Are you a post-menopausal woman struggling with weight gain despite trying every diet and fasting hack?
Tired of seeing no results? Ready to feel energised and keep up with your family and grandkids?
Good news! We have discovered a science-backed solution for those battling weight gain after menopause.
Our tools and systems, initially designed to optimise blood glucose and body composition, have helped many middle-aged women who have tried fasting, keto, calorie counting, and carnivore diets. These women are now thriving with our tailored programs!
Why Menopause Causes Weight Gain
As estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone levels decrease during menopause, maintaining a healthy body composition becomes challenging.
Post-menopausal women experience abrupt hormonal changes, resulting in weight gain and declining metabolic health. Reduced estrogen and increased follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) make it difficult to maintain muscle and bone mass, leading to increased body fat and insulin resistance.
The recent paper, Weight gain during the menopause transition: Evidence for a Mechanism Dependent on Protein Leverage, helped us pinpoint the problem and understand why our systems have been so helpful for so many middle-aged women.
- Decreasing estrogen and increasing follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) in the menopausal years make it harder for a woman’s body to hold onto precious muscle (and bone mass).
- Decreasing muscle mass and less activity means older women require less energy but more protein to maintain the precious metabolically active muscle they have.
- Increased appetite for protein to combat muscle loss caused by the changing hormonal milieu.
- Body fat as someone responds to increased cravings for protein by eating more calorie-ridden fat-and-carb foods despite a slowing metabolism. This leads to worsening metabolic health, insulin resistance, Type-2 Diabetes, and the many associated complications.
Simple Solutions for Menopause Weight Loss
The effective way to tackle menopausal weight gain is to prioritise dietary protein and reduce carbs and fat intake. This aligns with the protein leverage hypothesis, suggesting that higher protein intake enhances satiety and reduces overall calorie consumption.
Increasing protein intake helps post-menopausal women maintain muscle mass, improve metabolic health, and combat insulin resistance. Focusing on nutrient-dense foods ensures you get essential nutrients like calcium, iron, potassium, and vitamin C, supporting overall health and well-being during menopause.
In line with protein leverage theory, our satiety analysis has shown that we eat less when we increase the percentage of total energy from dietary protein. Our programs guide Optimisers to achieve an increased protein percentage by prioritising protein while incrementally dialling back the energy from fat and carbs.
Aside from protein, we have also identified several vital nutrients that we appear to crave, including calcium, iron, potassium, and vitamin C. Like protein, we eat until we get enough of these critical nutrients. Once we get what we need, we experience sensory-specific satiety.
Packing more of these nutrients into our food per calorie empowers us to crush our cravings and appetite with less energy while getting more of all the nutrients we need to thrive. We call this nutrient density.
Our satiety algorithm identifies nutrient-dense foods that enhance satiety. By prioritizing these foods, you can manage your appetite, feel full with fewer calories, and support effective weight management during menopause.
Our unique approach to nutrition focuses on providing adequate protein to build and maintain muscle mass, which is crucial for metabolic health in post-menopausal women.
This approach ensures you remain strong, robust, and resilient while also meeting your needs for other essential nutrients. Our emphasis on nutrient density helps crush cravings and promotes satiety, enabling you to manage your weight effectively during menopause.
Track What Matters: Effective Data Tips
While biohackers want to track everything, most people find tracking tedious. But a little data and measurement can help gamify the process of Nutritional Optimisation to make it fun as you ensure you’re moving in the right direction.
If you’ve tried every other weight loss approach and failed, some tracking will likely be helpful. But rather than tracking everything, we encourage our Optimisers to use the minimum effective dose of actionable data.
In our Data-Driven Fasting Challenges, we show users how to use blood glucose to validate their hunger, get back in touch with their innate hunger cues, and give their bodies precisely what they need when needed.
In our Macros Masterclass, Optimisers track their food to understand how they currently eat. Over time, they’re nudged towards a more optimal macronutrient intake until they find the minimum effective dose of macronutrient change required to keep them moving towards their goals.
High-Satiety Foods for Menopause
Now that you understand the problem and the solution, the simplest place to start your Nutritional Optimisation journey towards an adequate protein intake and increased satiety is with a simple food list.
While we have a range of food lists tailored towards different goals and preferences, our high-satiety foods will ensure you get the protein and nutrients you require to crush your craving and feel satisfied.
Nutrient-Dense Recipes for Weight Loss
We don’t always eat individual foods; instead, we combine them into meals. To help people get results fast, we created a series of NutriBooster recipes centred around nutrient density and tailored towards different goals and preferences.
To get the ball rolling, you can download samples of our Fat Loss, Maximum Nutrient Density or High Protein:Energy recipe books.
Must-Read Articles on Menopause Health
If you like to read, we have a range of articles that detail our unique approach to reversing insulin resistance and diabetes management we’ve included below:
- Menopausal Weight Gain: The Problem and Solution Explained
- Julia’s Journey to Wellness: Post-Menopause Success
- Maile’s Triumph: From Lupus Struggles to Thriving at 50
- Macros to Reverse Insulin Resistance and Achieve Optimal Health
- The Protein Leverage Hypothesis
- What is Nutrient Density (and Why It Matters)?
Join Our Weight Loss Courses
When you’re ready to dial things in, we have some courses that may interest you as you continue on your Nutritional Optimisation journey.
Data-Driven Fasting
Our most popular course is our Data-Driven Fasting Challenge. In just four weeks, you’ll learn to use your blood glucose to guide when and what to eat without tracking your food.
While many older women turn to popular fasting regimes like 16:8, 20:4, OMAD, ADF, or extended fasting, Data-Driven Fasting offers greater precision around meal timing and ensures you get the protein and nutrients every day.
You can familiarise yourself with our DDF app and get our free DDF 101 course here.
Learn more about our Data-Driven Fasting Challenge here
Macros Masterclass
If you’re ready to improve the quality of your diet, our Macros Masterclass guides Optimisers on how to dial in their balance between protein and energy from carbs and fat. This is the most critical step to increasing satiety.
While you may think that only body-building bros thrive on a higher-protein diet, menopausal and post-menopausal women might give them a run for their money because they require more protein with less energy.
Learn more about our Macros Masterclass here.
Micros Masterclass
Finally, when you’re ready to take your nutrition to the ultimate level, our Micros Masterclass will guide you to fill in all the micronutrient gaps you have that are critical to crushing your cravings and increasing your satiety.
Learn more about our Micros Masterclass here
Got Questions?
If you’ve got any further questions or want to learn more, we’d love you to ask them in our Optimising Nutrition Community. We have thousands of Optimisers eager to help new optimisers find their feet.
Breast cancer treatments kill cancer, but what happened to my insides as a result of chemo is invisible. My blood work is a mess and constant hot flashes ruined my quality of life. Finally, I found an oncologist who prescribed Provera, so now I have no hot flashes. However, even very low-carb eating and weight-bearing exercise isn’t keeping me from gaining weight. I don’t know what to do next.