Gemma’s Underactive Thyroid – gone!

“After having my son in 2009 I had a couple of quite scary experiences of being so tired, that when I was driving to nursery to drop my daughter off  I would fall asleep at traffic lights – I was terrified to be honest but I couldn’t decide if this was having a new baby or something else.

One trip to the Dr later I had a blood test to be told that I had a borderline under-active thyroid and that combined with sleep deprivation was probably why I was falling asleep at traffic lights. However by the time I had been “diagnosed” sleep was back on track and I was finding the tiredness more easy to manage and to be frank the thought of going on drugs for the rest of my life terrified me. So I agreed with the Dr to come back and get re-tested. Again borderline but I still couldn’t get my head around being on drugs for the rest of my life, so I plodded through 2010 and part of 2011. Overweight, tired and unhappy and, frankly, feeling out of control.

September 2011 was a big turning point in my life, enough was enough I had decided to take control. I gave up work – I was miserable and hated it, and my daughter was starting school so I took the decision to be a full-time mum as I just didn’t want to miss out anymore. I started FastTrack Fit Camp to help me take control of the tiredness, the weight and my general lack of fitness – I didn’t want to be the “Fat” mum in the playground and, to be frank, I was sick of going to bed tired and waking up tired. At this point I was still deciding whether to go on the thyroid drugs or not, my husband was keener than I was but I still wasn’t comfortable.

December 2011 – was a great time for me, FastTrack Fit Camp had helped me to regain my sense of control of my life, I had lost 2 stone, and dropped in a matter of months, from a size 20 to size 16 jeans (size 14 joggers as 16’s fall down doing jumping jacks – I’m the one always pulling my trousers up!) and a size 16 / 14 top. I was fitter, healthier, could walk to school without feeling dead on my feet, and just buzzed about life in general! Oh and I was sleeping better, going to bed later, getting up earlier and in the words of my husband “no longer a grumpy moo”.

At the same time I got retested for my Thyroid levels and much to the Dr, and my, surprise my levels had gone back up so I was no longer borderline under-active! However we still decided that I needed to go on the drugs as I was symptomatic still. So I bit the bullet and started taking the lowest dosage as an “experiment” to see how I would get on.

To be frank I initially felt great – even better than I had been just on Fit Camp (yes I class it as a drug and an addiction!) but by March 2012 I started to suffer really bad ocular migraines (no pain just whizzy eyes) I started to feel permanently off my head – it was horrible and horrendous and incredibly scary and I just didn’t know what to do with myself. So I took myself off the drugs. What an amazing difference. I went straight to the Drs and she told me something very interesting.

I had initially been told that once you have an under-active thyroid that’s it for life, drugs forever, it’s down hill from here. But this Dr (who had been through a similar experience) said to me because of the weight loss, because of the regular exercise and the healthy lifestyle my body had healed itself 🙂 No more drugs for me! Amazing – all because I have lost weight, eat (mostly!) to plan and exercise three times a week! Fit Camp changed my life.

So although we (me especially) might groan and moan our way through burpees and renegade rows, and I long for granary bread at certain times of the month (never chocolate anymore like I used too!) I now know from personal experience that it really does work and I have healed myself, not only physically, by taking proper care of my body, but also mentally by coming to terms with and accepting that my body is what it is and that I will always have “hockey” legs and having a new sense of pride and self worth in what I have achieved and knowing that it is down to me to keep myself fit an healthy.

And I tell you what, that’s the best incentive of them all.”

Gemma Ackerman – Swallowfield Camp
May 2012