Has anyone had medical reasons that kept you from losing?

An Underactive thyroid makes it a b!tch to lose weight, but it is possible. A blood test will show up if there is an issue. Other metabolic conditions such as PCOS often make it tougher too.

Medication will help the other symptoms of an underactive thyroid (depression, feeling cold, losing the edges of eyebrows, gynae probs, low sex drive), but in most people's experience, the meds don't help you to shift the lbs.

Check the boards for thread on not losing, there's tonnes of them. Ensure you are measuring and logging everything (denial is a wonderful thing, except when you want to see results), and that you don't have unreasonable goals such as losing 2lb per week if you don't have a huge amount to lose.

Good luck!

I have hypothyroidism. Along with a few other symptoms, I gained 10 pounds in two weeks even though I had been doing about 7000 cals a week exercising (it was summer and I was in almost all day ballet training). I was exhausted all the time, too, for no reason (yeah, I know the training but I am quite fit - the sleepiness came on suddenly through the day). Had joint aches and all, as well.

The sudden wait gain was what drove me to the doctor, though. It was so odd. Blood test and voila!

I have an awful time losing, even on the synthroid, T3, progesterone and DHEA.

I have PCOS and it makes it alot harder to lose. I take meds and viamins. They help but the only way I really start ls if I exercise too.

type 2 diabetes will do it to you.

you've provided no particular information about your settings/goals. your profile is locked. your diary is not viewable. i don't see how anyone can provide you useful feedback.

Sorry I was feeling down, and posted in a hurry. Didn't have time to post too many details before I had to leave. I was only eating 1400 cals/day, and exercising 3-5times/week (and not eating burned calories) Recently I started reading about bmr/tdee. 20% off of my tdee would put me at around 2100/day, and my bmr was 1800-1900 cal/day. So I've tinkered with my goals so that I have 1800/day. I've still stayed around 1600-1700, and the scale is not only going down, its going up. I was mostly looking to see if others have suffered from any biologic disorders that have hindered there weight loss journey so that I would have some ideas to research. Thank you for your comment though.

How long have you been doing TDEE -20% ?

I have PCOS and Grave's (thyroid disease) and so far I've not had a problem dropping weight because of those illnesses.

I currently have low thyroid hormones (fixing this by seeing an endocrinologist) and I found hard (but not impossible) to loose weight. I have been there before, so I know when this happens. Speak with an endo. My doctor has been super understanding and she suggested that I send her a report of my meals and exercises downloaded from MFP. You may not have any problem but it is worth a check, and thyroid issues are generally easy to fix. Good luck!

And just to clarify: once you are on medication the hormones are back to normal, you can loose weight as fast as every other person with your size, exercise level, calorie intake.

I have Type 1 diabetes and it's hard for me to lose weight. It took me years to lose 35 pounds. Since I lost it so slowly, it's easier to keep off.

I have MS, and PCOS. One makes it hard for me to exercise (sometimes) the other makes it hard to lose weight. I basically decided to ignore both and lose the weight no matter what those two A-holes had to say about it. So far it's working. I also don't take any medication for either. I am not my conditions and I have no excuses.

....but that's just my twisted way of looking at it. I keep it positive and it's always about mind over matter for me.

I have hypothyroidism and have had problems losing weight as well.. My dr put me on synthroid or the generic for it anyways and it didnt help with weightloss but she noticed that I was retaining fluid so she put me on a fluid pill and I dropped almost 10 pounds in fluid before I started my weightloss journey.. It just depends on you and your situation.. Check with your dr and see what they say.. Its better to be safe than sorry.

I have an underactive thyroid, and PCOS. They both make it SO hard to lose weight.

PCOS. Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome
Way to combat it is to have a low carb diet (eat like a diabetic would to control blood sugar) and take a bunch of cinnamon pills.

You've lost 22 pounds. Great job on the loss!

Make sure your accurately tracking your calories. Weigh and measure your food, give it time and the results will come.

I didn't have the time to read all the other posts, so forgive any repeats. Everyone would tell me "as long as you burn more than you consume, you have to lose weight." yet, 16 months later, I was 115lbs heavier. Yes, there are some common medical conditions which can cause your body to hold onto weight, hypothyroid being the most common. But, there are a lot of lesser known things as well. I was on a 1200 calorie a day diet for 6 months and gained 40lbs. Yet all my labs are in the "normal" range. I have a serious neurological condition, am on a bunch of meds (none of which are known to cause weight gain, by the way), and can't be as active as I used to. One of the things that happened to me was that those and other issues confused my metabolism into thinking I was starving. So, every single calorie I ate was converted to fat since my body didn't think it knew if I'd get a meal tomorrow and it wanted to horde energy so it would have something to burn if it didn't get any food.

I completely disagree with the comment that you should rule out all non-medical issues first. Assuming you have a decent relationship with your primary care physician &/or decent insurance, there's no reason to not mention it. Lots of insurance companies cover preventative care at good rates to encourage this. If there is something medically going on, there is no good reason to let it continue longer just to test out non-medical reasons. Not only will that make you continue to pack on pounds (lengthening the time it'll take to get them back off), but usually medical stuff that impacts your weight will be impacting other body systems which you might not yet notice. Plus, even if there's not one thing medically going on, your Dr can make suggestions about the best types of proteins, carbs, etc, ensure you're not sacrificing nutritional elements you need as you cut back calories, etc.

There are also some really good medically supervised weight loss programs. I did weight watchers and wanted to shoot myself in the head. Then, I found a medically supervised program and, after gaining weight every single day for 16 - 18 months, I've now lost 16lbs in 7 weeks. Because of my unique issues, I see the Dr every week with this supervised program. My husband's doing it with me and doesn't have any medical issues, so he doesn't see the Dr except every 6 - 8 wks or something. But, they do blood work on both of us every 3wks. If anything shows up out of range, they retest the next week. They send the labs to our Dr too, so he's completely aware of what's going on with us and, if something shows up out of range and I don't call to make an appt, his nurse calls us to make an appt. It alleviates any concerns about any medical issues which might be causing weight retention as well as ones which we might have developed by being over weight for a couple years. It also ensures we're accurately tracking everything. It's so easy to think you're writing everything down properly, but it's amazing how off our perceptions almost always are on actual portion sizes, etc.

I hope that some of this is helpful for you. Best of luck in your weight loss! Try not to get discouraged - not only is it completely normal for loss to wax and wane, but also if you're working out you can be getting healthier and more fit and not actually lose weight. My mom got into the habit of working out every single day. She gained weight, but lost 2 sizes. An inch of muscle weighs more than one inch of fat. So, if you're burning fat and building muscle, you may weight more but be a smaller size. Try to focus on body fat percentage and how your clothes fit just as much, if not more, than the actual lbs on the scale