The Thyroid's Role In Weight Loss

Your thyroid controls your metabolism. Any malfunction or disease affection this gland may cause metabolism problems, whichin turn can cause drastic weight problems. If you have a thyroid problem, you may either gain weight, lose weight, or you may find that losing weight is harder than usual.

Many diet planners don't take the thyroid into consideration when designing a weight loss program. As such, the most common advice given by experts and the media is to cut calories to lose weight. But this may be detrimental to your health if you have a thyroid problem.

Those with a condition called hyperthyroidism have a high metabolism due to an overactive thyroid. They tend to lose weight faster than non-hyperthyroidic people. This sounds great, but it can actually be hazardous to the person's health.

Aside from the medical difficulties such a disease brings, one will also notice weight problems as a result. These people have trouble keeping on weight and may notice weakness and bulging of the eyes. This disease may need special treatment from doctors.

Hypothyroidism on the other hand works in the other direction – slowing metabolism until the body gains weight at an incredible rate. Like hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism causes a general weakness in the body. It too may need special treatment and may cause serious health problems if left unattended.

While cutting calories in itself can be very hard for most people – imagine, the people involved in life and death struggles at the supermarket regarding whether to buy that extra box of sweets, some have exactly the opposite problem.

Instead of eating too much calories – which is a problem in itself, they eat too little calories instead.

Problem? What Problem?

The problem with some is that they believe that since the experts say that they have to cut calories, cutting calories to an inordinate amount will reap greater results. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. While cutting calories helps diets, consuming too little calories pushed the body into a hoard mode, the body’s metabolism slow to adapt to the lesser amount of available energy.