McCall McPherson, a thyroid expert and PA, shares strategies for people with thyroid conditions to avoid holiday weight gain. She recommends intermittent fasting with an 8-hour eating window, 4-5 days per week, as a low-effort way to boost metabolism and energy during the season.
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Are you a person who suffers with a thyroid condition and are so paranoid about gaining weight this holiday season? This is for you. I'm McCall McPherson, physician assistant, Thyroid expert and founder of Modern Thyroid Clinic. So year after year I see my patients, you know, who eat very, very well. But between like Christmas and New Year's, if your thyroid's not in order, you can gain six pounds and never lose that. Meanwhile, everyone else can like eat whatever they want between Thanksgiving and New Year's and gain three pounds and lose it by Valentine's Day. So obviously for thyroid sufferers, this is a huge stressful season. So I have a tip for you today that can help you not put in like so much effort and restrict, restrict, restrict in your diet, but still be able to enjoy the holidays and not gain ton of weight and not be able to lose it later. So the tool that I use, especially with my patients during this particular season, is intermittent fasting. So the reason I love intermittent fasting is one, it works on the part of your metabolism that hypothyroidism really totally destroys. Two, it doesn't require you to spend a huge amount of effort. In fact, this is less effort so you don't have to food prep, you know, go to the grocery store every day, like control, control, control, and eat perfectly 100% of the time, which is honestly not possible during the holidays, nor should it be required for you to have to maintain your weight. So the way that I approach intermittent fasting with my thyroid patients, who largely are women, is try to eat within an eight hour window every day. So you know, or not every day, four to five days a week really. But when, when you're intermittent fasting, keep your food and drinks that raise your blood sugar, insulin to an eight hour window. That can be 10 to 6, 12 to 8, 9 to 5. Also, that window can change every day based on what you've got going on. So if you wake up really hungry or you know, you have a dinner really late, adjust your food consumption time accordingly. Also, for women, like I mentioned, I only recommend that you do this like four to five days a week. That still leaves a lot of room for like normal life and leeway on weekends or holidays or whatever it is. I would say especially on days like Thanksgiving or Christmas or when you know you're gonna have like a family gathering that's going to last a few days, really try to incorporate that intermittent fasting on those days especially. So this will leave you by the new year with a better metabolism than you went into the holidays. As opposed to the reverse. And it will start to teach your body to more potently break down your food. Always getting interrupted. It'll make you more potently break down your food, create energy from it. And really, I think you'll feel a lot better, clearer, better energy. So I hope you like it. Let me know what you think.
