Dietary and Nutrition changes during perimenopause
There is currently a lot of talk around the need for extra protein during perimenopause. If you are a female in your 30s, 40s, or 50s, you may be being bombared with messages around the need for more protein and what to do to prevent weight gain.
While there is some truth to this and some women feel better with increasing protein, you don’t need to follow a high protein diet or reduce your carbohydrate intake.
We can show you some simple and tasty ways to increase your protein without radically changing your diet.
Some of the reasons women may need more protein are due to a possible increase in insulin resistance, which can affect appetite and weight. There is also a natural loss of muscle mass as we age (sarcopenia) and ensuring you are eating enough protein is important to address this. For these reasons, your level of physical activity is also something to think about and something we can help you understand and address.
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Weight gain during perimenopause
It’s not unusual for women to gain weight during perimenopause. This may be due to a combination of reasons including, but not limited to:
- A drop off in physical activity (especially with kids and often working full-time – which is totally understandable)
- An increase in insulin resistance as hormones change (weight gain is a side-effect of insulin resistance)
- Dieting history (see below)
- A natural process of ageing where we lose muscle (sarcopenia) and increase fat stores (this can be protective as we age)
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Dieting to lose weight often leads to muscle loss
For over 2 decades we have been helping women in their 30s, 40s and 50s (and beyond) who are struggling with food and their weight. You may have tried “every diet under the sun” to lose weight, only to regain the weight. This can leave you feeling distressed around food and your body and experiencing “food noise”. You may also engage in disordered eating behaviours including food restriction, over-eating or bingeing and emotional eating that doesn’t feel good. Please know you are not alone.
Almost everyone who tries to lose weight through dieting or a “healthy lifestyle” program, regains the weight and overtime and ends up a little (or much) heavier. This has nothing to do with a lack of willpower and it is certainly not a failing on your part. Loss of muscle mass with dieting is part of this gradual increase over time.
As you lose weight, you are losing both fat and muscle, the less you eat or the faster you lose weight, the more muscle wasting occurs. This has implications for your metabolism long-term, where less muscle means a slower metabolism. A slower metabolism is a more efficient one, meaning you now don’t need to eat as much to be in energy balance. Long-term, it is imperative you ensure you’re eating enough to minimise this effect; doing some resistance/weight training is also a great way maintain muscle and boost your metabolism. Dieting can make it difficult to exercise as you don’t have enough energy on board and your muscles will fatigue quickly, exercise feels harder and is often more painful.
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Dieting also has these consequences which contribute to weight regain;
- Constantly thinking about food or questioning whether or not you should eat a particular food, or at all (aka food noise)
- Strong food cravings
- Feeling shame/guilt around certain food
- Feeling out of control around food
- Bingeing behaviour, or even just feeling you’ve eaten way too much
- Trying to be “good” during the day and eating less and then feeling famished in the evening (or after work)
- Hitting the wall at 3-4pm and needing a “sugar hit”
- Feeling “addicted” to sugar or carbs
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So how can we help you?
No 1. is stop dieting or restricting food. To help you with this we use the non-diet/intuitive eating approach. As part of the intuitive eating process, we will start to fine tune any nutrition to meet your individual needs.
Usual female protein requirements are ~0.75g per kg of body weight, so an 80kg women needs around 60g of protein daily. This is easy to achieve on a normal dietary intake and you don’t need to focus on protein. Research has shown some women during perimenopause and menopause may benefit from increasing this to 1.0g to 1.2g per kg of body weight. This can start to get a bit trickier, especially if you are “watching what you eat” or super busy with kids and work. It’s common for women to find themselves missing meals snacks or meals, or going for more convenience food which may be lower in protein.
We can help you meet your protein needs and ensure you’re eating as well as you can without having to follow complicated high protein diets or higher protein meal plans. We will check your total food and protein intake and provide strategies to help you increase your protein and other nutrients with easy to apply strategies.
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Hormone replacement in perimenopause and beyond
Do you have questions or concerns around hormone replacement? A UK doctor Louise Newson is really leading the way with helping women understand what it’s all about. Her podcast is an excellent resource and this episode (HRT, misinformation and navigating the menopause media minefield) is a great place to start.
