Help I'm losing weight so quickly that my psychiatrist is worried

[sla_porra22]

One thing I think is worth mentioning before talking about what's happening is that I was ALWAYS fat when I was little.I had many health problems and took a lot of corticosteroid-based medication, which, in addition to making me gain weight, left me with some permanent side effects (such as constantly trembling).

But around my 9th year in school I lost about 20 kilos in about 2 months at most, and that continued to decrease rapidly. In 5 months I was about 6 kilos below my minimum weight. A year and a half later I was 10 kilos below my ideal weight, the amount of weight I was losing started to decrease and it "plateaued" at 17 kilos I'm below the minimum weight for my height. But since I ended my relationship about a week ago, I've already lost another 2 kilos. My psychiatrist said that being underweight for so long is extremely dangerous; besides weakening my bones, my body is slowly devouring my own muscles, including my heart muscle. She's afraid that at any moment I could die of a heart attack simply because my heart can no longer beat properly, as it's so weak


The thing is, I never wanted to stop eating or get to that point. On the contrary, I eat relatively well and even healthily. In fact, my blood/urine tests show I'm extremely healthy. I also got tested for STDs to make sure it couldn't be anything like that, and nothing came up. I don't really know why all this is happening. My doctors have no idea either, and even with supplements I continue to have these problems.


Has anyone else experienced this? Did you find out why? I think the only thing I haven't done yet is get tested for tumors. But given how long I've had this, if that were the case, I probably would have already had symptoms

I am currently 1.78m tall and weigh 51kg (5'10" and 112.4 lbs approximately)

 

[madameviolette]

Thyroid issues ?

 

[BullsDon'tFly]

Sorry to hear your condition. I'm experiencing an hard breakup and I think I lost some 3-4 kg too.
You said you eat healthily, are you also monitoring you calories? I know it sounds paradoxical, but eating a lot of greens (healthy as fuck) won't work if your goal is to gain weight/mantain muscle. Have you followed a specific diet prescribed by a physician/nutritionist?
Hope it will get better!

 

[sla_porra22]

Thyroid issues ?

I think that's a good guess. I'm not sure if they ever tested me for that. Thank you

 

[Spicy Tteokbokki]

There could be many reasons as to why you're dropping so much weight.
Initially I'd log everything for a week or two, so you can at least assesss the kcal and type of food you're eating. I've seen too many cases where people say they eat A LOT and when they actually counted it was usually not that much, or way too little for their height and body type and physical activity.
Beyond the thyroid I'd also check if you might have issues with gluten, causing malabsorption of your food, which could play a factor. Thyroid as well, but you'd need more tests than just a basic TSH which you'd likely get. At least a T3 and T4 on top, as a minimum. Thyroid antibodies could be useful as well, but idk if they'll let you go that far with testing.

Beyond that get an overall health checkup if you never had one, and see if there's anything there you could perhaps look into.

But again, start with logging your diet for 1-2 weeks then assess from there. Maybe you eat 1000-1200kcal a day and then that's a much easier way to start from, but if you're eating 2500kcal a day or more and are losing weight like crazy that's not good. (Barring things like FGF21 but that's not likely lol)

 

[madameviolette]

I think that's a good guess. I'm not sure if they ever tested me for that. Thank you

I have thyroid issues so that was my guess. Hyperthyroid made me lose a lot of weight despite eating a lot.

You can test your TSH. If it trends toward lower levels you may be prone to hyperthyroid. Or maybe autoimmune Graves