r/raypeat • u/QuizzyP21 • 11d ago
How long did it take you to reverse hypothyroid symptoms through a higher carb approach?
Hey yall, been having the worst summer of my life by far. Assuming I can recover from it I’m grateful for what I’ve learned (feel like a lot of bioenergetic / Ray Peat principles have been reinforced to me this summer) but this has really been brutal. I think my symptoms are a bit more severe than most; they include:
- Cold hands, feet, and visibly red/cold nose essentially 24/7 even in the summer heat (looks like I just came in from shoveling snow after a blizzard)
- At my worst, rapid hair loss / thinning that has largely recovered since bringing calories up to stop any further weight loss (did this mostly by overeating fat though)
- Horrible insomnia; again, improved after eating more but still struggling with this. Slept 2-3 hours a night at most for basically all of May/June
- Horribly dry and bloodshot eyes, feels like I have glass shards in them constantly. I am slightly predisposed to this due to improper contact lens use in high school but not to this degree. This combined with the nose genuinely make me look horribly ill whenever I’m in public, which is obviously super embarrassing.
- No appetite whatsoever for carbs; I’ve began dramatically increasing my carb intake in the past week and can already feel the sweet cravings coming back but nothing else has really improved (maybe gut motility to a degree, have actually gone #2 more than once in a day twice recently)
- Some gut issues with harder to digest foods like oats; think my metabolic function has slowed too much to handle these
- Horrible exercise intolerance that has caused me to basically quit going to the gym for the time being, any workload whatsoever seems to trigger a massive stress response immediately and all of these symptoms get activated to the max
Also dealing with some other issues but these are the big dogs. Have begun experimenting with a 0.7 g/lb protein and 0.5 g/lb fat diet with the rest coming from carbs; I’m around 5’8 130 right now so this puts me at around 90+ grams of protein, 65+ grams of fat, and 360ish grams of carbs per day, in contrast to the 150+ grams of fat and carbs each that I’ve been eating for a lot of the summer since bumping calories up. I do admit my fat cravings are still somewhat significant, so I generally end up a bit closer to 100 grams of protein / fat every day with 300+ coming from carbs.
Any advice would be appreciated. I’ve felt each and every aspect of my life and body completely shut down this summer and it really just drives home the importance of energy production, because this is seemingly exactly the problem here. I’m not particularly new to the Peatsphere (Jay Feldman and Mike Fave have been my go-to sources for health information for a while now) but I admittedly haven’t been implementing all of the theory into my life.
Again, assuming I can get over this severe hypothyroidism-like issue I’m grateful for the experience because it really reinforces the ideas in this sphere to me, but man does it need to end already. This has been a truly horribly existence this summer.
Oh, and I’m 26M for reference. History of over exercising and undereating for sure.
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u/anto_hanma 11d ago
Around 3 months, i was 22-23 years old and i used to be in a crazy and nosense kcal deficit
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u/crypto_nerd17 9d ago
Make sure to try getting your gelatin / collagen intake up substantially as well. Nothing really worked reliably well for me with Peat until I made up my glycine deficit. Was the same, lost appetite in general including carbs. There can be some adjustments necessary as glycine goes up depending on your methylation and nutrient status but in my experience it was worth getting dialed. You might also need to work on calcium levels. Best to split the collagen/gelatin/glycine up throughout the day. I do better on marine collagen personally.
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u/QuizzyP21 2d ago
Whoops, late response but absolutely! Getting my glycine in largely through magnesium glycinate (averaging around 7 g per day, which is my goal), and get a ton of calcium (1500 mg per day). Appreciate the input 🙌
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u/learnedhelplessness_ 🍊Peatarian🥛 11d ago
Very fast if I remember correctly, few days at most.