Fighterdiet & Thyroid Health

Can you do Fighter Diet with a thyroid condition?

The thyroid gland produces hormones that regulate your metabolism.

Just like some people have a fast metabolism overall, others have a slow one, but it doesn’t have to do with the thyroid alone. Many things affect your overall metabolic rate, like muscle mass, gender, activity level, stress levels, diet, stimulants and medications.

There are different kinds of thyroid conditions, mainly hypothyroidism which means low thyroid levels and hyperthyroidism which is high thyroid levels.

 

Hypothyroidism is very common

One cause is the autoimmune thyroid disease Hashimoto’s. Your thyroid gland is being attacked by antibodies and you end up with a sick thyroid that can’t produce active hormones properly.

You can be born with hypothyroidism, you can have it running in the family, you can trigger it by lifestyle, stress or medications like antidepressants and birth control pills.

You can also stress your body so hard with low calorie diet or a starvation diet which makes your thyroid slow down its hormone production to save you from dying. In this last example the thyroid will recover and your metabolism will return into a normal state when you eat more.

Many anorexics’ thyroid levels are very low which stems from the fact they’re not eating and that transfers into a low metabolism.

 

If you’re concerned about your thyroid, have these tests done:

1) TSH

2) Antibody Test

3) Free t4

4) Free t3

5) Reverse t3.

6) Thyroid Binding Globulin

 

I’m trying to keep this blog brief, so let’s get into the Fighterdiet and hypothyroid thing

Fighterdiet includes a lot of foods that can steal iodine from your thyroid.

Your thyroid needs iodine to produce hormones. Amongst these foods are my favorite vegetable cabbage, broccoli and all other members in the brassica family like the currently trendy kale. So can you eat these with a thyroid condition?

 

First of all, if you have a thyroid problem you probably need medication for life.

Secondly, cooking these foods destroys most of these components. Here’s another good one with details on different cooking methods effect.

I think you all know what a microwave enthusiast I am with my cabbage. Well, I might be on to something here: “Microwaving, as well as stir-frying and stir-frying/boiling, caused a high loss of glucosinolates in the present work”

Thirdly, you can always swap these foods for other non goitrogenic ones like green beans, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, mushrooms, squash and bell peppers.

 

You need to support your thyroid with the right minerals too

Iodine as mentioned before and selenium is very important. Pink salmon and fish in general is a really good source of selenium and iodine so that’s another reason the original Fighterdiet dinner is great!

There are many things that might be problematic for those with a thyroid issue; coffee, strawberries, gluten, wheat, oats, pine nuts, peanuts, anything soy unless it’s fermented and pretty much most of the “fun foods” in my opinion.

Keep in mind that some people can eat sugar all day long and never end up with diabetes, others can’t have any and end up born with it or develop diabetes. Life isn’t fair and same thing is true regarding thyroid and your food choices… You can only see what’s right for you by trying different things and allow time to see the results.

You might think that overweight individuals usually have low thyroid levels, but that’s not true.  Often they have high levels. So how on earth can they be fat you might wonder?

The truth is NO thyroid level or thyroid medication in the world can compete against a lousy diet or a lack of exercise

You can take an excess of thyroid pills and not lose one pound of fat because you still eat wrong. You might however lose muscle since muscle loss and weakness is the prize of excess thyroid.

I’ve had many clients who thought they’d lose fat when medicated with thyroid, yet to see their disappointment when it didn’t happen until finally they put in the hard work of working out and dietary discipline…

So what can you do if you are medicated and worried your Fighter Diet is affecting your metabolism?

Do a run of your own trial and error

Have your Fighterdiet vegetables but please there’s a reason I tell you all to not eat cruciferous vegetables raw no matter how healthy they are for us, for two months and see what happens. Then swap them using the Fighterdiet Food Pyramid and see what happens!

I would definitely stay clear from soy products since they seem to affect the thyroid hormone conversion more than others.

Cabbage and broccoli are not a one sided story though. Research indicates they protect us from thyroid cancer too.

 

Let’s repeat why these foods might affect your thyroid

*They steal iodine from your thyroid. Solution is to make sure you eat enough iodine to cover it.

* The components in these foods can interfere with the conversion of the inactive thyroid hormone t4 to the active t3. Solution is to deactivate these foods by not eating them raw.

Read more at Linus Pauling Institute here.

For in depth information about thyroid, go here.

 

I don’t know about you, but would you rather eat to protect your body from cancer and take a chance with the thyroid or avoid all these super foods that might have some to do with your thyroid but has not been proven to really matter? Your call!

Personally I don’t want to live a life avoiding tons of healthy foods due to a potential mechanism not even proven matters.

There’s no way I would cut out my favorite foods until they’re 100% proven guilty of being evil!