I started menopause a few months before turning 50. I had already noticed I couldn't eat like I used to (and never really gained weight, I stayed around 135 from age 20 to 45 or so. In 2001 I did a program called Body for Life and lost about 25 lbs in 12 weeks. But not long after finishing that, weight crept back up due to my incessant sweet tooth. In 2002 or so I was 175 lbs and found out about Atkins. Low carb was a revelation, and I got down to around 138-140 at various times. That was a pretty good weight even though not as low as my goal of 130 (weight when I got married).

Since then, I've done Atkins (mostly induction level eating) so many times I can't count, but it will get me close to my goal and then later I'll get sloppy and gain some back. I always get back to Atkins when I'm up 10-12 pounds max, so I keep a lid on weight gain. I absolutely refuse to buy bigger clothes to accommodate weight gain, so when pants get tight I know it's diet to go back to Dr. A.

People always say you can't lose when you're older. Well, I'm here to say NOT TRUE. I've actually done best with weight loss the last few years, and right now I'm closing in on 74! I've learned that I now must absolutely stay away from all grains (that includes corn), all starches, all sugar, and my body responds beautifully and I lose weight at a good clip. CONSISTENCY is the key. Be consistent with the type of eating that your body agrees with to lose weight.

It's simple, although not always easy if you're an emotional eater as I am. But each time I get my head in the right place, when I decide what I will be eating, then all is well. I always come back here to my journal to keep myself accountable. I write down what I eat so I don't get food amnesia. I know what to expect and I know if I eat this way I absolutely WILL lose weight.

By the way, I never took HRT thank goodness, but what I did find early on was that eating low carb and lowering my weight pretty much eliminated the need for HRT. I've been GREAT in the 20+ years I've been in menopause, no issues at all and never felt better. Excercise is good too!

I had my last period when I was 50 (I'm 68 now). In the next 18 months, I had gained just shy of 50 pounds, going from 150 pounds in 2005 to 196 in 2006. I was doing either step aerobics or walking hilly terrain for an hour 4 to 5 times a week and sticking to the low-carb program I had started in the late 1990s. Nothing, and I mean nothing, worked for me to lose that weight.

I started chasing doctors and looking into thyroid meds, bio-identical HRT, etc. looking for an answer. Again, nothing worked.

Now, more than 20 years later I'm still struggling to lose the weight. The only time I was able to get down to 165 was when I used homeopathic hcg and was eating 500 calories a day. When I stopped and started eating regular low-carb/keto again, the weight came back with a vengeance. I feel like I'm "broken" in a sense.

Now I'm carnivore, again. My husband's blood glucose has been elevated over the past several years (A1C was 6.7 and average reading estimated to be 143 fasting when checked recently). Now his doc says he's probably diabetic and will need to be put on medications. Since 2019, he's had prostate cancer (gone now with radiation), and then he found out his heart is damaged from a heart attack he doesn't even remember having. He's on 5 or 6 medications. The "threat" of more medications on top of that finally got him to get serious about low-carb eating and has asked for my help.

So, I recommitted to strict carnivore just this past week (was kind of lazy carnivore for a while there), and am slowly losing weight. All of 3 pounds this week.

The struggle is real, as they say. Not everyone can lose weight easily after menopause. If I loosen the reins even a slight bit, I gain again.

Hopefully, we can both commit to better eating and finally lose this weight for good.

All the best to you and your husband.
Consider checking the micronutrients for a typical week to be sure you are eating enough nutrients and not overeating fat.
New article to help:
https://optimisingnutrition.com/car...diet-food-list/

Thanks, Janet! I'm definitely not overeating fat. I've been averaging around 120g protein and 60g fat. I'll check out that article. I read the first one you linked to and got some good info. Also considering doing the Macros Masterclass. Still thinking on that one.

Janet, I have a quick question for you. I do tend to do better on carnivore when the fat is kept low, like 60g fat with 140g protein. I get that protein is most important, but it's not used for energy. Only fat and carbs are used for energy. If you trim carbs down to nothing (or virtually nothing), and keep the fat low, what keeps you going? Is it the body fat you're burning?

I'm a life member of Optimising Nutrition, and am seriously thinking about the Macros Master Class. I only did DDF before.

Neither Marty or Dr.Naiman recommend very low carb diets…why their information is in the semi-LC forum.

Avoiding ALL carbohydrate-containing foods can lead to the unnecessary exclusion of nutrient-dense foods and potentially a higher fat diet that won’t be as satiating.~The Macros class is perfect for figuring out what % carbs work for you.

Carbs OR Fat vs Carbs AND Fat

https://optimisingnutrition.com/car...-carbs-and-fat/

So if you want to lose weight, then you want to burn your own body fat, But not cut dietary fat to below levels needed for optimal hormone production, etc. You also do not Want to cut dietary carbohydrate to a level that triggers “carb hunger” which I think is the reason so many people are completely fall off the LC wagon at some point … the drive to have some glucose coming from the food you eat is strong.

Check the first graph in above article:


Personally, I do best at 20% net carbs, with protein and Fat 40%.

Dr Naiman keeps his macros at 40% Protein, and 30% both carbs and fats, but I do not exercise or look as he does

I wanted to jump in and say that keeping fat low might be a sign that adding the right carbs will lead to success.

On the other hand, I run on high fat levels. Anytime I back off the fat, I get cravings and get hungry too soon after a meal. So I'm burning it, and it doesn't add any excess weight.

I've always been this way. As a child I would ask for the fatty cuts, and prefered the poultry legs. Never did give up butter. I think there are ways we do crave the right things. If we feed ourselves the right foods.

No one looks like Dr. Naiman!

I need to have as few carbs as possible due to my tendency toward diverticulitis. Since cutting out virtually all fiber in the past couple of years, I've not had even one flare-up, or even been close to a flare-up, of diverticulitis. Prior to that when I was eating 20 - 30g of carbs per day (coming primarily from non-starchy veggies), I'd have frequent flare-ups.

A lot of women on carnivore say you need to eat 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of meat per day. I can usually eat only a pound, maybe a tad bit more. I plugged my food into Cronometer this morning: 1 can of sardines in water, 6 oz cubed steak with 1 egg fried in 1 tsp butter, and a 6 oz beef tenderloin. Totals are 1123 calories with 138.6g protein, 0.6g net carbs, and 61.4g fat.

I know that doesn't look like a lot of food, but on a meal plan like this, I don't crave carbs, and my satiety is high.

Hi Bawdy, we must've been posting at the same time.

Looking at your menu, it looks very carnivore, and I was doing carnivore for a full year quite happily. I only ran into trouble which what turns out to be oxalate dumping. I've got that under control and things have gotten much better, in case that helps. Best source for that info is the book, Toxic Superfoods.

I also wanted to add that what helped me the most with menopause was getting bioidentical estrogen and progesterone. I absolutely needed the estrogen, I still take it per my doctor's instructions: enough to keep symptoms at bay. I intend to do it as long as it keep symptoms at bay.

From thyroid to estrogen, they don't want to give us hormones! I could write an app for what endos do these days. Med school was a waste of time for most of them.

Reading along because of suffering over here. I'm 58 and still cycling but having symptoms. I know I have to be almost done with this nonsense. I was ready to get off this train 10 years ago, I fully expected to go into menopause when my mother did, this has been insane! I am sick of dealing with stuff and the appetite increase right before my cycle.

The hot flashes and night sweats were getting to me so I started HRT maybe a year ago? Year and a half? End of last year I started getting irregular, but this year I'm back to regular again.

The WORST thing for me to do now is fast. I can skip breakfast and lunch just fine, but I was wanting to just knock back a peripheral neuropathy flare, so I skipped dinner too and that night the hot flash/night sweats thing was really bad.

Obviously just tanks the hormones too much to fast. So, I stick with time-restricted feeding windows and avoid skipping a whole day of eating. That's all I've got to contribute here.

I'm being sent for a scan to see if anything is wrong. I doubt it, but whatever, I have to go in anyway for the mammogram. If all comes back normal, I'm going to ask for an increase in dosage to knock back the night sweats.

I'm also on Dr Naiman's P:E Diet, but I don't do the carb recommendation. I used to, but I have since gotten a CGM to watch my glucose carefully to try not to aggravate my peripheral neuropathy with blood sugar that is too high. My neurologist says I have to avoid my blood sugar going too high and too low too, he says that aggravates peripheral neuropathy. For that reason alone I can't do extended fasting. I had quit that when the pandemic hit anyway since Dr. Peter Attia says fasting drops your white blood cell count and you need that to fight a virus.

Anyway, my carbs are more like 50-60. I do just fine on it. I don't try to drain my glycogen stores with the exercises either. I do Dr. Naiman's exercises, but not well enough to get strong. I am working on that. I pull the diet lever as hard as I can, then I pull the exercise lever as lightly as I can, so I know where I can improve.

Bawdy, if you have to avoid all fiber, then check the lists by individual nutrient to be sure you have an alternate way to get what is missing.

WereBear, I took bioidentical hormones for several years. They helped a bit with hot flashes, night sweats, and mood swings, but never helped with weight loss.

Key Tones, I can't fast, either. I've gone back and forth with timing, eating lunch and dinner within an 18/6 window, eating three times a day, eating breakfast and dinner (no lunch), and I've been able to do a 24-hour fast a couple times. Those are hard for me. For whatever reason, I get horrible heartburn if I go past around 18 hours without eating. Not sure I could ever do an extended fast.

Janet, I recognize the quote from one of the articles I read this morning. I do eat eggs, some seafood (going to start eating sardines on a regular basis), Greek yogurt, butter, but no organ meats. I havbe the Ancestral Beef Organ capsules, but always forget to take them! The one nutrient I know I'm not getting enough of is potassium. They say you need 4.7 grams per day. As I said, I plugged today's meals into Cronometer, and the total potassium came to just 856 grams, about a quarter of what I should be getting. I did look into Marty's electrolyte mix, and might try that. I use LMNT, so I'd probably takes less than the teaspoon he recommends daily.

PS: Is there any way to add supplements you are taking in Cronometer?

My fasting blood sugar is in the mid-80s, and at least when I was testing it on DDF with Marty, it never went about 120 or so and then came right back down.

By shear coincidence I was in perimenopause when I ditched McDougall and started low carbing after reading Protein Power and have been eating under 35g net carbs/day ever since (with a few short excursions over 23 years). I never had any menopause symptoms. Meanwhile, I noticed that most of my friends experienced hot flashes, brain fog, etc. while living on high carbs (65+%) and eating as little fat as possible. Most people can't believe I had no symptoms, but my only theory for why it was possible is that all the estrogen I had stored in the fat in my obese hourglass body was slowly released and eased the transition as I slowly lost ~60 lbs of fat over a couple of years.

Bawdy, I just saw your question. Yes, there are supplement entries. They are simple like Vit C from a "nut lab" database. Or you can find a brand like Cal + Mag. Protein powders are in the Supplements category too. When you tap +food, supplements are a separate category. And on the reports, you can see your nutrition results with or without the supplements.

Deirdra, sounds logical. There are studies now that fat is more than an inert ugly storage unit. We should look at fat as an active organ, Directing growth, especially by the hormone estrogen. There is a reason that a "blanket of energy" was put on our bodies when no longer needed for reproduction.

Someone shared a photo from a "Blanket of Energy" post from a TV transformation guy. Your body is doing what it was designed to do at this time of life, in the calorie surplus you have been feeding it.

https://www.facebook.com/1000444669...mibextid=cr9u03

That's what makes "fixing things" so tricky on an individual level. JEY found success by doing the opposite of what I did.

Just as failing health drags us down by overlapping factors, we have to adjust as our bodies change. Getting better can also come with a lot of adjustments.

In my case, I don't think my body ever made enough of certain hormones, like estrogen, and then made too much cortisol to compensate. It was an issue all along, but menopause made it worse. Fixing my menopause had to be about fixing everything else.

By balancing hormones (add estrogen, lower cortisol with L-theanine) and engaging the autoimmune healing process, which I'm doing now, I am getting better. Actually became underweight as a result of the energies required!

For the first time ever, I have to fix my low appetite, and eat more. But oxalate awareness has fixed so many other problems, they reveal new ones.

It's always a moving target. We can actually disrupt what seemed like a working system by getting better.