heya qwert. I'm no expert i just know what worked for me. My digestion seriously was like a peppy mercedes vs my usual junk yard jallopy. I go by whether I get hungry. If I get hungry a few hours after I 've eaten then I know my stomach has emptied and my metabolism has picked up and I need to feed it.

Eating like this can be time consuming and expensive. I can't eat a lot of protein alone bcse it stops me up, so I can't do what my boyfriend does and eat cheese and kibasa (spelling?).
I find that apple digests really easily alone with other fruits. Sometimes I add fresh organic cream (ie no hormones) to the fruit, and that slows the digestion down a little so there's not such a low after it digests, for me anyway. Or you can heat up some plain whole rolled oats (cooked or raw, it's up to you) and top with the fruit and some splenda to balance it. The oats will slow down the insulin response bcse it is bulky/fiber. However you should be okay with apple since there's so much fiber in the skin, but if not try the oats with it.

If you still have a problem with this method, try taking 800mcg of Chromium / day for about 3 weeks and then try it again. Many people are defficient due to our poor diets (chromium we get from grains btw.. ironic that PCOSers are told to avoid grain). Chromium makes you more insulin sensitive, it is a necessary mineral needed for this. There are some other minerals but people usually aren't deficient in them.

I don' t have that great of a reaction to beans, it makes me tired and sluggish. For some reason garbonzo beans on salad seems to be okay for me, but kidney, etc just wear me out. Not sure why. If you made a stir fry you could add some garbonzo in for bulk and see how it goes for you. To me, cabbage almost feels like a carb though it's not. So when I eat cabbage I feel full in a good way.

Yeah cortisol raises testosterone levels. THe reason for this is:
Constant stress depletes your cortisol reserves needed for fight or flight. Your body still needs cortisol but if you're under a lot of mental, physical or emotional strain, your body can't tell the difference, it's still stress and you need more cortisol. So it sees your Progesterone, it converts it to Cortisol. Then you don't have enough to make regular periods or balance blood sugar, bcse incidentally, progesterone keeps you insulin sensitive. We all have testosterone anyway, so if you increase it by drinking caffeine (which stresses you also) & have depleted progesterone stores, you are now prime candidate for PCOS.... You have hightened testosterone, without progesterone to balance it. It's all about ratios, balance between hormones, not so much the lab values.