Autoimmune condition- can't lose any weight

[ploppiness]

I have a rare auto immune condition, diagnosed after a life changing medical event just before lockdown. Chemo and high dose steroids - stopped both now but after they led to weight gain and I can't lose it!

I eat minimally, have been under the hospital dietitian (who I'm not impressed by) for 18 months and my weight has not fluctuated since coming off the steroids and finishing chemo 3 years ago.

I also have hyperthyroidism and take biologics as well as levothroxine and pain killers.

I don't eat sugar or sweeteners and very few carbs.

For example yesterday I had lean chicken sprouts green beans cabbage broccoli ans cauliflower for supper 3 cups of decaf tea and lots of water.

Saturday I had veg stirfry with prawns, soy sauce for supper, 4 cups of decaf tea and more water.

Latest dietician appointment told me to speak to my consultant to stop taking biologics (!)

They also told me to eat more and said minimal amount of oil used in stir fries etc was making me fat. My eating is probably disordered but would probably now be classed as fasting 😂

I can't walk far but do swim lengths 3 plus times a week

I'm currently 14 stone and 5'6"

Help! (Please 😀)

Your dietician sounds like an idiot. If you are cutting out carbs, you need to get calories from somewhere, and that somewhere is fat.
Take a look at a well balanced keto diet, I can really recommend Eric Westman. He does have pay for courses, but all the info is freely available on his youtube channel.
Also, cutting out fat is doing you no favours a human being whose every cell needs fat to function, and a woman, who needs dietary fat to create hormones.

I wish you the best of luck.

I've got thyroid issues to and am Levothyroxine. It took a while to get up to a dose that I felt well on. I had to negotiate trial increases as they worry about over medicating. TSH now around 1 and I feel much better.

At this level my weight stopped going up endlessly but I couldn't seem to bring it down even when dieting hard.

I December I started on Mounjaro and it seems remarkable. I'm losing more weight than just calorie deficit would suggest is possible, and all my usual blood sugar issues seem to have disappeared.

I'm focussing on putting healthy foods in my body, with occasional treats over Christmas (chocolate covered almonds rather than tons of cake or chocolate).

Your dietician sounds daft, you need some fact with green veg to get the best out of them as the vitamins are fat soluble.

I've lost 20lb in less than 5 weeks and I'm feeling pretty good. I'm only taking the very low dose (2.5) and am continuing on that for the 2nd month as I don't feel the need to increase my dose.

It feels like this med aligns well with my hyperthyroidism and the weight loss seems to be in all the right places (tummy, rib cage, face) where it felt it built up due to high cortisol levels and inflammation as well as fat.

I'm still looking to lose another 20lb or so in order to get into healthy weight range but it feels doable now

I'm not denying myself any foods but portions are much smaller as you can't eat as much without feeling over full. The focus on healthy eating is to prepare for maintenance in the future. But I'm definitely still having butter on my Brussels sprouts 😊

Thank you both - I don't think I can take mountjaro, will check with my consultant though but will definitely have a proper look at keto - I do eat fat, butter etc but was sceptical about the diet Ian's advice 😂 I think they're stuck in the old fat is bad carbs are good way of thinking.

The teaching of dieticians is still very old school. I'd be looking at your thyroid function if you're eating that little and still failing to lose weight. Did you just list your main meal, or was that your entuire daily intake of food there?

Get them to run a full thyroid panel and take a look at the T3 levels - it may be that your body can't convert the levothroxine to a useful form, in which case you'll need medication to help that.

Keto did wonders for my weight AND depression but wasn’t sustainable long term for me unfortunately

@HesDeadBenYouCanStopNow I could have written this post myself. I'm not a big eater or snacker, I got gym 4x a week. Granted I don't calorie count per se. But the scales just don't budge, if someone did what I did without thyroid issues they would be losing exponentially. I thought enough is enough, I'm on mounjaro now and iv already lost 8 lbs in 11 days. And it's almost like the puffiness around my face and love handles, I can't explain it, it wasn't fat so must have been inflammation or rentention. I want to lose 1stone more, might seem like not a lot to lost for some ppl but I couldn't do it without the mounjaro because of my thyroid

@sigm it's good to know I'm not the only one.

I put on weight in my 40's but lost it quite easily on slimming world and then stayed at my target weight for years with no issue. But menopause and thyroid issues seemed to make it so hard.
I was exhausted to do any exercise and all my joints hurt too

Now with the right levo I feel much better. But it took MJ to help with the weight loss.

It's going to be really interesting when I try to maintain though

@HesDeadBenYouCanStopNow I get that because I'm 39 now and I can feel a shift in my hormones (for the worst, I'm sure I'm perimenopausal). I'm actually not sure what's going to happen when I come off it as I already have quite good eating habits and I'm active. I think I need to decrease carbs to almost none, think my hormones don't like them

A dietician telling you to stop biologics sounds questionable. I would not be taking that advice! If it isn't working or you're suffering severe side effects ( risky ones) then that's a different story.

Having autoimmune conditions myself, I'd be cautious about weight loss jabs. You already have a sensitive body and we don't know enough about the jabs and people who have autoimmunity just yet.

I discussed with my GP practice before deciding to take the jab.

I work in health and am sharing my journey with colleagues that might help build up some of that knowledge

I'm monitoring things closely and recording any symptoms on a daily basis no matter how innocuous

We're recommending MJ or equivalents to a variety of patients such as diabetic patients and morbidly obese so the more we monitor the better

I was being told about microdosing with semaglutide by a friend yesterday who has been diagnosed with an autoimmune condition. I was very interested so looked on Google myself. There was an interesting scientific study there which I think would be informative for you. I don’t know how to link, but I think I just put “semaglutide and autoimmune diseases” as a search. It wasn’t heavy reading (I’m no scientist!) but I could understand what I read.

It seems that the peptides in semaglutide affect/improve gut function and help reduce inflammation.

Might be worth a look.