By: Emily Karataeva and Igor Klibanov

So, you have hypothyroidism, and you’ve been looking for ways to lose weight. You’ve probably gone through countless different

  • Diets (Keto, Atkins)
  • Supplements (iodine, selenium, and others)
  • Exercise plans
  • Doctors (“Just eat less!”)

But to no avail. However, what if I told you that it’s actually possible for you to achieve significant weight loss, and keep it off, despite your hypothyroidism?

How to lose weight with hypothyroidism
Original source: here.

In this article, you can expect to learn:

  • What hypothyroidism is
  • How to start a healthy weight loss journey with hypothyroidism
  • The best kind of exercise for thyroid patients
  • Different kinds of supplements for healthy thyroid function

But before we get to all that, who even am I, and what makes me qualified to help you?

Hiya!

I’m Igor Klibanov. I am the proud author of 7 different books on fitness and nutrition, and I am also a personal trainer with many different clients who have hypothyroidism that I have helped in the past to lose weight and keep it off for good.

It may be hard due to doctors not taking you or your concerns seriously, and giving the same cookie cutter advice as everyone else, despite your body being different, but I am here to help you through your journey as you navigate to figure out what your body needs.

However, you might also want to understand what your condition is even about. This will give you a better understanding of yourself, and why your weight loss journey might look a little different than someone else’s 

So,

What is Hypothyroidism?

Hypothyroidism is a condition that affects your thyroid (a butterfly shaped gland in your neck) by causing it to underfunction. This happens when the thyroid gland does not secrete enough of an essential hormone responsible for the regulation of your body’s metabolism called triiodothyronine (T3). Some risk factors associated with hypothyroidism range from too little/much iodine, to surgical removal of some/all of the thyroid gland.

This can cause a variety of symptoms that you may be experiencing like:

  • Cold hands and feet (especially when others are comfortable)
  • Low energy levels, even though you’re sure you get enough sleep
  • Mental/brain fog 
  • Thinning of the outer-third of the eyebrow
  • And difficulty losing weight/unexplained weight gain (ding ding ding!!! The reason you’re reading this article).

An autoimmune disease called Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis could also be the one to blame for your underactive thyroid, as this condition can cause periods of time in which your thyroid under functions. Luckily, both of these can be tested for and confirmed with simple blood tests. 

Now that we know what’s causing your stubborn weight from coming off, let’s dive a little deeper and investigate the question of: 

Why Am I Not Losing weight?

Hypothyroidism is a metabolic syndrome that plays a key role in controlling energy expenditure through temperature. Your BMR (basal metabolic rate) is how many calories you would burn if you didn’t move for an entire day. Think of it as your ‘coma calories’, the amount of energy your body would expend to keep all its intricate systems up and running if you were in a coma. 

It’s been found that as much as two-thirds of those ‘coma calories’ are spent simply just keeping your body temperature around 36.5-36.8 degrees Celsius (97.7-98.2 degrees Fahrenheit). 

For example, let’s say someone’s BMR is 1800 kcal per day, about 1188 of those are spent on just keeping their temperature in an optimal range. However, for every degree drop in temperature, the body burns 10-13% less of those ‘coma calories’. 

What this means for those with hypothyroidism is essentially this: you need fewer calories to simply exist than someone without hypothyroidism. In essence, your metabolism slows. This means that a calorie deficit for your healthy coworker could well easily be maintenance for you, hence the stalling of the number on the scale, and even some weight gain.

Even though hypothyroidism makes weight loss a little more difficult, it is still far from impossible, and this article is about to show you how.

What Do I Need to Do So I Can Ensure Weight Loss?

Let’s get a couple things straight before we start:

  • Carbs, fats, sweets, and alcohol do NOT cause extra weight gain. It is the overconsumption of those calorie dense foods that do, and this is talked about extensively in my article on The (Un)Surprising Truth About Why We Get Fat.
  • Extreme calorie restriction is NOT the answer
  • Eliminating ANY foods from your diet for no reason is also NOT the answer (there may be a necessity in eliminating certain foods either temporarily or permanently, but it can’t be random).
  • Weight loss is ONLY achieved through a negative energy balance (calorie deficit), and any diet like keto or intermittent fasting is not magic

Now that we know what isn’t helpful, we can start identifying what is.

Diet

If your food intake looks a little like McDonalds burgers, processed foods, and soda, it’s no wonder that the number on your scale hasn’t budged, and it’s time to make some changes. So, what can you do? You can create a:

Calorie Deficit 

A calorie deficit is the only way in which weight loss can be achieved. By adjusting your energy intake to create a negative balance (calories burned > calories eaten), you can finally start to shed weight. Learning about the calories in your food can lead to a much better understanding as to why you’re not losing weight, even if what you eat every day looks like it’s not a lot of food. 

Now, you may be asking, what is my calorie deficit? And to that, the answer would be, ‘it depends’. How long you will need to be in one is also a factor, but that also depends on things like how much weight you want to lose.

Choosing to work with a personal trainer can help you on your journey to discover what a deficit looks like for you, and how you can get there. Besides that, you can easily create one yourself by experimenting with foods that have a lower calorie density, such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains (not to be confused with whole wheat or multigrain), and fat-free dairy. Other great examples of low calorie density foods would be soups (just not cream-based soups), and as far as desserts go, jello is a lot of volume, without a lot of calories.

On a related note, some of my clients found success in simply counting their calories as a weight loss tool.

This approach allows you to be a little less mindful about your food, because as long as it fits in your calorie ‘budget’, it’s allowed, as long as it’s logged honestly.

You can choose which approach works best for you, but always remember that heavy restriction and obsessive calorie counting is also not the way. Entertaining these unhealthy urges can easily lead to much larger problems down the line. If you’ve jumped from diet to diet in the past, then my article on why You Don’t Need a Diet, You Need a Therapist would be for you.

Emotional, logistical and behavioral problems (like emotional eating, stress eating, lack of planning, and just buying the wrong things) aren’t solved with nutritional solutions. They’re solved with emotional, logistical and behavioral solutions.

Limit Your Refined Carbohydrates and Sugar Intake

We all love a good donut from time to time, but consuming refined carbohydrates and added sugars can really be hurting your progress. Now, there are no magical ‘instant fat gaining’ properties in either of these, but the simple fact of the matter is that they make you hungrier by spiking your blood sugar levels, and then subsequently crashing them. 

This is what causes your cravings, low energy levels, and your inability to stop feeling like you constantly need food all the time. Limiting these can in turn cause you to easily feel more satisfied after meals, and less hungry in between them, resulting in less food consumed overall. 

Now, this is not an automatic CUT ALL CARBS alarm. Simply limit low-fibre carbohydrates. Think things like white bread, tortillas, white rice, and breakfast cereals. By contrast, high-fibre carbs are A-OK. That’s things like whole grain bread and pasta (not to be confused with whole wheat or multigrain), beans, peas, lentils, fruits, buckwheat, quinoa, amaranth, and others. 

However, that’s not to say you can’t have those foods while you’re losing weight, or even ever again at all. Of course you can have a pizza once in a while, but the key phrase here is once in a while. Think of it this way, the one day you have a pizza won’t outweigh the twenty days you’ve eaten in a deficit. 

Increase Your Lean Protein Intake

A staggering number of us neglect and struggle with our total protein intakes. This goes hand in hand with reducing your refined carbohydrate/sugar intake, as many people substitute what should be their protein sources with these foods. 

Protein is a wonderful macronutrient, as it is the one that leaves you with that ‘satisfied’ feeling after a meal. In addition to that, it also leaves you fuller for way longer than a simple carb does. This leads to less snacking in between meals, and less cravings over time

Another great thing about  protein is that it has a significantly higher thermic effect, which means that it can boost your metabolism, and help you burn up to 100 more calories a day. With a condition like hypothyroidism, you’re going to want all the help you can get, and this is exactly where you should get it from. 

These are the main 3 pillars of any weight loss advice, it just applies to people with hypothyroidism even more so. 

That being said, let’s now go over some advice sometimes given to many thyroid patients specifically, and talk about how they apply to you. 

Assuming this isn’t the first article you’ve read on losing weight with hypothyroidism, then you might already be asking:

What About Intermittent Fasting and a Gluten Free Diet?

Like we’ve gone over before, intermittent fasting (IF) isn’t magic. All it does is put restrictions on what times of the day you’re allowed to eat, which creates a deficit for you by skipping a meal, essentially. In one study done in thyroid patients, where fasting was compared to just daily caloric restriction, the results on people’s weights were identical.

You can choose to incorporate IF into your weight loss regimen if you believe it will help you stay on track, but for no other reason. It is not a guarantor of success because even if you only eat in an 8 hour window every single day, you might still be eating too many calories, which can cause weight gain – the opposite of what you want. 

In terms of a gluten free diet, gluten products also do not have magical properties that make you gain weight or make it impossible to lose it. The only reason you should cut gluten out of your diet is if you have an intolerance to it.

You can find out if you have a food intolerance to gluten by running a lab test. Cyrex labs is a good place to start for this. Alternatively, you can try doing an elimination diet. There are fantastic resources to help you navigate an elimination diet such as, Elimination Diets: How and Why to Do Them. The article goes deep into how elimination diets can be helpful in identifying your food intolerances by taking them out for a period of time, and then adding them back in to see how you react.

Another thing you might have encountered when trying to find answers for your weight loss problem may have been,

The Selenium Discourse

There is no clear status regarding a high selenium diet as being the cure to all your problems. Some studies find that there is a benefit from one, while others do not

This is, again, one of those things to investigate for yourself. Try incorporating more selenium into your diet through seafood and poultry or through supplementation to see if that does something for you. 

Once you have your diet plan squared away, you might now want to tackle:

Exercise

Lucky for you, I have written one of the most comprehensive articles on the internet on How to Exercise With a Slow Thyroid. It includes various different insights into physical activity, and what effect that has on your thyroid. 

To give the shortest possible answer here, the thyroid responds best to moderate intensity exercise. If you want a more in-depth answer however, I really do recommend you check that one out 😉.

Supplements

Supplements are a very hard thing to recommend, and they should always be evaluated on a case by case basis. There are many different causes for hypothyroidism, so what might work for some won’t work for others.

That being said, the most common ones for hypothyroidism are:

  • Selenium
  • Iodine
  • Tyrosine
  • Vitamin D

However, it might definitely be better to assess your nutrient and digestive status before deciding to down a selenium-iodine-tyrosine-vitamin D cocktail every morning. Just because they’re natural doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re safe. After all, poisonous mushrooms are all natural… but they’re still going to kill you.

Medications

Since I am a personal trainer, I can’t discuss medication with any authority. However, I can say that a lot of my clients who have hypothyroidism found an improvement with the thyroid medication levothyroxine.

And that’s it! Now you know how to successfully manage your hypothyroidism symptoms, and address whatever weight loss goals you are trying to achieve 

As long as you remember to: 

  • Keep a realistic caloric deficit
  • Limit refined carbohydrates
  • Get good sleep
  • And stay consistent

You should have no problems hitting all of your fitness goals! Just remember, don’t let your slow thyroid slow you.