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Helping You Lose Weight with Hashimoto's & Hypothyroidism - Free Balancing Blood Sugar for Weight Loss 3 Day Challenge
Starts 22nd Sep
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We've covered "eat less." Today let's focus on: "m We've covered "eat less." Today let's focus on: "move more," pushing harder in the gym can backfire just as badly with Hashimoto's. Weight loss stalls, so the instinct is always the same: add more cardio, train harder. Feels responsible. It's often the wrong move. 🏋️ Why: intense exercise is a physical stressor. If you're already under-fuelled, metabolically adapted from past dieting, and managing an autoimmune condition, more high-intensity training doesn't help your body let go of weight. It's one more reason to hold on. ⚙️ The mechanism: hard exercise raises cortisol like any stressor. A short spike is normal, but layered onto under-eating, poor sleep and an already-stressed thyroid, it stays elevated too long: higher blood sugar (hello, insulin resistance) and more suppressed T4-to-T3 conversion. Same slowdown, made worse. 🔁 The pattern: restriction slows metabolism → more exercise added to compensate → more stress on an already-stressed system → cortisol stays high → conversion drops further → more exhausted, more inflamed, just as stuck. Exercise isn't the enemy! using "more" exercise to fix what it can't fix is. ✅ What helps: type over amount. Daily movement (NEAT) supports metabolism with zero stress cost. Strength training at a sensible volume builds the muscle that drives metabolic rate. What backfires is stacking frequent high-intensity sessions onto a body already under-fuelled and under-supported. Pushed harder during a plateau and ended up more exhausted with nothing to show for it? This is almost certainly why and it's not a sign to try harder. We won't cover exercise in the free challenge, "Why Weight Loss Stalls with Hashimoto's & Hypothyroidism," there's not enough time across the 5 days. But day 4 covers exactly how stress impacts blood sugar and weight. If this resonated, that's a good sign the challenge is for you. Doors open very soon. Has intense exercise backfired for you during a plateau? Tell me ⬇️ #Hashimotos #Hypothyroidism #ThyroidHealth #CortisolBalance #MetabolicHealth #InsulinResistance #WeightLossJourney #NutritionCoaching #StressManagement #HormoneHealth #AutoimmuneHealth #BloodSugarBalance
Fat quality: the thing almost no diet app pays att Fat quality: the thing almost no diet app pays attention to. Open any calorie tracker and fat is just one number: grams in, calories counted. There's often no difference between olive oil and crisps cooked in reused seed oil, as long as they hit the same number. Your body sees it very differently, especially with Hashimoto's. 📊 The stat: most apps default to ~30% fat (MyFitnessPal: 50% carbs / 20% protein / 30% fat). The same setting whether you're losing, maintaining or building muscle. Sounds fine on paper. But 30% of a 1,200-calorie day is only ~40g of fat, barely enough for essential fatty acids, vitamin absorption, or making thyroid-supportive hormones. And that's before asking what kind of fat it is. 🕰️ The backstory: this traces to the 1960s-70s "saturated fat → cholesterol → heart disease" theory. That pipeline is far more contested and nuanced in current research than most guidance admits. Guidelines move slowly, apps run on old defaults, and "low fat" kept its healthy label long after the theory was questioned. 🥑 What actually matters: where fat comes from and what it replaces. Saturated fat in cheese isn't processed like the saturated fat in processed meat, it comes with a whole food matrix. And swapping fat for refined carbs/sugar has repeatedly failed to deliver the promised benefit, often the opposite. 🔥 For Hashimoto's specifically: oxidised, rancid fats (reused frying oils, refined vegetable oils) are far more linked to inflammation than saturated fat from whole food ever was. Fat type matters more than the number next to it. This is exactly why I focus on nourishment and function over numbers. As we near my free challenge, "Why Weight Loss Stalls with Hashimoto's & Hypothyroidism," this is what I want you thinking about: not "how do I get my fat grams down," but "is this fat working with my body or against it." Did you grow up with the "fat is bad" message too? Tell me ⬇️ #Hashimotos #Hypothyroidism #ThyroidHealth #NutritionScience #MetabolicHealth #FatQuality #HealthyFats #AntiInflammatory #WeightLossJourney #NutritionCoaching #GutHealth #HormoneHealth
Dieted on and off for years and it "just doesn't w Dieted on and off for years and it "just doesn't work like it used to"? That's not in your head. I covered in my last post how restriction lowers metabolic rate over time. So how do you actually turn that around? The instinct is always to cut harder. That's the opposite of what your body needs. Here's what actually rebuilds a metabolism that's been through years of yo-yo dieting: 🩸 Blood sugar & insulin sensitivity: chronically spiking/crashing blood sugar keeps insulin elevated, blunting fat access and driving the hunger crashes that make restriction unbearable. This is foundational, not optional. 💪 Protein + resistance training: every dieting cycle causes more muscle loss, if these aren't prioritised. Muscle drives your metabolic rate, so rebuilding it raises your metabolic floor instead of just stopping the fall. 🚶 Daily movement (NEAT): the energy burned just living your day is often your biggest calorie burn, and it quietly drops after years of dieting. It's also one of the first things to recover once your body feels safe again. 😴 Sleep & stress: both worsen insulin sensitivity and disrupt hunger hormones already working against you. Skip this and everything else works twice as hard. 📈 Raise before you cut: bringing intake up first, gradually, protects against metabolic adaptation. The scale may sit still or tick up slightly. That's not failure, that's repair. ❤️ Your relationship with food: years of restriction leave many people afraid of eating "too much." No macro plan fixes that. It has to be worked on directly. If this is you: your body isn't broken, and it isn't working against you. It's doing exactly what it's designed to do after being told, repeatedly, that food is scarce. Rebuilding trust with it takes a different approach and that's exactly what I've built into my programme. More on this very soon. Does this sound familiar? Tell me where you're at. #Hashimotos #Hypothyroidism #ThyroidHealth #MetabolicHealth #WeightLoss #YoYoDieting #InsulinResistance #NutritionCoaching #BloodSugarBalance #SustainableWeightLoss #HormoneHealth #AutoimmuneHealth
"Just eat less" isn't the advice you think it is, "Just eat less" isn't the advice you think it is, especially with Hashimoto's or thyroid dysfunction. Here's why... Calorie apps treat every 1,200-calorie day the same. They're not. Your body needs specific nutrients, not just a low enough number, to keep your thyroid working, let alone recover from Hashimoto's. Restrict long enough and your body adapts: leptin drops, T4→T3 conversion slows, resting metabolism falls below what your new weight predicts. This has been shown repeatedly since the 1940s Minnesota Starvation Experiment, and in Biggest Loser contestants whose metabolism were still suppressed 6 years later. That's why the deficit that worked before stops working. Your body needs less to do the same job. So the advice is always to cut further. If your thyroid's already compromised, that constant low-fuel state is extra stress on a system already struggling. Which is exactly why so many people end up more tired, colder, shedding more hair and gaining rather than losing weight. Most calorie apps don't help. They'll hand you a target well below what's healthy, often at or below 1,200 calories, the recognised floor for women without medical supervision. That barely covers rest, before movement, digestion or Hashimoto's are factored in. Most women managing Hashimoto's need closer to 1,800, but this needs to be individualised. This is why "eat less, move more" keeps failing the people who need results most and why I've built my weight loss programme rooted in nourishment, not restriction. More on this very soon! Has this cycle of restricting, adapting and getting stuck happened to you? Tell me below ⬇️ #Hashimotos #Hypothyroidism #ThyroidHealth #MetabolicHealth #NutritionCoach #calorierestrictivediet #caloriecounting #caloriecountinguk #eatlessmovemore #restrictivediets #hashimotosrecoveryspecialist #weightlosssupport #weightlosswithhypothyroidism #hashimotosweightloss
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