Interested in a Thyroid-Promoting Diet?
Today we’ll get into more detail about a thyroid-promoting diet. Which means we are going to discuss again what it means to eat an energy-promoting diet.
Yes, a bioenergetic or pro-metabolic diet is also one that supports the thyroid, and can be crucial to you getting your life back.
All of the problems that you want solved or fixed in your body will likely only become achievable with adequate energy production. Only when you produce enough energy to exceed the demands and stress that your body deals with daily will it have the energy resources available to devote to healing and regenerating you. In other words, greater energy creates greater resiliency.
We all know that our environment right now is far from optimal. The stressors that demand energy from your cells are huge: EMFs, mold, air pollution, food toxins, pesticides, drugs in our tap water, microplastics, glyphosate, PUFAs, the list goes on and on. We are literally bathing in toxic stress all day long.
So why add to the burden by eating low carb and fasting, or even chronically exercising incorrectly, which are each energy-sapping stressors to the body? Does that sound like a smart way to “get healthy”? Does adding even more stress sound remotely intelligent?
No, it does not. The scales need to be shifted. We need to increase our energy supply to meet and exceed the demand.
What defines “health” anyway?
Let me apply a bioenergetic lens to “health and wellness” taken from a recent video I watched from the Armstrong sisters.
When you are “healthy” the following should define your life:
High body temps and pulses
Warm hands and feet
1-3 bowel movements a day
Not excessively urinating
Good hormonal function (healthy sex drive, fertile, no PMS, ovulating)
Shiny hair, strong nails, smooth & healthy skin
7-9 hours of good sleep
Feeling happy and content
Good energy all day
Maintaining weight without dieting, restricting, or excessive exerciseThis optimal health profile can be achieved only with sufficient energy production.
The bioenergetic viewpoint is a return to focusing on how the body truly works, how we make energy, and then choosing foods that support this energy production.
We keep being told that being overweight, which is an epidemic in our society, is the result of consuming too much energy, so much so that the excess is getting stored as body fat. So we’re told to reduce our energy consumption and increase our energy output and that should fix the problem. Only it doesn’t.
Why?
Because like I explained in this post, Calories do not equal energy.
Energy production has less to do with the amount of Calories you are eating than the type of food you are eating. Think of energy as a resource. Let’s even give it a name and a symbol: E🔥
Here is a very short list of what requires E🔥 daily in the body:
- Digestion
- Thinking
- Talking
- Breathing
- Moving
- T3 production
- Repairing
- Exercise
- Hormone production
- Maintaining strong tissue structure
- Detoxing
- Growing hair and nails
- Heart beating
- Neurons firing
Let’s say all this requires 100 E🔥. But you only produce 85 E🔥 or even barely 60 E🔥. What is your body going to do?
Prioritize.
When resources are scarce, the body will prioritize the necessities to keep you alive. Non-essential tasks will be down-regulated via the thyroid dial pathway: hormonal function, digestion, good hair and skin, detoxification, etc.
And your body will rely on inefficient backup pathways like stress hormones to provide your body with enough fuel.
So, STOP thinking negatively about what foods will make you fat or skinny.
And START thinking positively about what foods will get you to 100+ E🔥.
Eat MORE of the things that improve E🔥
And MINIMIZE the foods that hinder E🔥.
Then your body will lower the stress hormones, and thus stop the fat sparing and storage that those exact stress hormones are causing.
Your body is an entire system. Nothing is in isolation. You will never get to the weight you desire or to the healthy life you crave if you do not remove the blocks to E🔥.
So, what are the ⬆️ E🔥 foods?
CARBS
Ripe fruit, fruit juice, maple syrup, raw honey, white rice, potatoes, etc.
As we talked about here, carbs signal abundance to your body. Because glucose oxidation is the preferred path of energy production (E🔥) in your body, carbohydrates are the preferred fuel.
Depending on your caloric needs, every human being needs from 250 g to 500+ g of carbs per day.
FAT
Saturated sources only - like butter, tallow, coconut oil, cocoa butter, chocolate, etc. NO SEED OILS ever and no other plant-based oils (like olive or avocado) until your health is optimal.
Saturated fat is the energy source for your muscles at rest and during low level, easy exercise. It feeds your muscles and heart when you are resting and is used to build all of your cellular membranes, your brain, and tons of hormones. PUFAs cause reductive stress in the mitochondria and should be completely avoided.
If you are dealing with low thyroid or other low energy issues, or are recovering from low carb and fasting, you must reduce your fat intake to 20% of your Calories. This is necessary to allow your mitochondria to switch back to glucose oxidation so that high E🔥 can be achieved. Eventually, the optimal range of fat consumed should be 20-40% of Calories.
PROTEIN
Grass-fed ruminants (beef, lamb, deer, etc), low-PUFA eggs, raw milk and cheeses, collagen, bone broth, low-PUFA fish, oysters, shrimp, etc.
Protein should not be a primary energy source. If you have been chronically low carb or fasting like I was, then protein has unfortunately been forced (through the direction of the stress hormones) to become a glucose source through the energy-sapping process of gluconeogenesis. You want to turn this off immediately by consuming adequate carbs. Your protein should be used to build your structure and systems (its primary and highly desirable job) and only be used for energy in an emergency.
Consume 0.6-0.8 g/ideal lb body weight of protein. If you have more body fat, consume the lower end. If you have little body fat, consume the higher end.
Next time, we will discuss how to figure out exactly what your own personal numbers should be.
For now, work on really upping your carbs and lowering the fat and eating enough protein and you will help feed the thyroid what it needs.
Until next time, be well!