The Menopause Menu

Please say it's not eight courses of aromatically scented foam?

This week's newsletter is brought to you by our friends at Winona, doctor-prescribed menopause care for women, backed by science, and shipped directly to your door.

Fellow Empresses,

How the hell are you?

This week I wanted to broach the dreaded topic of menopausal weight gain because when we talked to over three thousand of you during our Empress Mindset Survey, it was your top concern after vaginal dryness & atrophy. There’s so much conflicting information out there between competing diet plans and schools of thought and crazy Ozempic-y stuff… I thought I’d just walk through what’s been working for me… I can’t speak for anyone else.

Of course, it starts with the ridiculous…

So, there I was, at this uber fancy eight-course Chef’s Tasting event in LA that was straight out of the film The Menu, except without all the killing but WITH crazy-uptight servers ferrying elegantly styled plates with jewelry boxes of... get this... foam... Yup, aromatically scented foam. That was supposed to pass for FOOD! I was just a guest. Apparently, it had cost a small fortune for this foam-based dinner, and I needed to stop gawping, but everything looked like a mucus plug.

Smash cut to my doctor’s office, and a glib, white-coated, Chris Parnell doppelganger dismissing my recent weight gain concerns as “just menopause.”

“So, I’m going to need to live on air and water?”

He nods, absently scratching notes in my chart.

“So, basically, foam?” 

And once more, I’m transported back to my evening of boxed edible airy reductions, and I picture them for the remainder of my life. 

“So, I eat foam and just stay fat?” 

Which is well... ok, I can muster enough self-acceptance to stay any size after yo-yo-ing through a lifetime of multiple pregnancies and different seizure meds that have caused weird weight gains.

He tells me I need to exercise more vigorously. 

And I feel the need to SHAKE him VIGOROUSLY...

I already put in 5 days a week hoofing it on the treadmill to Ace of Base and other nightmarishly upbeat 90s tracks. But months of torrential night sweats have left me zombified, chubby, and not eager to add more Pilates or jogging to my life. I leave disgusted and stomp through a power walk all the way home.

There has to be another way, I think.

First, I have to get my night sweats under control so that I can actually sleep well enough to feel well enough to exercise and that's where HRT comes into play. I tackled that bit first and you can read about it here. It took me a while to get my DHEA dose right but once I did my metabolism picked back up, but I also had to figure out how to eat since I was in a new phase of life and my body was now reacting differently to all foods it seemed.

I'd always eaten healthily, i.e., whole foods, nothing processed, no preservatives, not a ton of red meat, lots of fish, grains, organic veggies, etc. My love language used to be stinky cheeses, but I had to cut back on those due to a recent cholesterol test. Still, even with cutting the cheese (ha) and alcohol from my diet, my old way of eating wasn't working. I was still carrying an extra 35 pounds I could not shed... even surviving on foam.

That's when I stumbled on The Galveston Diet by Dr. Mary Claire Haver. Now, I've never been a diet person per se. I don't believe in fad diets or trendy things or bone broth miracles. The closest I’ve ever come to following a fad is making that leek soup that French women always make when they need to drop water weight and I'm not sure it actually worked because I cheated and put too much cream in it. Actually, I don't think you're supposed to put any cream in it, but it really needed it for taste. So, there you go.

Dr. Haver’s system for shedding stubborn belly fat and reducing menopausal symptoms follows three interdependent strategies:

 1) Fuel Refocus: So, I was basically doing this by age 35, but starting in your thirties, you need a specific ratio of lean protein, healthy fats, and quality carbohydrates to optimize your overall health to efficiently burn fat as fuel. Plus, I really don’t mind eating an avocado a day. It’s a bit like an interior facial.

2) Intermittent Fasting: 16 hours of fasting with a flexible 8-hour eating window coaxes the body to draw energy from stored fat and decreases inflammation. This part actually came more easily to me than I thought it would. Maybe it’s because I get hyper-focused on work or certain activities. When everyone was home during the pandemic, insisting that I eat with them—it screwed me up because I wasn’t actually hungry, but I would perform eating to placate folks. My boundaries are better now, but it was a challenge. If I’m not hungry, I don’t care if you think it’s poor manners, I’m not having chicken and waffles with you (unless I’m actually hungry for them).

 3) Anti-inflammatory Nutrition: Limit added sugars, processed carbs, chemical additives, and preservatives while layering in anti-inflammatory foods like leafy greens, olive oil, berries, nuts, and tomatoes. I was pretty much doing this. However, I am super guilty of stress-baking... pies. My family will totally rat me out. Plus, my pies are super inflammatory... wine-poached pear with gruyere baked into the crust or cherry bourbon with a brown sugar crumb crust. See? I’m awful.

With these three principles working in concert, women (who don’t bake pies) can lose the weight they tend to gain in middle age as well as enjoy more energy, better sleep, less brain fog, and fewer hot flashes. All welcome things.

Alors… when I followed the plan, coupled with getting proper non-sweaty sleep, taking DHEA, and exercising (walks & yoga)—I am happy to report, I dropped 30 pounds over the course of six months. It wasn’t overnight, but my cholesterol levels came back swell, and I feel really good. What I love most of all is that I continue to see Dr. Haver keeping the conversation around health and empowerment during peri/menopause alive and crackling, and I think that part is so critical. When no one would talk to me about what to do. Here was someone who’d worked with over 100,000 women and I was able to hear the conversations and see other women modeling progress, confronting issues, and working past them so that I could too.

So, with that, we’re giving The Galveston Diet—named for her hometown—a hearty, full-throated Empress’s Huzzah!!! This plan works—in conjunction with all the other things. Again, it’s never about one thing. With menopause, as with life, it's a multitude of small, one-degree changes over time that make the difference.

Ok, that’s literally the skinny for this week. Stay tuned as we have a very special post coming up about celebrating peri/menopause as a seriously fun rite of passage. You’re not going to want to miss it!

Yours in Grandeur,

p.s. If you are so inclined, follow us on IG for flash content & upcoming giveaways. We’re at https://www.instagram.com/the.empress.age/ and we’d love to see you there!

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