Hello all

[Nickienailmania]

Hi everyone

New to this forum but not new to hypothyroid problems. I am trying to decide on a healthy food plan to follow. Would be interested in anyone's advice, tips, recipes etc

Xxx

[LaurieRose]

Hi I'm at the same stage as you at the moment and this is the healthy diet advice I've read which seems to make the most sense. 'The Paleo Diet' which mostly consists of meat and vegetables, avoiding grains and based on going back to the way cavemen used to eat by avoiding processed foods. I'm going to try it for six weeks and see if there's a difference.

Avoiding bad fats is a given as well whichever healthy diet plan you follow. Once finding a plan that works it's best to stick to it for life and jazz it up by fancy presentation. 😂 if it gets boring. There's advice on avoiding cruciferous vegetables like cabbage and sprouts too.

So many diet plans out there but as long as you eat healthy and what you like on the Paleo diet you can eat as much as you like and anytime of the day. If your appetite is good this bodes well. As long as your snack is say under 190 calories a few crunch tasteful vegetables like carrot sticks or sweet pointed red peppers.

For recipe suggestions I make my own selection of vegetable salads making sure they are at their optimum nutrition i.e. preferably in season ...buy them daily or every other day. Just buy what you'll eat and don't sidetrack down the aisles.

If you drink coffee it might be time to wean of and become accustomed to green tea lots of different flavours to go with it now, so it's not as bitter as on its own. Depends what your tastes are.

Hope you find what healthy plan is good for you and start to reap the benefits quickly. I'd be interested to know how you get on. Keep us posted.

Fellow hypothyroid sufferer.

Lauren 😊

[greygoose in reply to LaurieRose]

Lauren and Nickie, the advice on avoiding cruciferous vegetables is wrong. It's based on the fact that they contain goitrogenic elements, but then, so do things like strawberries and walnuts. The list is long! But if you avoided all of them, you wouldn't have much to eat! So, don't worry about goitrogens, just eat what you like and what likes you. If you feel something disagrees with you, stop eating it, but don't avoid whole food groups like that.

Also, do not count calories, that's a red herring, and not a natural way of eating. Paleolithic man didn't count calories! If you must count something, count nutrients.

You say to avoid bad fats, but what exactly do you count as bad fats? In my book, the bad fats are trans-fats, and highly processed seed oils, like rapeseed and sunflower seed. The good fats - and you need plenty of them! - are butter, olive oil, nuts and nut oils (anything you can press rather than process), avocado and coconut oil.

[Nickienailmania in reply to greygoose]

Strangely. I have followed clean eating paleo style way of eating for 3 years now. But I have still the weight gain .. I am trying to do is work out a plan which works for me .. As paleo seems to have stopped working for me so far as weightloss is concerned

I don't avoid cruciferous veg .. I just limit how much I have but still include them.

I am gluten free and dairy free as well

[greygoose in reply to Nickienailmania]

But, if you're hypo, the weight gain has nothing to do with what you eat. It is due to low metabolism, due to low T3. It's possible it isn't even fat, so how can what you eat possibly affect it?

[LaurieRose in reply to greygoose]

I think certain foods can speed up the metabolism.

[greygoose in reply to LaurieRose]

I really don't think so. What speeds up your metabolism is optimising your T3. You can't replace hormones with food.

[LaurieRose in reply to greygoose]

Ah that's interesting thank you. I agree on those being the bad fats too. I tend to chose butter rather than margarine, extra virgin spray oil rather than sunflower oil. Also low fat cheese instead of full fat. But im addicted to camembert with basil and tomato. Thinking of replacing it with tuna.

Which are the best nutrients to be counting greygoose ? Theres so much info and much contradicts what it says elsewhere.

[greygoose in reply to LaurieRose]

Low fat cheese? Are you kidding me? All dairy fat is good! Why cut it out? Besides, have you thought about what the cheese goes through to be come low-fat? We're talking serious processing here. And all processed food is bad. And what are they adding to make it taste palatable? Because without fat, food is tasteless.

And there's are reason for that. Fat gives food taste because Mother Nature wants us to eat it. The body needs fat. And that's one of the reasons that calorie-counting is a nonsense, because fat is highly calorific, but it's also a necessary nutrient. And eating fat doesn't make you fat. In fact, those that eat the most fat, lose the most weight (as long as they're not hypo!). So, enjoy that camembert - full fat!

So, that's one of the nutrients you should be counting - fat. They are all important, vit D; B vits; vits A, C, E, K; magnesium, zinc, selenium - iron is very important. Don't worry so much about the trace elements, they are there, but as their names suggests, you don't need them in vast quantities. And, iodine is one of the trace elements.

What you need to do is cut out all processed foods - especially low-fat stuff which is poison. Limit sugar, of course, but then if you cut out processed food, most of the sugar goes with it.

[Elven in reply to greygoose]

BRAVO! Very well said. I also reacted when I read the words 'low fat cheese'. This is no criticism of the OP! But as you point out making a dairy product low fat involves crazy technological hoop-jumping.

We've been brainwashed and seriously misled for decades by food manufacturers. They sell us rubbish labelled 'healthy'. And we poor innocents believe what we read. Low fat processed food is not healthy. It's been stripped of flavour and texture and is all-too-often bulked-out with sugar.

I've been strictly vegetarian low-carbing for a very long time. And counting calories. Naturally, since I was an undiagnosed Hypo for umpteen years, dieting became more and more taxing and ineffective. I 'dieted' my way from slimness to near-morbid obesity, despairing at the seeming hoplessness of my situation.

Finally the combined misery of endless painful and limiting symptoms compelled me to write everything down and ask my new GP for help. He ordered blood tests and then, one month ago, started me on 100mcg levothyroxine. Incredibly I've shed 18lb by eating double the amount of food I subsisted on before!

Early days, yet. I know that things may not always go this well, but the advice given to stop counting calories and carbs, and to instead count nutritional content, is first class. I hope the OP finds a way of eating and living that will promote health and wellbeing AND lead to weight loss! x

[greygoose in reply to Elven]

She will when she gets her T3 optimised.

Well done you for having seen through Big Food lies!!!

[LaurieRose in reply to greygoose]

Ah so i can keep the camembert then ...excellent haha. I tend not to eat processed foods anyway and because cholesterol has been hogh in the padt ive been advised by my nutritionist to cut out fat. But to be honest it hasnt made any difference to my weight.

I agree about a balanced diet but im still confused how much or little i should be eating.

[greygoose in reply to LaurieRose]

You see why I don't like nutritionists??? That was very bad advice. And very stupid. Cholesterol is made in the liver. And, it aims for a certain quantity. So, the more you eat, the less the liver makes. The less you eat, the more the liver makes. It equals itself out. The reason your cholesterol was high was because your T3 was low, which meant that your body could not regulate the use of cholesterol, for making hormones and things, and it built up in the blood. But the body still needed fat.

And, as I said, it wouldn't make any difference to your weight because a) eating fat doesn't make you fat and b) you've put on weight because you're hypo, nothing to do with eating fat. Or anything else, come to that.

Eat to satisfy yourself. If your leptin is ok, your built in breaks should come on when you've had enough. Don't set out to eat a certain quantity. Eat, as the French would say, 'à ta faim'.

[LaurieRose in reply to greygoose]

Thanks. I hope i can find out what my T3 levels and leptin levels are when i get tested next month. Hopefully I'll be repirting back a good weight loss soon.

[Nickienailmania]

Maybe I need my T3 levels checked as I eat clean anyway

[greygoose in reply to Nickienailmania]

I think maybe you do.

[LaurieRose]

What do they do to low fat cheese?

[greygoose in reply to LaurieRose]

Well, it's rather difficult to find in-depth information on that. Some is just skimmed to remove the fat, I believe, but often there are chemicals involved.

I found this article which, whilst informative in some ways - if you don't mind the bad language! - in other ways gets it somewhat wrong. Ancel Keys was not just mid-judged and hard done-by. He did bad science, got his conclusions wrong, and condemned a lot of people world-wide to bad health. And, cholesterol of any kind is not responsible for heart attacks. Other than that, it explains exactly what is wrong with low-fat dairy!

domesticity.gawker.com/low-...

[LaurieRose in reply to greygoose]

Thanks ill read it now. How do you cope with your thyroud issues.

[greygoose in reply to LaurieRose]

That's rather a broad question! Which particular bit?

I spent a lot of time - too much time - finding out which form o thyroid hormone replacement suited me. Turns out, it was T3 only. But, now, I'm 71, so I don't have to go to work anymore, I can sleep when I feel like it, and not worry if I don't sleep. So, that helps.

But, I have nothing to compare it with. I've been hypo since I was a small child. I've always had symptoms, so they're just normal life to me. I've learnt to live with them.

[LaurieRose in reply to greygoose]

Sorry to hear its been a lifelong struggle until you got used to it. Ill be back on later to chat more. Hope you have more good days than bad. Best wishes

[Elven in reply to LaurieRose]

They take away the healthy natural fat and replace it with chemical emulsifiers - for the 'rubbery' texture (which ends up being way too rubbery!). They also add preservatives, I suspect, because the fat is no longer there to extend useful edible life x

[LaurieRose in reply to Elven]

Ooh i didnt know ive definitely changed my mind about low fat now. Thank you.

[greygoose in reply to LaurieRose]

I think cottage cheese contains latex, doesn't it? That's what I've heard. But, as I said, it's difficult to find the details of exactly what they do put in it, nor how they remove the fat - I believe there are several different processes.

[Kavith-]

I had op on November what precautions should take for healthy purpose

[greygoose in reply to Kavith-]

Kavith, can you post this in a seperate question, please? People will be happy to help, but we don't want to squat Lbrook's thread, do we?

[Nickienailmania in reply to greygoose]

Actually greygoose this was my original thread and it's seems to have gone off piste a little

[greygoose in reply to Nickienailmania]

Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry! Yes, it's gone so far off piste, I'm totally confused! All I can say is, I hope you found some of the comments helpful.

This often happens, because the lay-out of the page is so confusing. You lose track of who has said what. I try not to get side-tracked with other people, but it doesn't always work! My sincere apologies. x

[Nickienailmania in reply to greygoose]

Hey it's not a problem. Nice to see passionate peeps here xx

[greygoose in reply to Nickienailmania]