The damage one walnut sized faulty gland can do.

 I will admit most of my life I've been plump to fat with a few brief spells of slim when the yoyo dieting has stuck for long enough to get there but never sustained.  I've never been massively active or sporty, huge boobs at 12 made it embaressing at school pe with the boys making comments and the girls being bitchy.  And truthfully I didn't like feeling that it's getting uncomfortable stage let alone the gasping for breath.

This is me taken in Turkey October 2017, just a few weeks before I was diagnosed with an over active thyroid.  I was about 12 stone in this pic.  

This is me taken in London 5 years later, I dont have any taken between the 2 pictures because I was so unhappy about how I looked and felt.  I wasnt at my largest here, I'd been going to the pool for months and had probably lost a stone or 2 by this.  Most of the damage was done during the 6 months after my diagnosis and I'd started taking the meds to lower my levels.  I probably put on 60-100lb in 6 months and that was with a diet that had kept me hovering around the 12/13 stone mark for 15 years. 

I did lose some of it pre Covid but lock down affected me (like millions of others) and without the daily pool workout whatever I lost pre covid came back, specially as we found a liking for Gin O Clock of an evening.

 

This is me now, taken 8 months ago after just getting my 2nd belt.  I'm around the 13st 10 mark in this pic.

4 years of averaging 1200 calories a day and exercising most days.  For most people that would have got me to be stupidly skinny but now I have no thyroid, I'm post menopause and I've effed my metabolism with years of yoyo dieting.  Many a times I've said it's not fair, but it is what it is and I have a choice I can either stick with it or I can go back to eating beige carbs, get massive again and lose the will to get off my arse and pretty quickly be back on a mobility scooter.