After one year of training five days a week, lifting heavy, with every gram of food weighed and measured, I did a body scan. It told me I had gained one kilo of muscle. Brilliant. And one kilo of pure fat. How the fuck is that even possible? If anybody had told me that story, I would have looked at her and said, sorry, you’re doing something wrong. You’re eating more than you think. And there I was, the one doing everything right, with a kilo of fat to prove it.
Let me go back. I have always been slim and fit. I could eat massive amounts of food and nothing happened. Even menopause, with all its drama, left my body alone. I stopped bleeding, I had hot flashes, and that was it.
Ten years later the thyroid came for me. Hypothyroid and Hashimoto’s autoimmune disease. The first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t sleep. I have always slept like a log, and suddenly I was lying awake night after night. And I was gaining weight. I didn’t recognise my own body and I couldn’t figure out what was happening. So I went to the doctor, and he told me what every woman has heard a thousand times. Eat less, move more.
So I did. I did what we do, I buckled down. I went through my nutrition, healed my leaky gut, and worked hard on bringing my health back. I watched my autoimmune counts go down, which was a huge win. On paper I was doing really well, and the weight kept piling on. I spent months raw vegan, then added foods back in one at a time. Nothing. Everywhere I looked it was calories in, calories out, and I was doing the maths and it didn’t add up. So I joined the gym. I got programmes, I tracked my food, I trained five days a week. A bit of cardio and a lot of lifting, and I lift heavy. I’m strong. I did everything by the book, and a year later the scan told me what it told me.
I hated how I looked and I hated how I felt. None of my clothes fitted, and I felt like a stranger in my own body. I looked six months pregnant. I’m 65. I wasn’t. Being big while doing my utmost to be healthy made me feel like shit.
So I went looking online. Every weight loss place had a questionnaire, and I answered them all. None of them asked about hormones. None of them asked about my thyroid, which I now know is a huge thing when it comes to weight. Then I found one place that talked about metabolism, the first place to do so, and I thought, yes, that’s my problem. I signed up, I got a coach, she gave me all my menus and I followed them to a T. I measured, I weighed, and even though I don’t enjoy cooking and food must be easy for me, I spent hours in the kitchen to follow the menus. I exercised. After three months I was 1 kg down, and then I was stuck. Nothing moved.
So I complained. I was assigned a new coach, and he was amazing. He was on it straight away. Thyroid, he said, is a whole different beast. Calories in and out don’t matter, exercise doesn’t matter, nothing will really fix this until your medication is balanced. He gave me training programmes and simplified menus, bless him. The training was easy. Resting was the hard part. Four days a week of training, no more.
Between training sets, two minutes rest instead of my 30 to 60 seconds. I don’t rest. I have never been the resting type. When I train, I train five, six days a week and I go hard and heavy. I remember standing there thinking, fuck me, I’m going to sit here for two whole minutes and wait to move again.
But I did what he told me, and I started losing weight. Only a little. My body started changing, it got stronger and it looked better.
Every week I checked in with him, and he asked me things nobody else had asked. What are you going through in your life right now? Emotionally? Practically? He took all of it into account, and one day he said it to me straight. You’re overloaded all the time, and you’ve been overloaded for the past 30 years. Back off. Take rest. Be kinder to yourself. Thirty years! Think about that. Thirty years of being the one who handles everything, and when my body broke down, my answer was to handle it harder. Train more, eat perfectly, weigh the food, push through.
My body had had enough.
He kept talking about inflammation, and it took me forever to understand him. I kept saying, I don’t have an inflammation, I’m perfectly healthy apart from the thyroid. Then it clicked. Inflammation is basically a state of stress in the body, with cortisol and all the other hormones coming along for the ride. And the food was a huge stress too. “Did I eat enough protein? Oh my God, I ate a cake.”
Along the way I got my medication sorted, the T3 and T4 balanced. And then came the moment that showed me what he meant. I was tired, so I took a week off. No training. I went for walks every day and I studied. And I lost a kilo. In one week. Boom, it just disappeared. After years of fighting for every gram, a week of walking and sitting with my books did what a year of heavy lifting couldn’t.
I think this goes beyond the thyroid. When hormones go haywire, and they do in menopause and in thyroid problems in very similar ways, I believe the body goes into this state of stress, and eating less and moving more only adds to it. Nobody I went to talked about this, until one coach asked about my life.
Now I train four days a week. Some mornings I wake up and think, no, I’m not feeling it today, and I don’t go. I love training, I love going in the morning, and still I will stay home if I need it. Most of all, I’m kind to myself about it. I’m not as strict with food anymore. I’m sleeping again. And I’m losing weight, at my own pace, around a kilo a month, and I’m like, wow, look at me go. The weight loss people talk about half a kilo to a kilo a week at the start. I laugh. A kilo a month is my victory.
It’s taken four years. I’m on the other side now, my hormones are optimised, autoimmune markers are declining, I am sleeping and I’m starting to feel happy in my body again.
Now I can laugh at how one year of extreme discipline gave me a kilo of fat!
So tell me, where are you still pushing harder when your body is asking you to stop? Hit reply or drop it in the comments. I read every one.
Anna
P.S. It took four years and one coach who asked about my life. In the Atelier, that question comes first. Anna’s Atelier is the paid part of Hera, €9 a month or €90 a year. It’s where we work with this time of life through body, mind, emotions and scent, and where I ask every woman the same question: what can I do for you? If you’re not ready, read along for free and my essays will come straight to your inbox. You are welcome either way.