The Galveston Diet for Menopause: What to Know

By Meryl Davids LandauMedically Reviewed by Lynn Grieger, RDN, CDCES

Reviewed: January 10, 2023

Medically Reviewed

Proteins and healthy fats make up a large part of the Galveston diet.

Adobe Stock

Gaining weight around the time of menopause is a common concern for many women.

It happened to the Texas ob-gyn Mary Claire Haver, MD, when her hormones started to fluctuate in midlife. Primarily to help herself, she created a new eating plan specifically for women in menopause, which is now being marketed as the Galveston Diet, named for her hometown.

Dr. Haver insists that Galveston is not a diet in the classic sense of the word. “It’s a lifetime eating plan,” she says. One effect is weight loss, but she says the Galveston diet is also a way to feel better overall and to improve other menopausal symptoms like hot flashes and brain fog.

When Haver, 54, began eating this way six years ago, “I was not counting calories, and the pounds started coming off. I was also sleeping better, and my hot flashes were better,” she says.

Information about the Galveston diet can be found on the company’s website.

Haver also outlines her story and discusses the science that guides her approach to menopause and nutrition in her new book, The Galveston Diet. The book also includes several weeks of meal plans for both meat eaters and vegetarians, along with recipes and shopping lists.

Read on to learn what the diet is all about — and what menopause experts have to say about its potential value.

Why Was the Galveston Diet Created?

Haver didn’t set out to create and share a lifestyle eating plan. She just wanted to drop the extra 20 pounds she’d put on by emotionally eating after her brother’s death and because of perimenopausal hormonal shifts.

She adopted the approaches she had preached as a physician, that weight loss results when you reduce your intake of calories and burn more with exercise. “Calories in, calories out. That’s what we were taught in medical school,” she says.

But even though she lowered her intake to less than 1,200 calories a day and religiously hit her home gym at 5:30 every morning, the pounds wouldn’t budge.

Exasperated, Haver reached out to nutritionists she knew, who pointed her to other possible reasons the weight was staying on, including the subclinical inflammation that is theorized, according to research, to increase with age.

She soon began evaluating the importance not just of calories but of the quality of the nutrition in her food — another topic not covered by her medical training — as well as ideas about the importance of eating within certain time windows.

She changed her eating habits and the weight fell off.

What Are the Major Components of the Galveston Diet?

The Galveston eating plan comprises three major actions:

1. Avoid Inflammatory Foods

Foods said to contribute to inflammation in the body are restricted on this plan. inflammation-promoting fare includes sugars, processed grains, fried foods, processed lunch meats, saturated fats, and soda, according to Harvard Health Publishing.

Instead, the diet emphasizes whole foods with lots of nonstarchy vegetables and fruits.

RELATED: 6 Foods to Avoid Around Menopause

Foods specifically believed to reduce inflammation are encouraged, such as fatty fish, berries, garlic, nuts, tomatoes, and olive oil.

2. Practice Intermittent Fasting

The idea, notes a review of research published in the Annals of Medicine, is that a long stretch of time between meals makes your cells more adaptive to stressors and also initiates important cellular repair.

The type of intermittent fasting (IF) recommended in the Galveston diet is known as 16/8, which means fasting for 16 hours and eating during a window of 8 hours every day. That generally means delaying the first meal of the day until around noon.

When it comes to menopausal women, there has been some concern that intermittent fasting might affect hormone levels, but a study published in the journal Obesity in October 2022 tested a dozen postmenopausal women (as well as a dozen premenopausal women) after two months of an even stricter eating windows of four to six hours. It found no changes in levels of estrone, testosterone, and most other sex hormones.

Haver advises adopting an intermittent fasting regimen slowly, such as by pushing breakfast back a half hour every few days, to give your body time to adjust. “I myself took six weeks before my first meal was at noon, so I never felt very hungry,” she says.

3. Up Your Fat Intake

Compared with the typical American diet, the Galveston diet slashes carbs dramatically. Here, the bulk of calories — some 70 percent at first — come from healthy fats, in order to encourage fat burning, according to Margaret Walsh, the company’s director of coaching and curriculum.

The company refers to this shift in energy sourcing as “fuel refocusing.”

“The aim is to achieve an optimal ratio of fat to protein to carbohydrate that promotes fat loss in the fat-loss phase,” says Walsh.

Proteins make up the next largest part of the diet, with nutrient-dense carbohydrates the smallest component.

After you’ve been on the diet for a while and you get used to eating fewer carbs and sugars, some additional complex carbs are put in.

Do Menopausal Women Need a Special Diet?

It is true that a woman’s body composition shifts during perimenopause, with more fat settling around the abdomen, experts say.

“Midbody weight gain is almost universal among menopausal women,” says Nanette Santoro, MD, the chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora and a longtime menopause researcher.

Virtually every woman gains at least some fat under her skin with the end of menses, Dr. Santoro says, which researchers believe might be related to the loss of estrogen.

Some percentage of women do experience more rapid weight gain and more fat accumulation around the abdomen during the menopausal transition, she says. “Still, little is known about why these women seem to have to work much harder on maintaining their body weight during this time.”

In addition to the possible hormonal link, women entering perimenopause and menopause are also dealing with changes related to getting older, says Stephanie Faubion, MD, the director of the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Women’s Health and the medical director for the North American Menopause Society (NAMS). The average age of menopause, defined as having gone a full year without having a period, is 51.

Menopausal women generally lose muscle mass at a rate of almost 1 percent a year, Dr. Faubion says. In fact, as a result of muscle loss, metabolic rate decreases by about 30 percent between ages 20 and 70 for both women and men, according to research, and this may contribute to weight gain.

RELATED: The Best Foods for Women Around Menopause

Is There Evidence That the Galveston Diet Benefits Menopausal Women?

The short, factual answer is no. Haver points to testimonials from women who have successfully used the diet but says the company has not conducted any clinical research.

Santoro and Faubion insist that clinical studies are required before the diet can be said to work.

“There is no evidence that the Galveston diet is some special kind of magic” for midlife women, Santoro says. “The diet is an example of a hunch-based marketing tool,” she says, noting it incorporates several ideas with at most a small amount of research behind them.

“The points about anti-inflammatory foods and a diet to ‘rebalance hormones’ are appealing, but not evidence-based,” Faubion says.

Plus this eating plan restricts carbohydrates more than is necessary, says Bonnie Taub-Dix, RDN, author of Read It Before You Eat It — Taking You From Label to Table. “Whole grain carbs provide fiber and a wide range of vitamins and minerals to help keep us satisfied and energized,” she says.

And while healthy fats like olive oil are important for midlife women — especially since they promote heart health at a time when heart disease risk increases — “an overabundance is not necessary,” Taub-Dix says.

“What women should take from this is that they should be focusing on eating food — real food (not processed), mostly from plants, and not too much,” Faubion says, referencing Michael Pollan’s advice from In Defense of Food.

Is There Any Research on the Concepts the Galveston Diet Is Based On?

There’s some research that supports the ideas, in general, but studies focused on menopausal women, in particular, are lacking.

Two key concepts in the Galveston diet likely spring from preliminary research on reducing carbs and on eating more high-quality fats.

A study known as EMPOWIR (Enhance the Metabolic Profile of Women With Insulin Resistance) followed 46 menopausal women who reduced their consumption of simple carbs for 12 months, while eating plenty of vegetables, low-fat protein and dairy, and low-glycemic index fruits. It found benefits for weight loss and improved insulin resistance in these women.

But in its conclusion the authors emphasize that larger, long-term studies are needed to confirm the results. Plus, most nutritionists emphasize the importance of reducing simple carbs and eating more nutrient-dense, complex carbs instead, as is suggested in the Mediterranean diet.

Evidence supporting the idea that intermittent fasting helps some people lose weight is accumulating. A review published in December 2021 in JAMA Network Open found weight loss benefits “supported by moderate to high quality of evidence.” But the studies reviewed didn’t specifically involve menopausal women.

Similarly, a review of 42 studies that tested IF in overweight people, both women and men, published in Biological Research for Nursing in May 2022, found that in the majority of studies, the technique did result in weight loss that was sustained over time. However, the authors note that other calorie-restricting eating plans were equally effective. This review also did not confirm any long-term differences in anti-inflammatory effects between IF eaters and others, and again, post-menopausal women weren’t the focus of the research.

Generally, the benefits of exercising and eating whole foods while avoiding sugar, processed food, and other unhealthy items are widely accepted and proven aspects of many healthy eating plans.

RELATED: 8 Energy Boosters for Menopausal Fatigue

What Is in a Sample Day’s Food on the Galveston Diet?

Many of the food items recommended in the Galveston diet appear on other eating plans, such as the well-regarded Mediterranean diet. For example, lunches and dinners in the suggested plans include chef salads, marinated grilled shrimp, and turkey tacos.

One key difference from other diets is that the suggested meal plans don’t include any breakfast items, because intermittent fasting generally lasts until noon.

Perhaps the biggest change from many weight-loss plans is the reliance on fats, which add ingredients to recipes not seen in most diets: bacon on spaghetti squash, cream cheese on celery sticks, and sour cream and heavy cream in a broccoli and chicken bake, for instance.

Even Without Scientific Evidence, Might There Be Benefits to the Galveston Diet?

The Galveston diet has become very popular in the four years since it was introduced.

Accessing the diet’s member website costs a one-time fee of $59 to $99.

Those desiring step-by-step guidance through the curriculum with certified coaches pay an additional $49 a month (which they can cancel at any time). These members “benefit from the community support, live instruction, and group coaching sessions,” Walsh says.

In addition to meal plans and recipes, the website includes a lot of information about midlife hormones, inflammation, and changing your mindset about food. For example, as Haver says, “Food can be about culture and celebration, so you’re going to have a piece of birthday cake. But that’s different from sitting alone with a pint of ice cream” and stress-eating.

Exercise is undeniably good for health and wellness and can help with weight loss, and the program offers video workouts.

Pros and Cons of the Galveston Diet

It may be that the diet itself is helpful for midlife women. Or perhaps all the expansive support and hand holding is what’s most beneficial. After all, as Haver notes, a lot of women are desperate to learn more about what’s happening in their bodies during perimenopause and menopause, and many doctors don’t help them.

Whatever the reason, testimonials on the website suggest that a number of menopausal women are losing weight that they, like Haver, previously had great difficulty dropping.

Editorial Sources and Fact-Checking

• Ferrucci F, Fabbri E. Inflammageing: Chronic Inflammation in Ageing, Cardiovascular Disease, and Frailty. Nature Reviews Cardiology. July 2018.
• Foods That Fight Inflammation. Harvard Health Publishing. November 16, 2021.
• Wilhelmi de Toledo F, Grundler F, Sirtori CS, Ruscica M. Unraveling the Health Effects of Fasting: A Long Road From Obesity Treatment to Healthy Life Span Increase and Improved Cognition. Annals of Medicine. June 2020.
• Faiza Kalam F, Akasheh RT, Cienfuegos S, et al. Effect of Time-Restricted Eating on Sex Hormone Levels in Premenopausal and Postmenopausal Females. Obesity. October 6, 2022.
• Kalyani RR, Corriere M, Ferrucci L. Age-Related and Disease-Related Muscle Loss: The Effect of Diabetes, Obesity, and Other Diseases. The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. October 2014.
• Mogul H, Freeman R, Nguyen K. Metformin-Sustained Weight Loss and Reduced Android Fat Tissue At 12 Months In EMPOWIR (Enhance The Metabolic Profile Of Women With Insulin Resistance): A Double Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Randomized Trial of Normoglycemic Women with Midlife Weight Gain. Endocrine Practice. May 2016.
• Patikorn C, Roubal K, Veettil SK, et al. Intermittent Fasting and Obesity-Related Health Outcomes: An Umbrella Review of Meta-analyses of Randomized Clinical Trials. JAMA Open Network. December 17, 2021.
• Wei X, Cooper A, Lee I, et al. Intermittent Energy Restriction for Weight Loss: A Systematic Review of Cardiometabolic, Inflammatory and Appetite Outcomes. Biological Research for Nursing. May 8, 2022.

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What Causes an Increase in Abdominal Fat After Menopause?

It’s a frustrating problem! The jeans you could easily slip into before menopause are now hard to button. You haven’t gained significant weight, but your waistline has thickened. An increase in abdominal fat after menopause is an issue many women face.

Even if you don’t gain a lot of weight, you may notice where you store fat shifts toward the waist and tummy. Plus, a thickening waistline is a marker of too much visceral fat – the type that increases the risk of health problems like cardiovascular disease. Are you destined to have a thick waistline during the second half of life?

What Causes Unwanted Abdominal Fat?

The key to getting rid of unwanted abdominal fat is understanding what causes it. After menopause, your body stores excess energy around your midsection rather than your hips and thighs. This is partly due to hormone changes, which make it harder for you to burn fat and more likely to store it around your waist.

Lifestyle also plays a role in the higher propensity to store fat midline. Let’s look at what causes belly fat to become more of a problem after menopause.

1. Hormonal Changes

Once you enter menopause, your ovaries produce less estrogen. This leads to a redistribution of where you store body fat. You’re less likely to send those extra pounds of body fat to your hips and thighs and more of it ends up around your abdomen and waist.

Hormonal changes also cause a drop in lean body mass and an increase in abdominal fat. As a result, you carry more abdominal fat even if you didn’t gain a large amount of weight.

2. Stress

Mid-life is a stressful time for many women. The stressors that surround menopause, like hot flashes and problems sleeping, contribute to an expanding waistline and belly. Stress has a major effect on the level of cortisol in your body.

Cortisol is a hormone that stores fat around your middle. It also causes you to crave high-sugar and high-carb versions of comfort foods, such as chocolate cake and French fries.

Tossing and turning at night and struggling to get a good night’s sleep can also cause belly fat. A study published in the journal Obesity found that people who sleep five hours or less per night have more belly fat than those who sleep seven hours or more per night. One reason is that lack of sleep causes an increase in ghrelin, which is a hormone that makes you hungry, and a decrease in leptin, which makes you feel full.

It’s important to have ways to manage stress at every stage in life, and that includes menopause. Some stress reduction tactics that help many people include:

• Yoga

• Meditation

• Deep breathing

• Nature walks

• Writing in a journal

• Practicing mindfulness

3.

A Sedentary Lifestyle

Most people slow down a bit during mid-life. Exercise is one of the best weapons against metabolic syndrome and a sedentary lifestyle.

Exercise helps maintain normal blood sugar levels and reduce the production of stress hormones, so you can enjoy better health and less belly fat.

4. Poor Dietary Choices

Treating belly fat after menopause requires a shift in lifestyle and diet. If your diet is mostly processed and includes foods high in sugar, you’re creating an environment that promotes belly fat.

How can you break the cycle? Substituting refined carbohydrates and ultra-processed foods with high-quality sources of protein and more non-starchy vegetables helps tame your body’s insulin response so you store less fat around your midline. Consuming more protein also reduces hunger and sugar cravings.

How can you turn your diet around? Start by making small changes:

• Replace one starchy carbohydrate per week with a non-starchy vegetable and include a quality source of protein at every meal.

• Add more fiber to your diet to slow how quickly you absorb carbohydrates. This change reduces the amount of insulin your pancreas must produce. Too much insulin makes it easier to store fat around the midline.

• Prioritize veggies and protein! One study also found that eating veggies and protein before carbohydrates lowers the blood sugar response to a meal and insulin release.

It’s Not Impossible to Lose Belly Fat After Menopause!

You can’t control the hormonal changes that work against losing belly fat, but you can change your lifestyle. The best exercise prescription is a combination of exercise that boosts your heart rate and strength training. Higher intensity exercise has the edge when it comes to reducing belly fat.

The conclusion of a study published in the International Journal of Cardiology was that, “High-intensity-resistance training induced a faster visceral fat loss, and the potential of resistance training should not be undervalued. ” So, more movement and pick up the intensity a bit when you can.

Belly fat isn’t only an aesthetic issue; it carries health risks. The reasons women have more of it after menopause are multifactorial.

Lifestyle habits like managing stress, exercise, and eating a whole food diet are beneficial for keeping belly fat in check!

How to get rid of belly fat during menopause [expert opinion]

11/24/2020

3 min

post author

Agnieszka Šmurta

Dietitian-specialist in complex skin treatment diseases, overweight, obesity and other diseases, related to malnutrition

If you have been affected by the problem of excess volume in the abdomen, which arose on the background of menopause, then the first thing you should do is sports. An active lifestyle and proper nutrition will help keep the figure under control, preventing the formation of body fat.

With the onset of menopause, a woman’s body goes through hormonal changes that often lead to overweight (1). Due to a decrease in the synthesis of female sex hormones (estrogens) and the active production of male (androgens), the distribution of adipose tissue by the body is disrupted: instead of gynoid fat, characteristic of reproductive age, in which fat deposits accumulate on the hips, android fat appears in the abdomen and sides . Excess fat deposits accumulate in the subcutaneous tissue of the abdominal cavity and form the so-called “tummy” (2).

What should I do to get rid of my tummy?

• Avoid debilitating diets that promise instant results, such as fasting, fruit, vegetable, protein diets. The diet should be light, but varied and nutritious!
• Enrich your diet with fiber by eating at least 400 g (5 servings) of fruits and vegetables per day.
• Limit your sugar intake to less than 10% of your total energy intake.
• Reduce your total fat intake to 30% or less of your total energy intake (excluding vegetable fats).
• Eliminate processed foods and foods containing industrial trans fats.

For a personalized meal plan, ask a nutritionist to help you create a menu that suits you. Eating this diet during menopause will not only help you manage your weight, but also improve skin, hair, and keep your body healthy and immune (1).

How to lose weight in the abdomen?

Regular exercise and a healthy diet are the main solution to the problem (3). Follow general dietitian recommendations and eat a balanced, calorie-deficient diet. Key tips for adjusting your menu:

• A calorie deficit of 500 kcal/day can result in a loss of approximately 0.5 kg per week (4).
• Remember, weight loss should not exceed 4 kg per month – a safe rate for the body.
• A dietitian should formulate a low-calorie diet by assessing energy requirements (calculating basal metabolic rate (BMR) using the Harris-Benedict equation and determining physical activity level) (1).

Adjust your diet and hit the gym!

Today there are many so-called “miraculous” diets, which, after short-term starvation or a critical reduction in calories consumed per day, give an instant result: body weight is reduced by several kilograms in a couple of weeks. Remember that such restrictions in food intake are dangerous to health! They can cause vitamin and mineral deficiencies, protein loss, and even fluid and electrolyte imbalances. In the process of such diets, you will really lose a couple of kilograms, but they will return again as soon as you start eating in the usual way (5).

How to eat during menopause: expert advice and advice

1. The first and very important rule is to eat the optimal amount of food: eat 4-5 times a day, every three hours.
2. The diet should include a large amount of fiber and exclude foods with a high glycemic index (GI> 65) [1].
3. Eat more fresh fruits, vegetables, legumes (eg lentils, chickpeas), nuts and whole grains (eg oats, brown rice). At least 400 g (5 servings) of fruits and vegetables should be consumed per day. Remember that potatoes, sweet potatoes, and other high-starch root vegetables are not considered fruits or vegetables.
4. Cut down on sugary foods. Remember that sugar is found in large quantities in the composition of many foods.
5. Change the way you cook food: remove fat from meat, use non-animal vegetable oil, boil, steam, or bake foods instead of frying.
6. Reduce your intake of foods high in saturated fats such as cheese, ice cream, fatty meats, sour cream, butter.
7. Reduce your consumption of snacks, fast food, salty,
   fatty foods.
8. And don’t forget about physical activity (6).

Consult a nutritionist for your optimal nutrition program.

SOURCES:

[1]. Bronchyk-Puzoń A, Piecha D, Nowak J, Koszowska A, Kulik-Kupka K, Dittfeld A, Zubelewicz-Szkodzinska B. Guidelines for dietary management of menopausal women with simple obesity. Prz menopause. March 2015; 14(1): 48–52.

[2]. Pertynski T, Stachowiak G. Menopause — facts and controversies. Polish Journal of Endocrinology; vol 57; no 5/2006 ISSN 0423–104X.

[3]. Jull J, Stacey D, Beach S, Dumas A, Strychar I, Ufholz L, Prince S, Abdulnour J, Prud’homme D. Lifestyle Interventions Targeting Body Weight Changes during the Menopause Transition: A Systematic Review. J Obes. 2014; 2014: 824310.

[4]. Mastorakos G, Valsamakis G, Paltoglou G, Creatsas G. Management of obesity in menopause: Diet, excercise, pharmacotherapyand bariatric surgery. Maturitas. Mar 2010;65(3):219-24.

[5] Ciborowska H, ​​Rudnicka A. (2007). Zywienie w otylosci (adipositas). Dietyka. Zywienie zdrowego i chorego czlowieka. Warsaw. PZWL

[6]. World Health Organization Global Infobase. http://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/healthy-diet

How to lose weight after menopause and lose belly fat: 5 rules

Belly fat is the most dangerous for health! With menopause, women often gain weight, and this area is best kept under control.

Tags:

Health

Women Health

Workout

How to lose weight

Menopause and menopause

After going through menopause, many women are faced with the fact that excess fat begins to accumulate more actively in the waist area – the so-called male pattern. This is quite dangerous for health, because the so-called visceral fat can envelop the internal organs and lead to their obesity. In addition, fat in the abdomen negatively affects the heart: doctors warn that every extra centimeter at the waist increases the risk of a heart attack. We tell you what you can do to maintain health and beauty after menopause.

Why does fat accumulate around the waist?

There are two reasons: a decrease in the proportion of estrogen hormones in the female body and loss of muscle mass. It is estrogen that is responsible for the female type of figure and for the distribution of fat in the female body, causing it to accumulate in the hips and maintaining a pronounced waist. When estrogen production declines during menopause, fat begins to be distributed along male lines, settling at the waist.

The second reason is the decrease in muscle mass. After 40, muscle tissue is lost faster (and this process accelerates every year) and more difficult to recover, stored calories turn into fat, but in order for them to become muscle tissue, you have to expend more effort than before.

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How to get rid of the belly after menopause?

To get rid of the stomach, you have to focus on both nutrition and exercise. You can do yoga, you can practice stretching exercises, strength training and aerobic exercise are suitable – the main thing is that they are regular. As for nutrition, here are some tips.

Avoid soybeans

Soybeans contain compounds that are chemically similar to the hormone estrogen and therefore have the same effects of weight gain and bloating. Therefore, it is important to reduce your consumption of processed, unfermented soybeans, such as soy milk or soy water.

Avoid carbonated drinks

The most common culprits for bloating are beer and carbonated drinks. And if you do not want to find an unpleasant surprise in the morning, refrain from using them at least two hours before bedtime – or better yet, refuse them altogether. Sugary sodas and alcohol slow down metabolism and have a bad effect on the functioning of internal organs – so a flat tummy is only one of the benefits of giving up on them.