Complete thyroid removal 9 yrs. ago. I just keep gaining weight, can't seem to lose any.

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Any diets out there that work if you don't have a thyroid at all??

I've tried several.

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4 Replies

  • Posted

    I drink plenty of water and do exercise to try to maintain. Sadly, even if I have soups and fruit, I still gain, I'm fed up too!!

  • Posted

    I had my thyroid removed in July. So far they have upped my medicine 3x but I am still very tired. I tried to exercise at least 3 to 4 days and week and stay under my points with WW but I keep gaining.

    I am getting fed up as well.

     

  • Posted

    Thyroid disease is autoimmune, so you'll want to reduce the load on your immune system by reducing triggers. Eliminating sugar, wheat and most dairy is a start. This will help reduce the flare ups of the immune system. When the immune system flares, the body has to deal with a lot of inflammation, water retention and other issues. This of course puts the body into survival mode.

    Keep in mind that as long as your body is sick, it will be very difficult to lose weight. So using artificial sweeteners and other "cheats" don't help. You also need to make sure you're getting proper nutrition and enough animal protein.

    With hypothyroidism, the body's metabolism slows down, resulting in slow digestion, sluggish liver and kidneys. You can see how this slow elimination makes it impossible to lose weight. 

    The best thing I've found is to do gluten free, high protein diet. Lots of lean chicken, beef and fish. At this point, I avoid fish due to rusk of mercury, which worsens thyroid health.

    There are many helpful cleanses, that can assist in sluggish elimination. While your body isn't efficiently eliminating on a day to day basis, you can help yourself out by cleansing. There are psyllium/herbal colon cleanses for the gut, liver and gallbladder flushes for liver health and fat digestion, many herbs such as parsley, turmeric, mulberry leaves (source of chlorophyll) and so many others that can help.

    I've fought my weight my entire life. One of the biggest frustrations for me has been conventional diets which discourage low calorie intake. I gain weight on "normal" diets. I've found to lose weight, I need to take on between 800-1100 calories per day. I am 5'6" and have a large frame for a female. I might do 1300 on a splurge day or if I've exercised a lot, but rarely, if I'm trying to lose weight. If I start to gain, I just go back to my low calories, with high protein diet until I'm back to where I want to be. 

    This sort of dieting along with cleansing brought me a blissful 10 years at a size 2-4. Which, I can assure you is not over rated! 

    However it was initially several months of dieting with virtually no progress before the weight started coming off. I mean I was doing less that 1300 calories and two hours of high impact aerobics for three months before the weight started coming off. So the key is to stick with it, even during the frustrating times when you aren't getting visual results. 

    I also don't do weight training when I'm trying to lose weight. Rather, while losing, I focus on aerobic activities. Get the weight off with the cardio. It'll give you enough strength training... once the weight is off, you can start reshaping things by adding in weights.

    It's important that you make the time and space for to be able to stick with a plan. Homemade foods are best, as additives trigger the immune system. You can use hard boiled eggs as snacks. They travel well and you can cook a batch for the week. Homemade soups are also great. Give up sweets. If you must have them, take one or two bites. Nothing is ever solved by binging with sweets that can't be solved in one bite. So if one bite doesn't satisfy, know that nothing will. 

    Also, to give yourself the best possible chance for success, get yourself as healthy as possible.   I'm finding, now after five years of thyroid hell, my system is so riddled with autoimmune disease that I have massive bloat, water retention and inflammation to contend with. This makes it near impossible to exercise due to the massive pain. I can't jump in and just do it because I'm in such diar straights that I have to start at a very low level of exercise,  which makes losing even more difficult. For me, swimming and doing my own yoga may be the place to start now, but I'm so overwhelmed and plagued with pain, that it's a monumental task just to get myself organized enough to set aside time and space to do the exercise. Meanwhile, I've spent the last year trying to recover my health so that I can successfully diet. 

    Well those are the basics from my decades of struggles and weight loss with thyroid disease, most of it undiagnosed. 

  • Posted

    Hahaha, I just posted with what's worked best for me. We'll see how much of it gets posted.

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