Menopause can be tough for some women. Troublesome symptoms and weight gain can be hard to combat. Galveston diet is especially designed to counteract these problems of menopause.
Galveston diet
Menopause comes with a lot of hormonal fluctuations leading to troubling symptoms and central adiposity. Many women suffer due to this hormonal withdrawal. They get hot flushes, palpitations, mood swings, fatigue, and excess weight especially around the waist.
Galveston diet (Source: Good Housekeeping)Texas ob-gyn Mary Claire Haver also experienced a lot of trouble during her menopause. Hence she invented the Galveston diet to tackle it. The name comes from her hometown. Mary argues that Galveston is actually not a diet. According to her:
“It’s a lifetime eating plan,”
This diet causes weight loss and overcomes menopausal symptoms. It makes the woman feel better overall. She reveals:
“I was not counting calories, and the pounds started coming off. I was also sleeping better, and my hot flashes were better,”
She is using this diet since last 5 to 6 years. She found that just lowering calories did not help. The type of foods and meal timings need to change as well in order to reduce weight.
Major components of the diet
This diet means:
Avoid inflammatory foods
On this diet menu, sugars, processed grains and refined products, fried foods, processed meats, saturated fats, diet sodas, and other unhealthy food items that raise body inflammation are out. Replace with whole foods, fresh fruits, vegetables, and nuts and seeds. Berries are particularly good for health.
Intermittent fasting and Galveston diet
It is 16/8 fasting. This means fast for 16 hours in a day and eat in the remaining 8 hours window. Hence first meal of the day comes around noon. She advises to delay breakfast daily be half an hour:
“I myself took six weeks before my first meal was at noon, so I never felt very hungry,”
Galveston diet (Source: Abby Langer)Healthy fats
Cut carbs and replace with healthy fats. Have 70% of daily calories from fat, 21 percent from protein and 9 percent only from carbs. Add complex carbs after a few days.
Efficacy and safety of this diet
There is no concrete scientific support for this diet. It is something that helped the Texan ob-gyn. But whether other peri-menopausal women will benefit is not certain. Nanette Santoro from the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora says:
“There is no evidence that the Galveston diet is some special kind of magic”
“The diet is an example of a hunch-based marketing tool,”
Stephanie Faubion from Mayo clinic’s center for women health adds:
“The points about anti-inflammatory foods and a diet to ‘rebalance hormones’ are appealing, but not evidence-based,”
“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,”
Galveston diet (Source: Meraki Lane)The diet has no safety issues but follow it under medical supervision.
Despite lacking evidence, the diet is popular. The website membership is USD 59 to 229 to be paid once in life time. The website has a lot of recipes and tips and also sample menu plan. It has a lot of information for women of that age. Mary clarifies:
“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 should also be part of the plan to help it achieve the desired results.