I've never been in shape. I was 120 lbs (so not overweight) but always the last to cross the finish line during the mile jog in high school. Girls 3x bigger than me would finish first. My biological mother used drugs (not sure how much during pregnancy) and I grew up on an orchard where I was exposed to tons of pesticides as a kid. I grew up with grandparents though and ate a pretty healthy (non-processed) diet, so I was rarely super ill but more just lethargic my entire childhood.

That said, I know what it felt like to get into shape (or as good of shape as I could get) as I've done it a few times during my adult life. However, this has been different. I was bedridden for almost a month after getting sick and for a year I did nothing but drag myself through work and then come home and sleep. So I did lost most of my muscle mass, and I really am starting from scratch now.

I did intracellular electrolyte testing a couple months ago as I really felt I was still low in Magnesium even though my naturopath thought it unlikely due to how much transdermal I've done. I don't remember the numbers, but I'm on the low end of what they consider functional (ie, healthy). Not the low end of what the medical community considers good enough to prevent certain diseases. My calcium was middle of functional level and the only other issue that showed up was a low Potassium in relation to Sodium level. potassium on it's own was well into the middle of functional level.

She thinks I might still have GI issues with not absorbing nutrients. 1 year after the flu I did GI testing and my probiotic levels were all out of whack, but I thought I fixed them (but I haven't retested recently). I've also had tons of food sensitivities since getting sick which I do still have. I've been reading about the Iodine and food sensitivity connection, so I'm still hopeful that Iodine will improve that. But I'm good at keeping 90% clear of all sensitive foods.

My D was 30 in October, but even trying to take 2k IU/day was giving me headaches without having done transdermal magnesium that day. After starting Iodine I seemed to be able to take a little D without as much issue, but with the low grade detox headaches, it's hard to say what's from detox versus from D. So for the most part I'm not taking D other than in my liquid.

I get 2,000IU of A in my liquid vitamin (plus 1,000IU of D in that and a little K as well). Potassium around 400mg/day which is only 10% of RDA. But it seems hard to get high dose potassium supplements. I don't eat a lot of fruit due to sugars (I feel better on high protein diets than high carb diets). Magnesium is usually 500mg transdermal every 2-3 days and a long 1,500mg soak on the weekend. I pop 200mg chelated pills here and there but I'm not sure I'm getting much from it. Otherwise, I eat a ton of dark green vegetables and nuts so if I was getting it from food I'd probably be getting 1k+mg.

I don't eat dairy or take calcium supplements (since my magnesium is still lower than my calcium), but my protein bars have milk protein in them so I'm probably getting 100% RDA between those and the dark greens.

After finding out about Iodine and the thyroid connection, I had hoped that was what has held me back the last year (as well as my entire life!). I have gone as much as 2 weeks of exercising 3x/week this past year (to try to push through it if it was temporary), but even after stopping I'd have a relapse on my fatigue issues. Today has only been 1 day of slightly pushing since I started on Iodine, but I'm scared of pushing too hard and undoing any progress I've made lately.

Before you started on Iodine did you have major fatigue issues or were your improvements on Iodine completely different? I'd love to hear from anyone that particularly had fatigue issues going into the Iodine and how long of feeling good you waited before starting to add exercise :)

Thanks for any thoughts!

Thanks for the thoughts, but I highly doubt that's it. I haven't pushed myself anywhere near those levels since getting sick and even before then I couldn't last very long at high intensity. I've been able to do some weight lifting with moderate aerobic before getting sick, but I've never in my life been able to push long and hard enough to get the traditional side stitches and such that you hear about in real athletes.