The official diagnosis is Hashimoto's Disease.

So I wrote about hypothyroidism a few weeks ago. At that stage I was waiting on test results to clarify the reason for my underactive thyroid, and the test results are in. I have Hashimoto's Disease.
I have to admit, with the massive amount of reading I've done over the past 24 hours, I'm both more understanding about people whose thyroid is contributing to their weight gain, and absolutely furious with anyone who uses it as an excuse to not put in any effort. I'm also more impressed with myself. The fact that I've been able to lose a large amount of weight in a decently short period of time (22kg in a year) is something my doctor says I must have worked extremely hard for. Looking back over that year, I definitely have put my body through its paces and tested the limits of what I can endure in terms of restrictive eating and exercise.

I'm seeing an endocrinologist with expertise in thyroid disease on March 28th and I'm hoping that treatment can start at that point. I have so many hashi's symptoms that may or may not be able to be treated with thyroid hormone replacement. Some of them may be completely unrelated to the Hashimoto's.

Things I'm hopeful and optimistic about changing:

• I'll keep my hair and it won't be dry and brittle any more.
• I'll start to feel more "well". Thinking back over the years, there are so many things I attributed to just being overweight. One of the main ones is that I can't remember the last time I felt really well.
• My skin dryness and issues with Ketosis Pilaris will clear up.
• My anxiety and panic issues will settle down.
• My body will stop fighting me on this weight loss thing. I know a lot of people hope that thyroid meds will just magically fix their weight problems and they'll return to a healthy weight automatically. I realize the struggle my body needs to go through in order to rid itself of the extra weight, and expect that in order to lose more weight, I'll need to just continue with what I'm currently doing and hope that the loss becomes a little easier as a result of a better-functioning metabolism.

Something I've learned in the last 24 hours is that Duromine masks thyroid function problems. I've been on it for 2 and a half months after a massive stall in my loss, and was due to finish up with it this month anyway, but now I need to stop using it altogether so that my doctors are looking at genuine blood test results when they're deciding on the treatment course for me. I was surprised to see a normal TFT result on my bloods yesterday when my thyroid antibodies were over 1000 and my TFT results have been steadily declining over a number of years. That's when I looked into what can cause a sudden normal and found that Duromine can be a factor. I guess we'll see once I have the next test in 2 weeks time with no Duromine in my system.

I'll post an update in a couple of weeks when I know more about what we're gonna do about this.