Is Your Low Thyroid Diet Making You Hungry?
Segment 4
By this point in our journey to seek the perfect low thyroid diet,
you’ve realized we advocate only healthy eating plans. We shall
continue to warn against fad dieting, such a calorie restrictive diet.
The way we see it, who in their right conscience would try to persuade
us eating a 500-calorie per day diet is healthy?
You’d better believe it happens! Self-proclaimed diet gurus exist, all
over the internet! It’s exciting to watch the pendulum swing the other
way!
Abnormally low caloric intake puts your body in famine mode, where it
must hoard its fat stores. The body substitutes lean muscle for its
necessary calories. As you lose muscle, your metabolism slows to a crawl
and the body requires fewer calories to operate.
In consequence, you
gain rather than lose weight.
New- thought is that folks with thyroid conditions, struggling to
lose weight are probably not consuming enough calories!
We gently urge you to put the nutrition back into your diet and
consume enough calories to fire-up your metabolism. It’s particularly
dangerous when on a low thyroid diet
to consume insufficient calories, as this overburdens your thyroid.
Severe calorie-deprivation will decrease Leptin in your bloodstream
by about 40%, after only four days. After one month, Leptin will dive
approximately 54%. Cutting down calories in effort to lose weight
becomes a no-win situation.
The lower you let your Leptin go, the
hungrier you get!
If you’re not familiar with Leptin, it’s produced in the body’s fat
cells, called the “satiety signal” as it tells the brain when the body
has eaten enough.
Nutritionists recommend never dipping below 1,200 calories per day
when dieting, without medical supervision. Otherwise, you risk impairing
your metabolism and hindering your thyroid. On the other hand, before
you dash out for a double-dip Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice-cream (my favorite), some restrictions
apply.
For instance, if you eat one big meal every day, you’ve likely
stretched your stomach to the point you never feel full. If you never
feel full, your satiety hormones don’t communicate with your brain,
probably due to Leptin resistance.
Side Bar………………………I remember my Grandmother not eating all day on a night should was going out to dinner so she could save up her calories. She put her body into starvation mode so all those calories we stored as FAT. What a big mistake!
For a low thyroid diet
to be most effective, divide your caloric intake into 4-6 smaller,
nutritious meals per day. In time, your stomach will “shrink” back to
normal.
Based on 155 pounds, for illustrative purposes, here is a formula to
help you calculate the number of calories you need for each mini-meal:
*First, we’ll divide 155 pounds by 2.2 = 70.45
*Next, we’ll multiply 70.45 x 25 = 1761.25
*Then, we’ll subtract 200 calories, which is an adjustment in calorie and metabolism needs for folks on a low thyroid diet.
*1761.25 – 200 = 1561.25
If you weigh 155 pounds, your daily calorie needs in order to lose weight are 1561 (rounded).
*Finally, divide 1561 by 300 = 5.20
Considering experts suggest several small meals of 300 calories, you
can eat 5 mini-meals daily and reasonably expect to lose weight!