The best diet for menopause needs to take into a account many things, these are a few:
- Increasing waist size
- Crashing energy levels
- Sleep problems
- Hot sweats
- Brain fog
- Growing risk of disease
Best Diet For Menopause
A lot of perimenopausal women notice that their waist size is increasing, for no apparent reason. This is likely due to hormonal imbalances between oestrogen and progesterone, because they decrease at different rates. Previous successful strategies to lose weight might be failing. The trick is to bring insulin into line.
Many menopausal women struggle hugely with poor energy. This impacts brain function and can lead to brain fog. This is made much worse by wildly fluctuating blood sugar levels, which is one result of a normal Western diet. The trick is to bring insulin into line.
Sleep problems can be triggered by a number of different hormones. The sex hormones (or lack of) obviously play a big role, but they’re not the only ones. If you waking up between 2am and 4am on a regular basis, and feeling that strange kind of knackered and wide awake thing at the same time – take a look at the way you’re eating and drinking in the evening. Guess what the trick is here?
One of the 4 biggest killers in the West is type 2 diabetes. It’s on the rise and more and more middle-age women are succuming. It’s a disease related to insulin, and in many people – it can be reversed by..
Bringing Insulin Into Line
By far the best diet for menopause is one that lowers your insulin level. It has the potential to help with so many menopause symptoms, especially weight gain.
When you have insulin in your system it acts like an on/off switch regarding fat burning. When you have insulin floating around – you cannot burn fat, neither the fat you’ve just eaten, or the fat you’re wearing. You can learn more here.
Your body is a hybrid when it comes to energy source – it can run on both glucose (sugar) and fat. It likes to swing between both, but for sustained energy fat works best. The brain in particular loves burning fat for it’s energy.
When you make poor choices with your carbs, i.e. sugar and the other refined stuff – they trigger massive quantities of insulin. You end up with a rebound low blood sugar a few hours later. This crashes your energy in the day, and causes you to wake up at night – and it also adds to hot sweats!
Type 2 diabetes is caused by too many carbs.
The best diet for menopause keeps insulin levels low. Three ways to reduce insulin include:
- Giving your system a break from food – intermittent fasting.
- Reducing carbs and choosing wisely when you do eat them.
- Cut right back on sugar and refined carbs, especially at night if you have sleep problems.
- Choose whole and unrefined carbs which release their glucose slowly.
- Eat plenty of natural fat – it’s a great energy source and does not trigger insulin (and therefore doesn’t make you fat)
By far the best diet for menopause is one that includes plenty of good natural fat, is lower in carbs, and particularly low in sugar and refined carbs.
Good fats include olive oil, grass fed butter, coconut oil, pastured eggs, fatty wild fish, pastured meat, seeds and nuts.
Better carb choices include bean, lentils, chick peas, sweet potatoes, yams, and oats.
When you make better fat and carb choices along with plenty of green veg every day – you’re onto a winner.
This combo will help with an expanding waist, energy, sleep issues, and go a good way to protect you from disease.
Menopause Help Available
Feel free to ask any questions in the comments below.
Have a great week!
Dr Julie