Tag Archives: leptin resistance

“If Thyroid Pills Burned Calories, I’d Be a Supermodel: Why Your Medication Isn’t Fixing Your Metabolism — And What Actually Will”

Leave a reply

By A.L. Childers — the woman who once believed Thyroid Pills would magically turn her into a woodland sprite, only to wake up still human.

✨Read This Before Your Next Thyroid Meltdown

If you’ve ever stood in your kitchen at 7 a.m., staring at your tiny thyroid pill like it’s a golden ticket to a slimmer life — only to end the day feeling puffy, sluggish, and ready to fight God Himself…

You are not alone.

If swallowing thyroid medication burned calories, half of us would have abs.
Instead, we have… opinions.
And doctors who say “your labs are normal.”

🍾 The Day I Realised My Thyroid Medication Wasn’t a Weight-Loss Coach

I used to think switching to Armour was like joining an elite metabolic gym.

I pictured my thyroid hormones doing burpees, deadlifts, and wall-sits.
Meanwhile, I was eating salads, walking miles, drinking water…

Yet somehow gaining weight like my metabolism had been adopted by a sloth family.

Turns out:
Medication is only one piece of the thyroid puzzle — not the whole picture.

Armour, Synthroid, Levothyroxine, NP, Tirosint — pick your potion.
If the rest of the system is broken, the pill can only do so much.

Let’s break down the REAL reasons your medication isn’t helping you drop the weight — with humor, truth, and a few lovingly sarcastic nudges.

1. Your Medication Isn’t Fixing Your Metabolism — Because It Can’t Do All the Work

Thyroid meds replace missing hormones, yes.
But they do NOT automatically:

  • repair metabolic damage
  • undo inflammation
  • correct leptin resistance
  • fix insulin issues
  • reset cortisol
  • unclog your liver
  • heal your gut

Medication can whisper:
“Here’s the hormone you asked for.”

But your body may reply:
“I literally don’t know what to do with that right now.”

Especially if Reverse T3 is sky-high — because Reverse T3 is like the villain in a period novel: charming, well-dressed, and absolutely blocking your progress in every chapter.

2. Leptin Resistance: The Hunger Gremlin That Lives Rent-Free in Your Hormones

Leptin resistance is the thyroid world’s HOA president — controlling everything, allowing nothing, ruining lives.

Signs you might have it:
✔ You gain weight easily
✔ You lose weight only by accident
✔ You are hungry after eating
✔ You gain weight LOOKING at bread
✔ Diets feel like punishment
✔ Exercise feels like betrayal

Leptin resistance slows metabolism so aggressively, you could train for a marathon and the scale would say:

“Cute effort, babe.”

Fixing leptin resistance often matters MORE than adjusting thyroid meds.

3. Reverse T3: The Useless Doorstop Hormone That Blocks All Progress

Reverse T3 is like the coworker who shows up to every meeting with zero contribution yet insists on speaking.

High Reverse T3 means:

  • Your T3 can’t enter the cells
  • Your metabolism stays slow
  • You feel exhausted even with “normal labs”
  • Weight loss becomes impossible

Doctors rarely test it.
Patients rarely know about it.
But it silently wrecks lives.

Simple fix?
Lower T4 meds slightly, raise T3 slowly, and address inflammation.

4. You’re Taking Thyroid Meds… But Your Gut Isn’t Absorbing Them Correctly

Imagine throwing money at the landlord and they never apply it to your account.

That’s your gut on thyroid medication.

Low stomach acid, SIBO, IBS, gluten sensitivity, gallbladder issues, and inflammation all block medication absorption.

If you’re taking thyroid meds with:
🧃 coffee
🍞 bread
🥛 dairy
🍊 orange juice
💊 iron
💊 calcium

Then congratulations — you’re taking them wrong.

Take meds on an empty stomach with water, then wait 45–60 minutes.
If that sounds annoying, welcome to hypothyroidism: where the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.

5. Thyroid Medication Won’t Fix Your Diet… Even If You Swear You Eat “Pretty Healthy”

I used to tell people:
“I eat very healthy.”

Meanwhile, gluten, dairy, sugar, and seed oils were over in the corner whispering:

“She thinks she’s invisible.”

You don’t need a miserable diet.
You need a healing one.

Here are three SIMPLE swaps that repair thyroid metabolism:

🌿 Swap 1: Morning Coffee → Warm Lemon Water + Electrolytes

This reduces inflammation and adrenal stress.

🥚 Swap 2: Cereal/Toast → Protein + Healthy Fat Breakfast

Examples:

  • eggs + avocado
  • turkey sausage + sautéed greens
  • chia pudding with coconut milk

🥗 Swap 3: “Healthy” Processed Foods → Real Ingredients

  • Olive oil, not seed oils
  • Vegetables, not veggie-flavored crackers
  • Fruit, not fruit-flavored yogurt

These changes alone can reduce inflammation enough to LET your thyroid medication actually work.

🍽 Easy Thyroid-Friendly Recipe (So You Don’t Ask “But What Do I Eat?”)

🔥 Thyroid Metabolism Repair Smoothie

  • 1 cup coconut milk
  • 1 handful spinach
  • 1 tbsp chia seeds
  • ½ avocado
  • ½ cup frozen blueberries
  • 1 scoop collagen
  • Cinnamon (balancing for blood sugar)

Blend. Sip. Feel smug.

📚 Thyroid Metabolism Repair — What It ACTUALLY Means

It means repairing the systems that allow your thyroid hormone to work:

✔ Reducing inflammation
✔ Healing the gut
✔ Lowering Reverse T3
✔ Tuning leptin and insulin
✔ Improving sleep
✔ Reducing cortisol
✔ Supporting the liver
✔ Adjusting meds properly
✔ Eating in alignment with hormones

When all these systems work together?
Weight loss stops being a battle and becomes a side effect of healing.

💬 CALL TO ACTION

If this blog made you laugh, sigh, nod, or whisper “this woman is reading my diary,” then SHARE IT.

You never know who else is silently suffering in the shadows of “normal labs.”

🔁 Share it
💬 Comment
❤️ Follow me
📩 Join my email list
🌿 Visit TheHypothyroidismChick.com

Your story matters. Your healing matters. And you don’t have to do this alone.

👩‍💼 ABOUT THE AUTHOR — A.L. Childers

Audrey Childers is a published author, thyroid advocate, and the founder of TheHypothyroidismChick.com.
After years of misdiagnosis, weight struggles, and being told “it’s just stress,” she healed her thyroid and autoimmune issues through functional nutrition, root-cause research, and relentless determination.

She writes to help women reclaim their bodies, their health, and their hope — with humor, compassion, and the occasional well-placed sarcastic jab.

She is the author of:

Her mission?
To make sure no woman ever feels crazy, dismissed, or alone in her thyroid journey again.

📜 DISCLAIMER

This blog is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider before changing medications, supplements, or treatment plans. The author assumes no responsibility for any outcomes resulting from the application of information in this blog.

5 Reasons Armour Thyroid Isn’t Helping You Lose Weight — And What No One Ever Told You

13 Replies

By A.L. Childers — written in the quiet hour when the counting-house candles burn low, and a woman must take inventory of her health the way merchants tally their fortunes.

🔥

If you have ever sat at the edge of your bed — hands in your hair, heart in your throat — wondering how you can swallow a thyroid pill every morning and still feel heavy, swollen, tired, and trapped in a body that no longer feels like your own… this is for you.

Because Armour Thyroid is not the villain.
And you are not the failure.
The missing truth is simply this: no medication can fix what your doctor never measured.

🌾 An Old-World Tale of Modern Thyroid Trouble

Imagine, for a moment, an 18th-century counting house: tall ledgers, ink-stained fingers, and a clerk bent over columns of numbers, trying desperately to make the sums balance.

This, dear reader, is what managing hypothyroidism often feels like.

You take Armour Thyroid.
You wait.
You hope.
You pray the numbers will finally reconcile — the weight, the fatigue, the fog, the pulse, the mood.

But the ledger refuses to even out.

You are doing everything right… and yet the body behaves as though something is terribly amiss in its bookkeeping.

That is because Armour alone cannot fix the metabolic debts accumulated by inflammation, leptin resistance, reverse T3, under-dosing, or inactive ingredients your body rejects.

Let us now open the ledger and examine the five great discrepancies that steal your progress.

1. You Aren’t Being Dosed Correctly (The Most Common, Least Discussed Problem)

Armour Thyroid contains both T4 (inactive) and T3 (active) hormones.
Your doctor often doses it as if T3 were harmless — but T3 is three times more powerful than T4 at lowering TSH.

This leads to two common mistakes:

Mistake A — You were switched from Levothyroxine to Armour using an outdated conversion chart.

Most charts say:
100 mcg T4 = 1 grain Armour
But in reality:
50 mcg T4 ≈ 1 grain Armour

Which means many patients are silently cut in half.

Mistake B — Your doctor fears T3 and under-doses you.

Because T3 can cause heart palpitations if increased too quickly, many doctors start too low and never titrate up.

Result:
Your body stays hypothyroid no matter what the prescription says.

2. Your Body Needs More T3 Than Armour Provides

Some people — especially women — need much higher levels of T3 to move thyroid hormone into the cells.

This is especially true if you have:

  • High Reverse T3
  • Leptin resistance
  • Insulin resistance
  • Fibromyalgia
  • Low body temperature
  • Chronic fatigue
  • Long-term stress
  • Bipolar or mood disorders in the family

Armour Thyroid has fixed ratios, meaning you can’t increase T3 without also increasing T4 (which may worsen Reverse T3).

Adding a small dose of Liothyronine (T3) or Cytomel can be life-changing.

3. Leptin Resistance Is Blocking Your Weight Loss (This One Hurts… But It’s Real)

Leptin is the “fat thermostat.”
When leptin rises, metabolism should rise.

But when leptin breaks — as it does in hypothyroidism, stress, poor sleep, insulin resistance, and inflammation — the brain never gets the message.

Result:
Your metabolism lowers even while you gain weight.
Your hunger increases even while you diet.
Exercise hardly matters.

Most importantly:
Leptin resistance reduces T4 → T3 conversion.
Meaning:
Even Armour cannot help if leptin is choking the metabolic pathways.

A fasting leptin test > 12 usually confirms it.

4. You Are Reacting to Armour’s Inactive Ingredients (No One Warns You About This)

Not all thyroid medications are created equal — not because of the hormones but because of the fillers.

Armour contains:

  • Methylcellulose (binds the hormone and can delay absorption)
  • Dextrose (sugars some people react to)

If you have low stomach acid, SIBO, Hashimoto’s, IBS, or poor digestion, Armour may absorb poorly — or cause symptoms you mistake for thyroid issues.

Many patients do better on:

  • WP Thyroid (fewest fillers)
  • Nature-Throid
  • Tirosint (gel cap, extremely clean)

If Armour feels like it “stops working,” this is often why.

5. Your Reverse T3 Is Too High (The Silent Thyroid Saboteur)

Reverse T3 is like a broken key fitting into the thyroid receptor — blocking the lock without ever turning it.

High Reverse T3 means you can swallow thyroid medicine all day long… and none of it enters the cell.

Causes include:

  • Stress
  • Inflammation
  • Chronic illness
  • Dieting
  • Birth control
  • Certain medications
  • Insulin resistance
  • Leptin resistance
  • Too much T4 medication
  • Gut inflammation

If your Reverse T3 is high, Armour alone cannot help you lose weight.
You must address the cause and adjust medication.

✨ The Ledger Closes — And a New Chapter for Your Health Begins

Armour Thyroid is a useful tool, but it is not a magic wand.
It will not override metabolic blockages, poor conversion, under-dosing, or hormonal chaos.

If you aren’t losing weight on Armour, check the 5 metabolic “entries” in your ledger:

✔ Dose
✔ T3 needs
✔ Leptin resistance
✔ Inactive ingredient sensitivity
✔ Reverse T3

Only when all five balance out…
Only then does weight loss finally move in your favor.

📚 Recommended Reading by A.L. Childers

These books guide you through diet, inflammation reversal, thyroid support, and the deeper emotional journey of reclaiming your health.

📜 DISCLAIMER

The information in this blog reflects personal research and experience and is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not medical, legal, or financial advice. The author is not a medical professional. Always consult a licensed healthcare provider before changing medication, supplements, or treatment plans. The author assumes no responsibility for any outcomes resulting from the use of information in this blog. Your health decisions should be made with a qualified professional. Empower yourself with knowledge — but proceed with care.

👩‍💼 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Audrey Childers — known online as The Hypothyroidism Chick — is a published author, investigative wellness writer, and thyroid advocate with over a decade of research experience. After reversing her own autoimmune and thyroid struggles, she now writes books, guides, and articles to help women reclaim the health the medical system often overlooks.

Her work includes nutrition, autoimmune healing, thyroid-friendly cooking, and lifestyle transformation rooted in both science and lived experience.

You can find her books on Amazon and connect with her at:
🌿 TheHypothyroidismChick.com


📣 CALL TO ACTION (SHARE IT!)

If this helped you, share it, love — you may save another woman years of confusion and suffering.
Drop a comment, repost on Facebook, and tag anyone fighting the same battle.
We heal in community.