I have PCOS and am 31. I am blessed to be 25 weeks pregnant by some miracle. I owe such a huge debt to Mumsnet which has given me so much invaluable advice and so I now want to give back and provide any information which may help any other PCOS sufferers.
Firstly, I can honestly say that everything I learned about the condition came from my own research and not from anything the GP told me. The standard line was try for 6 months and then we'll try fertility medication. But in a lot of cases (I fully appreciate this may not apply to all), once you learn to understand how the condition works then you can really put together your own "treatment plan" which works for your body.
I was never overweight but I always had a very sweet tooth and therefore sky high sugar levels meaning little ovulation and periods. Fine when growing up as who wants periods anyway but problematic when it comes to fertility! I also did enjoy my carbs and caffeine tea...both of which are a no no...or at least only permissible in small doses anyway. The heavy, sweet stuff (mostly!) went out and the legumes, brown rice, lentils and houmous moved in!
Also although I did do some daily exercise, it was nowhere the recommended 10,000 daily steps...get yourself a Fitbit and track exactly what exercise you're doing as I found it easy to think I was doing enough when in reality I was doing very little. I was shocked when my Fitbit revealed how little exercise I actually did. My Fitbit was a wake up call. When I started to track ovulation - see below - I honestly found the months I regularly recorded around the 10,000 steps mark were the months I ovulated. I have found exercise and ovulation go hand in hand.
I would also absolutely swear by inositol as I really feel it helped me regulate my sugar levels and therefore ovulate. The reviews on Amazon are enough to suggest it is worth trying. I would also highly recommend macca root which is meant to basically make up for whatever your body is missing and help balance you. I took it in powder form...absolutely disgusting taste so have a glass of water nearby to wash it down super quick!
As I said above, you first need to understand your "cycles". I have put cycles in inverted commas as I used to equate the very irregular bleeding I would get to a cycle/proper period but once I started to use a thermometer to track what my body was doing, I soon realised that a lot of the time, the bleeding was not the end of a cycle as there was no ovulation. I can swear by the thermometer as being accurate for showing whether or not ovulation has taken place as my temperature always reliably rose once I had ovulated. Once you know what your body is actually doing (and not what you think it is doing!) then you can start to introduce vitamins and experiment with exercise etc and check what is and isn't making a difference. Bear in mind you usually need to give changes in diet, vitamins and exercise around three months to take effect.
I would also swear by Clue (I could not be more grateful to the maker of this software) which is free to download to record your ovulation, cycles, temperature, diet, exercise, etc. With Clue you can really track what is going on which is so important. It acts as an invaluable record for GP appointments as you can evidence when your bleeds are and whether this was preceded by ovulation.
Finally, don't get so focussed on the PCOS side of conceiving that you forget other useful but very basic aids...we used the fertility lubricant Conceive Plus which had excellent reviews on Amazon. PCOS sufferers aren't great at producing their own swimming aid and so I would definitely advise a fertility lubricant just to make sure that when you do ovulate at the opportun moment, you are giving everything the best chance of getting where they're meant to be!
If anyone wants to PM me then I will be very happy to offer any help or support I can.
The best advice I can give is understand you own body and read, read, read. Your GP is not a PCOS specialist and will not tell you any of the above. Only then can you make sense of it all and understand what your body needs from you.