food log, hypothyroid and weight gain...i am confused and would love advice!

hi everyone..please bear with me regarding the long post!  i was diagnosed as hypothyroid about six months ago.  i started .05 mcg of levoythyroxine and my levels have tested in the low normal levels ever since.  however, i have gained 5 lbs since starting the medicine without a change in diet. 

at my first three month appointment, i had gained 3 lbs and voiced my concerns to my gp.  she said that my thyroid is testing normal and i shouldn't worry about it.  i decided to begin keeping a food log so that i would have some hard evidence to show that i wasn't crazy!  my next three month appointment was last week and i had gained another 2 lbs.  my gp did a full blood test, but i don't expect anything out of the ordinary.  i had been keeping my food log for one and a half months with the following stats:

• height: 5'4
• beginning food log weight of 106
• assumed calorie burn of 1400 (sedentary)
• any exercise (i usually walk about 8 miles a week) was added in outside of the 1400.  e.g., if walking 5 miles one day, i had a burn of 1700 for the day
• i record everything...including small bites and all liquid.  i am very conservative in my counting (if i am unsure of the calorie count, i estimate high).
• my lowest calories for the day have been around 900 while my high calories have been 2200.  as such, my calories fluctuate each day.

over the course of the month and a half, i have eaten 9000 calories less than my allowed calories which means i should have LOST 2.5 lbs!!!  this morning i weighed 108. 

i don't understand.  do i up my calories hoping to rev my metabolism?  i know i can't drop calories, which i have done in the past.  i am trying to eat normally, but feel like i am just putting on weight!

any advice is much appreciated!!

The problem may be because you're borderline for clinically underweight.   5'4" and 108lbs gives you a BMI of 18.6 which is very, very low.... arguably too low.  If your weight is rising perhaps that's because your body is coming out of the illness and wants to get up to a more healthy level?

i've gone through very similar stuff.  i'd like to suggest just a few things:

1) i'm not certain where exactly your calorie levels were when your thyroid was tested, but it sounds like you've been pretty restrictive plus exercising a lot for awhile.  in such a case, the body begins to slow down all processes, the speed of which are determined by the thyroid. people toss around the term "starvation mode" quite often, but it's true that in a prolonged state of chronic undernutrition, the thyroid really does produce lower levels of t3 (the bioavailable form of thyroid hormone) and t4 (the kind that needs to be converted to t3 in order to be available to your body's cells).  you may think that your intake is cutting it, but your body may disagree and be slowing things down quite significantly, especially if you're exercising a lot on top of an insufficient intake.  i was at the point where i was exercising my life away (literally) and eating very little...i'd already been anorexic for years (i'm not saying you're necessarily eating disordered, i'm just trying to illustrate my point)...and i actually started gaining weight... fast.  it was the most ridiculous thing ever.  i knew something was wrong, and a lot of professionals who told me "you needed to gain weight anyway" (which frustrated me because gaining weight would have been more acceptable if i were actually leading a more normal lifestyle--and i knew the gain wasn't restoring anything and i wasn't at all "healthier" because if it) or "you're probably in starvation mode...try exercising less and eating more" (which frustrated me because none of them had actually experienced what i was going through, nor could they offer me any sort of proof that i wouldn't just gain more weight if i tried their suggestion).  i did finally got my thyroid diagnosed as underactive, and also took medication that didn't really seem to ameliorate the problem.  i just continued driving my body further and further into the ground.

2) if indeed your thyroid is underactive due to imbalances that are out of your control (which, unfortunately, it sounds to me is highly unlikely), might i suggest you talk with your physician about adding in some t3 to your meds medley.  levothyroxine is the synthetic form of thyroid hormone, and contains only t4.  because t4 needs to be converted by your body to t3 before being available to your cells, if you have conversion issues (which a lot of people do), you may not really be solving the problem... even if your bloodwork is showing up as normal...that is to say, a lot of hypothyroid people need to be over the "normal" ranges (or under, in the case of tsh) in order to experience relief of symptoms.  many find armour thyroid (natural dessicated thyroid--contains t4 AND t3), or adding in cytomel (t3) to be more helpful than just the synthroid (t4) by itself.

3) it sounds like your intake is kind of all over the place right now.  try consistently sticking to the higher side of your range (2200 or so), because your body is having a hard time knowing that it can trust you to supply it with the energy it needs to start functioning optimally and stop hoarding everything you give it.  counterintuitive as it may seem, exercise is only going to make it harder for your body to trust you.

well, rather long-winded i've become once again.  i suppose if you take anything from what i'm saying, it would be that i think your body really needs a little tlc in order to get your metabolism functioning properly again.  i would bet that your low thyroid levels are simply a result of prolonged undernutrition. i'm going through a lot of the same stuff myself, but i'm trying very hard to get my calories up consistently to the point where my body will trust me again and can stop making a drastic attempt to conserve everything it gets.  it's been a loooong time of self-destruction, but i like to think my metabolism can still rebound.  i'm oiling the machine, so we'll see.

love, izA.

thank you both so much for the comments!  i really appreciate your time!!

i just received my test results from the dr. this morning.  my thyroid levels have increased since my last visit and they have increased my dosage to .75 mcg.  however, i agree with the comments above in that i need to up my calorie intake.  it is such a scary thing.  i am already gaining weight with what i am eating now, that it is scary to increase and think i could gain even more. 

cruumb - as you have started increasing your calories, have you started noticing any results?

Hey Bobby- I don't think I can add anything new since the above posters were really thourough but I did want to just reiterate what was already said because I went through/ still suffer from the same thing. I was also diagnosed hypothyroid, as a result of a restricted calorie intake. Around your levels actually, between 900- 1400 for several months, with exercise, which is obviously not enough for anyone. If you have read any of the stickied topics, you'd see you need 1200 to simply survive if you laid around in bed all day. So your body pretty much is in that "starvation mode" people talk about. Not eating enough only makes the thyroid condition worse too.

I've been on on .5 mg of armour thyroid for over a year and haven't noticed too much of a difference, though my energy levels did become more normal (i'm still a little lacking in that department but would rather try and improve that through higher calorie intake and better health) Eating more will help regulate your thyroid even without the medication, though of course you should continue to monitor that with your doctor. I have gained a lot of weight but very slowly since I started, but it was intentional so I don't think the medication had anything to do with it since it was so difficult to put the weight on. Trust us when we tell you to increase your calories! you need at least 2000 and probably more if you're active, especially since you are borderline underweight, it will most likely greatly increase your health if you gain a few more pounds. I know how stressful that can be, but it makes a world of a difference to eat more, and you won't balloon up by increasing your calories. I currently eat b/w 2500 and 3000, and am aiming for the higher end of that since I lost a few lbs again on 2500. There was one point that it took me over 4000 to gain weight very slowly too. So my advice would be to start working your way to 2000 and see how your body responds.

Good luck!

hi again, bobby!  i totally understand your hesitation.  you sound exactly like me, in fact.  

i pretty much immediately noticed results when i stopped overexercising...that's when the weight started to fall off of me again :/ 

when i increased my calories, i gained a lot in a short period of time. at first it was very clearly severe edema and landed me in the er.  i got scared and reduced my calories a bit.  but i knew i had to keep pressing forward if i ever want any kind of metabolism back, so i got my calories back up where they need to be.  gained again.  but my body's been suffering for SO long (15 years)...and i'm embarrassed to get specific about numbers at this point, but let's just say things were bad. i am trying sooo hard to trust the people who tell me it's probably a lot of fluid at this point and it may take some time for things to level off.

 i got my thyroid medication today.  but it's still sitting, unopened, on my dresser.  i've decided i'm *not* going to take it until i give my body a chance to straighten itself out.  i'd really like to see my metabolism rebound on its own.  how cool would that be?  scary stuff, but i'm trying to trust my extensive research and see how things go.

i completely understand the "well if i'm gaining on this much, just imagine what i'll gain on a normal calorie level!!" argument....but, logically, i'm trying to wrap my brain around the research i've done...and take a giant leap of faith...

you don't have to be emaciated or near death to be completely in "starvation mode" and hurting your organs and systems.  when my weight was going up and up i was pretty close to the normal weight range, but my health, i'm certain was just as bad as when i've been at my lowest weights, if not worse than ever. definitely increase your calories, eliminate exercise (just existing, errands, housework, etc. is more than enough)...stress hormones will antagonize the situation and push your body further into starvation mode.  the sooner you give your body what it needs and stop creating stressors, the sooner it will recover.

hope this helps <3

I had similiar problems. I work out for sixty minutes five days a week and eat 1,200 calories and take medication. The problem is that some thyroid medication causes hair loss. Honestly, I would rather be fat than bald since I am a woman.

People with hypothyroidism typically have dramatically restricted their calories in an attempt to lose weight. Besides being dangerous, it makes a sluggish metabolism even more so.

I read the Thyroid Diet. There is a lot of good advice. After cutting out the no-no foods, I have lost five pounts and have more energy. The muscle aches are still there.

There is some dispute about where thyroid levels should be. Please read up on it.

I have thyroid problems too. In late 2005 they found a nodule on my left lobe and my physician and endocrinologist didn't do much about it.  I was not given any suppressive therapy.  They kept telling me my levels were normal when I did my blood work every two months. I was always tired, gained weight, anxiety attacks in the middle of the night while trying to sleep, and insomnia. I even had a sleep study done and they found that my rate rate was increasing when I was trying to sleep when it should have been decreasing. They put me on Zoloft and sleeping meds for the anxiety and insomnia.  I got tiered  of taking meds that I knew weren't helping fix  my problem and took myself off.  I knew there was something wrong but they weren't helping me. 

So when i went to Greece to vist family in May 2007 I saw a endocrinologist there.  i brought all my paper work from here and she reviewed it and had me redo most tests.  They found that my growth grew over 20% and was cystic.  She said that I should have been put on suppressive therapy and that if it grew anymore and the cystic part of the nodule busted I could get really sick. She also told me that even though my blood work came back fine doesn't mean that there isn't a problem.  You can have thyroid issues that don't show in blood work. 

When I got back home I found a new endocrinologist.  She agreed that surgery was best, especially with my family history of thyroid and breast cancer.  My left lobe and isthmus were removed.  I was not given any meds afterwards.  My monthly blood work showed normal results. But I still gained a little weight after the surgery.  I ended up putting myself on a diet and got my weight down some. 

In march I started getting these welts on my arms and legs, huge ones that swelled up, itched, burned to touch and then turned to a bruise for a week.  I saw an allergist who did all kinds of test  and a biopsy and found no allergies. What I had was angioedema but he didn't know why.  It's an autoimmune deficiency.   I was put on anti histamines and it helped some.  I then had stomach pains and had a lower GI and colonoscopy done.   The edema didn't appear to be in any of my organs. I kept asking if it could have anything to do with my Thyroid and the answer I got was no.  The only doctor to tell me that it was a possibility was my gastrologist.  Deepdown I felt and still feel that is does have something to do with my Thyroid.

I went back to Greece Oct 2008 and saw the same doctor,  she put me on 50 mcg of Synthroid.  She said that even though my levels appear normal it's a good idea to take it for maintenance purposes because the right side now has to work over time.  A month into taking the synthroid my angioedema symptoms lessened.  now I get them on occasion and my symptoms are not nearly as bad as they used to be.  My point is ( sorry for rambling) that you need to get a second opinion and try seeing an endocrinologist.  If there is a problem and it's left untreated who knows what can happen.

As with the others I agree that you need to increase you calorie intake some, that may give you the jump start that you need.