Hypothyroid and weight gain/loss

Another note. Adjusting to thyroid medication can be a real roller coaster ride. I am now on 225mg, but started very slowly at 12.5mg I believe, and increased over many months. It was a shock to my system, after being so depleted for so long, and I had lots of symptoms and side effects as my body adjusted. Just my way of saying, don't be too hard on yourself. Your body is adjusting to what it needs, but this takes time. Be kind to yourself.

karas_journey wrote: »

pjshawley wrote: »

Another note. Adjusting to thyroid medication can be a real roller coaster ride. I am now on 225mg, but started very slowly at 12.5mg I believe, and increased over many months. It was a shock to my system, after being so depleted for so long, and I had lots of symptoms and side effects as my body adjusted. Just my way of saying, don't be too hard on yourself. Your body is adjusting to what it needs, but this takes time. Be kind to yourself.

I started subclinical and theres a lot of debate about whether to medicate or not. But I had so many symptoms like hair loss super dry skin loss of libido depression really bad anxiety low heart rate and the 30 lbs weight gain in under 4 months... so I started at 25 mcg because I wasnt in a big deficit but recent went to 37.5 mcg on my way to 50 mcg but I'm so sensitive to meds I increased slowly too. But I dont see much improvement at all which is disappointing. Started early March. My hair started falling out again when I went up to 37.5 and I'm back to constipation and bloating... this must happen each time I adjust the dose...but I have not lost any weight. I'm trying to be patient but its July and nothing to show for my efforts... so I get frustrated and yesterday I cracked and ate 6 wafer cookies. It was like my mental bough broke! I hope the side effects go away and I'd give anything for just 10 lbs 💜

honestly thyroid dosage is based on body size and its likely that your dose is too low - i'm 5'3" and 165 and my dose is 150mg a day - they started me on 100 when i first had my thyroid removed and its been adjusted up over the years

did they show you what your bloodwork results were? have they tested your testoterone? i figured my hair falling out was due to my thyroid, but it turned out that my testosterone levels were slightly out of funk

enjoy those wafer cookies - just log them - you shouldn't stress out over eating an enjoyable food

Perla4686 wrote: »

Update and panicking!
So I've been hypothyroid for a very long time. I've been taking 100 MCG levothyroxine and had no symptoms. With each of my pregnancies I needed a little more levo, 150, but within 3 months after birth it settled back to 100. With my youngest (she's 15 mts), it didn't settle back and I stayed on 125mcg.
I joined MFP in February and lost 35 lbs so far (another 30 to go).
Recently, I started having some symptoms; heart palpitations, hand tremors and occasional dizzyness. So I've been retested and it's finally gone back to my pre-baby level, back to 100.
Here's my panicking: obviously, taking a little over has helped me lose weight (although I was super carefull with CICO and regularly work out). Now, I feel so down that I can't even get credit for all that hard work + I'm stressed that my weight loss will stall/slow to a trickle on just 100. Obviously, I'm happy to be taking less medication but at the same time, feeling stressed too.
I know this is unreasonable, as I've successfully lost (and gained!) in the past on 100. But I can't help the mindgames I play with myself.
Any words of wisdom?

Honestly, I doubt that being "over-medicated" (which it really wasn't, BTW, before you got hyper symptoms) is going to explain your weight loss, or any major portion of it.

The estimates I've seen are that completely untreated hypothyroidism has a penalty of around 5% of RMR, at the top. That would be about a 60-calorie slowdown on my estimated 1200-calorie RMR. If there are further effects of being hypo (beyond RMR), they are primarily from fatigue (thus reduced activity, possibly including inobvious things like fidgeting), from water retention (so temporary), or through increased appetite.

It doesn't make sense to me to assume that mildly overtreated hypothyrodism would have a much more dramactic effect on RMR in the opposite direction. I don't have any proof (or expertise ) but it seems very unlikely that if you got some bizarre (and not worthwhile!) weight loss benefit from heart palpitations and other bad stuff to the tune of more than 50-100 or so calories daily, and if there was any at all it was probably much less than that. Losing 35 pounds since February is way more than a 50-100 calorie deficit. It's got to have been something in the vicinity of 750 calorie average daily deficit, as just a back of the envelope calculation. (35 pounds over 6 months, if months have 4 weeks approximately, would be about 1.46 pounds/per week on average, so 3500 calories in a pound times 1.46 is 5110 calories' deficit weekly, or 730 a day).

So, if there's a weight-management penalty from being properly treated (which I do think is unlikely to be noticeable at all) and at a lower dose of meds, it might be water retention (which wouldn't be huge, and wouldn't keep accumulating indefinitely), reduced activity (something you can largely perceive and counter), or through appetite (which you're managing through calorie counting and attentiveness, so it isn't going to mysteriously overtake you).

Clearly, you don't want to be overtreated: Dangerous. So the dosage change is necessary. It's not always easy, but there's no point in questioning or fearing necessity: It's stressful, unproductive, and a waste of emotional energy (without actually burning any extra calories for expending that emotional energy ).

Going forward, you'll be running the experiment to see if there's any observable effect on your weight loss. It seems logical to expect that if there is any effect at all, it will be quite small, possibly small enough to be lost in the noise of unavoidable estimating approximations for food, exercise, activity level, etc.

Why not run the experiment, see how things end up after 4-6 weeks, before being distressed about it? The outcome is pretty unlikely to be dramatic; making it dramatic in advance of data is IMO pretty optional.

Best wishes!

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Perla4686 wrote: »

Update and panicking!
So I've been hypothyroid for a very long time. I've been taking 100 MCG levothyroxine and had no symptoms. With each of my pregnancies I needed a little more levo, 150, but within 3 months after birth it settled back to 100. With my youngest (she's 15 mts), it didn't settle back and I stayed on 125mcg.
I joined MFP in February and lost 35 lbs so far (another 30 to go).
Recently, I started having some symptoms; heart palpitations, hand tremors and occasional dizzyness. So I've been retested and it's finally gone back to my pre-baby level, back to 100.
Here's my panicking: obviously, taking a little over has helped me lose weight (although I was super carefull with CICO and regularly work out). Now, I feel so down that I can't even get credit for all that hard work + I'm stressed that my weight loss will stall/slow to a trickle on just 100. Obviously, I'm happy to be taking less medication but at the same time, feeling stressed too.
I know this is unreasonable, as I've successfully lost (and gained!) in the past on 100. But I can't help the mindgames I play with myself.
Any words of wisdom?

Honestly, I doubt that being "over-medicated" (which it really wasn't, BTW, before you got hyper symptoms) is going to explain your weight loss, or any major portion of it.

The estimates I've seen are that completely untreated hypothyroidism has a penalty of around 5% of RMR, at the top. That would be about a 60-calorie slowdown on my estimated 1200-calorie RMR. If there are further effects of being hypo (beyond RMR), they are primarily from fatigue (thus reduced activity, possibly including inobvious things like fidgeting), from water retention (so temporary), or through increased appetite.

It doesn't make sense to me to assume that mildly overtreated hypothyrodism would have a much more dramactic effect on RMR in the opposite direction. I don't have any proof (or expertise ) but it seems very unlikely that if you got some bizarre (and not worthwhile!) weight loss benefit from heart palpitations and other bad stuff to the tune of more than 50-100 or so calories daily, and if there was any at all it was probably much less than that. Losing 35 pounds since February is way more than a 50-100 calorie deficit. It's got to have been something in the vicinity of 750 calorie average daily deficit, as just a back of the envelope calculation. (35 pounds over 6 months, if months have 4 weeks approximately, would be about 1.46 pounds/per week on average, so 3500 calories in a pound times 1.46 is 5110 calories' deficit weekly, or 730 a day).

So, if there's a weight-management penalty from being properly treated (which I do think is unlikely to be noticeable at all) and at a lower dose of meds, it might be water retention (which wouldn't be huge, and wouldn't keep accumulating indefinitely), reduced activity (something you can largely perceive and counter), or through appetite (which you're managing through calorie counting and attentiveness, so it isn't going to mysteriously overtake you).

Clearly, you don't want to be overtreated: Dangerous. So the dosage change is necessary. It's not always easy, but there's no point in questioning or fearing necessity: It's stressful, unproductive, and a waste of emotional energy (without actually burning any extra calories for expending that emotional energy ).

Going forward, you'll be running the experiment to see if there's any observable effect on your weight loss. It seems logical to expect that if there is any effect at all, it will be quite small, possibly small enough to be lost in the noise of unavoidable estimating approximations for food, exercise, activity level, etc.

Why not run the experiment, see how things end up after 4-6 weeks, before being distressed about it? The outcome is pretty unlikely to be dramatic; making it dramatic in advance of data is IMO pretty optional.

Best wishes!

Preach!

I've been keeping a journal and logging things such as the time I take my supplement, what other medications I'm taking, full thyroid panel, weight, my energy level, quality of sleep, etc for 19 years. I started MFP about 5 years ago and began tracking intake as well with other factors and the only impact I note is my weight fluctuations based upon CICO - my behavior. I do note that my appetite increases as TSH increases, but this is behavioral and mitigated with the knowledge of logging into MFP.

My case is a bit different as I had a total thyroidectomy, so there is little variation and my supplement is significantly higher to mitigate cancer.

Perception is honestly the primary driver in this. If you believe you can attain your goals, this dramatically increases your chances of success. The other aspect is that weight impacts thyroid more than thyroid impacting weight.

AnnPT77 wrote: »

CSARdiver wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Perla4686 wrote: »

Update and panicking!
So I've been hypothyroid for a very long time. I've been taking 100 MCG levothyroxine and had no symptoms. With each of my pregnancies I needed a little more levo, 150, but within 3 months after birth it settled back to 100. With my youngest (she's 15 mts), it didn't settle back and I stayed on 125mcg.
I joined MFP in February and lost 35 lbs so far (another 30 to go).
Recently, I started having some symptoms; heart palpitations, hand tremors and occasional dizzyness. So I've been retested and it's finally gone back to my pre-baby level, back to 100.
Here's my panicking: obviously, taking a little over has helped me lose weight (although I was super carefull with CICO and regularly work out). Now, I feel so down that I can't even get credit for all that hard work + I'm stressed that my weight loss will stall/slow to a trickle on just 100. Obviously, I'm happy to be taking less medication but at the same time, feeling stressed too.
I know this is unreasonable, as I've successfully lost (and gained!) in the past on 100. But I can't help the mindgames I play with myself.
Any words of wisdom?

Honestly, I doubt that being "over-medicated" (which it really wasn't, BTW, before you got hyper symptoms) is going to explain your weight loss, or any major portion of it.

The estimates I've seen are that completely untreated hypothyroidism has a penalty of around 5% of RMR, at the top. That would be about a 60-calorie slowdown on my estimated 1200-calorie RMR. If there are further effects of being hypo (beyond RMR), they are primarily from fatigue (thus reduced activity, possibly including inobvious things like fidgeting), from water retention (so temporary), or through increased appetite.

It doesn't make sense to me to assume that mildly overtreated hypothyrodism would have a much more dramactic effect on RMR in the opposite direction. I don't have any proof (or expertise ) but it seems very unlikely that if you got some bizarre (and not worthwhile!) weight loss benefit from heart palpitations and other bad stuff to the tune of more than 50-100 or so calories daily, and if there was any at all it was probably much less than that. Losing 35 pounds since February is way more than a 50-100 calorie deficit. It's got to have been something in the vicinity of 750 calorie average daily deficit, as just a back of the envelope calculation. (35 pounds over 6 months, if months have 4 weeks approximately, would be about 1.46 pounds/per week on average, so 3500 calories in a pound times 1.46 is 5110 calories' deficit weekly, or 730 a day).

So, if there's a weight-management penalty from being properly treated (which I do think is unlikely to be noticeable at all) and at a lower dose of meds, it might be water retention (which wouldn't be huge, and wouldn't keep accumulating indefinitely), reduced activity (something you can largely perceive and counter), or through appetite (which you're managing through calorie counting and attentiveness, so it isn't going to mysteriously overtake you).

Clearly, you don't want to be overtreated: Dangerous. So the dosage change is necessary. It's not always easy, but there's no point in questioning or fearing necessity: It's stressful, unproductive, and a waste of emotional energy (without actually burning any extra calories for expending that emotional energy ).

Going forward, you'll be running the experiment to see if there's any observable effect on your weight loss. It seems logical to expect that if there is any effect at all, it will be quite small, possibly small enough to be lost in the noise of unavoidable estimating approximations for food, exercise, activity level, etc.

Why not run the experiment, see how things end up after 4-6 weeks, before being distressed about it? The outcome is pretty unlikely to be dramatic; making it dramatic in advance of data is IMO pretty optional.

Best wishes!

Preach!

I've been keeping a journal and logging things such as the time I take my supplement, what other medications I'm taking, full thyroid panel, weight, my energy level, quality of sleep, etc for 19 years. I started MFP about 5 years ago and began tracking intake as well with other factors and the only impact I note is my weight fluctuations based upon CICO - my behavior. I do note that my appetite increases as TSH increases, but this is behavioral and mitigated with the knowledge of logging into MFP.

My case is a bit different as I had a total thyroidectomy, so there is little variation and my supplement is significantly higher to mitigate cancer.

Perception is honestly the primary driver in this. If you believe you can attain your goals, this dramatically increases your chances of success. The other aspect is that weight impacts thyroid more than thyroid impacting weight.

I was hoping you'd show up and contribute actual expertise (almost tagged you, but hate to bug people) . . . and I can't tell you how relieved I am that you seem to feel I didn't go too far afield into lala land, scientifically speaking. Thanks!

Not at all - I feel there's a solid number of people here who understand the limits of hormonal disorders and can push back against the woo.

I would mention that when I lost 60 lbs the first reaction of my endocrinologist was to lower my Synthroid, but monitoring my panel revealed no discernible change - meaning I'm utilizing the hormone and that lowering would not be worth the risk. I have a great relationship with my physicians and I don't know what I'm going to do when he retires.

Perla4686 wrote: »

CSARdiver wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

CSARdiver wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Perla4686 wrote: »

Update and panicking!
So I've been hypothyroid for a very long time. I've been taking 100 MCG levothyroxine and had no symptoms. With each of my pregnancies I needed a little more levo, 150, but within 3 months after birth it settled back to 100. With my youngest (she's 15 mts), it didn't settle back and I stayed on 125mcg.
I joined MFP in February and lost 35 lbs so far (another 30 to go).
Recently, I started having some symptoms; heart palpitations, hand tremors and occasional dizzyness. So I've been retested and it's finally gone back to my pre-baby level, back to 100.
Here's my panicking: obviously, taking a little over has helped me lose weight (although I was super carefull with CICO and regularly work out). Now, I feel so down that I can't even get credit for all that hard work + I'm stressed that my weight loss will stall/slow to a trickle on just 100. Obviously, I'm happy to be taking less medication but at the same time, feeling stressed too.
I know this is unreasonable, as I've successfully lost (and gained!) in the past on 100. But I can't help the mindgames I play with myself.
Any words of wisdom?

Honestly, I doubt that being "over-medicated" (which it really wasn't, BTW, before you got hyper symptoms) is going to explain your weight loss, or any major portion of it.

The estimates I've seen are that completely untreated hypothyroidism has a penalty of around 5% of RMR, at the top. That would be about a 60-calorie slowdown on my estimated 1200-calorie RMR. If there are further effects of being hypo (beyond RMR), they are primarily from fatigue (thus reduced activity, possibly including inobvious things like fidgeting), from water retention (so temporary), or through increased appetite.

It doesn't make sense to me to assume that mildly overtreated hypothyrodism would have a much more dramactic effect on RMR in the opposite direction. I don't have any proof (or expertise ) but it seems very unlikely that if you got some bizarre (and not worthwhile!) weight loss benefit from heart palpitations and other bad stuff to the tune of more than 50-100 or so calories daily, and if there was any at all it was probably much less than that. Losing 35 pounds since February is way more than a 50-100 calorie deficit. It's got to have been something in the vicinity of 750 calorie average daily deficit, as just a back of the envelope calculation. (35 pounds over 6 months, if months have 4 weeks approximately, would be about 1.46 pounds/per week on average, so 3500 calories in a pound times 1.46 is 5110 calories' deficit weekly, or 730 a day).

So, if there's a weight-management penalty from being properly treated (which I do think is unlikely to be noticeable at all) and at a lower dose of meds, it might be water retention (which wouldn't be huge, and wouldn't keep accumulating indefinitely), reduced activity (something you can largely perceive and counter), or through appetite (which you're managing through calorie counting and attentiveness, so it isn't going to mysteriously overtake you).

Clearly, you don't want to be overtreated: Dangerous. So the dosage change is necessary. It's not always easy, but there's no point in questioning or fearing necessity: It's stressful, unproductive, and a waste of emotional energy (without actually burning any extra calories for expending that emotional energy ).

Going forward, you'll be running the experiment to see if there's any observable effect on your weight loss. It seems logical to expect that if there is any effect at all, it will be quite small, possibly small enough to be lost in the noise of unavoidable estimating approximations for food, exercise, activity level, etc.

Why not run the experiment, see how things end up after 4-6 weeks, before being distressed about it? The outcome is pretty unlikely to be dramatic; making it dramatic in advance of data is IMO pretty optional.

Best wishes!

Preach!

I've been keeping a journal and logging things such as the time I take my supplement, what other medications I'm taking, full thyroid panel, weight, my energy level, quality of sleep, etc for 19 years. I started MFP about 5 years ago and began tracking intake as well with other factors and the only impact I note is my weight fluctuations based upon CICO - my behavior. I do note that my appetite increases as TSH increases, but this is behavioral and mitigated with the knowledge of logging into MFP.

My case is a bit different as I had a total thyroidectomy, so there is little variation and my supplement is significantly higher to mitigate cancer.

Perception is honestly the primary driver in this. If you believe you can attain your goals, this dramatically increases your chances of success. The other aspect is that weight impacts thyroid more than thyroid impacting weight.

I was hoping you'd show up and contribute actual expertise (almost tagged you, but hate to bug people) . . . and I can't tell you how relieved I am that you seem to feel I didn't go too far afield into lala land, scientifically speaking. Thanks!

Not at all - I feel there's a solid number of people here who understand the limits of hormonal disorders and can push back against the woo.

I would mention that when I lost 60 lbs the first reaction of my endocrinologist was to lower my Synthroid, but monitoring my panel revealed no discernible change - meaning I'm utilizing the hormone and that lowering would not be worth the risk. I have a great relationship with my physicians and I don't know what I'm going to do when he retires.

You've piqued my curiosity there. When you say weight can impact thyroid, would you say my need for medication may be reduced as I lose weight? That would be a nice perk. Who knows, maybe that's why my thyroid improved in the first place?
You've all been very helpful, thanks! I'll let you know how the experiment's going in a couple of months....

Possibly - one of the many determinants of dosage is your body mass. This issue with thyroid and most endocrine glands is that if they begin to produce diminished levels of hormones, these organs rarely go back to full functional levels, but I'm speaking in generalistic terms. None of this matters in your specific case.

I used to think what a curse it was that I needed to take that little pill of 200 mcg...then I realized what a wondrous time we live in that all I have to do is take a small pill and can lead the life I've always lived.

Tagging @Rines1594 you may find this thread helpful

Pearl4686 wrote: »

I know this thread is old, but got some great advice here and hoping for the same again.
Recently, I'm starting to feel like there's a lump in my throat. I feel it when I swallow and I'm finding it difficult to swallow some foods like raw carrot.
I suspect it has something to do with my thyroid (hypothyroid for 9 years, on levo 100mcg, never had symptoms)
I will obviously go see my doctor if this persists but I'm curious if anyone has any insight.
Thanks everyone!
Tagging @CSARdiver @AnnPT77

I hope @CSARdiver will pop in, because I have no relevant specialized scientific/medical knowledge, just knowledge randomly gleaned from my experience/reading as a long-term hypothryroid person.

The only relevant things I know are:

* At regular appointments every 6 months to get my hypo meds refilled, my doctor always checks my neck for swelling, in the vicinity of the thyroid (but this could be about my breast cancer history, or both things: I haven't asked).
* IMO, you really should see your doctor. Maybe call and ask them if this is something you should be seen about more quickly, vs. waiting.

CSARdiver wrote: »

karas_journey wrote: »

cheryldumais wrote: »

I'm hypothyroid as well. 125 mcg/day of synthroid. I lost over 100 lbs. I do however find my maintenance calories are about 200 below what they tell me they should be. Am I weighing every bite... no. Maybe I can't measure correctly but either way I know how I have to eat to maintain. Having said all that I hit a plateau after I lost about 80 lbs and the answer for me was a diet break. I ate at maintenance for a week then went back on plan and lost another 20 lbs. You might want to give that a try. They say you should actually break for 2 weeks but I was terrified of gaining it all back. Good luck.

This is very encouraging because I joined a thyroid Facebook group and everyone says you can't lose weight. I originally needed to lose 155. I was down 85 when I plateaued for 6 months and went hypo as I wasn't while losing weight. I do know breaks are beneficial. I originally lost 135 lbs in 2004 and kept it off till 2012 when I got on several weight gaining medications for MS. But things went very wrong last summer. I'm hoping to get things optimized and get this weight off!! Thx for the encouragement i know it's possible.

Sadly you'll find the same phenomenon everywhere. Victim status is en vogue currently and there are many who embrace this, so thyroid disorder becomes a convenient excuse for failure.

Hormones are free cycling, so you'll likely find yourself needed less supplement as you lose weight. Thinking of your body as a mass of water - it is used to a specific amount of hormone cycling through. If you increase your body mass by 25% you cause your endocrine system to work 25% harder to maintain, which creates a great deal of stress, inflammation, and if carried out over time organ and system damage. In all cases weight management becomes key and calorie counting is a very effective system for success. Much like balancing your finances, your food intake needs to be managed.

Really great analogy!