Thyroid Medicine

I have been on Synthroid for going on 5 years now and yes, weight loss is slow, but it's going to be for anyone with a thyroid issue. I have lost 12 lbs. in 5 months. That's a little over 0.5lb./week, which is completely normal and natural and healthy, especially given that I'm 20 lbs. from my goal weight. At my heaviest I was 2 lbs. overweight, and that was after 3 years on Synthroid. I gained roughly 20 lbs. total on Synthroid and it took me those 3 years to gain that much. I'll tell you at least 15 lbs. of those 20 were not from the medication, they were from horrible eating and little to no exercise.

The best advice I can offer is to not use your medication or your disease as an excuse. Is your thyroid the reason that weight loss is slow? Yep. But weight loss is still possible with thyroid problems as long as you can find the right dose of medication (whatever medication your doc gives ya) to level out your TSH, and eat healthy and exercise at least 5 days/week, you will lose weight just fine.

I have been on Synthroid for going on 5 years now and yes, weight loss is slow, but it's going to be for anyone with a thyroid issue. I have lost 12 lbs. in 5 months. That's a little over 0.5lb./week, which is completely normal and natural and healthy, especially given that I'm 20 lbs. from my goal weight. At my heaviest I was 2 lbs. overweight, and that was after 3 years on Synthroid. I gained roughly 20 lbs. total on Synthroid and it took me those 3 years to gain that much. I'll tell you at least 15 lbs. of those 20 were not from the medication, they were from horrible eating and little to no exercise.

The best advice I can offer is to not use your medication or your disease as an excuse. Is your thyroid the reason that weight loss is slow? Yep. But weight loss is still possible with thyroid problems as long as you can find the right dose of medication (whatever medication your doc gives ya) to level out your TSH, and eat healthy and exercise at least 5 days/week, you will lose weight just fine.

The problem is the TSH number is not what you should want to level out...............The Free T3 and Free T4 need to be at certain percentage levels for a person to feel good and be able to lose weight at a decent pace. That is the reason why people are able to have a "normal" TSH range yet still have the symptoms. These are the people that go undiagnosed because the medical community and most people focus on TSH values alone.

I am one of those people. I find it unnerving for someone to say that someone else is using their disease as an excuse for not losing weight.............Even if the TSH is "normal" and the Free T3 and T4 values are not in the proper range, a person is still going to have those symptoms and it will also be impossible to lose weight.

It is far from an excuse, it is a reality. I pray for the day that the medical community should educate themselves on treating the WHOLE person and not the TSH lab value. I am not a number, I am a person.

I am fortunate that I now have a doctor that addresses me the person and not my TSH lab value. I am also fortunate enough that she has put me on a plan that is working for me to lose the weight................

I have a feeling that you are one of the fortunate ones that Synthroid works for............which means your thyroid issues are very minor and minute. Good for you!!!!

I never went back to this post, but I'd like to address a few of the things you've said here now that I've read them.
1) my thyroid issues were horrible. My thyroid was so bad that it actually grew an extension of itself because it couldn't handle the disease.
2) I think the reality is that you are one of the few who needs T3 and T4 addressed and not just T4. This is a minority of the people in the world with thyroid disease, not the majority. There are hundreds of thousands of people on Synthroid or Levo and it works just fine for them. A fraction of those people have had to switch to Armour or the like. Understandable and fine, but it's not the majority of people with thyroid disease by any stretch.
3) I'm not saying your disease (our disease, really) is any less significant. I'm saying don't let it get in the way of your weight loss! I sat around for years saying there was nothing I could do, I was fat because of my disease, and I was always going to be that way. Then I got off my *kitten*, worked my butt off in the gym burning several hundred calories at least 5 days/week and was VERY strict on my diet and lost 10 pounds. Actually 11 now. And believe it or not the figures actually read that I've lost 25 lbs. of body fat in 5 months. I'd say that's losing weight and doing it even with this stupid disease. I stopped using it as my excuse and lost weight. What I'm saying is, you can't just sit around (and YOU is FIGURATIVE not personal here) and wait for the weight loss to happen. If you think it's your meds, DO something about it. If two or more doctors say it's not your meds, then it's either your diet or your exercise or something else is wrong with your health. Figure it out and get on the road to healthy! That's all I'm saying.

The T4-Only Club
Think you are doing fine on a T4-only thyroid med?
Think again! Synthroid, Levoxyl, Levothyroxine, Eltroxin, Oroxine, Norton and a host of other brand names for synthetic T4-only are simply giving you a thyroid storage hormone, meant to convert to the life-giving and active thyroid hormone T3. But a large and growing body of patients in the T4-only club, as well as many wise doctors, have discovered that the body is not meant to live on conversion alone, no matter how “normal” your TSH lab result is or how fine you feel.

As a result of being in this club, your stress-busting adrenals may be kicking in big time with cortisol and adrenaline to keep you going on an inadequate treatment of T4-only. Over time, there’s a high risk of those adrenals becoming sluggish, presenting a much more complicated problem to treat. Low ferritin, aka storage iron, can also raise its ugly head.

As one ages on T4 like Synthroid, doctors are finding patients with continuing hypothyroid symptoms of a poor treatment, including rising blood pressure, a buildup of cholesterol and other lipids, increased depression, fatigue and/or a myriad of other inadequate side effects of a poor thyroid treatment.

According to the experience of patients worldwide, T4-only meds do not do the job, any more than an elevator which only rises to the fifth floor of a 50-story building “does the job.”
Sure, you may feel better with good results. But you will be left with your own brand and intensity of lingering symptoms of an inadequate thyroid treatment that will get worse as you age. Yup.

Hi - I am new to this site- I have been on Synthroid for 20 years- and I am very active. I workout hard, eat very healthy and to this day 20 years after the birth of my last son, when my thyroid went out- I have not lost weight.

I hold weight around my stomach and am just thick all over. The more I read - the more I believe it is the medication. There is no way I should way 200 pounds with the amount of activity I do and the way that I eat. I have tried countless ways of losing weight from the Thyroid Diet, Adkins, Weight Watchers, Metabolism, you name it I have tried it. I have tried exercising for 90 min a day- nothing has worked for me.

My doc says I am healthy- good BP, good cholesterol, good triglycerides, etc. I am just at my wit's end. Any suggestions??

Thanks for your quick reply. I have a scheduled appointment next week and I am going to bring this up. Do you see a specialist or a GP?