Let’s be honest, menopause is painful and highly uncomfortable. While the symptoms of menopause are likely to vary, weight gain is often considered to be the common problem. It’s no secret that proper diet and exercise are the best ways to manage this sudden weight gain, but as a menopausal woman, you may face several difficulties. The following article will help to offer guidance concerning this and discuss some of the best diets for post-menopausal women and weight loss for women over 50.
Best Diets for Women Over 50: Intermittent Fasting, Carb Cycling, Mediterranean
As scientists deepened and evolved their knowledge of nutrition, several new diets have been getting a lot of buzz. The current most popular and effective weight loss approaches for weight loss for women over 50 include intermittent fasting, carb cycling, and the Mediterranean diet. These diet plans have been associated with reducing cardiovascular events, increasing bone and muscle mass, promoting longevity, and reducing the risks of various cancers.
Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is becoming a new craze for post-menopausal women. People have seen it deliver some amazing results on all body types. The popularity of intermittent fasting in weight loss for women over 50 has also gained interest in recent years promoting more and more women switching to this diet.
Intermittent fasting promises following benefits, along with a lean and energized body:
- Prominent weight loss and maintenance of a healthy weight
- Increased lean muscle mass
- Improved energy
- Enhanced immunity against various pathogens
- Reduced stress on the brain and body
- Promoted cell growth (and stimulated resistance towards various diseases in turn)
- Increased cellular sensitivity towards insulin
- Boosted cognition
- Making the anti-aging system robust as it enhances your body as a whole
For women over 50, it is better to talk to a doctor before starting intermittent fasting. Your health and age must be kept in mind while determining which kind of intermittent fasting is good for you.
There is some speculations about the benefits of IF created by the people who believe fasting is never a good option for the human body. But the reality is humans have always fasted. As we look back into history, we can see that periods of fasting has always been a part of human life.
Cavemen would fast for long durations of time and then after a good hunt, they would feast. Not only this, fasting has been deeply rooted in many cultures and features in various holy books like the Bible, the Quran, and the Mahabharata.
If you are ready to start intermittent fasting, check out this article on crescendo fasting, the best fasting approach for women.
Carb Cycling
Carb cycling means restricting carbohydrates for a temporary amount of time. “Temporary” is the key here.
This means that there will be times when you can decrease the intake of carbohydrates. This decreased intake of carbohydrates will allow you to benefit from ketosis but without destroying the systems that need some amount of carbohydrates to run properly. Carb cycling is actually a modified version of keto-diet that reduces negative effects even more.
A carb-cycling diet focuses on foods like grilled chicken or lean proteins. This diet can help a post-menopausal woman and a woman over 50 in the following ways:
Balanced hormones: A carb-cycling diet ensures that all your hormones, including insulin, are in check. This makes certain that you experience fewer hot flashes, and even if they occur, they are less intense and persist for a lesser period of time.
Enhanced brain function: When glucose is in lesser quantity, hot flashes become more frequent and intense, thereby decreasing brain’s health. This happens in the keto diet in which you start depriving your brain of glucose leading to a hot flash which indicates that your brain is trying to protect itself from over-starvation.
Things get worse when Estrogen, a female hormone with a job to increase the transport of glucose to the brain, gradually drops. As the estrogen levels drop, so does the ability to transport more glucose leading to increased hot flashes.
A carb cycling diet makes sure that your brain never runs out of glucose completely. This eventually reduces miserable menopausal symptoms. At the same time, it will help you control your total carbohydrate intake and promote weight loss.
Increased Weight loss: Many women attest that weight loss for women over 50 can become a serious issue, particularly after menopause. Carb cycling diet helps with this problem by optimizing hormones that regulate hunger. These hormones include insulin, leptin, and ghrelin. This diet also reduces your cravings and prevents weight gain.
Boosted sex drive: Carb cycling diet makes sure that the fat-soluble vitamins in your body get properly absorbed. One of the most important fat-soluble vitamins in your body is vitamin D- a precursor of sex hormones. By increasing vitamin D absorption, carb recycling helps rebalance your sex hormones which are knocked away as menopause kicks in. The result: enhanced spark between the sheets!
Stabilized energy levels: Menopause can usually have you wiped out, making you feel fatigued and irritable. Carb recycling diet aids in the maintenance of optimum energy levels through pathways that burn calories at a fixed pace. This stabilized energy also ensures that the hormone levels of a woman stay in check.
Improved sleep: Sleeping can become an issue after menopause, especially if you are not focusing on your diet. Consuming variable quantities of fats and carbs can induce a spike and crash in blood sugar which may lead to insomnia. Combined with other menopausal symptoms like hot flashes and palpitations, the sleep of a menopausal woman can really become disturbed. Carb cycling diets balance blood sugar, regulates the sleep-controlling-hormones like melatonin, serotonin, and cortisol, and resets your circadian rhythm for better sleep.
Reduced inflammation: Menopause often causes inflammation which may lead to the development of several painful symptoms. This increased inflammation also plays a vital role in inducing nearly every disease on earth. Carb cycling diet helps by combining the power of fats and carbohydrates to ensure a reduced level of inflammation, joint pain, and back pain.
Mediterranean Diet
The Mediterranean diet is more like a lifestyle than just a meal routine. By mixing a well-balanced diet along with regular physical activity in an environment with no fast foods, this diet ensures enhanced weight loss for women over 50. The hallmark of this diet is getting rid of poor food choices, eating products derived from plants, unprocessed foods loaded with nutrients, and healthy fats, and maintaining the target of 1200 calories a day.
The Mediterranean diet puts special emphasis on fresh foods that are prepared in simple ways, using minimal saturated fats, sugars, and salts. Extra virgin olive oil is frequently added to foods in this diet. It contains monounsaturated fat that protects against cardiovascular issues and helps you lose weight after 50. Many studies have shown Mediterranean diet to be extremely beneficial with advantages such as:
- Lowered risk of heart attack and atherosclerosis
- Reduced risk of diabetes type- 2
- Enhanced cognition
- Reduced risk of osteoporosis in post-menopausal women
- Increased muscle mass in women over 50
- Delayed progression of carotid plaque
- Stabilizing resting metabolic rate
A higher Mediterranean diet score (MDS), meaning better adherence to this diet, ensures that a post-menopausal woman improves her bone mineral density and enhances her slower metabolism irrespective of her hormonal profile, prior lifestyle, and even smoking habits.
7 Weight Loss Tips for Women Over 50
In addition to the diet recommendations discussed above, here are seven weight loss tips for women over 50 and post-menopausal women.
- Be More Active. Try weight training, walk for at least 30 minutes every day, or perform some aerobic exercises daily.
- Stay away from sugary drinks. Don’t risk your health over soda. Simply swap it with water or may sparkling sugar-free drinks.
- Eat more vegetables. Try to fill up with food that is high in good nutrients. Vegetables will reduce your calories per day and will boost weight loss.
- Control your portions. Controlling how much food you eat is as essential as eating healthy foods.
- Eat breakfast. This will not only keep you active all day but will also stop you from binge eating.
- Stay hydrated. Drinking a lot of water will ensure that you are losing weight and avoiding mistaking thirst signals for hunger signals.
- Eat only when you are hungry. Not eating on time will only lead to binge eating making you gain weight in the process.
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