Thread: High fat diet & thyroid downregulation

Yes thyroid downreg will occur with keto diets. The weekend carbs ups are rarely enough to upregulate the thyroid and only convert some of the T4 to T3. It's not something that will occur straight away tho. Keto diets will be sucessful for fat loss for a good few weeks (although strength on most keto diets is appauling and is the reason i've got no intention of doing one).

You can prevent it by either 1. overfeeding on carbs (this re-triggers leptin a bit too) which kinda defeats the whole purpose of ketosis or 2. not do keto in the first place.

The good thing about low carb (but not keto diets) is that your carbs never get low enough to downregulate the thyroid in the first place (in most cases - there's usually always exceptions for certain individuals) and if any downregulation does occur, the more frequent carb ups (that you should have on a low carb diet for performance purposes if anything**) will sort it out.

** I say performance cause if you're not shifting the load your muscle mass will not stay put. TKD may keep strength so may be the best choice of keto if you insist on doing one.

Another thing, if you switch from a high carb bulking diet to a cyclical carb diet you will most likely experience strength decreases at first, but once you become acustomed to low carb training you'll probably experience some kick-ass strength gains as most others have.

so, are you all saying, that a low carb diet, but not the keto type, is best, if intending to diet for more than just a few weeks, but that the keto type is ok, if dieting only for a shorter period, to prevent downregulation of the thyroid? what about muscle loss on regular low carb diets? on keto diets you don't loose any muscle, right?