The Thyroid Diet
WLR dietitian Juliette Kellow reviews The Thyroid Diet
book and reveals whether it is worth adding to your bookcase!
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The Thyroid Diet by Mary J Shomon (Harper Thorsons,
£10.99)
REVIEW By
WLR Dietitian
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What’s the theory?
Many millions of people have an undiagnosed thyroid problem
that affects their metabolism and results in them piling on
the pounds, despite their best efforts to lose weight. For
those with an underactive thyroid, weight loss is often hard,
even when the condition is treated. That’s where this book
comes to the rescue by providing three different diet plans to
help these people shift the pounds.
What does the diet involve?
You answer a few questions to discover the best diet to
suit you. The three diets are ‘Free-Form’, ‘Carb-Sensitive’
and ‘Calorie-Sensitive’.
The Free-Form plan is based on eating healthily with three
meals and 1–2 snacks a day, protein with each meal, low GI
carbs and healthy fats.
The Carb-Sensitive plan is practically identical with just
one less serving of low GI fruit and starches and an extra 5g
of fibre!
The Calorie-Sensitive plan involves using equations to work
out the number of calories you need each day but doesn’t give
you any advice on the foods you should eat to make up your
calorie allowance.
You should stick to your chosen plan for at least four
weeks. There’s also advice on how to tweak the plans if you’re
not losing weight, for example, by drinking more water,
cutting back on starchy foods and calories or dropping the
snacks. There are also plenty of calorie, fat and carb-counted
recipes to choose from.
What else does the book include?
This book doesn’t just focus on treating an underactive
thyroid – it includes information about all types of thyroid
problem including an overactive thyroid and thyroid cancer.
There’s information about the causes, symptoms and who’s at
risk and it helps people identify whether they could have a
thyroid problem.
It also provides information on diagnosis and treatment and
explains how thyroid disorders affect weight, even when they
are treated with medication. There’s also a lot of information
that appears to bear no specific relevance to thyroid problems
such as information about coeliac disease, thrush, parasitic
infections, drugs that cause weight gain and supplements that
may aid weight loss. In fact, the diet section is a relatively
small part of the book!
How much weight will I lose?
There’s no specific weight loss promise made. The book
acknowledges that if you have a thyroid problem, you’ll
probably find it harder to lose weight, even if you’re
receiving treatment.
Juliette’s verdict on The Thyroid Diet
This is hard going with lots of scientific information to
plough through before getting to the actual diets themselves.
After 100 pages, I was hungry to find out what the diets
involved. By the time I actually came to the diets (eventually
on page 143), my appetite had all but gone – and sadly the
plans did nothing to restore it.
The diets are sketchy and there’s nothing that makes them
unique for people with thyroid problems. Ultimately, like
other reduced-calorie plans, they would probably work for
anyone, regardless of whether or not they had a thyroid
problem.
Having said this, this book is useful for people who think
they may have a thyroid problem and want more information on
the symptoms and treatments available.
More Information
Using the healthy eating tools in WLR will help you learn
how to eat healthily and balance your diet for weight loss.
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