Anyone else on T3 only script?
I haven't spent much time on here lately as things have been fairly stable with my TRT protocol. But last year I had a low iron issue that required supplementation at 45 mg a day for most of the year. It brought it back somewhat but at that dose It still wasn't climbing as much as it needed to. Dr decided it was more than likely related to my thyroid.
I have known I have had hypothyroidism for a bit more than a couple years. Back then I went on synthroid and felt horrible, dr bumped up the dose and I just dropped it completely. My current doctor decided to focus on the cause which was Hashimoto's and helped get that under control by removing foods that were causing issues. I had significant changes in TSH and free t3, but was still tired a lot, like that diet had me falling asleep at work really fast. I tried to reintroduce foods and find a culprit but nothing worked.
Fast forward back to after the iron issues my Dr put me on armor thyroid, which once again made me feel worse, I would get blood shot eyes and had complete lack of motivation. I started T3 only just a couple weeks ago, and those issues started to go away. We are doing our first blood work on the T3 only as soon as I am able to get it done. Dr believes RT3 to be the issue and it not allowing receptor sites to use the T3, hence the T3 only protocol.
It has been quite frustrating, but after my failed attempt with synthroid I decided to give this go around the best shot I could, and endure the issues till it was solved. It is getting frustrating to me and I will tell you why.
Before I started synthroid I had lost a bit of weight, and was doing really well physically, I went on synthroid and gained 10 lbs while on, then another 10 lbs when I came off. Last summer I had bod pod and skin fold readings done and was at 12.7% bodyfat and 10.7%ish on those readings. And you could tell by how I looked. I had been taking T3 on my own prior to that low body fat reading for something like 7 weeks and reading was done 6 weeks later. Yesterday I know it isn't accurate, but had the hand held body fat reader take me at 21.9%, I usually don't put any faith in these, but to be honest I probably look dang near close to that.
When I went on the armor thyroid though I was determined to not let myself get fat, but I wanted to see how I felt without having too restricted of calories. So started off trying to eat at maintenance. I kept feeling fatter and fatter as things went on, so I started reducing calories incrementally, then I went as far as dropping carbs entirely some days and for all meals till dinner. I was staying under 1500 calories most days and when I would eat more on my lifting days it wasn't much more. I even got as low as 900 calories some days. All this time never losing any weight, managed to stay about the same weight yet look fatter and fatter. So you could understand why I would be frustrated to look as bad as I do. The fat under my belly button started to protrude greatly, it almost looks like a big ab bulge, top 4 ab areas it is fairly flat, then the lower stomach fat sticks out greatly and it is even wider, looks like a big bar across there, and it looks even worse from the side. And all these reduced calories never gave me an appetite, I never had issues falling asleep, I never got super hungry when I would go to refeed. I went from looking the best I have looked in my life to about the worst I have looked in the past several years, while taking armor thyroid.
I imagine there must be other factors going on. I am determined to get this figured out, I have been giving it a lot of time, even though it frustrates me as I have back tracked in my goals as far as strength and body composition goes, but my hope is when it is all said and done, I have a dialed in T3 dose that allows me to have a healthy fat level while eating healthy, and being able to respond to calorie deficits and surpluses properly. And my hopes are that is the only issue I have, there may be underlying problems in my gut and other contributing factors that my dr will seek out if I don't feel better.
Anyone else end up on Dr. prescribed T3 only? What was your experience like? What were your observations and what did you go through? Any tips to make things better for me? Any other questions about details of what I have done, feel free to ask. I just needed to get this off my chest, as this whole situation has really bothered me, but I would love people's input. I also am curious whether this is commonly genetic, and if I have family members I should be helping with this discovery, I haven't said anything to anyone yet, because I want to see if it even works.
