Exercising with a Thyroid Condition: How to Lose Weight and Beat Fatigue with Dr. Emily Kiberd

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Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Welcome and thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert. Here I put the power of health in your hands and give you access to the top people in health and wellness.

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Hey, it's JJ here and today we are going to be talking about the secret weapon to lose weight and beat fatigue with Hashimoto's Intriguing what could that be? Well, here's the thing. If you've been struggling, working through your thyroid issues and trying to work out and noticing that it just makes you feel worse, not better, this episode is for you. I have the perfect guest to walk you through exactly what you should be doing. If you've got Hashimoto's and more importantly, what you should not be doing, and it's probably something you're actually doing right now because it will make you worse, not better. I've got Dr. Emily Kaibard and she is a chiropractor movement expert in Manhattan. She's the creator of Thyroid Strong and the founder of the Urban Wellness clinic and she also has the podcast Muscle Medicine and she also has her own personal story with this, which is how it became one of the areas that she focuses on. I was super excited to find it because I knew this was something that we need to talk about and we haven't talked about yet because, you know, exercise can be therapeutic or it can be destructive. It's a drug and when you know how to use it correctly, it can change everything. So that's what I've got in store for you today. Plus I've got great show notes and great information from her that you can download and keep with you. And you can get that@jjvirgin.com thyroid strong. Now before I dive in, I just want to do a shout out to Diane D.C. 2016. She says love this podcast. Five stars. JJ is so fun, informative and has great guests on her show. Yep. Diane, Today is Today is no exception. Thank you JJ for an educational, interesting podcast. There's so much conflicting information everywhere, so I rely on you as a cutting edge yet sensible source of information. I'm definitely a JJ groupie. I super appreciate that. Shout out to Diane. Love to shout you out too as well. And before we do the dive into today's topic, I got one more thing to shout out.

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Doctor Emily Kaibard, welcome to the show. I've never taped a show where the person I'm interviewing may go into labor at any moment. Super exciting to have you.

Any moment. I'm so honored.

Yeah, well, we will cross our fingers and luckily this is not like a two day podcast, so we should be good. And I appreciate you squeezing this in literally before shift. Yes.

Three week countdown.

So. Yes. Boy, does those last three weeks go slowly, as you know. All right, let's dive into this because I have never heard anyone do justice to this topic. So I've been kind of hounding you about coming on the show to talk about it since I heard it. Heard you talk about it. I think it's so cool in that your whole specialty now is really focusing on how to help people with thyroid disease exercise correctly. So how did that happen? I mean, you're a chiropractor, right? So how did you like, all of a sudden decide, hey, I. I've got to deal with exercise and thyroid. Where'd that come from?

Yeah, I mean, I've always been an athlete. I've always worked out and like any good story.

And by the way, I just got to do you a shout out. I did not look like you when I was pregnant. You were that person who's like, like in perfect shape and someone just like, stuck a. Stuck a belly on you. I was like, what happened here?

Yeah, the common comment I get is you are all baby.

Yes, I am all baby.

So I have always been super active. And I had my first baby. This will be my second about four years ago. And there's so many things that new moms get told after they give birth. Exhaustion is normal. Holding onto that extra stubborn baby weight is normal. Your hair falling out, totally normal. Feeling a little blue. Like moms feel that way. And, you know, I listened. And 18 months later, postpartum, I still had all those symptoms. And I was like, something is not right. I feel like a shadow of myself. And if you look at pictures of me, I look inflamed. I have that, like, morning puff in the face. Like, my skin was dry and red, and every time I ate, I look like I was bloated again. And every time I would work out, and, you know, I mainly strength train. I don't have cardio days, which I know your listeners know well. Every time I would work out, I would literally be so fatigued after I couldn't get out of bed for a couple days. And that stress of not being able to be there for my new baby, for my family, it was really evident. You know, if you can't get out of bed for two days and can't take care of your baby.

Yeah. That is not the time you want to have low energy.

Yeah, exactly. So I went the traditional route and saw traditional medical doctors, I saw some functional medicine doctors and just really struggled in getting, like, clear root cause of what was going on. And I saw one of our dear friends, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, and she was like, your thyroid antibodies are off the charts. You are on your way to an autoimmune disease. You have all the signs and symptoms of Hashimoto's.

Man, thank God you went to Gabrielle and someone tested your thyroid antibodies. You know, Phew.

Yeah. It's crazy to go through six doctors and only have one test done, which was my tsa.

Okay, I just have to throw one at you. That's really crazy. When I had my first baby and I was feeling, like, weird and funky and a little depressed, and my face was breaking out after the baby, and I went to the doctor, and they want to put me on antidepressants and. And Accutane, and I was actually pregnant again. So it's amazing what will be missed. Luckily, I didn't do any of that. All right, so they were just testing your tsh. Thankfully, you went to our buddy Gabrielle. She found it. Then what happened?

Yeah, and, you know, it was all these underlying root causes. Parasites, heavy metals, mold toxicity, food intolerance, and clean that up. And I felt probably, like, 50 to 60% better. But every time I would go and work out, I would feel exhausted. I would feel like I got hit by a bus for three days in terms of muscle aches and joint pains. And some of my older workout routines were yoga. You know, the Boutique New York, 50 minute, hit it hard, strength training class. And it just zapped my energy. And so, having been in practice for 12 years and helping women get out of pain and get strong so they're more resilient at life, I was like, I gotta do this better. I have to do this smarter. You know, the mindset of, like, Work hard, play hard. That typical New Yorker. Go, go, go. I really had to shift that mindset and reprogram my workouts. And so that's what I played within myself and then started to do with the women who had Hashimoto's coming through my clinic.

So it's amazing that, you know, you could take something that was kind of rotten and now realize that it's not just you. You're starting to see it with other people and now create something that I had never heard anyone else really addressing. That's why. Yeah. When you start to say it, I'm like, oh, wow, this is so critical because no one really talks about it.

Yeah. So one of the things that I often see women with Hashimoto's coming in and struggling with is the typical recommendations that they're told to do in terms of exercise are Cardio. So walk, 20 minutes, yoga, pilates bar, maybe swimming, something. Low impact. In the research, what we know is low thyroid leads to low muscle mass. So it's harder for women with Hashimoto's to maintain.

That's not going to help them do it.

Right. And so like the yoga, the stretching, all that stuff is not going to help increase the muscle mass, let alone just maintain. And we know that muscle is really important for longevity and for wrong.

For bone health and for, like, just being able to go through life, get the groceries out of the car. Although we don't have to get the groceries out of the car anymore.

It's.

We just have to. But, you know, all the activities of daily life, if you don't have muscle mass and if you're not using it, you're losing it. You know, I just was. Someone DM'd me on Facebook and had severe osteoporosis and said, oh, she's not doing any exercise. I'm like, no, no, no. He's like, well, that's not going to help your osteoporosis. So. So what is that then? The big mistake that women are struggling with if they have Hashimoto's and they're exercising, is that they're just doing too light of a workout to make any difference.

Yeah. The most common thing I see is too much cardio.

Right.

Because oftentimes women with Hashimoto's are struggling with weight gain. And, you know, the first thing I think we're often told in society is like, go for a run, burn the calories, and really are doing chronic cardio or sometimes working out too hard. So I had one patient work out cardio, do cardio elliptical 45 minutes followed by 45 minutes of strength training five days a week.

How on earth could she even be doing that with her.

I know, I know she was, she was holed up in bed probably the rest of the day. But that's what her trainer was getting her to do. And the sad part was the trainer was telling her as she was gaining weight that she, I knew it, I.

Was like going, oh, I bet the next part was, you bet. You just need to eat less. And let's just repeat. It's just. You know what makes me crazy here is it's so clear in the science that if you cut calories chronically, not if you do a little intermittent fast, but if you cut calories chronically, that you also lower your metabolism because your metabolism goes oh, less food, slow it down. And then if you try the opposite of all just because I'm just going back to that silly bank account model of weight loss that luckily everybody listening knows better about. But you know, you just still see it out there is exercising more. I mean that's, that's the, the reverse of caloric restriction that just makes the same thing happen in that if you're doing loads of cardio, it just makes you hungrier. And it was, and it can burn up muscle. It was interesting. Way back when I was in grad school, I read a study about women who did, who were like, you know, training for marathons and ran for an hour plus every day, could not maintain their weight if they stopped, like if they even stopped for a couple days. And I was like, why would that be? And now it's like, now you sort of get it, why it would be so all right, so it's definitely not more is not better. So what do you do then?

So I have women work out smarter, not harder through strength training. And one of the other things that we see with women who are struggling with Hashimoto's is they have a not only lower muscle mass but slower tendon turnover, which means it takes longer to recover. And you know, that's what the research is in. Clinically I see that women have this hypermobility, so laxity in their joints. So if you looked at a woman from the side, her knees would kind of travel back behind her heels. If she was in a plank or top of a push ups, her elbows would hyperextend. If she stood and just bend forward with her knees straight, she could palm the floor. So these are some of the signs of hypermobility. And so not a lot of people Talk about this. This is more just like what I've seen in clinic for the last 12 years. And so yoga, Pilates, bar. Stretching is only going to exacerbate that hypermobility, that tissue laxity.

And don't you find, Emily, the people who are more flexible want to do. It's like that makes them feel great, so they'll do more of it. Not realizing that stretching hypermobile joints actually is not what you want to do. Right?

Yeah, they'll feel great for probably an hour, but then typically they won't feel great for the next three days. They'll go to like, I really feel like tightness and like I got hit by a bus. And usually it means like, those muscles don't need to be stretched more. They need to get stabilized. So I have women strength train. And especially for the woman with Hashimoto's, it is heavier than she probably thinks. So there are no, there's no pink.

No little pink dumbbells. I call those paperweights.

Exactly. Usually it's lower rep. So I think a kind of traditional trainer model is three sets of 10. I usually don't have any woman do more than five reps and then long rest breaks so that we're not flaring up like a Hashi flare up. Not burning a woman out, but helping her get strong, stable, help her build her muscle mass. And I'm not saying bulky, right? Because it's.

Yeah, I was just gonna throw that out to you because, you know, I can already hear the question. And I love this because it actually goes back to when I was in grad school working on my thesis and I had to help people get strong quickly. It was short reps was the biggest for muscle stimulus. So. But I, I am just kind of imagining some of the questions. But yeah, but I'm going to get bigger. Can you bust that myth, my friend?

Yeah, you're. I mean, especially when you're struggling with Hashimoto's. You're not going to get, you're not going to get bigger just from like a hormone perspective. And just due to the fact that it's just harder to mean muscle mass, maintain muscle mass. I mean, that heavier weight, low reps, long rest periods. I typically have women work up to two to three times a week. That's working up to that. And it's not 45 minutes. It's not an hour and a half in the gym. It's literally working up to 20, 30 minutes. Because really, who has an hour in the gym anymore? I haven't done that in decades. So yeah, and part of it's a mindset shift. You know, some people will look at a weight and think, that's going to injure me. And the most important piece is have your form dialed in your breathing and that is taught. Like, when do we learn that? We don't learn that in high school. We don't learn it in college. Really. Only if we like work out with a trainer. So that is what I help women do. And you have to take into account the hypermobility when you are working on your form.

So this sounds like I'm listening to this going, you're right. Like you look at back in high school and college and go, man, we needed to learn how to do budgeting, how to cook, how to exercise correctly. Like, I don't really remember most of the stuff I learned, but those things were the things we needed to learn and like how to behave well in a relationship. You know, the critical things. But someone listening, I'm thinking, well, how would they know if they were hyper mobile? And how do they know if they're doing the exercise right? If they don't have a trainer, how do they do this?

Yeah. So some of the signs of the hypermobility would be like the knees hyperextending, the elbows being able to bend forward, palm the floor. And then how to do it is you can do it online. I have an online program called Thyroid Strong and it's a video exercise.

And if you were watching yourself in the mirror, because I love that, because, you know, I remember reading, okay, why don't people exercise? Number one, they don't have time. Well, awesome. Because this does not take a lot of time. And that's really a key factor, really quality over quantity. But the second reason is they feel like they're too out of shape to go to the gym. And so this is awesome too. Now, can someone use your video and do this in a mirror and be able to tell if their form is. Is right on?

Yeah, absolutely. So there's some principles in the program that I talk about and this is principles throughout any strength training, but just not a lot of people talk about it. And trainers don't often train it cause it's not sexy. So one of the principles is breathing into the belly. Right. So oftentimes as women, we're taught to suck up and in. And if you do that, when you pull a weight, you will for sure injure something, probably your back. So breathing.

So what does that do? What does breathing into your belly do?

Yeah, so breathing down and wide Helps create what's called intra abdominal pressure. It's just stabilization pressure through your core. And then when you breathe out to pick up a weight, you create a little brace. And so this helps strengthen the core, helps strengthen the spine. It's what we do as babies. Like, you never see a baby suck their belly up and in. They always kind of have this little boot of.

It's only a woman in a tight dress. And you know what? It's the best visual I can think for that is you see guys lifting heavy weights at the gym wearing those big weight belts. This is like your own internal. How you create your own internal weight belt.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. And then one of the other principles is we call it getting stacked. So if you ever see someone pick up a weight and they kind of arch their back and flare their ribs, they're no longer using that strengthen their core. Now they're using too much of their back muscles. So we want the ribs right over our pelvis. We want our ears in line with our shoulders, in line with our hips. So everything is, like, stacked over one another. And this helps learn how to build tension, which is important when you lift a weight. And for myself, if the form is off or the breath is off, like, if I take a breath in and I expand just into my ribs, I don't pick up the weight. I just reset, and then I start again. I think there's this thought of, like, ba. Like, bang out this. Bang out the reps and just get through it. And how quickly can I get through it to move on? But I would rather have each move, each rep be the most perfect form and less of them.

All right, so let's, like, give people some practical things. I know, like, a lot of this is visual, so I know you've got videos, so that's fantastic. And you're also going to be giving everyone three things not to do in your workout if you have Hashis, and what to do instead. So you'll be able to get that. Everybody@jjvirgin.com thyroid strong. But what are three. Let's give people something that. That they can just, like, walk away with to go. Okay, I've got. If someone's got Hashimoto's, they're gonna get started. Your three top takeaways. Yeah.

So lose a chronic cardio. Yay.

The crowd goes wild. And really, by chronic cardio, it's that elliptical bike, Stairmaster, jogging, all that kind of stuff. The I used to. Emily. I used to belong to this gym. And you'd walk down this Hallway. And on one side of the hall, it was glass on either side. You walk down one side was the weight room, One side was the cardio room. And what was crazy is I went to that gym for probably four years during the four years, and it seemed like there were the people either did the cardio room or the weight room, but the divides did not cross. Right. And I kept looking over at the cardio room, and for four years, I thought, don't those people realize, like, do they not ever look into the weight room and realize that the people in the weight room keep looking younger and better? And this was the average age in this gym. It was out in Palm Desert, California, was probably 60, maybe even a little older. But what was crazy is the people in the weight room kept looking better and younger. The people in the cardio room were looking worse. You know, they were looking flabbier. They were looking more haggard. And I'm like, going, aren't they looking in the other side and going, head scratching over there? You know?

So, yeah, dump the chronic cardio time.

Yeah.

Like, especially at a time when you need muscle in your.

Right. I mean, that's the worst possible time to. To do it. I mean, the minute you're hitting 30 plus, you've just lost your margin for error anyway. And then, you know, put thyroid problems on top of it, and boom. So, all right, chronic cardio is out. What's next?

Yep. Start to strength train. And I'm not talking, like, bicep curls, tricep dips. I did have a patient come to me once and tell me that she did 10 bicep curls and inflated by Hashimoto's. And I'm thinking, why don't we do moves that make you better at life? And those moves are typically compound movements, full body movements. So squat, a hinge, a lunge, a push, a pull. These moves that work the whole body to build tension, not just muscle isolation. I think that's kind of like an.

Older school bodybuilding, functional stuff, because we aren't. This is not. We're not going into a bodybuilding competition. Yeah, exactly. So, by the way, that's important for everybody, because I always had people say, I'm afraid I'm gonna get big. I go, do you know how hard, like, women have to work out in the gym in order to get big? I mean, it's like this has not just happened. Okay, yeah.

And then the last one would be to take the rest break that you need.

Right.

I think there's so much one exercise to the next exercise to the next exercise and really just taking the rest that you need in between the sets. Some of the people that I know that work out really hard, don't they work out like 15 minutes and they take long rest breaks and they don't do tons of reps and their muscle mass is really good and they have really quality tissue.

Yes. Recovery. That's fantastic. Okay, let's tell everyone what you've got for them. And again, it's jjvirgin.com thyroidstrong. You are giving everybody a super gift. Talk us through it.

So it's a three mistakes that you're probably doing in your workout and three things to do instead. It's super easy downloadable PDF and it cuts through kind of what we've been told and then really tells what we really should be doing to take care of our body. If we have Hashimoto's, excellent.

This is such a key, important part of it because the last thing we want someone to do is they've been working on the diet part of it and then all of a sudden they're undoing it with the exercise part of it. And I like to say that exercise can be therapeutic or it can be destructive. It's like a drug. So this is how to use it correctly. And I just love, love that you are doing this because again, so sorely needed. And I was like, I haven't heard anyone talk about it. So thank you so much for doing it, Emily. I super appreciate it.

Thanks so much, jj.

Now after the break, I'm going to take this, give you my top action step and a challenge from today so that you can put this into immediate action. So stay with me.

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Welcome back. All right, now what I want to do is give you some basics to take away from this interview today and also a little bit of a challenge. All right, here we go. So first off, make sure you download the show notes so that you get Emily's handout and you can do that again@jjvirgin.com thyroid strong. Now, number one thing, and my challenge to you is to listen, truly listen to what your body is telling you. If you go and you work out and you feel worse, not better. Head scratcher. Let's start to look back at what you were doing, okay? Because ultimately you can be told this is the best exercise ever for you, whatever it is, or the best diet, right? And if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work. So we've always got to come from this place of being our own personal health detective. And I love that because this is a whole part of this program is like, okay, let's first assess. Number one, do you have hypermobile joints? Don't stretch your hypermobile joints. That is such a key takeaway that I do not hear people talking about. So that is the first one. Do not stretch hypermobile joints. And you're going to want to, because, boy, it's one of those things. If I'm super flexible, then I'm going to do things to help me stay super flexible. You actually want to strengthen the. The hypermobile and stretch the inflexible. So it's the opposite of probably what most of us tend to do. The next thing is we are going to trash the treadmill. So if you've been doing loads of cardio, we're going to get rid of that and move into the third thing, which is strength training or resistance training, but for thyroid issues, done in a very different way, which is doing short exercises. So you're doing somewhere in the, you know, up to five repetitions with longer breaks. And again, you'll get all of this in Emily's handout that you get@jjvirgin.com thyroidstrong but the big thing I want to emphasize here is that you're listening to your body, because what Emily mentioned in there is that it's fairly quickly after the workout, you'll go, wow, I felt. I. I feel really exhausted. Right? Or everything's starting to hurt. That is your body yelling at you going, this is not working for me. So let's end. Alrighty.

Cool.

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