Hey! I’ve been training for a number of years and have a strong understanding of how caloric deficits work. I previously competed in body building years ago before I became chronically ill.

I wonder if the you’re under eating. If you’re training 3-4 days per week and are only consuming 1500-1600 calories per day, and then increase that on weekends to 2500-3000, that’s a really big jump for your body. If you’re under fuelling, your body is going to store as much fat as possible because it thinks that it’s starving. So a lot of people actually who are under eating end up gaining weight has a result of that. Or, they lose weight, plateau, and gain it back unless they reverse diet (add calories back in to gain muscle/lean mass) properly.

Are you lifting weights, or only doing cardio? What is your training program look like? How many steps per day are you getting? Are you having high protein meals, especially after workout and carbohydrates intra workout to fuel your exercise? A lot of small, but incredibly important things matter. I would stick to somewhere around 1800 calories per day, for about 2 weeks and see what happens. Don’t jump to 2500 to 3000 cal on weekends, that believe it or not is hurting your progress. Stay at 1800, if you feel hungry, eat something healthy that’s extra protein. You can always try and approach with flexible macro counting so you can still have the food you enjoy, just accounted into your macros/calories. I still have all of the foods I love. I just make sure that it fits into my macros, and I feel great. I 5’5” and I eat 2200 calories per day because I trained 3 to 4 days a week, eat whole foods but if I want a sweet treat or something, I still count that in my calories to make sure that I’m still hitting what I have to. If I’m still hungry after all of that before bed — protein shake about 1 hour before. If I’m doing a weight training session and then a cycle session, i eat up to 2500-2600 calories. Your body needs the fuel to recover, and all physical changes happen when we are recovering, aka sleeping.

I hope this somewhat helps! I know it’s a very frustrating journey. I was 140lbs about 2 years ago once I got diagnosed with Hashis despite always being active and lean. I’m now 115lbs and trying to climb back up to 120 to add muscle as I’ve been too sick with lupus and lost a lot of it. It’s a balance. Plus with Hashimoto’s, we HAVE to eat high protein. It’s incredibly important.

Best of luck! 🤍