Question: 

What diet is best for Perimenopause?

Short Answer: 

One of the most common complaints we get from women in perimenopause is unexplained weight gain. Their lifestyles have not changed in years, but all of a sudden, their weight keeps increasing. And if they try to lose the weight, their efforts fall short and often gain more weight in the process. An observation we see quite often is that many women are still tyring to “eat less and exercise more.” This might have worked when they were 25, but for women in their 40’s, this weight loss approach often seemed to backfire. Women in their 40’s typically have a good deal of stress already, so trying to exercise the weight off only adds to their stress. This makes the weight loss process very frustrating, if not seem impossible.

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PYHP 098 Full Transcript: 

Download PYHP 098 Transcript

Dr. Maki: Everyone thank you for joining us for another episode of the Progress Your Health podcast. I am Dr. Maki.

Dr. Davidson: And I am Dr. Davidson. 

Dr. Maki: So on this one, we are just going to dive right in, and we of course have a lot to talk about. We cannot not talk about perimenopause or menopause without discussing diet and weight loss at least to some extent. Would you agree with that?

Dr. Davidson: Absolutely when women, hit their 40s, they especially perimenopause and menopause. They always say it is like I put on 10, 12 pounds overnight like it, just where did it come from and they will point right to their stomach. I have had women, I love them dearly they will even grab their stomach and say, “I have never had a belly before where did this gut come from?” And things are different, of course, we all know obviously from when we are twenty, to when we are forty, to when we are sixty, we are always changing but it definitely comes from the change in hormones. 

Dr. Maki: Yes, right and believe me that is very complicated and you and I, we have been doing this a long time and we certainly do not have all the answers when it comes to diet and weight loss and especially perimenopausal weight loss or menopausal weight loss for that matter. But the purpose of this episode is to kind of just shed some light on some of the observations that we have noticed and in some ways what does not work for people, we do know some of those things. Everyone is still trying to follow the same advice eat less, exercise more all the time. They are just trying to basically starve themselves and exercise a bunch and that strategy right there and we will kind of dive into that, what that strategy looks like little bit more specifically but that strategy clearly does not work. And in some cases that actually make their situation worse, they actually gain more weight. They are exercising five, six days a week and their weight is going up. 

Dr. Davidson: Yes, you will see that I mean granted I was a child of the 80s. I remember the 80s and the 90s, if you were going to go on a diet, you