Hypothyroidism Caused My Weight Gain?

Recently, I learned by TSH level was 5.2, which, according to most measures, is Hypothyroidism. One of the symptoms of hypothyroidism is weight gain. I have a theory that I have had hypothyroidism since my first goiter was detected back in March 2014. I know I have put on around 45 pounds since that time period. I wanted to see if I could correlate my weight gain to Hypothyroidism and attempt to explain the weight gain by a high TSH level instead of eating too many cheeseburgers.

I have been overweight most of my life. I never knew I was overweight until, as a child of perhaps 6, a neighbor kid told me. I was never terribly overweight. I think back then they called it "husky". 

This changed in high school and college as I learned to workout. But then my children came along and the career took off, and so did my weight. When I focused on exercise and eating healthy - the weight came off. When I became busy? The weight returned. My adult life has been nothing but a yo-yo.

Around age 37 I decided to do something about this. I introduced exercise as a regular everyday activity. I like to exercise, but I usually feel like there are better ways to spend my time. Allowing myself to exercise daily guilt-free was perfect! I still had some ups and downs with weight, usually tied to getting too busy to work out, however, I was doing fairly well for seven years. I was even running five miles per day! And then my weight shot up. Immediately, as soon as I went on depression medicine (which I believe to have been hypothyroidism  related), my weight shot through the roof. A side effect of my depression medicine (as well as the hypothyroid) is weight gain because you crave food all day long and end up making horrible choices. It didn't matter how much I was working out, the needle on the scale simply moved in the wrong direction. My wife developed a slogan "You wouldn't have to go to the gym so much if you didn't eat so much." Even my doctor said "Stop eating so much". But the cravings were uncontrollable. 

I went back through my journals and logs and mapped out my weight for the past 23 years (half my life). 

Again, my hope was that I would find my weight was fairly average until two years ago at which time something terrible must have happened. What I found instead was a graph showing my weight was all over the place! High peaks and low valleys. While my average weight for the seven year period from age 37 to 44 was better than the rest, it too was filled with many struggles. 

In the end? It would be difficult for me to blame this latest weight gain on Hypothyroidism or Depression Medicine. I believe that caused it, but, a better explanation is that my life has been filled with many weight ups and downs, and this is just another one of them.