I have hypothyroidism that was diagnosed last year and I started taking thyroxin about 10 months ago. I started SS 4 months ago, with progress that is probably not great. However, some of my symptoms have returned - I wasn’t sure until a month ago, when it got worse (digestive issues, tiredness, losing weight). Everything stalled pretty badly, or even regressed. I went for a test and my blood levels were almost back to before I took the meds.
More details:
I’m 29, female, 168cm tall, 67cm waist, 57 kg (5 feet 6 inches, 26 inches, 126 pounds). Before taking any meds, I had 5.3 mU/l thyrotropin and 14.0 pmol/l thyroxine (sorry if I mistranslated the names). After taking 62 micrograms of thyroxine, it went to 1.0 and 17.2. Now I was back at 4.1 and 15.7.
Squat 20 → 41 kg (44 → 90 pounds)
Bench 17.5 → 27 kg (38.5 → 59 pounds)
Press 12.5 → 21 kg (27.5 → 46 pounds)
Deadlift 25 → 50 kg (55 → 110 pounds)
Power clean 16 → 26 kg (35 → 57 pounds)
I time my rests to 5 minutes and skipped maybe 2 sessions since I began. I gained 3 kg (6.5 pounds) during the first 3 months, but lost 2 kg over the past month. I haven’t made any progress this month - I probably should have tried to eat more, but you know, summer. Some days I can grind out my previous PRs, some days I fail them and lower the weight. It’s getting a little better, I managed to add 1kg to both the bench and press recently. I’ll try to start gaining some weight in a couple weeks.
It’s going to take a while to titrate the dosage up, last time it took a couple re-tests before the correct one was found. Should I somehow adjust the training during this time? Once the dosage is right, can I just ignore this whole thing?
- I felt reasonably well - I still had some minor amount of digestive issues, but I felt a lot better than before (I wish I had kept some kind of log). It slowly deteriorated since then. Oddly enough, I felt the best the first week I ever started taking thyroxin, even though the dosage turned out to be half of what I eventually needed. Digestion worked like clockwork. Then it was gone, and even subsequent increases didn’t bring it back completely…
- I just want to be stronger. I thought gaining about 1 kg/month and losing it later would work better than recomp. Although in the long term I wouldn’t mind gaining ~5 kg of muscle while having about 3 kg less fat than now.
- OK, I’ll try the Bridge then. I thought my numbers are way too low to move on from LP, but I guess whatever I’m doing isn’t working.
Is it common for people with hypothyroidism to have this much trouble or should I look for other causes? I’m going to a local SS coach to have my form checked out, but I suppose that bad form wouldn’t cause all the lifts to stall at the same time.
Thank you!
- I felt reasonably well - I still had some minor amount of digestive issues, but I felt a lot better than before. It slowly deteriorated since then.
- I don’t want to gain weight per se, I just want to be stronger. I thought gaining about 1 kg/month and losing it later would work better than recomp. The weight loss effect I have from this is pretty minor, I could have easily made myself eat more had I wanted to.
- OK, I’ll try the Bridge.
I just listened to your programming podcast and it’s like you described me - I thought my recovery wasn’t good enough and I kept trying to sleep&eat more, resetting, taking longer breaks or having an extra rest day. Everything except deadlifts (kept rounding my back, fixed it only recently) has been RPE 10 since month #2, I got video of squats where I was stuck in place for 3 seconds and grinding trough it, and I still felt like a p***y because my numbers were so low. And I never thought I might need more volume.
Thank you very much for the help.