PCOS Cycle & Insulin Diet Checker

Tap what you ate yesterday. We score it against the four dietary levers with the strongest evidence behind insulin resistance and ovulatory function in PCOS, then show you the three changes that would move your score the most.

Free. No account, no email.
1,487 women here are working on cycle regularity. Out of 4,168 using PCOS Meal Planner.
Step 1 of 2
What did you eat yesterday?
Tap everything that featured. A rough match is fine, we are scoring the shape of the day, not counting grams.

Grains & starches

Protein

Fish & seafood

Vegetables

Fruit

Beans & lentils

Nuts & seeds

Dairy

Fats & oils

Packaged & fast food

Sweet things

Drinks

Alcohol

Step 2 of 2
Two quick questions
These change the scoring more than any single food does.
Tap at least three foods to score
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out of 100, for insulin and inflammation load
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Your three highest-leverage changes

Get the full breakdown

Your score tells you where you stand. The full report tells you what to do about it, against the exact day you just entered.

  • Every lever explained against your own food day
  • Specific swaps, matched from our recipe library
  • Emailed to you, plus a PDF you can keep
  • Re-score later to see what actually changed
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Free account. We do not share your data.

What this checker measures, and what it does not

The short version This tool scores a day of eating against insulin load and inflammatory load. It does not score, predict, or estimate fertility, and no result here says anything about whether you will conceive. What it does measure is the upstream mechanism: insulin resistance is present in an estimated 65 to 80 percent of women with PCOS, and it is the most consistently documented dietary lever on the hormonal environment that governs ovulation.

Most people arrive at a PCOS diet tool wanting a single answer about a single outcome. The honest position is that diet acts on a mechanism, and the mechanism acts on a cycle, and a cycle is one input into a much larger picture that includes age, tubal and uterine factors, thyroid function, partner factors, and plenty that no food log can see. So this tool stays in its lane: it scores the part that is actually yours to change, and it tells you which part of it to change first.

The four levers, and why these four

The 2023 International Evidence-based Guideline for the Assessment and Management of PCOS is explicit that no specific dietary composition has been shown to be superior for PCOS. That finding is often reported as "diet does not matter", which inverts it. What the guideline actually says is that the branded diets do not separate from each other, so the useful question is not which diet, but which underlying variables are doing the work. These are the four that recur across the literature.

LeverWeightWhy it carries that weight
Glycemic load 40% The most direct dietary line to circulating insulin, and insulin resistance is the most documented upstream driver of anovulation in PCOS.
Protein adequacy 20% Protein blunts the glucose response of the meal it sits in. Protein at the first meal shapes the curve for the rest of the day.
Fat quality 20% Targets the inflammatory contribution rather than the insulin one. Chronic low-grade inflammation is an independent feature of PCOS.
Plant variety 20% A workable proxy for micronutrient density. Breadth of plants covers the gaps that recur in PCOS dietary surveys better than any single nutrient target.

Why glycemic load is weighted double

Elevated insulin does two things at once in PCOS. It stimulates ovarian theca cells to produce more androgens, and it suppresses the liver's production of sex hormone binding globulin, which raises the fraction of testosterone circulating free. Both push in the same direction, and the resulting androgen environment interferes with the recruitment and maturation of a dominant follicle. That is the chain from a plate of food to an irregular cycle, and glycemic load is the first link in it.

How to read your score

The overall number is a weighted composite, so a strong score on one lever does not rescue a weak score on another. That is deliberate. The three fixes we return are ranked by how many overall points each one would recover, which means the first item on your list is genuinely the one worth doing first, not the one that is easiest to write about.

A score in the 80s does not mean you are doing everything right, and a score in the 30s does not mean you have done anything wrong. Plenty of people score low because of one high-glycemic breakfast they have eaten for fifteen years without anyone ever mentioning it. That is a fixable, specific thing, which is the entire point of scoring a day rather than grading a person.

One day is a sample, not a verdict

Score a typical day rather than your best day, and re-score after a few weeks of changes. Insulin markers can move within weeks. Cycle changes lag much further behind: a follicle takes roughly 85 to 90 days to develop from recruitment to ovulation, which is why trials measuring ovulatory outcomes in PCOS generally run three to six months. Three months is the minimum honest window before drawing any conclusion about your cycle.

Related tools and reading

Educational tool, not medical advice This checker is an educational scoring tool. It does not diagnose any condition, it does not assess fertility, and it does not predict any medical or reproductive outcome. It cannot tell you whether you are ovulating or whether you will conceive. Irregular or absent periods have many possible causes beyond PCOS, several of which need investigation. Always talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian about your own situation, particularly before making significant dietary changes or if you are trying to conceive, taking medication, or managing another condition.