Eat well through (peri)menopause: no perfection required

Exhausted, sweaty, barely sleeping, with three kids heading to college, an aging mother far away and a body that no longer responds the way it used to … and on top of that, the advice to eat "perfectly". For many women in perimenopause, nutrition becomes one more item on an already overflowing list. "Not everybody has time for a therapist, a coach, or meditation, " says nutritionist Diana Reid, "but everybody has chocolate in their cupboard."

Diana Reid, MPH, RDN, works as "The Global Dietitian". She counsels individuals and families with a non-diet, weight-neutral approach, is a certified Intuitive Eating counsellor and holds a certificate in perimenopause nutrition. Her message sounds unspectacular: how we should eat in perimenopause isn't massively different from general health recommendations. But there are changes, nonetheless: the old rules stop working, the body reacts in unexpected ways, but nobody hands out the new rulebook. In this conversation she explains what to eat, what to skip, and why 80 percent can be good enough.

Lëtzebuerger Journal: What does nutrition have to do with perimenopause?

Diana Reid: At every big change in life – puberty, pregnancy, postpartum, and then perimenopause – our hormones shift, and every major hormonal shift ripples across the other systems in our body: cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, nervous system. Nutrition can play a supportive, preventative, or in some cases even a treatment role, especially for the health risks that increase at perimenopause.

Which changes in the body during menopause affect nutritional needs?

The one thing women tend to get most frustrated with is weight gain. Probably 70 per cent or more gain weight during the transition, anywhere from a couple of kilos to 15, and it usually shows up around the midsection. For women who never had to think about their weight, it can feel like a foreign body. I sometimes joke about "puberty 2.0": girls between 11 and 13 didn't ask for those changes either.

Then there are sleep issues, which nutrition can help with, though not as much as I'd like. And there are less visible risks: women's cardiovascular risk is lower than men's until perimenopause, then it surpasses it. Women lose about 20 per cent of their bone density in the five years around the transition. Insulin resistance and diabetes risk increase as well. Nutrition, exercise and lifestyle can play a huge role in all of this.