"Your thyroid doesn't have calories in it."
I've heard dumb coaches make this remark quite a few times. Hell, I've even admittedly been that dumb coach that thought hormones played no role in weight gain and weight loss.
Your thyroid IS in fact tanking your metabolism, and i'm going to dive into WHY and HOW TO FIX IT.
The metabolic shift postpartum is pretty interesting.
👍 On one side, if you're breastfeeding OR just way more active with your baby, your metabolic rate is going thru the roof.
👎 On the other side, you're inflamed, you're not sleeping, and you're stressed AF. Your metabolism is now in the gutter.
With your new lifestyle that has you inflamed AF and your recovery in the dumpster, and your new set of hormones postpartum, it's no wonder you're having trouble losing weight. And probably gaining weight while not really eating any differently.
When your body is stressed, your nervous system is switched to "on."
Instead of the physiological processes responsible for keeping the metabolism high, your body is focused on increasing your heart rate and keeping your mind in a hyper-aware state for survival.
📉 So your metabolism starts lowering.
🧬 Pair that with the fact that your cells are now NO LONGER focused on hormonal exchange but rather on giving energy to parts of the body for stimulation.
Let me backtrack and explain the thyroid in a bit of detail.
The thyroid gland is a butterfly shaped gland that sits in front of the windpipe. it directly regulates the body's metabolic rate (how many calories you burn) as well as other various functions.
Iodine is consumed from the foods you eat. In the body iodine produces two major hormones: T3 and T4.
The T4 hormone is secreted from the thryoid gland and travels thru the bloodstream. When T4 arrives at targeted cells and tissues it becomes T3.
When your body is stressed and the nervous system is switched to "on" for fight or flight, this hormonal interaction occurs much slower.
This decreases your thyroid.
If you know anyone with hypo-thyroidism, there's a great chance they are overweight or obese.
This is because the body's metabolism is so slow due to lowered thyroid production.
So go on meds?
Maybe, but that is kind of a band-aid tbh.
The better approach is focusing on our diet and recovery to optimize thyroid:
Thyroid is produced from iodine in food sources. So the type of foods you eat and their quality do matter for thyroid. Eating a calorie appropriate diet + anti-inflammatory foods will help balance your thyroid so you can start burning body fat like a mother. You can find my Metabolic Anti-Aging Food Guide in my instagram profile (instagram.com/dylanaconrad)
Recovery influences thyroid from a lot of different factors.
Psychologically, if you're not sleeping and chronically stressed, you're basically operating like you're drunk.
And if you ever saw Dylan in college circa 2006 you'd know that when we're drunk we don't make the best decisions (which is why Tonita's was jam packed at 3AM on a Saturday).
So you'll have more of a propensity to eat hyper-inflammatory processed foods, skip on meal prep and exercise, and just make dumb excuses that a fully rested version of yourself would slap you for.
Physiologically, the cells are not focused on hormonal production or exchange when they are in a state of "fight or flight" (what happens when you are not sleeping as much, more stressed, etc).
So this lowers your thyroid production as previously explained.
OK, so what can i do that will enhance my recovery and optimize thyroid?
✔️ Sleep more
✔️ Get more quality sleep
✔️ Decrease stress volume (the duration of time you're stressed) thru meditation and breath work
✔️ Decrease stress intensity by removing common stressors in your life
✔️ Supplement with "chill pills" (any natural supplement that will increase your "rest and digest" such as ashwaganda, GABA, ZMA, etc...a lot of which found in Burn PM and Sleep Multiplier by Prestige Labs
✔️ Get on a solid training model
✔️ Walk more
✔️ Get outside more
✔️ Eat a higher carbohydrate diet
Yes, doing KETO is the worst thing you can do for your recovery, which is why it drives me absolutely insane when people prescribe KETO for PCOS and other hormonal issues.
This the exact reason we focus so hard on lifestyle modifications with our "White on Rice Accountability System."
Also why I developed the "Anti-Aging Metabolic Food Guide" and the "Metabolic Momma Training Method."
When we figure our clients recovery schedule, nutrition, and training, the hierarchy we use is:
1️⃣ Recovery
2️⃣ Nutrition
3️⃣ Training
Is one of our metabolic momma's working 12 hour days and not sleeping enough? Adding in exercise is probably not the best idea. And putting her into a steep calorie deficit will make her feel even worse.
Metabolic momma is sleeping 6 hours but needs to meal prep? Skip the meal prep and instead use the time to sleep more.
If you have the option of sleeping, meal prepping, and training, always choose sleep first. That's why I'm never upset if clients cancel their workouts because they needed extra sleep.
Work smarter, not harder!
-DC
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