Totie Fields once said, “I’ve been on a diet for two weeks and all I’ve lost is fourteen days.”
If you’re trying to lose weight, you may feel like Totie is talking about you.
You’ve probably tried diet after diet, joined Jenny Craig or Nutrisystem, or tried whichever “lose twenty pounds in two weeks” diet program was being advertised the last time you watched late-night television. Maybe you sat through a few Weight Watchers meetings where everyone else lost weight that week . . . but not you. Maybe you tried herbal diet pills, or over-the-counter Alli, or overpriced açaí supplements. Maybe you’ve hitched your diet wagon to the likes of Valerie Bertinelli or Jennifer Hudson and the diet programs and products they promote. And I bet your bedside table is stacked high with diet books that tell you to eat only protein, eat like a caveman, smash your fat, flatten your belly, eat right for your blood type, and stay in the zone, right?
But whatever you’re doing and whatever advice you’re following, you’re not losing weight. In fact, you may even be following one of these weight loss programs or diet gurus religiously, eating well, exercising regularly, and not only are you not losing, but you’re actually gaining weight!
Mari, a personal trainer, found herself frustrated.
It just didn’t make any sense. There I was advising my clients on fitness and nutrition, and somehow, I kept gaining weight, and couldn’t drop a pound myself. I was eating a terrific, healthy diet—and believe me, in my business, I know about good sources of protein, organic fruits and veggies. I was working out with at least six clients a day—that’s six hours of exercise on top of a low-calorie, low-fat, ultrahealthy diet. What else was I supposed to do, for goodness’ sake, when I cut calories, cut fat, exercised more than ever before, and I still couldn’t lose weight?
Maybe, like Mari, you never had a weight problem, but then suddenly the pounds started piling on. Many doctors say “calories in, calories out” and remind you that it takes 3,500 excess calories to gain a pound. But you—well, you seemingly defy the laws of physics! How it is humanly possible to eat the same things, in the same quantities, and do the same amount of exercise this month as you were doing last month, yet gain ten pounds? Logically, you would need to take in an extra 35,000 calories during the month—basically, the calories in sixty-five Big Macs—to gain ten pounds. And yet there it is, the extra weight . . . defying all logic and reason.
Andrea noticed that she had gained fifteen pounds unexpectedly, and to jump-start some weight loss, she did a three-week liquid cleansing fast—with no solid food, just drinking water and vegetable broth. At the end of the three weeks, she had gained two pounds.
I told my doctor that I was having trouble losing weight, even on the cleansing fast. My doctor laughed at me and said, “You won’t lose weight unless you eat less.” I looked at him and was thinking, “How much less could I possibly eat?”
When Corey first got married, she was a healthy 135 pounds.
Six months later, I was 175 pounds, miserable, and wondering how this had happened to me. At first, the doctor told me I was “clearly” eating too much and not exercising enough. I explained that my diet had actually improved after I got married and graduated from college. Before graduation, I ate fast food almost constantly. My new husband was a big fan of salad for dinner, so we primarily cooked at home and ate lots of salads.
When you’re faced with this sort of unexplained weight gain or a total inability to lose weight on even the most rigorous diet and exercise program, what happens next? Well, most of us end up in a doctor’s office, saying, “I think something is wrong with me.”
Unfortunately, doctors often have little to offer, and you are likely to be sent home with one of the following:
• An antidepressant. “Depression makes you gain weight.” Plus, it’s easy and inexpensive to prescribe, because no blood tests are required.
• A shrug of the shoulders. The shrug is usually accompanied by one of those vague non-explanations like, “Well, you’re getting older—it’s to be expected” or “It must be your hormones” or “It’s normal not to lose weight after having a baby” or “We all need more exercise,” and so on.
• A condescending look. Often the look is delivered with patronizing advice along the lines of “Well, you clearly are eating too much!” or “Get off the couch and stop strapping on the feedbag!” And there’s my personal favorite, the doctor who openly snickered at a woman and told her, “My diagnosis is that you have fork-in-mouth disease!”
• A handout. Usually this is a photocopy of the latest version of the USDA Food Pyramid, telling you to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day and . . . well, you know the rest. If your doctor is really fancy, maybe it’ll be a color brochure of the food pyramid.
Gee, doctor, thanks for nothing.
You know something is not right. You are not overweight because you’re sitting around lazily stuffing your face, but it seems like the doctor doesn’t believe you. And you’re not imagining that. The doctor doesn’t believe you. One study showed that not only general practitioners—but even health professionals who specialize in treating obesity—have negative stereotypes about people who are overweight. They see someone who is overweight, and they associated that with being lazy or even unintelligent. Most doctors—and the people around you, to an even greater extent—have an automatic bias against people who are overweight.
You know something is wrong—but who believes you?
I believe you.
Because while your doctor is busy assuming that you’re too lazy to exercise, that you’re sneaking food when no one is looking, and that you don’t have enough willpower to stop eating, what he or she is not doing is his or her job: to suspect that you could have a thyroid problem—a dysfunction in the small, butterfly-shaped gland in your neck—and run the proper tests to make a diagnosis.
A normal thyroid weighs just an ounce, but this little butterfly-shaped gland packs a punch, because it is your master gland of metabolism and energy. When your thyroid isn’t functioning, your metabolism—and your ability to lose weight—can grind to a halt.
Unfortunately, some narrow-minded doctors dismiss thyroid disease as yet another “excuse” for being overweight. The reality, however, is that for millions of overweight people, undiagnosed, untreated, or improperly treated, thyroid disease is a very real reason for weight problems.
Learning about thyroid disease and its symptoms—beyond weight problems—and how to get properly diagnosed and treated are critical steps that can address an overlooked cause of your weight gain, help restore your hope, and finally allow healthy diet and exercise to work the way they should!
Recent studies have conservatively estimated that as many as 27 million people have a thyroid problem, the majority of them undiagnosed. Some experts believe that the actual number is substantially higher, more like 59 million people, and rapidly on the rise. At the same time, studies have shown that as many as two-thirds of all Americans—that’s 200 million Americans—are overweight or obese.
Do you see the connection?
You may be one of the millions of people struggling to lose weight, sabotaged by your own thyroid! One study found that as many as 40 percent of overweight people had evidence of a dysfunctional thyroid.
That was the case for Mari, Andrea, Rick, and Corey. All were finally diagnosed with hypothyroidism, and after treatment, their weight normalized and their diet and exercise programs became successful again. This is what happens for some people who, struggling with undiagnosed thyroid issues, get diagnosed. It’s as if a door opens. Weight doesn’t magically fall off, but the diet and exercise programs that are no longer working begin to work again.
For some people, treating an undiagnosed, untreated thyroid condition can be the key to successful weight loss.
MY OWN JOURNEY
I wrote the first edition of The Thyroid Diet back in 2004, because it is a topic near and dear to my own heart.
I started inexplicably gaining weight at age thirty-three. After going through my twenties as a slender size 8, I quickly started packing on weight—so much so that I bought a size 12 wedding gown, and in the months before my wedding, I had to have my wedding dress let out two more sizes. (Is that a horrifying thing for a bride or what?) Even after I went on an intensive diet with daily exercise, I walked down the aisle as a size 16. After the honeymoon, the weight kept piling on. And it didn’t make sense.
During that time before and after my wedding, I went to the doctor a number of times complaining about a variety of symptoms. I hadn’t changed my diet and yet I was gaining weight rapidly. Even after I started an intensive diet and exercise program, the weight kept coming. I was exhausted. My hair was falling out. I felt moody and a bit blue. And I had muscle and joint pains and aches.
After a few visits, my doctor decided she should test my thyroid. I was surprised when she called and left a voice mail saying that I was hypothyroid and that she’d call in a prescription for me. I didn’t even know what a thyroid was. Sure, I’d heard overweight people laughingly referred to as having “glandular problems,” and I had an aunt who’d had a goiter once, but that was the extent of my knowledge about my master gland of metabolism.
My doctor put me on thyroid hormone replacement therapy. At that point, I assumed that all the symptoms, and particularly the pounds, would disappear as quickly as they had appeared, now that I was getting my thyroid back in order. But it wasn’t so simple.
As we tweaked my medicine and dosage, I felt far better in some ways—less exhausted, less moody, my aches disappeared, and I felt clear-headed—and I lost a few pounds. But after that, the extra weight didn’t budge.
Nothing I was doing moved the scale an ounce. I realized that it wasn’t going to be so easy. So I set out on a mission to discover how best to optimize my thyroid treatment. To learn what and how much I could and couldn’t eat in order to lose weight. To find out whether I needed to exercise, what type of exercise, and how much. To learn how to get back on track when my weight-loss efforts got stalled or even derailed.
So I started reading and learning. I interviewed hundreds of endocrinologists, internists, hormone experts, integrative physicians, nutritionists, weight-loss coaches, dietitians, herbalists, holistic health counselors, fitness experts, physiologists, and more.
Meanwhile, as I increasingly focused my time on thyroid advocacy, I also began to hear from other thyroid patients—in letters, in e-mails, in online forums, in calls to radio shows, in faxes, in telephone coaching sessions, and face-to-face at classes and events around the world. They would describe their symptoms, and ask if they too could have a thyroid problem. They would share their frustrations with inexplicable weight gain, the misery of not feeling well. They’d cry, telling me how being overweight made them feel ugly, old, worthless, and unattractive, and how nothing was working in their attempts to get the weight off. The ones who had figured out how to lose weight would share what was working and what wasn’t.
I learned the most important fact of all: it doesn’t have to be this way. There are answers.
And that’s why I wrote The Thyroid Diet: to organize everything I’d learned about thyroid disease in one place, and to help others identify thyroid signs and symptoms, get properly diagnosed, navigate through the treatment options to get the best possible thyroid treatment, and tackle the issues of metabolism and hormonal imbalance that can make weight loss difficult even after proper treatment. I put together all the best ideas for thyroid patients who were trying to lose weight and not having success using the traditional “eat well and exercise” approach.
After The Thyroid Diet was published, I heard from thousands of people who were using the book to help transform their own health. The Thyroid Diet helped them recognize their own thyroid signs and symptoms and gave them the information and tools to find the right kind of practitioner, ask for the appropriate tests, and get treated. People were still coming up to me at conferences and sending me faxes and e-mails, saying: “I did it! I’m finally losing weight!” “My doctor can’t believe it, even he wanted to know what I was doing!” And they cried . . . but this time tears of happiness!
Some thyroid patients—myself included—also discovered that the weight-loss journey for thyroid patients is an ongoing struggle. Certain people could optimize thyroid function, cut calories, reduce fat, cut starchy carbohydrates, and regularly exercise—and still gain weight. Again, seemingly defying the laws of physics!
What was going on?
Back to the medical journals, the literature, the endocrinologists, the hormone experts, the weight-loss coaches, the physiologists. Back to the patient community, to find out what was working and what wasn’t. I realized that there was much more for us to know, and for some thyroid patients there were other hormonal issues that were getting in the way of weight loss.
And that’s why I wrote The Thyroid Diet Revolution. Building on what we know from The Thyroid Diet, we are long overdue for a revolution in the way we think about the thyroid’s impact on diet and weight loss, and a revolution in the way we help thyroid patients lose weight.
WHY DO WE NEED A REVOLUTION?
Some people think it should be obvious: you complain about fatigue and weight gain, and your doctor will run the right tests, interpret them correctly, and get you on the best thyroid treatments. Problem solved, right? Where’s the issue? What’s the controversy? Why do we need a revolution?
The truth is, it’s rarely that easy. HMOs and insurers want to control costs, so they don’t agree to pay for tests. Doctors don’t agree on what tests to run or how to interpret them, creating a situation in which you can take the same blood test result and show it to two different doctors in the same practice, and one will say you have a thyroid condition and prescribe medication, while the other one will say you’re fine.
But perhaps the biggest reason of all is that we are living with a tired, worn-out, and destructive stigma associated with the word thyroid.
If you say the word thyroid to someone who doesn’t have or understand thyroid disease—and that means most people, including doctors, who don’t personally have a thyroid condition—you’re likely to hear laughter. These days, thyroid is code for “fat.”
If you search for the term thyroid on Twitter, you’ll see person after person tweeting a now famous “joke” from comedian Emo Phillips. The so-called joke goes like this: “I saw a woman wearing a sweatshirt with ‘Guess’ on it. I said, ‘Thyroid problem?’ ”
It’s no longer politically correct or acceptable in television shows or commercials to make fun of someone who is overweight. But the world loves to hate overweight people. So now they get around it by saying “thyroid problem.”
Listen carefully—you’ll hear it quite regularly in sitcoms, in conversation with friends and family, in celebrity interviews, in advertisements. Even major national companies such as Marriott and Dairy Queen have broadcast national advertising campaigns on television and radio that used references to “thyroid problems” to imply—in a failed attempt at humor—that someone was overweight.
Besides those who think it’s just hilarious, you have the uninformed doctors, weight-loss experts, members of the media, and many of our own friends, family members, and colleagues who believe with all their hearts that thyroid problems are an excuse used by lazy, overweight people who want something to blame for being fat.
And, sad to say, there are even a few misguided, inept doctors who are out there yelling from the rafters that anyone who is overweight and asks the doctor for a thyroid test is just “drug-seeking”—as if the person were an addict looking to score a fix instead of a person with a hormonal imbalance looking for proper thyroid diagnosis and treatment!
Naturally, all of this laughter, prejudice, misinformation and mistreatment is coming from people who do not have thyroid conditions, so the bottom line is they have no idea what they’re talking about. And that’s clear when you start laying out real-life cases to them and they either quickly change the subject or argue that the person you’re talking about “must be eating secretly”—even when I tell them about a lawyer I know named Rick, who was training for a marathon, running twenty to thirty miles a week, and eating a fastidiously healthy diet. Rick didn’t know it yet, but he had become hypothyroid.
I was running regularly, subsisting on my usual diet of fish, chicken, and salads for the most part, I’d cut out the occasional glass of wine and had really tightened up my diet in preparation for the race. And the weight was piling on. I mean, every single week. Sometimes I felt like every day I got on the scale, it was up. In three months, I put on at least twenty pounds. It was if my body didn’t belong to me. I asked the doctor if it could be a thyroid problem. But the doctor’s answer? “Don’t blame your thyroid. You just need more exercise!”
The stigma also extends to the celebrity world. When a high-profile celebrity announces that she is battling breast cancer, or he has had gastric bypass surgery for weight loss, there’s no shame. In fact, they have their publicists announce it, they do interviews, and it’s front-page news.
But what about when a celebrity has an underactive thyroid condition due to autoimmune Hashimoto’s disease—the most common thyroid problem in America? Few celebrities seem inclined to publicly announce their hypothyroid conditions, and I can’t think of anyone in recent years who has been willing to make it his or her own personal cause, or adopted it as an issue to promote.
For example, Sex and the City actress Kim Cattrall, NBC Today show host Meredith Vieira, singer Linda Ronstadt, and My Big Fat Greek Wedding star Nia Vardalos are all hypothyroid, and yet we rarely hear anything about their thyroid challenges. I even interviewed Nia Vardalos after she successfully lost forty pounds, and that was after she’d been diagnosed and treated for an underactive thyroid. She didn’t want to talk about her thyroid problem, and implied that she didn’t want to “blame” her thyroid for her weight gain, or attribute her ability to lose weight to getting properly diagnosed and treated. I have nothing but respect for Nia’s amazing talent and intelligence, but, hello! When you get a thyroid condition properly diagnosed and treated, that is when many people find they can finally lose weight and keep it off!
(Of course it’s okay to announce you have had thyroid cancer—like JAG and Army Wives actress Catherine Bell, singer Rod Stewart, Sofia Vergara of television’s Modern Family, and comedian Joe Piscopo. For some reason, thyroid cancer does not have the same stigma.)
The truth is that many celebrities have thyroid problems, yet few of them have made it publicly known. The stigma surrounding thyroid problems ensures a celebrity code of silence.
There’s another issue complicating the whole situation that we just can’t overlook, and that’s the Oprah factor.
I’ll let you in on a secret—thyroid patients recognize each other. We look around us, and we see the puffiness around the eyes, the lack of hair on the outer edge of the eyebrows, the unexplained weight gain, the thinning hair, and we somehow just know. Since the late 1990s, I have had that feeling about Oprah Winfrey. And I was not alone. Other thyroid patients did too. Readers even wrote to me years ago, asking if I’d contacted Oprah. “Oprah looks hypothyroid to me,” they’d write. “Please, Mary, get in touch with Oprah and tell her to get her thyroid checked!” And I did. Believe me, I did.
And I wrote not just to urge Oprah to get her own thyroid checked as she went up and down in her weight-loss struggles but also to urge her to cover thyroid disease on her program. For years, Oprah dedicated numerous episodes of her popular and influential talk show to important women’s health concerns: menopause, low sex drive, weight loss, depression, infertility, PMS, and others. And time and again, she and her health experts listened to women complain of fatigue, weight gain or difficulty losing weight, depression, hair loss, muscle pain, lack of sex drive, erratic periods, and such, but thyroid disease was never mentioned! Never! Believe me, I was listening, not to mention writing to her and her producers, passionately encouraging them to bring up the issue of thyroid disease as an overlooked factor in all of these health concerns facing viewers. But Oprah continued on, and thyroid disease was not part of the discussion.
Meanwhile, Oprah seemed to successfully conquer her own weight-loss battle. Armed with her trainers, chefs, nutritionists, and staff, she had finally gotten to some sort of balance. She was at a healthy weight, she was exercising, and she seemed happy with herself.
But in 2006, she started to regain the weight that she’d lost. Again, I wrote to Oprah and her producers, and my readers wrote as well. The message: “Oprah, check your thyroid!”
No response.
In 2007, Oprah finally admitted what we had suspected along the way—she herself was hypothyroid. But instead of embracing it, doing a show on it, talking about the stealthy symptoms that can be difficult to identify and the issues around diagnosis and treatment, Oprah quickly backpedaled and claimed that she had “cured” her thyroid condition with a long Hawaiian vacation and a diet heavy in soy milk. She brought mind-body experts on her show to say that thyroid disease is due to women’s inability to speak out, and that “finding your voice” is the solution. Oprah then came back and said that no, she wasn’t actually cured, but that she’d decided not to take thyroid medication. Instead, she decided her problem was menopause, and she went on Suzanne Somers’s controversial hormone regimen.
Meanwhile, she appeared to continue to gain weight, looking puffy around her eyes and in her face and neck. Was she still hypothyroid? Only her doctor knows, but she certainly fit the profile.
I’m not saying that Oprah’s going public about her thyroid problem didn’t have positive effects, because it did. There are some people who, listening to Oprah go back and forth about her thyroid issue, recognized the symptoms. Hearing about thyroid disease on Oprah was the wakeup call they needed to get properly diagnosed and treated.
But Oprah could have done so much more. She had it in her hands to help many millions of women around the world, women who look to her for advice and information and who follow Oprah’s weight struggles because her struggles mirror their own.
Oprah had the opportunity to raise awareness of our epidemic of undiagnosed, untreated hypothyroidism. She had a chance to focus attention on the many challenges we face in getting properly diagnosed. Oprah could have explored the impact of an underactive and autoimmune thyroid on metabolism and weight. She was in a position to publicize the many issues surrounding proper thyroid treatment and restoring a metabolism that is affected by thyroid disease.
But Oprah did not do one of these things. Instead, she made it seem like having a thyroid problem was an embarrassment—something to be ashamed of, to brush away and ignore, and even to disown.
Oprah has also confused the weight-loss issue in particular for thyroid patients. By refusing thyroid treatment herself—a move that some of her followers will no doubt emulate—and by publicly advocating approaches that are known to be detrimental to some thyroid patients, she has made the weight-loss battle for thyroid patients more difficult.
She has publicly promoted a soy-heavy vegan diet, soy milk, vacations, bubble baths, and even blowing kisses at herself in the mirror as thyroid solutions. (I’m not saying that a nice soak in the tub and good self-esteem aren’t great, but seriously—they are not treatments for thyroid problems.) And a diet heavy on certain raw vegetables and loaded with soy can actually slow the thyroid down further, making hypothyroidism worsen and causing further weight gain. So, thanks but no thanks, Oprah, for that advice.
The message women have taken away from Oprah is that thyroid problems really aren’t worth focusing on, maybe you shouldn’t even get treated for an underactive thyroid, and by the way, vegan diets, soy, self-love, and speaking out will help your thyroid—not exactly a road map to success for most people with thyroid conditions, and definitely not helpful for those thyroid patients who are having difficulty losing weight.
THE THYROID DIET REVOLUTION WILL HELP YOU GET OFF THE WEIGHT-LOSS MERRY-GO-ROUND
Not only is there a stigma attached to thyroid disease, but as we all know, it’s not easy to be overweight. I know that you don’t want to be overweight. Sure, there are some overweight people who feel entirely comfortable with themselves and don’t have any body image issues. More power to them. But I’m not one of them, and if you’re reading this book, neither are you.
And let’s face it: in addition to the psychosocial burden—suffering emotionally or mentally because of the self-esteem and depression issues related to being overweight—there is also an increased risk of many serious health conditions, including:
• Insulin resistance and diabetes
• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Cardiovascular disease
• Stroke
• Asthma
• Arthritis/degenerative joint disease
• Gallbladder disease
• Sleep apnea
• Fatigue
• Fertility problems and complications of pregnancy
• Stress incontinence
Being overweight or obese is also a risk factor for various cancers. A sixteen-year study by the American Cancer Society found that deaths from a wide variety of cancers—including those of the breast, endometrium, colon, rectum, esophagus, pancreas, kidney, gallbladder, ovary, cervix, liver, and prostate, as well as multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma—are linked to excess weight and obesity. Only a few cancers—lung cancer, bladder cancer, brain cancer, and melanoma—were found to have no link to excess weight. All those health issues certainly provide enough incentive to lose weight.
But how?
If you read the newspapers and women’s magazine articles, watch those middle-of-the-night infomercials, view morning television interviews, and talk to the staff at supplement stores, you’ll hear from “experts” galore, and every one of them knows the magic answer, the key to weight-loss success. The key is . . .
. . . detoxing the liver
. . . regulating insulin
. . . avoiding carbohydrates
. . . avoiding fat
. . . eating more good fat
. . . staying away from the wrong carbohydrates
. . . restricting calories
. . . eating more calories
. . . raw foods
. . . juicing
. . . being a vegetarian
. . . being a vegan
. . . going gluten- free
. . . eating a high-protein diet
. . . mini-meals and grazing all day
. . . eating three meals a day and no snacks
. . . eating Mediterranean style
. . . exercising
. . . taking supplements
. . . taking weight-loss drugs
. . . eating cabbage soup
. . . following a liquid diet
. . . having surgery
. . . managing your mind and emotions
. . . regulating brain chemistry
. . . drinking maple syrup and cayenne pepper
Blah blah blah! It’s a weight-loss merry-go-round, and we need to get off.
That’s hard for everyone, but it’s even more so for people who have an undiagnosed—or even diagnosed and treated—thyroid problem.
Thyroid patients are generally not lazy or lacking willpower. And your weight problem is most likely not an emotional issue that can be shouted and bullied out of you by some anorexic television personality with abs of steel and a heart of stone. You know and I know that you’re not downing an entire pizza or box of donuts every night when no one else is watching. Your eating habits are probably not very different from those of your friends or family members who are at a normal weight.
Your problem is that your body does not work the way it’s supposed to, so a challenge that is already hard for most people is that much harder for you. And what you suspect about your body is probably true: you may gain weight more easily than others, and you probably won’t lose weight as quickly as others.
In fact, if you are hypothyroid, your metabolism can become so inefficient—unable to burn fat, and capable of storing nearly every calorie you eat as fat—despite the most rigorous diet and exercise program. Your friend or spouse could go on the same diet as you, lose a pound or two a week, and you might stay the same or even gain weight. It’s not fair!
Can we shout that together? It’s not fair!
Okay, since we’ve established that it’s not fair, it’s time to move on. That’s life—I’ve got a thyroid problem, maybe you’ve got a thyroid problem, and it’s not likely to go away. This is something we’ll probably both live with for the rest of our lives. The question is, are we going to live well with it, or it is going to define us and make us miserable? Is it going to stop us from feeling good about ourselves, fitting into clothes we like, feeling sexy, exercising or playing sports, having energy for work, family, and children?
It shouldn’t, but it does.
But The Thyroid Diet Revolution—in a simple, understandable way—helps you get off the merry-go-round, offering you the support, encouragement, and information you need to lose weight, despite a thyroid condition.
ABOUT THE THYROID DIET REVOLUTION
The Thyroid Diet Revolution can be a weight-loss revolution for you in a number of ways.
First, if you don’t yet know if a thyroid problem is sabotaging your efforts to lose weight, you’ll learn about the signs and symptoms—including the subtle and less common symptoms—that can signal a potential thyroid condition. You’ll get comprehensive guidelines on how to get properly diagnosed. And keep in mind that it’s rarely as easy as asking your doctor to “test your thyroid.” You’ll find out which tests to ask for, and how to get them done—even if you have an HMO, insurance company, or practitioner who is interfering. You’ll find out what the test results mean, and why “your thyroid results are normal” is not enough information and doesn’t rule out the kind of thyroid problem that could make you gain weight—or stop you from losing weight. And if you are diagnosed with a thyroid condition, there’s the issue of treatment. Some doctors believe that anyone with an underactive thyroid should just be put on the Synthroid brand of levothyroxine medication, and that’s that. But there are actually many brands beyond Synthroid, and many other options beyond levothyroxine, that can be used to effectively treat your thyroid condition. The key is finding out which drug(s), at what dose(s), and in what combination(s) can safely and best resolve your symptoms. And, of particular interest to thyroid patients trying to lose weight, there is the issue of thyroid resistance—or, as Dr. Mark Starr calls it, type II hypothyroidism.
You’ll also learn about hormonal imbalances and resistance issues, and how they can affect your ability to lose weight. First, some thyroid patients produce a particular kind of thyroid hormone that can make it especially difficult for you to lose weight. Few doctors test for it, and few doctors understand what it means and how to treat it. You’ll learn about thyroid resistance in The Thyroid Diet Revolution. There are other types of hormonal resistance that are also more common in thyroid patients, including insulin resistance and leptin resistance. Again, there are very few physicians who are knowledgeable about the hormonal impact on weight gain and loss, but you’ll find out the latest information on how these resistance syndromes can affect weight loss, and how they can be identified, tested, and, most important, treated. Other hormone imbalances can also affect your ability to lose weight, including estrogen dominance and deficiencies or excess levels of progesterone, adrenal hormone, DHEA, and testosterone. The Thyroid Diet Revolution will help you explore the interrelated balance of hormones and weight.
Nutrition is, of course, a critical component for thyroid patients who want to lose weight, and The Thyroid Diet Revolution has a comprehensive approach to help guide you. You’ll learn about the challenges—nutritional and vitamin deficiencies, food allergies, food sensitivities, goitrogenic foods, phytoestrogens, and toxic exposures—that can get in the way of weight loss. You’ll also learn about the importance of the glycemic index for thyroid patients who want to lose weight, as well as foods that help metabolism. And you’ll get a number of structured recommendations that can get you started right away on the thyroid diet. You’ll also get in-depth reviews of the most popular diet programs—everything from the South Beach Diet to Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and the Paleo Diet—from the perspective of thyroid patients. Is this a diet that is generally thyroid-friendly? Are thyroid patients losing weight on this diet plan? Should you avoid the diet entirely? Are there ways to customize it to make it more effective for thyroid patients? It’s all here in The Thyroid Diet Revolution.
Movement is also an essential part of The Thyroid Diet Revolution’s approach to weight loss. But not just any exercise. Have no fear—I’m not going to suggest you start doing an hour of step aerobics six days a week, or start running five miles a day. Most of us aren’t in shape to do that—plus it’s not healthy for our adrenal system and may even prevent weight loss. The real key? Building muscle, detoxing the lymph system, and moving without exhausting ourselves. I have some recommendations regarding great ways to get into a regular exercise program, including a section created specifically for thyroid dieters by exercise physiologist Teresa Tapp, founder of the incredible T-Tapp exercise program. To whet your appetite: I lost twelve inches in two weeks, and I was doing three 45-minute sessions of T-Tapp a week.
And last but not least, there is the mind-body aspect of weight loss. What you think does affect what you eat, how you eat, how you digest, and whether or not you gain or lose weight. If you’re inclined to dismiss that idea as “woo-woo,” think again. Neuroendocrinology is the science of the relationship between our neurological and hormonal systems. And those two systems are indeed related. Think about how, if you watch a television commercial for something that looks delicious, you might start feeling hungry. You may even begin to salivate a little. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, a whole host of hormonal processes are beginning. What if you could tap into those hormonal processes and help guide them in the right direction? In The Thyroid Diet Revolution, you’ll learn the skill of talking directly to your body in a language it can understand. You’ll also learn why “loving your animal”—to borrow a phrase from weight-loss expert Jena la Flamme—is an essential part of weight loss. And how slowing down, savoring what we eat, and appreciating the experience can actually transform our relationship with food and help us lose weight.
The Thyroid Diet Revolution also includes a detailed resources section, to help you explore in even greater depth the many concepts, approaches, and techniques featured in the book, and so you can access all the skills, tools, experts, and resources you need to get started.
Isn’t it time you started a revolution, your own Thyroid Diet Revolution?
Let’s get started!
Mary J. Shomon
March 2011
Kensington, Maryland