NUTRITION
FOR MENOPAUSE
What we eat at this stage of life can completely change how we feel and plays a big role in health and fitness goals. It’s time to ditch fad diets and calorie-cutting and instead, learn how to nourish your body in a way that works with and supports your changing hormones.
CALORIE COUNTING
IS NOT THE ANSWER
Weight gain is common around menopause and many women turn to dieting and cutting calories, only to find it doesn’t work. It did when you were younger, so why doesn’t it now? Whilst there are many reasons women struggle to stick to a diet (I wrote a book about it which you can find here), its important to understand the changes happening in your body which affect fat-burning and storing mechanisms, insulin resistance and even how many calories we extract from the food we’re eating.
Cutting calories too hard puts you at risk of suffering from Low Energy Availability. Symptoms include low energy, poor sleep, thinning hair and compromised immunity. If you’re working out at the same time, your body won’t have enough energy to adapt to the workout, which means you won’t lose fat or gain strength.
HOW HORMONES
AFFECT WEIGHT GAIN
Estrogen plays an important role in the metabolism and when levels fluctuate during peri-menopause and then post-menopause, it upsets the balance. Estrogen affects appetite regulation, blood sugar control and how efficiently our bodies burn glucose and fat from fat stores for energy. Fat also produces a weak source of estrogen which gives us a much-needed top-up. Constant stress is known to increase abdominal fat and you don’t need me to tell you how stressed we feel at this time of life. This all adds up to being more prone to accumulate fat even if our eating habits haven’t changed.
EAT MORE PROTEIN &
FEWER CARBS
Where your calories come from becomes more important than how many you eat and it’s with a heavy heart that I tell you that carbs really do become the enemy. Women simply can’t process them as well around menopause which means they get stored as fat and/or increase blood glucose levels. This doesn’t mean going to the extreme of cutting out carbs, but the bottom line is that, if you want to lose weight or stop your waistline expanding, you’ll need to cut right back on bread, pasta, rice, noodles and processed, sugary foods like cakes, biscuits and pizza.
Conversely, we need to eat more protein because most of us aren’t eating enough. Menopausal women need more than the national guidelines, at least 75g per day and potentially much more, depending on body weight and activity levels. (I aim for around 130g per day to support my training regime). Increasing protein is essential to protect against muscle loss, and while eating more protein without exercising has been shown in some studies to improve body composition, combining it with strength training brings better results and other benefits too.
Including around 30g of protein at each meal improves satiety and fullness between meals, which plays a huge role in managing cravings and reducing the temptation to snack between meals. Protein is essentially the building blocks of the body, used for repairing and renewing muscles and organs and supporting the growth of hair, nails and healthy skin.
GOOD BUGS VS BAD BUGS
THE GUT MICROBIOME
You’ll have no doubt heard about the importance of a healthy microbiome, but this becomes even more essential in the context of menopause. Estrogen is processed by bacteria in the gut before it is sent to the rest of the body. When estrogen levels drop, these bacteria become redundant and die off, changing the delicate balance of good bacteria and bad bacteria in the gut. Many women notice poorer digestion and more bloating, inflammation, reduced bone mineral density, impaired immune function, depression and brain fog. Having too many bad bacteria is also linked to weight gain because these ‘bad’ strains extract more calories from the food we eat than the ‘good’ strains.
Fortunately, improving your gut microbiome is as simple as increasing the variety of fruit, veg and plant-based foods, such as nuts, seeds, whole grains, herbs and spices. Adding fermented foods like live yoghurt, kefir, kombucha and sauerkraut will also help.
Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cabbage, kale, radish, chard, sprouts etc..) have the added benefit of helping to balance hormones, supporting the menopause transition.
HOW DIET & EXERCISE
WORK TOGETHER
To stay strong and active for life, we need muscle, yet at this time of our lives, our bodies are programmed to break down muscle. Exercise and diet play a dual role in countering this, if we do it the right way. I explain more about the exercise approach women should take to build muscle and burn fat here But even with the appropriate exercise, our body won’t adapt if we aren’t feeding it correctly. Exercise puts the body in a stress state, which triggers muscle burning and fat storing - the opposite of what we want. To avoid this, women must eat before working out and then, within 30 minutes of exercising, eat around 30g of protein either as a snack or a meal. Eating before a workout means you are well-fuelled and able to go hard which is essential to change your metabolism. Eating afterwards puts the body into repair mode so it can rebuild and grow muscle and let go of stubborn fat.
STICKING TO
A HEALTHIER DIET
Knowing what to eat is one thing, but sticking to a plan that limits convenience foods and sweet things is another thing altogether.
We eat for many reasons and not just because we are hungry. If you’ve struggled to stick to a diet in the past then it’s important to take time to understand both your food habits and your relationship with food.
Ask yourself the following questions:
What’s stopping you from eating a healthier diet?
How well do your goals motivate you?
What things could you change or do differently to make it easier for you to eat better?
The answers you get will help you create new strategies which boost your motivation and allow you to form new habits which together will give you better and faster results.
Results don’t simply come from following a set of new recipes, there are other equally important factors to work on:
Mindset. An essential step is to firmly decide that you want to change for the better and that your health and happiness are worth prioritising.
Trust. Fostering the belief that eating healthier food is important and will change not just your weight, but how you feel; your energy levels, focus and mood.
Consciousness. Much of what we eat is done with little thought. We’re influenced heavily by food marketing, being surrounded by food, the behaviour of others and even the automatic responses to our emotions. Instead, we have to relearn how to make conscious decisions about what we eat, so we can choose foods that move us closer to our goal and give us the right balance of sustenance and pleasure in our lives.
Example meal plans
Now you understand what to eat and why, try out these easy-to-follow meal plans and start tracking the changes today.
BUY THE BOOK
If you’ve tried repeatedly over the years to eat a healthier diet but find you simply can’t stick to a diet, then this is the next book you should read. It’s not your average diet book which just tells you what you should and shouldn’t be eating. Instead, it explains why it’s so hard to lose weight after 40. It shines a light on how women’s complicated lives and our tendency to put others first affects how we eat and therefore our weight. The book will help you understand your blockers and show you how to overcome them to finally find success.
