average

Researchers looked at two strategies. Some individuals were

More patients turn to weight loss surgery

A little more than a year ago, Anthony Accinno reached what he considered a low point when his weight reached an all-time high of 315 pounds.

Over the years, he’d won temporary victories in losing weight through diet and exercise, but would inevitably gain it back when he’d fall back into old patterns, he said.

“A lot of it came down to emotional eating,” Accinno said. “I’d lose 30 or 40 pounds and I’d turn to food to pacify my emotions and the weight would go back up and then a year later I’d start losing again.”

Now, Accinno is celebrating the first anniversary of his gastric sleeve surgery at the Stamford Hospital Center for Surgical Weight Loss as well as reaching his target weight of 215 pounds, a goal that once seemed unattainable.

Hit a Weight Loss Plateau? Don’t Sleep Through These 7 Tips

For years, I was in denial about my weight. I would look in the mirror and see the same healthy guy from my early 20s. It wasn’t until my 40th birthday that I had my “aha” moment. It looked like I had swallowed a sheep!

Years of guzzling processed foods and dodging exercise had caught up to me. I wasn’t just fat. I was sick too and taking prescription drugs to try to maintain a normal existence.

I know firsthand that weight loss can be a long journey, and sometimes it makes you feel like you’re losing a battle. You may commit to new habits and lose a few pounds. But suddenly the weight loss train that was cruising along at high speeds slams on its breaks. You feel like you’re doing everything “right,” but the weight won’t budge. When the plateau hits, many people give up and convince themselves they have a slow metabolism or something is wrong with their new healthy lifestyle changes and they quit.

Sometimes, you have to take a step back and get some new ideas to get the weight-loss moving forward. Here are 7 things to try:

1. Hit the Hay Earlier. A new study suggests that the link between sleep and weight loss is closer than we ever thought. University of Colorado researchers found that losing just a few hours of sleep a night can lead to weight gain. The sleep-deprived people ate far more than people who got 9 hours of sleep. They also tended to crave carbohydrates and ate more calories from after-dinner snacking than any other meal in the day.

Group-based incentives may produce more weight loss

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Employees offered financial incentives to lose weight may drop more pounds when they’re competing as part of a group of colleagues, a new study suggests.

Researchers compared two incentive scenarios. Under one, employees got $100 for each month they met the goal of dropping at least one pound per week. Under the second scenario, $500 was set aside each month for a group of five co-workers and the ones who met their goal got to split the prize.

“People may be more motivated to achieve a particular goal when a particular resource that had been allocated for them is given to someone else if they don’t achieve their goal,” said Dr. Jeffrey Kullgren, the study’s lead author from the University of Michigan Medical School and the Ann Arbor VA Healthcare System.

He and his colleagues randomly assigned 105 obese hospital employees to be offered the individual incentive, the group-based incentive (without knowing who else was in their group) or not to receive any reward for losing weight.

Participants weighed-in each month for about five months. By the end of the study, people in the no-reward group had lost an average of just over one pound each. Those who were offered individualincentives had shed 3.7 pounds, on average, compared to 10.6 pounds among those with group-based incentives.

The possibility of earning more than $100 if their group members didn’t lose weight, in addition to the element of competition, may have driven those employees to make the most significant changes, Kullgren’s team reported Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

WHAT WORKS BEST?

Although weight-loss incentives are becoming popular with many employers, researchers said there are still questions about what type of program provides the most bang for the buck.

“There are hundreds of different ways you can think about doing it. I don’t think there’s a consensus about what the best way is,” said Robert Jeffery, who has studied financial incentives at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Past research does provide a few clues, however, he told Reuters Health. Rewarding people more frequently – such as every week – seems to encourage more weight loss, as does offering more money for success, not surprisingly.

Behavioral economics suggests that aversion to losing – whether money or just a competition with other members of the group – can be a good motivator.

For instance, one recent study found loss aversion played a role in who lost weight when dieters had to deposit a few dollars into an account weekly, and the cash was matched if they lost weight or forfeited if they didn’t (see Reuters Health story of February 8, 2011 here:).

Study says: Financial reward + competition = More weight loss

If we’ve  learned anything from March Madness, it’s that an office pool is fun: It not only holds out the promise of a financial windfall; it pits us against our co-workers in vying for the payoff.  So when it comes to tackling obesity, could the same combination of inducements work to trim workforce fat? A new study, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, says it can.

At Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 105 employees who were obese (having a body-mass index between 30 and 40) joined a weight-loss program that was actually a clinical trial. With workplace weight-loss contests springing up across the country, the trial aimed to find out who would lose the most weight over six months and keep it off for three months at least: subjects who got a reward for shedding pounds but did it solo; subjects who lost weight as a team and split a pot of money; or those who simply signed up to come in for monthly weigh-ins and had no financial incentive to lose weight.

Consider These Cases

Mrs. Lin, a 40-year-old working mother, has been following several popular television shows discussing health and lifestyle. She has struggled with obesity for 8-10 years, trying several fad diets but adhering to each for no more than 2-4 months. She has found dieticians to be unhelpful for her busy life, which includes 3 children under 10 years of age. Her exercise consists mainly of daily walking for 1-2 miles.

Her body mass index (BMI) is 31 kg/m² (normal, 18.5-24.9 kg/m²; obese ≥ 30 kg/m²); this is an improvement from 3 years ago, when it was 35 kg/m². A recent medical work-up showed normal thyroid function, a low-density lipoprotein cholesterol level of 150 mg/dL (optimal < 100 mg/dL; borderline high, 130-159 mg/dL), a high-density lipoprotein cholesterol level of 40 mg/dL (low < 50 mg/dL for women), and a normal triglyceride level. Mrs. Lin asks whether you can prescribe human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) injections for weight loss or if she should obtain it over the Internet.

Couple’s 500-pound weight loss just one success story

Two years ago, Angela and Willie Gillis decided they were ready for a healthier lifestyle. Through diet changes and daily exercise they lost a combined 500 pounds.

CNN readers were inspired by the Gillises’ story, posting more than 1,000 encouraging comments for the couple. They also showed that weight loss success stories come in all shapes and sizes.

Seems our readers are doing their part to make America a Fit Nation.

“AWESOME! So inspiring!” Holly Jean Paquin Michels posted on the story. “My husband and I (along with another couple) are 3 months into our own transformation and have both lost almost 40 pounds. I love that your love for one another shines through in your commitment to this great challenge! That’s how we are conquering it too. Congratulations!”

Excerpt: Stranger Here: How Weight-Loss Surgery Transformed My Body and Messed with My Head

At work, clients sent us huge gift baskets of chocolates or donuts or gourmet banana bread. Women with their glossy hair and their expensive shoes and tiny pants, men in their tight polo shirts and skinny jeans and shiny belts, they all brought salads for lunch in stacks of Tupperware containers for maximum freshness. Account directors and project managers and studio people –they’d carefully assemble their salads on a large glass plate, add a sprinkle of flaxseeds, and set a small dish of fat-free vinaigrette on the side of the plate, while at their elbow would be a three-foot chocolate Easter bunny. They’d turn and march out of the kitchen without even looking at the city block worth of dark gourmet chocolate staring at them.