If you’re barely getting through the day, too exhausted to keep up with your kids, and every attempt to lose weight with hypothyroidism feels like a losing battle, it’s time to learn what the usual advice isn’t telling you that actually helps to get your energy back and lose weight.
Imagine following your doctors orders…
…. Taking their meds.
…. Getting their labs.
… Seeking out thyroid support supplements.
… Learning what foods to eat for hypothyroidism.
… Learning what foods to avoid.
… Even going without eating.
… and still have the scale go up!!
That’s exactly what I went through… I could not lose weight no matter what and felt defeated. This was me before:
I want to share with you what helped me to finally lose weight for good and how I got into the best shape of my life:
How to Lose Weight if You Have an Underactive Thyroid
One of my biggest epiphanies came when I learned that the body protects itself from toxins by stuffing toxins into fat cells. This is very different than the typical advice you hear like “eat less, exercise more”.
The question I started to ask then was, where are these toxins coming from?
The first thing to look at is the food you are eating. I don’t mean whether you are eating keto, paleo, vegan, carnivore or any diet. I’m talking about the source of your food. Where does it come from, how is it grown?
… because if the food you eat lacks nutrients, then two things will happen:
#1 – when you lack nutrients, you will be hungry and tend to overeat as a result. Sugar cravings or salt cravings is a sign that the food you are eating lacks the minerals your body needs
#2 – when you eat food that lacks nutrients, the probiotics in your gut won’t digest the food. Instead, bad bacteria will break down the food and this is the number one source of toxins for most people!
I want to make sure this doesn’t go over your head like it did for me for the longest time. I used to think I was eating healthy. I was eating organic, lean meats & veggies… I had tried doing paleo, keto, vegan, carnivore… just about every diet.
… but none of that matters if you have bad bacteria in your gut that’s active because that means your gut is toxic.
So even if you are eating “clean”, the food you eat goes into a toxic environment and the bad bacteria creates more toxins.
That’s why I would eat a salad and a few minutes later have gas and feel bloated. Bad bacteria was eating the food I was eating, it was producing toxins and those toxins kept making me fat.
So what you eat doesn’t matter if you have bad bacteria overgrowth in your gut.
Do you have gas, bloating or constipation?
This is the easiest way to know if you have bad bacteria overgrowth. Probiotics don’t produce gas. Bad bacteria does and that’s one reason they are considered bad. It’s the root of poor digestion.
When you have poor digestion, your body produces toxins (which drain your energy), and you can’t transfer food energy into your body, which is why most people feel tired all the time.
That’s why the number one thing you can do to lose weight with hypothyroidism is to improve your digestion. I learned about this from brewing beer… I know that’ weird, but stick with me here.
When brewing beer, I used to add water with minerals to digest starch in barley grain into sugars. That’s when it dawned on me that I was adding water and minerals to kickstart the digestive process.
So, I decided to test drinking water with minerals to see if it would improve my digestion… and sure enough, it did!!!
I would drink 2-3 of these throughout the day:
1 Quart of Clean Water (reverse osmosis)
2 mL Ionic Magnesium
4 mL of SOLE salt
I got pretty excited when I felt an energy boost and my hair stopped falling out!!!
This told me I was on the right track because just having energy meant I could actually work out and recover. The reason why I started getting more energy was because my digestion improved, which meant my body was actually taking food energy and transferring it into my body… that’s what digestion is for!!
Hypothyroidism Diet Plan for Weight Loss
Getting properly hydrated helped me get rid of gas, bloating and constipation. It wasn’t overnight. I noticed my skin go from dry, ashy and itchy to looking clear and radiant first… then my digestion started to improve. Looking back, I can see I was chronically dehydrated.
That alone wasn’t enough to help me lose weight though. I mentioned earlier that I was eating lean meats & veggies. I used to avoid eating fat because I thought I would get fat if I ate fat. What that did instead was to train my body to burn carbs as energy and my body stopped burning fat for energy.
If your body doesn’t burn fat for energy, then it will store fat.
It all started to make sense!!!
… because there are probiotics that rely on fat soluble nutrients (which are only found in fats from certain foods).
One of the most important fat-soluble nutrients your body needs is vitamin D. You would typically find the pre-cursor to this nutrient in fish, and more specifically in fish liver oil like cod liver oil.
The problem, however, was that I still had a broken metabolism and my body was not digesting fat properly. Taking cod liver oil would wreck me. That’s when I had another epiphany around food that I learned from brewing beer.
Fermentation is a continuation of the digestive process. That means that if you ever struggle to digest any type of food, then you should ferment the food because by fermenting food you are digesting food before it goes into your body. Once it goes into your body, it requires no additional digestion.
That’s why when you look at regular cod liver oil, you will see the nutrient label state that you are getting omega-6 and other nutrients, but it doesn’t list vitamin D. If on the other hand, you look up fermented cod liver oil, you will notice it mentions vitamin D as a nutrient.
That’s because probiotics make vitamins through the fermentation process…
There was no way this is how it works!!
Fermented cod liver oil gives you vitamin D, but more importantly, it gives you the probiotics that help you digest fat!!! It kickstarts your fat metabolism!! It kickstarts your ability to burn fat for energy!!
… and you know what else is important for these probiotics to function properly?
You must have adequate amounts of water and minerals in your system because that’s what probiotics need to be strong and healthy.
Once I boosted my vitamin D levels my energy went through the roof and I started burning fat and packing on muscle because my body was more efficient at getting nutrients from food.
We cover how to get rid of thyroid fatigue and how to lose weight in more detail inside the 5-Day Energy Challenge.
How to get more energy with Hypothyroidism
The key to get energy is learning how to create an environment in your gut for probiotics to grow… minerals are just one of nine steps I use to create this environment…
Sadly, most doctors don’t have a clue about this… thyroid supplements, and programs that promise to “fix your thyroid” don’t understand this either…
I am not a doctor… I only know about this because I was an avid home brewer and studied fermentation, though not for health purposes… I was not into health back then… I was only growing probiotics (brewer’s yeast) to make beer…
… but when I learned that probiotics are what make hormones… all bets were off… I needed to try making the probiotics in my gut as healthy as I could for myself, even if no one else followed…
If you are…
- Too exhausted to move.
- Struggling to stay awake
- Low energy is affecting your work
- Can’t say yes to active play with your kids (family is frustrated at you)
- You’ve tried the diets
- You’ve tried the supplements
- You’ve adjusted your dose up, down and sideways at this point
… then I’m excited to share with you my Energy Blueprint… I journaled everything I did for over seven years to get rid of thyroid fatigue.
I took out what didn’t work and left only what worked…
I started sharing this with others via my free email newsletter.
When you subscribe to our email newsletter you will learn each step I took to get more energy…
You will start by improving digestion… the first thing you’ll notice is no more gas, bloating or constipation… no more dry skin…
Once you tip that domino, the next step is to improve your sleep… you will learn how to get deep restorative sleep so you wake up refreshed and ready to take on the day…
Your mind will be sharp in the morning… and if your hair is thinning or falling out, you will notice it start to grow thick and strong again.
… and because everything you do is completely natural, the energy you feel will last all day without having to rely on caffeine or thyroid supplements.
So, you’ll notice when you come home after work, you’ll have energy to play with your kids, workout or do whatever activity you feel like because you will have the energy left to do so!
