There’s the SAD – Standard American Diet…
… and then there’s many other “diets”…
- Paleo
- Keto
- Whole 30
- Raw Vegan
- Carnivore
- Traditional Cooking
- Etc…
… but when it comes to a Thyroid Diet, things change…
Especially with Hashimoto’s…
When you have digestive issues, the food you eat can only take you so far…
Eating good food doesn’t help you if you can’t digest it…
Nutrient depletion is common with poor digestion…
Initial supplementation may be needed to jumpstart your hormone production…
Once you get going… a focus on foods that help restructure your gut flora, improve digestion and help produce hormones is what has worked for me…
Hint: The most impactful change to your diet you will do is to cut back on sugar…
Here’s a list of foods you can add to your shopping list…
- Avocado
- Coconut oil
- Avocado Oil
- Olive Oil
- Duck Fat
- Chia Seeds
- Hemp Seeds
- Pasture Raised Eggs
- Bone broth
- Bone broth protein
- Grass-fed Beef
- Raw unpasteurized nuts (soak before consuming)
- Pea protein
- Salmon
- Pumpkin Seeds
- Pasture raised chicken
- Cacao Nibs
- Cinnamon
- Turmeric
- Maca root powder
- Cacao butter
- Blue green algae
- Grass-fed beef organs
- Raw unpasteurized milk (*see below for more info)
- Raw nut butters (almond, cashew, etc.)
Putting together meals doesn’t have to be too complicated…
To get started…
Think meat & potatoes…
Keep carbs to protein ratio to less than 2:1… and reduce carbs until you can go keto for hormone production
Add greens and make sure you add a good amount of healthy fats and you have a good meal…
This is just one way of looking at food…
My goal here is to show you as best as I can how I envision food and how I structure my diet…
To illustrate my diet, let me walk you through a spectrum of diets I’ve followed that has helped me get more energy, burn fat and take control of my health…
Beginner
One of the most effective diets I recommend to get started is Practical Paleo
Not only will you find simple recipes to follow…
It’s a great read to help you understand what are the best foods for thyroid function…
I recommend studying…
Chapter 7 – Addressing autoimmunity
Chapter 8 – Balancing blood sugar
Chapter 9 – Managing stress
The book also covers specific meal plans for
- Adrenal health
- Autoimmune Conditions
- Blood sugar regulation
- Fat loss
- Healthy hormones
- Chronic fatigue
- Fibromyalgia
- Thyroid health
- and more…
You can get Practical Paleo on Amazon and help support this blog…
Here is what a weekly meal plan looks like following practical paleo…
To enhance this diet for thyroid function I use 2 supplements…
#1 Fermented cod liver oil is my go to “food” for Vitamin D…
2 capsules at night and 2 in the morning is a good start…
Here’s the Facebook Live replay where I talk about Fermented Cod liver oil…
#2 What I focus on is getting more energy by improving mitochondria function… CoEnzyme Q10 sparks “on” your mitochondria which produces energy for you…
Intermediate
As you begin to adapt to a low carb, more healthy fat (which is a must for hormone production)… you can begin to stack other strategies to your diet…
You’ll find this is actually easier than the beginner phase because it requires less cooking…
Saves time, money…
… and helps you lose weight…
Win, win, win…
Here’s what it looks like…
The biggest change here is that we add intermittent fasting to our meal plan…
Intermittent fasting is the main strategy I use to lose weight and stay lean…
… but more than that… it’s what keeps me active…
Can fasting be too aggressive of a detox??
Maybe…
… which is why I use Ayurvedic herbs to help me detox and build up the length of my “intermittent fasting” period…
While doing intermittent fasting… Instead of eating food that requires digestion, I drink green juice…
This is a great maintenance program and a good diet to “test” your digestive system… see how your body is doing as you progress and improve your gut health…
Remember…
Hashimoto’s = autoimmune issues
Autoimmune issues = poor gut health
Poor gut health = poor digestion
Poor digestion = lack of good probiotics in your gut…
… and that’s the difference between this intermediate diet and the next level… a more advanced diet…
When you begin to restructure your gut flora…
Advanced
My big epiphany moment came when I understood that gut health is all about taking care of your gut flora… gut flora being probiotics…
This is where I began to see a transformation in my health…
Low sugar in my diet helped me reduce my yeast overgrowth…
… and created an environment for gut friendly bacteria to thrive…
The next step was to add more probiotics to my diet…
#2 I started to transition into a fermented foods diet…
Possibly the ultimate “Hashimoto’s diet” in my opinion…
One of the foods I recommend for hormone production is raw unpasteurized milk…
… but if you’re anything like me, you may have a sensitivity, allergy or straight up intolerance to certain foods like gluten, dairy, etc….
Which is why I highly recommend you learn Traditional Cooking methods…
Read Maureen’s Success Story with Traditional Cooking School…
You can join Traditional Cooking School here and help support this blog…
The important thing to understand about Traditional Cooking is that it teaches you how to prepare food in a way that “pre-digests” food…
This is a gateway to ancient wisdom of food preparation…
… using methods like soaking, sprouting and my favorite… fermenting!!
Fermenting teaches you how to grow probiotics…
This is what gut health is all about…
It’s what allowed me to find the root cause of my fatigue, weight gain, hair loss, etc.
It is the foundation of what I am calling Beer Diet Project…
I understand fermentation due to my background in brewing beer…
… so I started experimenting with my diet…
I started to fine tune my diet using ancient wisdom of fermentation to get more energy, lose weight and be more focused and alert…
Here’s what it looks like…
Beer Diet Project “Lite”
Once I understood that I was restructuring my gut flora…
I started to envision my gut as the perfect fermentation vessel…
Just like brewing beer, I started to pay attention to
- The quality of water I drink
- The minerals in food and water
- The pH of my gut
- The temperature of my gut
- The probiotics (yeast and bacteria) in my gut
Here’s what my diet looks like…
***Note that this is a work in progress and I experiment a lot…
I am primarily on a plant based diet as I write this, but I experiment with diet all the time to understand how my body reacts to different sources of foods…
… hence why this is a “Project”…
The main thing about this diet is that it focuses on healthy fats (and notice the addition of salt) and improving fat digestion…
The main reason for this is to create an environment for the body to produce and uptake Vitamin D
Beer Diet Project Intermediate
What begins to change for me here is really paying attention to things no one I know of pays attention to…
Little details like quality of water…
Most people drink city water… filtered water or at best reverse osmosis water…
As a brewer I would do a Google search for “Water quality report (city, state)” to check what was in the water in my area…
Turns out I wouldn’t use most city water to brew beer unless I removed things like chlorine or chloramine and other things that could affect yeast health (probiotics)…
Understanding that, I began to ask myself “if I use high quality water to brew, why not use high quality water to drink?”
Enter steam distilled water…
Around this stage I begin to clean up my diet and tend to go more plant based so eating Canadian bacon is reserved only for workout days, although I often times go without…
The most important addition to this meal plan is the “hormone fat shake”…
It’s how I get my body to produce hormones…
Note that prior to implementing this I did a lot of work in making sure my body could digest fats and proteins which is what Traditional Cooking and probiotics are designed to do…
… and I had to learn how to add cholesterol to my diet…
This is essentially where I’m at and experimenting with different meal plans myself…
You can download the meal plan below…
Stay tuned for more updates on this and I hope this truly helps you on your journey…
Cheers! 🍻
PS to learn more about how to get more energy, check out our Energy Bootcamp program
