The Pros & Cons of the Top 3 Diets for Women In Menopause

Everyone wants to know what the “best” diet is to follow, which, to be fair, is a logical question to ask —especially when you’re a woman in menopause who's been bombarded with opinions, misinformation, and different diets advertised to you for years.

(Does anyone remember the  Cookie Diet?  Yes, that was a thing!)

The problem is none of them seem to work.

I’ll be up front with you: I don’t believe in diets as the best way to lose weight after menopause.

So why am I writing this blog?

First, because there is some useful information to talk about in the top 3 recommended diets for women over 50.

Second, because I know there’s a portion of you that are going to try them, and I want you to be fully informed.

And third, because I want you to take the next step in your health journey with enough information.

If you choose to try one of these diets (or even if you don’t), you need to understand:

1. The benefits of each diet
2. The limitations of each diet
3.  How post-menopausal women can safely try each one

So let’s dive in.

Diet #1: Intermittent Fasting

Why Is Intermittent Fasting Recommended?

Intermittent Fasting, or IF for short, was first introduced as a treatment for epilepsy. Basically, fasting forces your brain to use fats for fuel instead of sugar, which stabilizes brain activity. Fasting increases GABA, a chemical that tells neurons to slow down and stay calm, and decreases glutamate, a chemical that tells the brain to fire up and stay excited. 

But as far as a weight loss strategy, many people have had great success with IF. It can help to stabilize blood sugar, it’s easy on the digestion, and it has been known to be very beneficial for diabetics.  

It forces the body to use stored fat, once the sugar or glycogen stores have been depleted. It increases insulin sensitivity, which prevents type 2 diabetes and increases Human Growth Hormone (HGH), which preserves muscle and burns fat.

The Problem With Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent Fasting puts a lot of stress on the body for women over 50. Once you are post menopausal, you need to find ways to lower the stress, not increase it. Increased stress = increased cortisol (the stress hormone), which is the reason you're dealing with belly fat. The last thing you need is more of it! 

It’s already hard enough for us to maintain, let alone gain, muscle. We are already naturally losing muscle (sarcopenia) and need to fight against that every day. Fasting tells your body you are starving. As such, it lets go of your lean muscle and holds onto fat, leaving you with an even higher % of body fat.

How Can You Safely Try Intermittent Fasting?

You need to be ready to eat a balanced diet during your eating window.  Too many women place too much emphasis on their fasting time and don’t pay enough attention to what they do eat when it’s time. Regardless of when you eat, you need to maintain the right macronutrient balance for your body and metabolism. 

For workouts, I see many women working out in the morning during the fasting period. This is another great way to burn muscle and store fat.  Try working out DURING the time you’re eating, if you’re going to try this way of eating.

Lastly, I would actually recommend tracking your food alongside when you’re eating. This is what’s going to help you find the correct macronutrient balance. If you don’t know exactly how to do this — the simplification is this: When you track your food, you will be able to see trends in how your body is responding. If your weight goes up, you have data. If your weight goes down, you have data. Determining exactly what it means is honestly, highly dependent on a lot of variables, but it will be a good starting point for you or for anyone you work with to help you analyze your nutrition and weight loss.

Overall, however, I find this diet both too restrictive and too loose on nutritional guidelines. 

If you’re looking for long-term weight loss as well as a healthy, strong, lean body, this isn’t the diet for you. 

Diet #2: low-carb

Why Are Low-Carb Diets Recommended?

It’s pretty exciting to see your scale go down 5 or 6 pounds in just one week!

Many women lose weight quickly on low-carb diets, which are considered below 26% carbohydrates. It also means getting most or all of your carbohydrates from vegetables and little fruit.

The low-carb diet became popular back in the 1970s with the Atkins diet and resurfaced again in the 1990s with the South Beach diet. Both shared the low-carb philosophy: avoid all starchy carbs and to focus on protein, vegetables, and fats. Even fruits were considered “too starchy.”   

The Problem With Low Carb Diets

Most women on a low-carb diet will avoid complex carbohydrates like bread, pasta, and cereal (which I agree with!), but they also avoid very healthy carbs like rice, quinoa, and potatoes.

And those great-looking numbers on the scale? That isn’t due to a legitimate drop in body fat; it’s an illusion brought on by losing water weight. You see, carbohydrates are stored in our body as glucose in our blood and brain and glycogen in our muscles and liver. With each molecule of glycogen stored, we store 3 or 4 molecules of water. So, when you deplete your glycogen stores, you also deplete your body of water.  And it leaves your muscles looking small and flat.

Meanwhile, if you add back one serving of a starchy carb, the water weight will come right back, and the scale will go back up. This leads to the false belief that carbs are the food pyramid’s root of all evil.

As a matter of fact, you could gain fat if you restrict carbs too much.  Why? We need carbs to build muscle.  Carbs are your body's preferred energy source. Without carbs/glycogen in your muscles, and without enough fat-burning efficiency, your body will break down your muscle to produce the sugar it needs for energy. 

This slows your metabolism down, making it harder and harder to lose weight. 

How Can You Safely Try A Low-Carb Diet?

I agree with watching how many starchy carb servings you have in a day, but don’t omit them from your diet altogether.  Instead, focus on getting your carb servings from whole foods. In addition to the aforementioned rice, quinoa, and potatoes, other healthy carbs include beans, legumes, squash, farro, and more.

Diet #3: Keto

Why Are Keto Diets Recommended?

The Keto diet was first introduced in 1920 as a medical treatment for epilepsy.  Since fasting wasn’t sustainable as a lifestyle, Keto was a way to mimic a fasting state while still having enough calories.  

A true Keto diet has a macronutrient breakdown of  70-75% fat, 20-25% protein, and 5-10% carbohydrates. The high level of fat is to keep you satiated, and the low protein is to help keep you in ketosis. Your body can convert too much protein into glucose (gluconeogenesis), which will take you out of ketosis. And, of course, the low carbs are to keep you in fat-burning mode. 

The pros of this diet, in my opinion, are very limited. The keto diet reduces inflammation, lowers triglycerides, calms the brain, promotes rapid fat loss, and steadies energy levels. You may lose weight quickly (including your muscle). 

The Problem With Keto Diets

As for the cons, maintaining a diet that consists mainly of fat is not very sustainable, and for many people, it’s not too appealing either. If you enjoy the way you eat healthily and have a variety of foods to choose from and flavors to enjoy, you’re far more likely to stick with it. That variety will also help you get an array of nutrients and vitamins in your food.

On top of that, as a woman who is post menopausal, your main priority has to be building muscle. Otherwise, you’ll continue to get weaker and accelerate sarcopenia, the natural progression of muscle loss that began in our 30’s.  Remember, we need protein and carbohydrates for muscle growth, brain function, healthy organs, and a variety of micronutrients.

​How Can You Try a Keto Diet Safely?

First, decide if you want a true Keto diet or a diet inspired by Keto (Atkins, Paleo). This is important because it’s going to determine what your calories are made up of, meaning the macronutrient balance. In a true keto diet, 90% of your calories come from fat. So that will potentially alter what you choose for healthy foods and how you determine if its still healthy for you as you go based on heavy fat intake.

Second, it’s a great idea and highly recommended to check your liver and kidney functions first - because it can make liver conditions worse and make your kidneys overloaded. Please ensure you are healthy before starting, especially if you are aiming for a true Keto diet.

And third, keep saturated fats to a minimum. Because you’re focusing so much on fats, you really need to watch this. They shouldn’t be more than 7% of your fat intake or it can contribute to heart disease, which is already the number one killer for women.

How to Choose a Post-Menopausal Diet

So where does that leave us?

The 3 most popular diets (excluding medical interventions) that women in menopause are discussing will give you temporary results if you’re able to stick with them long enough, but none will be effective at long-term weight loss. 

Everyone wants to know the answer, “What’s that one solution that’s sure to take the weight off and keep it off?”

Your metabolism, lifestyle, history, and goals will determine what’s right for you.  

So the real answer is to approach this like a detective, not to grab a ready-made diet off the shelf and hope it works even when so many others have failed.

Four Steps to Customize a Healthy Routine

Step 1

Start by taking stock of where you are now. You can do this by taking the time to log your food for a full week before making any changes.

Begin moving your body daily instead of jumping into a strength training program before your body is ready. Give your metabolism a boost by getting a proper night's sleep regularly. 

Step 2

Adjust your caloric and macro intake to put you in a slight deficit if your metabolism is ready for this. If you’ve been under-eating or under a lot of stress, you may need to work on metabolic restoration first. 

Step 3
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Begin strength training two to three times per week, making sure you’re hitting all the major muscle groups, and be sure to progress those workouts to ensure you’re stressing the muscle enough to elicit change.

Add in daily movement of at least 10,000 steps along with stretching or yoga.

Step 4

Have a great recovery plan. This includes a solid nighttime routine, sleeping 7-9 hours per night, taking 2-3 days off per week from formal exercise, and a stress management plan in place. 

These four steps should be enough to get you going. Remember, your metabolism is constantly changing, and you need to be aware of the signs that it’s time to change things up.   Watch for changes in your hunger and craving, daily stress, energy levels throughout the day, and your ability to recover from your workouts. 

If you’re looking for a more structured approach to your goals or aren’t quite sure where to start, I’m available!

Click here to schedule your free fitness and nutrition consult, where we’ll discuss your goals, roadblocks, and if working with a health coach is right for you.