Hypothyroidism....could this be why I am not losing ANY weight????

2

Replies

  • cbutton1111
    cbutton1111 Posts: 5 Member
    I have it too and it is a slow process. Up your protein, take measurements as opposed to just weighing in and keep up the hard work. If you're feeling better, stronger, have more energy/stamina that should be your gauge. And keep talking to your endocrinologist regarding your health. You can do it!
  • ASKyle
    ASKyle Posts: 1,475 Member
    Weigh your food, try eating more protein and fat. Try not eating back as many of your exercise calories.

    But remember, even if your thyroid is your excuse, does that mean you give up? No, you'll have to work with what you got.
  • Leigh14
    Leigh14 Posts: 871 Member
    synacious wrote: »
    synacious wrote: »
    If she's not losing weight on what she's currently eating, the solution is not to eat MORE. I suspect logging issues/eating more calories than she thinks.

    You are wrong, not eating enough could be the issue. Bumping cals up could help.

    Care to explain why I'm wrong without the use of the false term "starvation mode"?

    I can. "Starvation mode" is a coined term meant to simplify a concept. It's definitely misused and overused.

    A person can eat too much or eat too little. They will either gain or lose weight. The specific calorie points for each differ from person-to-person as their metabolisms differ.

    When a person eats well below their maintenance caloric level, they will initially lose weight. As their metabolism adjusts to this new, lower level of caloric intake, it will take either fewer calories or a higher exercise exertion to create a deficit - thus making it harder to lose fat. They may lose other things - muscle, bone density. (Sanity ... haha)

    That's it in a nutshell.

    To lose weight consistently, a smaller deficit must be created, along with maintenance (or higher) caloric intake days meant to assure your metabolic system that it should not adjust to a new, lower maintenance level.
  • oliversnh
    oliversnh Posts: 15 Member
    Thanks everyone....thinking I should make an appointment and see my doctor. I do feel better eating healthier and exercising, but I really can't fit into any of my clothes, so I get so discouraged.
  • 737jac737
    737jac737 Posts: 54 Member
    edited June 2016
    I take thyroid meds every day and I was put on birth control pills 2 months ago, so I have A LOT going against me. I've still lost almost 30 pounds. IT'S HARD. IT TAKES A LOT OF EFFORT. YOU DON'T LOSE WEIGHT IN 2 MONTHS. I will be 50 in 3 months. NO EXCUSES. You know what my life is like? Don't eat after 7 pm. Stay under your calories. NEVER CHEAT ON YOUR DIET. Limit yourself to 100 g carbs, 150 g protein, 30 g sugar every day. Do one hour of cardio every day before your first meal, or 1 hour of cardio every night PLUS weight training. You need to SWEAT HARD for an hour. Drink 10 glasses of water every day. The only way to lose weight is to change your life FOREVER. On Mondays and Wednesdays I take 3 one-hour classes -- Zumba, Pilates and Bodypump. Google them. Everyone says, Oh, you look so good. Do you diet? NO. I CHANGED THE WAY I LIVE.
  • Duchy82
    Duchy82 Posts: 560 Member
    It can be done I've lost a lot of weight but....
    I don't lose as much weight as mfp says i should, what I mean is, if I set my profile to 0.75kg loss per week I probably only lose 0.5kg a week.

    My TSH is very low in the normal range and my T4 is right at the top end of normal. If they are not, I don't lose. So don't take 'normal' as the answer listen to your body, are you truly symptom free? If you are not losing with a big deficit then probably not. So try and convince your gp to not just treat on blood results.

    I also try not to eat back exercise cals and if I do its a max of 25% to increase the deficit. Also try and be as accurate with logging as humanly possible. 5kg away from target for me and I'm the same weight I was 20year ago now. Good luck, it will happen, persistence is key!
  • mathiseasy
    mathiseasy Posts: 165 Member
    oliversnh wrote: »
    Thanks everyone....thinking I should make an appointment and see my doctor. I do feel better eating healthier and exercising, but I really can't fit into any of my clothes, so I get so discouraged.

    Let me cosign the recommendation to find an endocrinologist who will treat your symptoms, not just your condition. My endocrinologist keeps a very tight grip on my bloodwork, and as I lose weight she is only decreasing my meds slightly, not the whole way, to help me keep losing weight. I was classified as Obese Class 2, and have managed to decrease my bmi to 33.something. I'm still considered obese, but I am not done yet =)
    It's possible to lose weight with hypothyroidism. Definitely talk to your dr and see what they say.
  • ASKyle
    ASKyle Posts: 1,475 Member
    rml_16 wrote: »
    ASKyle wrote: »
    Weigh your food, try eating more protein and fat. Try not eating back as many of your exercise calories.

    But remember, even if your thyroid is your excuse, does that mean you give up? No, you'll have to work with what you got.

    Thyroid isn't an "excuse." It's an actual medical condition. That's a really nasty thing to say.

    Of course you don't give up. Eating healthy and exercising are about more than the scale and the measuring tape. They're about overall quality of life and health. But we also do like to see the scale and the measuring tape move and it's frustrating when we do all the right things and they don't. And when they don't because of something we have no control over, it's maddening. Calling it an "excuse" is dismissive and rude.

    It's not nasty, and I never said it's NOT a medical condition. My mom is hypothyroid, but thanks.

    OP clearly stated that her levels are right where they should be. There is no excuse or reason she shouldn't lose weight. That it's frustrating "when we(you) do all the right things" and the scale doesn't move, doesn't change the fact that her caloric needs are possibly less than someone who is not hypothyroid. I am not sure if that's even true if someones being medicated properly.

    This falls in line with people who claim "x medication made me fat" when really it was that it increased their appetite, or slowed their metabolism. To combat that, they need to control their appetite and/or decrease their caloric intake.

    If OP is in fact weighing all the food that she eats (and I mean ALL OF IT), and staying within her calorie goal and not losing, her BMR or TDEE calculations are off, and she needs to adjust her intake accordingly.
  • Kycatz101
    Kycatz101 Posts: 5 Member
    I feel what you're saying. I'm in the same boat. I talked with my endocrinologist and she said I just had to work harder. With my numbers, if anything, she should have decreased my meds, regardless of my symptoms. I'm walking a lot, which is helping, and staying away from processed foods. Lots of water. My calorie intake is around 1200.
  • FloralBlossom
    FloralBlossom Posts: 21 Member
    Maybe try keeping track of your measurements instead of your weight. If you are exercise your body could be replacing your fat with muscle causing you to lose inches on your body but the number on the scale tends to take longer to show progress
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,329 Member
    To, would you mind posting your blood results? GPS tend to say that thyroid values are fine as they just about fall into the reference range. Many people, including me feel terrible when fT3 and fT4 are only at the lower end of the range. Just upping my medication a tiny bit made such a huge difference for me. Likewise, many doctors claim that the thyroid is fine when TSH are actually fairly high. In the Uk you're not considered hypothyroid if your TSH is not above 10 or so and if someone has problems then it surely cannot be the thyroid. other countries consider a TSH of above 2.5 too high.
  • Leigh14
    Leigh14 Posts: 871 Member
    On the thyroid front, I responded better to natural desiccated thyroid, as well. I take Armour. Synthroid worked for a while, then we had to keep increasing the dosage. I started at my general practitioner who thankfully let me try Armour after my own research, then I went to an endocrinologist to manage my dosage. He told me I'd screwed up by taking Armour and wanted me to "start over" by taking a low dose of Synthroid. I never went back to him. I found a homeopathic doctor instead; she helped manage my hypothyroidism, identified and treated hormone issues, identified and treated Lyme disease - and now I'm mostly symptom-free.

    I'm sure your medical journey won't be the same, but please try to do your own research and be your own advocate.
  • rml_16
    rml_16 Posts: 16,414 Member
    ASKyle wrote: »
    rml_16 wrote: »
    ASKyle wrote: »
    Weigh your food, try eating more protein and fat. Try not eating back as many of your exercise calories.

    But remember, even if your thyroid is your excuse, does that mean you give up? No, you'll have to work with what you got.

    Thyroid isn't an "excuse." It's an actual medical condition. That's a really nasty thing to say.

    Of course you don't give up. Eating healthy and exercising are about more than the scale and the measuring tape. They're about overall quality of life and health. But we also do like to see the scale and the measuring tape move and it's frustrating when we do all the right things and they don't. And when they don't because of something we have no control over, it's maddening. Calling it an "excuse" is dismissive and rude.

    It's not nasty, and I never said it's NOT a medical condition. My mom is hypothyroid, but thanks.

    OP clearly stated that her levels are right where they should be. There is no excuse or reason she shouldn't lose weight. That it's frustrating "when we(you) do all the right things" and the scale doesn't move, doesn't change the fact that her caloric needs are possibly less than someone who is not hypothyroid. I am not sure if that's even true if someones being medicated properly.

    This falls in line with people who claim "x medication made me fat" when really it was that it increased their appetite, or slowed their metabolism. To combat that, they need to control their appetite and/or decrease their caloric intake.

    If OP is in fact weighing all the food that she eats (and I mean ALL OF IT), and staying within her calorie goal and not losing, her BMR or TDEE calculations are off, and she needs to adjust her intake accordingly.

    You have absolutely no understanding of the disorder. At all.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,329 Member
    edited June 2016
    rml_16 wrote: »
    ASKyle wrote: »
    rml_16 wrote: »
    ASKyle wrote: »
    Weigh your food, try eating more protein and fat. Try not eating back as many of your exercise calories.

    But remember, even if your thyroid is your excuse, does that mean you give up? No, you'll have to work with what you got.

    Thyroid isn't an "excuse." It's an actual medical condition. That's a really nasty thing to say.

    Of course you don't give up. Eating healthy and exercising are about more than the scale and the measuring tape. They're about overall quality of life and health. But we also do like to see the scale and the measuring tape move and it's frustrating when we do all the right things and they don't. And when they don't because of something we have no control over, it's maddening. Calling it an "excuse" is dismissive and rude.

    It's not nasty, and I never said it's NOT a medical condition. My mom is hypothyroid, but thanks.

    OP clearly stated that her levels are right where they should be. There is no excuse or reason she shouldn't lose weight. That it's frustrating "when we(you) do all the right things" and the scale doesn't move, doesn't change the fact that her caloric needs are possibly less than someone who is not hypothyroid. I am not sure if that's even true if someones being medicated properly.

    This falls in line with people who claim "x medication made me fat" when really it was that it increased their appetite, or slowed their metabolism. To combat that, they need to control their appetite and/or decrease their caloric intake.

    If OP is in fact weighing all the food that she eats (and I mean ALL OF IT), and staying within her calorie goal and not losing, her BMR or TDEE calculations are off, and she needs to adjust her intake accordingly.

    You have absolutely no understanding of the disorder. At all.

    I do. I was completely untreated, had no energy at all and had a massive amount of antibodies, and I lost weight just fine. Really, it's still cico also with hypothyroidism. The BMR might be a bit lower (peer reviewed literature talks about 4% max!) but that's not a reason to NOT lose weight.
  • Colorscheme
    Colorscheme Posts: 1,179 Member
    yirara wrote: »
    rml_16 wrote: »
    ASKyle wrote: »
    rml_16 wrote: »
    ASKyle wrote: »
    Weigh your food, try eating more protein and fat. Try not eating back as many of your exercise calories.

    But remember, even if your thyroid is your excuse, does that mean you give up? No, you'll have to work with what you got.

    Thyroid isn't an "excuse." It's an actual medical condition. That's a really nasty thing to say.

    Of course you don't give up. Eating healthy and exercising are about more than the scale and the measuring tape. They're about overall quality of life and health. But we also do like to see the scale and the measuring tape move and it's frustrating when we do all the right things and they don't. And when they don't because of something we have no control over, it's maddening. Calling it an "excuse" is dismissive and rude.

    It's not nasty, and I never said it's NOT a medical condition. My mom is hypothyroid, but thanks.

    OP clearly stated that her levels are right where they should be. There is no excuse or reason she shouldn't lose weight. That it's frustrating "when we(you) do all the right things" and the scale doesn't move, doesn't change the fact that her caloric needs are possibly less than someone who is not hypothyroid. I am not sure if that's even true if someones being medicated properly.

    This falls in line with people who claim "x medication made me fat" when really it was that it increased their appetite, or slowed their metabolism. To combat that, they need to control their appetite and/or decrease their caloric intake.

    If OP is in fact weighing all the food that she eats (and I mean ALL OF IT), and staying within her calorie goal and not losing, her BMR or TDEE calculations are off, and she needs to adjust her intake accordingly.

    You have absolutely no understanding of the disorder. At all.

    I do. I was completely untreated and with a massive amount of antibodies, and I lost weight just fine. Really, it's still cico also with hypothyroidism. The BMR might be a bit lower (peer reviewed literature talks about 4% max!) but that's not a reason to NOT lose weight.

    My friend has hypo, numbers look good. She can also lose weight fine.
  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 9,329 Member
    Oh, and to add that that: I was also deficient in iron, vitamin b12 and vitamin D3 (guess where my energy levels were). Also had no influence on weight loss.