Graves Disease – Fast Diet

This topic contains 4 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by Strathearn 8 years, 6 months ago.

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hemum

12:20 pm
13 Oct 15
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Hi All

Hope someone can help please. I used the fast diet last year and lost 1.5 stone, it was great. Then in May I was diagnosed with Graves Disease and put onto carbimazole and the weight just piled on. I am now down to 10mg per day and have been fasting 2 days a week for 3 weeks and havent lost an ounce! I have also increased my exercise and have been reducing my intake on the non fast days. I have read on the internet that carbimazole can cause weight gain. I am really asking myself if there is any point in fasting if its not going to make any difference. Has anyone had this problem please?

Many thanks

Cinque

1:51 am
14 Oct 15
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Hi Hemum, How frustrating!
I haven’t had this problem, but I know that weight gain with some medications is just awful for the poor people suffering enough already!
The only thing that comes to my mind is that maybe if you weren’t doing 5:2 you would have piled heaps more weight on. If that is so, it might be worth keeping on 5:2 to at least maintain your weight where it is.
I hope you have a good doctor/specialist to discuss this with, and that people who have had experience with carbimazole come along to share their experience.
Sending good wishes

bakasana

4:43 am
14 Oct 15
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Hi hemum, I too have Graves and completely understand what you’re going through.

I piled on nearly 30kgs while on carbimazole and as a result became pre-diabetic. It was probably partly due to the glacial speed metabolism which carbimazole bestows and partly due to the habit of eating when I wasn’t hungry, which I’d developed when my Graves was at its most ravenous.

Sadly I wasn’t aware of fasting at the time but I’m certain that it would have made a difference; at the very least I probably wouldn’t have gained so much or have had to work so hard for so long to shift it. Am now only about one size away from where I was pre-Graves.

Sorry for the length of this reply. Hope this has been of some help though, it’s frustratingly slow, grinding work but you ***will*** get through this.

diggles

8:29 am
14 Oct 15
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Hi hemum,
I also had Graves’ disease and was treated with carbimazole. My dose was reduced until eventually my specialist decided I didn’t need it at all and I was medication free for 2 years. All was good until I became very stressed at work and my graves flared up again. That time I took the carbimazole to get it under control and then I had radioactive iodine to permanently deal with the overactiivity and now I take thyroxin for an under active thyroid. Easier to deal with.

What I have learned from all of this is that when my metabolism was going crazy with untreated graves the weight just dropped off no matter what I ate. Both times that I started on the medication my weight went up significantly but I agree with bakasana – in my case it was simply because I had got used to eating so much!

2 years after my iodine I have decided to deal with the excess weight. I have been making slow but steady progress with the 5:2 way of eating. It is working for me in a way that nothing else has.
Not sure if this helps you at all but I really do think it will work for you too.

Strathearn

11:31 am
19 Oct 15
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I’m another Graves Disease sufferer and I feel I have benefitted enormously from the 5:2 regime. Having been diagnosed in 2010, I was still on Carbimazole at the beginning of this year, albeit down to a 5mg dose. I tried coming off in 2014, but started “boiling up” again. My weight had slowly crept up while I was on the drug.

I began the 5:2 in February this year and am now lighter than I have been for about 20 years (I’ve lost almost 2 stones). I don’t know whether it’s the weight loss or the fasting, but it has improved my health to the extent that I came off Carbimazole four months ago and have continued at normal thyroid levels since then. I am also having less pain from my Hallux Rigidus (osteoarthritis of the big toe joints).

The weight loss has been slow and rather up and down at times, but the trend of the graph has been ever downward. I was given reassurance by others on the forum who said don’t mind if the scales aren’t always reading less, the inches may still be coming off. My target is to lose a couple more pounds then go onto a 1-day a week regime, because I believe the fasting is beneficial to my health.

So I’d say stick with it and give it time. It’s likely to do you good in the long run.