An inCYST testimonial

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We love to hear how we're helping you, what you want more of, less of, etc.

I recently received this letter from someone who joined the inCYST Institute. Thanks, friend!

I remember very clearly which article was the one that opened my eyes. I'd been reading the blog for a while after I'd done a PCOS-related search. I think there were a few articles where you mentioned fish oil and I do remember reading them but I figured I'm already seeing a Naturopath and if she hasn't prescribed it to me then I must not need it.

And then you wrote this: http://www.incyst.com/2011/11/what-inflammation-means-to-your-brain.html. I remember reading it and it was like a hit in the face. I'm an Engineering student and for the last five years I've carried around a ton of guilt regarding my 'professional' success. I used to be more motivated in high school and I'd put in more effort and I'd get better results. Ever since I'd started my undergrad career those things had just gone more and more and more downhill. I couldn't concentrate and I just stopped caring after a while, I basically resumed to doing whatever I can to pass, and honestly I don't think I had it in me for much more than that.

Before reading that article, I blamed it all on myself, thinking I'd just become lazy and I'm not as smart as I think and I'm never gonna be as good as the other Eng students around me. I can't even tell you how much I thank you for that article, it was the biggest relief of my life to read it and think that maybe it wasn't all me. I've been taking fish oil ever since and things do seem to be getting better. So thank you, again. Thank you!

I very much enjoy reading articles like that because you explain in very common terms what it is that bad habits do to you and it kinda scares me into submission (I know it's a bad way to put it). I find that I have to constantly remind myself what could happen if I don't have healthy habits since I'm constantly being bombarded with images of unhealthy people who still look great (I'm referring to the mass media here). I also find it useful when you review products and/or actual food items, nutrients and vitamins, with the science behind of course as you always do. I'm really excited about Fitness Fridays and I think the first article was really useful (perhaps not for me personally right now since I can't afford a personal trainer anyway) for people who actually spend their money on working out with someone.

I won't lie, I rarely try recipes that you post even though I read them unless they're super raw. I'm way better at taking ingredients that I know I want to eat and somehow mix them up together to create a great meal rather than following instructions. I do use the recipes you post to guide my creative meal-making though. I also try to eat most of what I eat in the most natural form possible so I don't actually cook quite so often.

Anyway, that's all I can think of for now. I made the final decision to join when I read this on facebook:

inCYST Programs for Women With Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
I am starting to get the feeling that one of the reasons many of you have so much trouble with food...is that you were not raised in environments that were in touch with food in healthy ways. So much of what suggest is too far removed from where you are in reality. Do you need some kind of boot camp or club that worked you through the basics of food and cooking? This would have to be a paid offering, as I am pretty tapped out with regards to offering help that does not pay my bills.


It's pretty sad that it had to come to that for me to decide but it did. I think I often forget that there's an actual person behind all of this and yeah, why not help if I can. I mean for 25 dollars, it's not the end of the world. I spend that much going to see a movie with my boyfriend. If I could I would encourage more people to support inCYST, but I know of no one else who actually benefits from it since I don't know any other women with PCOS in my non-online life. I think that people respond better when they realise what kind of impact they can have with just a little bit of help from each of us.


I had not put that on Facebook to garner sympathy, but rather to encourage people to consider investing in something they felt had value to them. An investment here has the potential to save you money on medications...and for some...assisted reproduction. We don't ask for much, but we hope you can help if we have helped you!

One of my favorite healthy eating tricks -- turn something you DON'T like into something you DO

Source: kalynskitchen.com via Amanda on Pinterest

I've now worked with three Chow Locally boxes, and for the most part I was cruising along. Until this past week when arugula showed up in the box. A few years ago, I belonged to a CSA at a farm where arugula grew particularly well. So for weeks at a time, it would show up in the box. I was not particularly fond of it in the first place, but when having to eat it for weeks on end...well, let's just say I developed an intense dislike for the green.

But my job at Chow Locally is to show people how to use foods in season. I decided to use this as an opportunity to put myself in many of my client's shoes, and I chose to challenge myself to learn to eat--and like--arugula.

Flipping through some recipes, I happened across arugula pesto. And I like basil pesto, so I figured it might be fun to try it with arugula. It turned out so tasty I was eating it by the spoonful!

So I cruised the Internet and found a lot of recipes for pesto using a lot of other greens that people often turn their noses up at. I found kale pesto, collard pesto, and mustard green pesto.

I think I was open minded to and expecting to like this recipe because I had an expectation of the taste that would be positive. Trying something completely foreign on top of a new food would have been too much. Expectation is half the battle!

So if you're trying to learn to cook and eat new foods, think of ways to cook the new so that it is familiar. Willing to bet it helps you add more new things to your repertoire than you thought yourself capable of.

Fitness Friday: Why "cheat days" and PCOS are a bad combination

Source: bakersroyale.com via Lauren on Pinterest

If you have ever lived in the world of athletes, you may be familiar with a term, the "cheat day". A cheat day is a day set aside each week to eat the foods that are not on your diet...it is included in a lot of strict regimens with the philosophy that if you let yourself have those foods one day a week, it will be easier to follow the strict regime the rest of the week.

The cheat day is extremely counterproductive for PCOS, and here just a few of the reasons why.

1. It creates the mentality that there are good foods, and bad foods. Of course, there are foods that are more supportive of lessening insulin resistance than others. But subscribing "good" and "bad" designations to foods can be counterproductive. I have found that the minute a food becomes something you limit to just one day a week...it can cause you to crave and obsess about the very food you are supposed to be limiting.

2. And that brings me to my next point. Binge eating is extremely strongly correlated with PCOS, and what happens on some of those cheat days...can be mind boggling. Women with PCOS are extremely sensitive to small changes in diet, and a binge episode can include salty foods that promote fluid retention. If your physician is monitoring your insulin function with a test called a hemoglobin A1c, it is a reading of your average blood glucose over the past weeks. Major binges that take you a few days to get over can throw that average off.

3. I have seen cases where overdoing the cheat day has been a major barrier to overcoming insulin resistance. It can be the thing that provokes your physician to increase your medication dose...a dose which may be too high on days when you are eating well. The very best way to reduce your dependence on medication, is to refrain from starving/bingeing cycles that make it hard for your physician to create a medication regimen that helps you.

4. Cheat days can interfere with weight loss. Let's say you are losing about a pound a week. Your calorie deficit is about 500 per day. All it takes is one fast food dinner, in addition to a normal breakfast and lunch, to offset your progress you have made the rest of the week.

5. A lot of foods people "cheat" on are processed and high in sodium. It can take a few days to flush the water this sodium is retaining. My experience is, if you are working with the mentality of cheating and not cheating, even if you give yourself permission to do so, there is guilt involved after the cheat. And that can drive you to weigh in the next day, look at the higher weight, assume it is fat you have gained...encouraging overexercising and over restricting food. Both of those choices impose stress on your insulin and cortisol systems and interfere with blood sugar control.

Our goal at inCYST is to create a lifestyle where the healthier foods are the ones you gravitate toward, not because they are good for you, but because you genuinely enjoy them. My experience is that when you are in a hormone-friendly groove, you actually LIKE to eat greens, fruits, and lean proteins. I know, for me, when I am taking care of myself, I can barely handle walking through a food court in the mall or airport without feeling nauseated from the smell. I don't really need cheat days because I don't have an appetite for the kind of foods cheat days are designed to allow.

When you are craving "bad" foods, it is a major sign that you are out of balance. Cheat days have a way of keeping you stuck In that imbalance, not helping you out of it.

Let us help you learn what life is like living life in balance, rather than constantly counteracting some kind of extreme with another extreme. That is what we excel at.

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness. You hear that word a lot from people like me trying to help you move toward health...it's kind of a tough concept to describe. Over the weekend we were experimenting with the iPad and filming a pilot "Yoga for PCOS" class, and something happened during filming that perfectly illustrated how mindfulness works.

We live in a culture that is constantly bombarding us with stimuli. It has gotten worse in the past 5 years or so with the advent of smart phones, as we can literally be on alert 24/7 with beeps, buzzers, and "push" notifications. We can get so drawn in to social networking sites that we feel if we don't read every single status update, watch every single video, respond to every single event invitation, we are somehow missing out.

It is possible to spend an entire day connected to a screen, at the expense of losing connection to real people right in front of us. To see this for yourself, I challenge you to go for several hours with your phone and tablet left behind, and spend time in a public place. Look at how many people are focused on their phones...texting, IM'ing, talking...instead of participating in the world right in front of their faces. I have actually started turning off email and wireless connection on my writing days, so I am focused on one thing, and not constantly being tempted to shift my focus by random, multiple notifications coming at me from all directions.

The drawback to this is that when you are absorbed with your techno toys, you are also not listening to important messages your body is sending you.

You might ignore hunger. Which might seem like a good thing...except that in ignoring hunger, you often push yourself to the point of being ravenous before you respond to the cue.

You might ignore that you are tired, and stay up half the night playing Farmville, and you know if you regularly read this blog, poor sleep hygiene drives insulin resistance and worsens the symptoms of PCOS.

You might also ignore emotions. Feeling angry, sad, lonely, are uncomfortable to allow yourself to do. But those emotions are no different than physical cues, they are guiding you toward actions you need to take. If you ignore your emotions, they don't go away, they just amplify and amplify until they get your attention. If this is how you choose to deal with your emotions, their magnitude by the time that you are forced to acknowledge them, can be so great, that your response to them is at risk of being extreme--rage fits, excessive exercise, binge eating, alcohol dependence--are all common ways that people often deal with emotions they are afraid to face.

Mindfulness is a conscious exercise that develops your ability to be more aware, throughout the day, of how you are feeling. It is also called "being present". Your attention is on you, your immediate surroundings, and how you feel in those surroundings. If you pay attention to those things on an ongoing basis, and make conscious decisions about how you are going to address the situations, you can avert a lot of emotional outbursts, and binge/compulsive-type behaviors that sabotage PCOS management.

Meditation is a way to practice staying focused on yourself without being pulled away by distractions. Most people struggle with meditation at first, because until they start, they are not even aware of what thoughts and feelings they have been avoiding. It can be extremely uncomfortable. If you stick with it, it does get easier, you do develop more comfort with those thoughts and feelings, and they tend to not hit the magnitude where they convert into toxic behaviors.

When we were filming the other day, one of Sarah's kitties really wanted to help. So while Sarah and Deborah were busy focused on practicing meditation, kitty felt a little bit left out because her usual attention-getting behaviors were not working for her. (That is often what happens when we stop allowing ourselves to be distracted...the people who are positively reinforced by distracting us lose their own distraction and "up the ante" to pull us back into the unhealthy thing they need to do.)

So in this video, Kitty works and works and finally gets Deborah 's attention. For a split second, Deborah's focus on meditation was broken. But she quickly caught herself and got right back into the groove.

Now if it wasn't Kitty wanting some loving that could wait, and rather a sudden thunderstorm, Deborah may have chosen to prioritize getting out of
the rain.

Practicing mindfulness is exactly like that. You develop the ability to close out distractions. You can't ever really make them go away, life is about prioritizing and ably handling then,any distractions that are thrown in our path. The goal is to acknowledge them ,just as Deborah acknowledged Kitty, and get back to more of a personal focus as quickly as possible.

Enjoy the video! It is one of several segments the kitties helped with...as the person behind the camera I was experiencing my own special mindful moments, working extremely hard to not disrupt the session with laughing, or peeing in my pants from not laughing.

We had a great time, and will have updates soon on how you can participate in our yoga program.

A little video inspiration from one of our long time fans

Sunday Sarah Jones videotaped a Yoga for PCOS class for us to test out the camera, setting, and format. Our good friend Deborah helped us out. As we were relaxing afterward, Deborah took a few minutes to share her PCOS story.

I hope you find it inspiring and can feel a connection!



Deborah has been working at the PCOS thing for a few years now. She takes huge leaps forward, takes breaks, sometimes gets pulled into old choices...but her net movement is always forward. That's what change is about.

Our yoga series will be available to Institute members soon. if you would like to be notified notified when they are available...please leave a note here or email me at monika@afterthediet.com

De-bittering Kale

Source: elanaspantry.com via Valerie on Pinterest

Kale is the new rage. I've even seen it hailed as The New Beef.

Problem is, for newbies to this green way of eating, kale is a bitter veggie to swallow.

I wanted to share some of my favorite ways to work with kale that get you out of the bitter and into the tasty zone!

1. Make chips! I put a photo album on our Facebook page showing you how to do this with pretty much any green, including kale. It's soooo easy!

2. Cook with Parmesan cheese. Cheese, for some reason, helps to take bitterness out of greens.

3. Massage with oil. I'm sharing a couple of links here to recipes describing tis technique, which is basically breaking down the membranes of the leaves with your hands while massaging in a little oil. The first recipe, Kale Salad with Grapefruit, and photo are from friend Valerie Griswold. The second recipe is for the popular kale avocado salad at Whole Foods, which is what I always encourage people to try if they have never had kale. The avocado does the job that the oil does in the previous recipe.

4. Throw a handful into smoothies! You won't taste it at all, and you'll still get the benefit of its goodness.

5. Add to soups. If I get close to the next weekly veggie box and I still have things I haven't used, I make soup. Kale is a great thing to throw in anything.

Stop Beating Yourself Up!

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• “I’m so stupid!”
• “I’m never going to figure out how to hold better boundaries.”
• “I’m so fat, it’s disgusting.”
• “I just can’t figure out how to actually fall asleep.”
• “I don’t know why I keep getting involved with people who don’t treat me well.”
• “This is hopeless.”

In my psychotherapy practice, I hear comments like these every day. Many of my clients have low self-esteem, and run a constant stream of mental verbal abuse. It may stem from an abusive background (the things their parents said to them are embedded at this point), frustrating health conditions that are difficult to manage, or having a tendency to find unhealthy relationships. Not knowing how to create change is another reason for this kind of self-talk. Lots of things can trigger self-abuse, and it usually doesn’t take much. Many of us are all too good at starting the litany of self-abuse. For some of us, it’s a 24 hour a day practice.

What is the result of this constant barrage of mean, unproductive, and even cruel commentary? Feeling bad goes to feeling worse, depression is exacerbated, motivation decreases, and sometimes an eating, drinking, spending, or sexual binge is set off because a woman feels and thinks, “What’s the point? I can’t change. This is too hard. I’ll never figure it out. This isn’t worth it. I’m not worth it.”

I want you to stop beating yourself up – NOW. There are enough negatives coming in from external sources (bad grades, an unappreciative spouse, kids who walk all over you, the competitive types at the gym who sneer at your efforts, the not-so-subtle one-upmanship of your friend who has a much larger clothing budget, etc.). You need to combat all of that with positive self-talk, and a commitment to deleting the negative statements from your vocabulary. Every time you start with the negative self-talk, write it down, and immediately counter it in writing with a positive statement. For example:

• “I look like crap” becomes “I have some extra weight because of my PCOS, but I’ve made huge improvements in my diet and exercise program – and I’m getting there. And I still dress really cute. That matters.”

• “I’m stupid” is countered with “I’m smart, and there’s lots of evidence to prove it – I had a 3.9 GPA, and three people (name them) told me I was smart in the last month.”

• “I don’t know how to be happy” gets countered with “happiness is a process, and I’m taking important steps to achieve it, like journaling, going to therapy, and keeping a gratitude list.”

Your language is powerful, and it’s a choice. It impacts your sense of well-being, productivity, and even your health. By choosing positive language for your self-talk, it also shifts your interactions with other people. More importantly, it shifts your sense of self, and improves your self-esteem. Only you have the power to do that.

Gretchen Kubacky, Psy.D. is a Health Psychologist in private practice in West Los Angeles, California. She has completed the inCYST training. She specializes in counseling women and couples who are coping with infertility, PCOS, and related endocrine disorders and chronic illnesses.

If you would like to learn more about Dr. Kubacky or her practice, or obtain referrals in the Los Angeles area, please visit her website at www.drkubacky.com, or e-mail her at AskDrGretchen@gmail.com. You can also follow her on Twitter @askdrgretchen.