WHAT TO EAT TO BUILD MUSCLE AND BURN FAT THROUGH THE MENOPAUSE
Fuelling your body for success
If you’ve been reading our blogs for a while, you’ll know that we’ve talked about what kind of exercise is most beneficial for our menopausal bodies and how often we should be doing it. To recap, ideally we should be doing Strength Training/HIIT workouts three times per week, with gentle rest days in between with exercises such as; Yoga, Stretching, Meditation, Walking, Pilates.
Obviously nutrition plays a huge part in supporting our body composition to have more lean muscle and less fat as we get older.
We’ve previously spoken about new research which is finding almost everything to do with our health starts with a healthy microbiome, from hormone balancing, to fat loss, to brain health, to heart health, to bone health, to vaginal health, and any other part of your body you can name.
Your gut microbiome is the universe of microorganisms that live in your intestinal tract.
When you eat, you are actually feeding these little guys first. If you make them happy, they in turn, help all your body functions work properly, by breaking down and absorbing food properly. They also generate important by products that help you produce hormones and regulate your central nervous system and autonomic nervous system function, AND regulate what we deposit in our fat cells.
A Quick Microbiome Recap:
We need a whole food diet with plenty of plants for your gut bacteria to eat, with at least 25 grams of fibre from different plant foods every day.
Eating a diverse diet of whole grains, vegetables (especially greens), fruits (especially berries), beans, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices will generally keep your gut happy. Cut out processed foods, refined carbs and sugar where possible.
Add in:
Probiotics - These are fermented foods containing healthy bacteria which are great for gut health - yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kombucha, miso, pickles, sourdough bread and tempeh.
Prebiotics - These are foods that keep those probiotic bacteria thriving, and include garlic, onions, leeks, asparagus, green bananas, Jerusalem artichoke, oats, legumes, beans, and peas.
We don't recommend you take expensive prebiotic and probiotic supplements. Taking too much of one particular one can actually throw your microbiome out of whack much like antibiotics do.
Only take supplements if you have been advised to by your doctor following a bout of illness, or after taking medications that have wiped out your gut flora.
Should you go Plant Based?
This is totally up to you but if you're struggling with menopausal symptoms, new research from Dr. Neal Barnard et al found that:
The combination of a low-fat, vegan diet and whole soybeans was associated with reduced frequency and severity of hot flashes and improved quality of life in vasomotor, psychosocial, physical, and sexual domains in postmenopausal women. During the 12-week study period, the majority of intervention-group participants became free of moderate-to-severe hot flashes.
If you don't want to go fully plant based, we suggest at least cutting down on animal and dairy products.
And just a note: In this study it was a low fat diet, but that still included healthy fats like avocado, nuts, and seeds. They just avoided sloshing loads of oil, butter or ghee over everything.
How to fuel your workouts for maximum benefit:
If you're following our exercise guidelines and trying the more intense, strength training and HIIT workouts, we need to fuel the body for these.
So what and when you eat around your workout is really important.
Eat something before you exercise:
If you exercise in a fasted state, i.e. on an empty stomach, the body actually becomes more stressed. If it doesn't have energy to use for the workout, it can actually take energy stored in your muscles to fuel the workout. This is completely counterproductive as we're trying to BUILD muscle.
So have something small about half an hour/an hour before your workout, so the body can utilise that energy and not go into panic mode.
It doesn't have to be a lot, but should contain protein and carbohydrate.
Things like: A banana and cashew nut butter, small bowl of granola and plant based yogurt, sourdough toast with nut butter.
Eat something within 30 minutes of finishing your workout:
This is super important!
We have a recovery window after an intense workout when the body is most receptive to restoring your glycogen (energy) stores, and repairing the muscles. Interestingly, this is a much shorter recovery time for women than for men. We need to eat within 30 minutes of a workout, whereas men have about 3 hours.
Women finish intense workouts with high levels of cortisol (stress hormone) and in a catabolic state where we are actually eating into our own muscle stores and breaking down our tissues. (This sounds scary, but don't worry, it's a natural process of changing our body composition).
But as menopausal women, we do need to get out of that state as quickly as possible, as we don't want to lose the muscle mass we're trying to build.
So depending on what time of day you're working out, make sure you have something within 30 minutes of the end of your workout.
Skipping this part will actually trigger your body to store more fat and slow down the metabolism.
Make sure your post workout meal or snack has protein in it to help rebuild the muscles.
Plant based meals/snacks you could have:
Vegetables with quinoa; smoothie with plant based milk, kale, broccoli, berries, ground hemp seeds and chia seeds; sourdough toast with cashew nut butter; banana with nut butter; stir fried vegetables with edamame beans or tofu; crudites and houmous; fresh salad with sweet potato and beans/lentils/chickpeas.
Non plant based ideas:
Sourdough toast with tomatoes, spinach and eggs; brown rice with broccoli and salmon; chicken and vegetables.
A word about cruciferous vegetables:
As well as being rich in antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and fibre, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage are particularly good for hormone management. The more of these you eat, the better your hormonal health, and the lower your risk for increased abdominal fat.
Remember for our main meals, we want our plate to look like this:
Food is our life giving energy source, so enjoy a wide and colourful diversity of mainly plant based whole foods to support your body and mind through the menopause transition.
Happy eating,
Sara & Dr. Clare