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.
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 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. 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 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. 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. 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.
