A New Approach to Dieting?

There is no doubt that the majority of women at Menopause suffer from weight gain, particularly around the middle.

There are an endless number of diets, and hormone balance is certainly a key factor, but I thought it would be interesting to share information from Nutritionist Patrick Holford on how having a new approach to your diet may be the most effective way to deal with it, and improve your longevity too.

If you think it might be helpful for you to explore, here’s what he has to say about it.

Modified fasting

There’s a simple way to extend lifespan by 25% and that’s to eat a diet that’s very low calories. It’s well proven in all animal species but is unlikely to catch on in us humans.

However, thanks to the work of Professor Mark Mattson from the US National Institute on Ageing, he discovered that you can get an equivalent effect, and many other health benefits, by modified fasting two days a week, or eating less every other day.

The benefits appear to be many – less pain and inflammation, less risk for diabetes and possibly dementia and, of course, less weight.

How does it work?

This way of eating, known as alternate day dieting, seems to work because it can trigger the health-promoting gene called ‘Sweet Sixteen’. You may recall a study that showed that eating low calories for eight weeks reversed diabetes, improving sensitivity to the hormone insulin.

Insulin is a hormone made by the pancreas. It is responsible for making the body’s cells absorb glucose (sugar) from the blood and the less you produce the better. A recent study of 64,000 people with diabetes, reported at the American College of Cardiology, well illustrates this point.

The researchers found that the more insulin medication a person uses, the greater their risk for a cardiovascular event (death, heart attack or stroke) but Metformin was not found to have the same risk.

Improving insulin sensitivity

What this research shows is that too much insulin switches on a diabetes and heart disease promoting gene, nicknamed the Grim Reaper. Clearly this is not the right way to go. What you want to do is improve insulin sensitivity, and to eat in a way that means you need less insulin anyway.

The best way to do that, according to gene expert Professor Cynthia Kenyon from the University of California, is to eat a low glycemic load (GL) diet, cutting right back on carbohydrates which promote insulin release.

Also helpful is supplementing with chromium (200-600mcg) and even better with a cinnamon extract high in the compound MCHP, as it also helps reverse insulin resistance by improving the function of insulin receptors.

This helps balance blood sugar, normalise hunger and reduce cravings, improves lifespan, helps protect cells, essential for heart function.

Why the type of diet is important

This is the kind of diet I’ve been recommending for years because it has so many health benefits besides rapid weight loss.

Some low GL approaches, such as Atkins and Dukan diets, are based on avoiding carbs, and increasing high-protein foods. I’m not a fan of this approach long-term – although it can kick start the process of recovery or weight loss in the short-term – because you end up on a diet high in meat and dairy products, which is a recipe for increasing cancer risk.

Also, dairy products, while low in sugar, do promote insulin hormones, which is what you want to avoid. There are other downsides too is relation to bone density and kidney function, which is already impaired in many people with diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

The best option for health and longevity

My preferred low GL diet approach means eating less carbs rather than no carbs at all, but always choosing ones that release their sugar content slowly. Berries, cherries and plums, for example, have very slow-releasing sugars. Increasing antioxidants from fruit and vegetables also makes sense from an anti-ageing point of view.

The idea of eating less every other day, or having two or three very low-calorie days, makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective. After all, our hunter-gatherer ancestors would have had lean days and feast days on a regular basis.

The Low GL Diet Bible and the Low GL Diet Cookbook explain how to do this. It is best to get well established on a low GL diet, helping to break carb addiction, before going one step further into alternate day dieting.

After the first four weeks, you can switch to two days eating normally, followed by one day eating no more than 500–800 calories, then back to two days eating normally and so on.

 Helpful information: 

Many women do put weight on, particularly around the middle, at menopause and such increased weight is also an increased risk for conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

Following a diet such as the one outlined here can certainly help to improve your overall health, and if you would like to know more about the GL diet you will find books on it at Patrick Holford’s website.

If your weight gain is related to oestrogen dominance, then rebalancing your hormones will certainly improve the situation as well.

https://anna.blog.wellsprings-health.com/what-signs-of-oestrogen-dominance-do-you-have-3/