Many popular weight loss approaches rely solely of foods, calorie counting, and meal replacers. However, if your thyroid hormones are sub-optimal or your adrenal hormones are out of balance, you will end restricting your calories so much that you can create a raft of future health complications – including damaging your thyroid hormones further and creating a really unbalanced picture.
Today, let’s look at calories, metabolism and why some people don’t lose weight with a caloric reduction approach.
Yesterdays email discussed the different forms of calories and why some foods help with weight, while others boy-cot it – even if they have the same caloric value.
If you missed it – check it out in my blog on the Lucy Rose Clinic website.
Daily Calorie needs for the “average” person
The average woman needs to eat about 2,000 calories per day to maintain her weight, and 1,500 calories per day to lose 0.5kg (1 pound) of weight per week.
The average man needs 2,500 calories to maintain, and 2,000 to lose 0.5kg (1 pound) of weight per week.
Now if you have a thyroid condition – or have some or all of the following symptoms – then following the above recommendation will not budge weight.
Why?
People with a slower metabolism typically burn 500 calories less a day. If you were to eat 2,500 which is a maintenance value, you will put on weight. If you eat the lower amount of calories, you will maintain weight. If you eat less again, you set yourself up for issues which I will discuss below.
Check your symptoms
These symptoms can be due to other factors, but if you have 5 or more, that indicates that your thyroid hormones may be behind it.
- Heavy irregular periods
- Premenstrual tension
- Perimenopause symptoms
- Tiredness & Sluggishness
- Dryer Hair or Skin
- Sleep More Than Usual
- Weaker Muscles
- Constant Feeling of cold
- Poorer Memory – brain fog
- Puffier Eyes
- Difficulty with Math
- Weigh gain easily
- Outer third of eyebrows sparse
- Clumsy – unsteady gait
- Irregular periods
- Carpel Tunnel
- Heart rate fluctuations
- Overly stressed
- Waking up tired
- Skin issues such as psoriasis, eczema, rashes and allergies
- Mid afternoon fatigue or napping
- Sleep issues
Work with up-skilled practitioners who focus on the state and function of the hormones to help with your weight loss goals!
Not Eating Enough
One of the most paradoxical symptoms of someone who is under-eating is weight gain!
One of our senior retired clients discovered this first hand when she followed her Detox Food Program to the letter. She was eating 3 times as much as she had for years, and while it felt really contradictory, she lost 8kg in the 3 week program!
Her food program was full of high quality proteins, lots of vegetables, and had no grains or processed foods in it.
>>> Long term calorie reduction induces changes in your body’s metabolism in order to keep your body in a homeostatic balance. Your body does not like major, drastic changes, and it will make modifications to your thyroid, adrenal, and sex hormones in order to slow down metabolic process in response to the low calorie diet.
The Blood Sugar Dance
Under-eating over a long period of time can cause hypoglycemia, especially when combined with exercise. When this hits, you feel better fast eating sugary foods, but this often creates a cycle of high and low blood sugar swings that leads to overeating or binging on junk foods.
Thyroid Hormone conversion issue
In a study done on 15 obese (113 kg) women over an 18-week period, they discovered that rT3, the inactive thyroid hormone, increased by as much as 27 percent in the group put on a very, very low calorie diet.
RT3 – or reverse T3, occurs when the thyroid hormone T4 (thyroxine) converts down the inactive pathway instead of the activating pathway that makes T3.
If rT3 builds up in the blood to elevated levels it causes a heap of complications, and the body finds it very hard to clear out the excess hormones.
RT3 binds to T3 receptors blocking the action of T3 and thus acting as a metabolic break. If rT3 levels are high, and other thyroid hormone markers are in range, this indicates rT3 dominance.
Other causes of reverse T3 dominance include: leptin resistance, inflammation (NF kappa-B), nutrient deficiencies such as low iron, selenium, zinc, chromium, Vit B6 and B12, Vit D and iodine, low testosterone, low human growth hormone, insulin dependent diabetes, pain, stress, environmental toxins, free radical load, hemorrhagic shock, liver disease, kidney disease, severe or systemic illness, severe injury, surgery, and toxic metal exposure.
Our thorough testing packages cover these factors to get to the root problem and help you optimise your hormones and biological functions using natural therapies, detoxification programs, nutrient replacement therapy, and scientifically validated traditional herbal medicine.
Weight loss can seem complicated, but when you work with practitioners who are trained to understand the way the body works at a functional level, the confusion is taken out and replaced with an individualised plan to get you feeling great again!