Can't lose weight !

[Bigsi]

I have underactive thyroid, and am really overweight ( 138 kg ). For the past 4 weeks I have been on 1500 calorie diet and walking one hour a day. The result = 1 lb loss !

What am I doing wrong ? I take 125mg Levothyroxine daily and wait an hour before having breakfast. I am thinking of taking a Blue Horizon thyroid test to see what's going on.

Any advice for my problem would be really appreciated.

Thanks Simon.

[Jaydee1507 Administrator]

3 months ago your TSH was over 2. Did you get a dose increase then?

By weight you would likely need over 200mcgs Levo. Calculation: 1.6 x 138 = 220 This is very approximate but an indicator you're not taking enough Levo and need a 25mcg dose incease.

Ask GP for a trial increase.

What supplements are you taking?

What are your latest results for ferritin, folate, B12 & D3?

[Bigsi in reply to Jaydee1507]

Thanks for the response 😄I am having a routine blood test in a few weeks so will have a discussion about the levo.I take a multivitamin and have been eating healthily for past month, but just feel deflated at the lack of weightloss progress

[Jaydee1507 Administrator in reply to Bigsi]

You didnt answer my questions.

Do you do tests as per the protocol recommended here? Recommended blood test protocol: Test at 9am (or as close as possible), fasting, last levo dose 24hrs before the blood draw & no biotin containing supplements for 3-7 days (Biotin can interfere with thyroid blood results as it is used in the testing process).

Testing like this gives consistency in your results and will show stable blood levels of hormone and highest TSH which varies throughout the day. Taking Levo/T3 just prior to blood draw can show a falsely elevated result and your GP/Endo might change your dose incorrectly as a result.

This group does not recommend multivitamins for a number of reasons - poor quality, inactive vitamins that many peoples bodies cannot use, too lower dose to raise levels to OPTIMAL, containing iodine which isn;t recommended, the list goes on.

Better to test levels and target deficiencies/low levels with high dose, good quality, active vitamins.

If you're not taking enough Levo you never will lose weight.

[greygoose]

You're not doing anything wrong. You're hypo and that's just the way it is. And it's more likely to be water-weight than fat, so all the calorie-counting and walking in the world is not going to budge it. You need to be optimally medicated, and it doesn't sound like you are.

And the problem with getting tested by your doctor is that he is very unlikely to test your FT3, and that is what counts, not the TSH. T3 is the active hormone and sometimes we need that pretty high for it to have any effect - especially if we went undiagnosed for a long time before treatment started.

I was in your position many years ago and taking 200 mcg levo. And still putting on weight! Although I wasn't a poor converter, I couldn't convert enough to T3 for my needs. So, T3 was added. But not enough. And NDT was even worse because the T4 to T3 ratio was not right for me - not enough T3. I continued to put on weight. And when my weight reached 130 kilos, I stopped weighing myself...

Well, it's a long, long story, but it's all written out on my profile, if you're interested, but the long and the short of it was: I just needed more T3. Nothing to do with my diet, nothing to do with exercise. Just a basic case of getting enough T3 for my needs.

I did, of course, optimise my nutrients - which helped a lot with some things but not with the weight. And I did that by getting my nutrients tested and just taking what I needed and nothing else. Multivits are always a bad idea, for many reasons, but also because they contain things we don't need, like iodine. And that can make things a whole lot worse. So, my advice to your, for starters, would be to get private testing to get a full thyroid panel:

TSH

FT4

FT3

TPO antibodies

Tg antibodies

vit D

vit B12

folate

ferritin

Then post all the results and ranges on here and let's have a look. Pretty sure your problem is low FT3.

[Bigsi in reply to greygoose]

Thanks, gonna book a Gold Thyroid test with Blue Horizon. Will post the results soon 😃

[SlowDragon Administrator in reply to Bigsi]

Make sure to test

A) early morning, before 9am, only drinking water between waking and test

B) last dose levothyroxine 24 hours before test

C) only test after 6-8 weeks minimum on same brand and dose Levo

D) stop any supplements that contain biotin 5-7 days before test

E) multivitamins never recommended on here

[Bigsi in reply to SlowDragon]

Taken on board your kind comments thanks 😊

[Brightness14]

just keep going and good luck.