12/02/2022
Great myth busting on the hottest diet trend of the moment. Fruits, starchy vegetables, legumes, and whole grains are not the enemy. Increase your protein intake ~2-2.3g/kg of body weight, lower refined sugar intake, and elimate or decrease alcohol consumption for best health outcomes and/or fat loss. Of course, you can’t forget a good fitness program of heavy weightlifting, HIIT, and consistent walking for a healthy body.
Just say NO to Keto
A big diet trend that many menopausal women are tempted by is the ketogenic diet. The ""keto"" diet is extremely low-carb, limiting intake to fewer than 50 grams of carbs a day, or the amount of one small apple and a cup of oatmeal. Instead, you get the bulk of your calories from a lot of fat (more than 60 percent of your intake) and moderate amounts of protein.
As is so often the case, the original research on the ketogenic diet was done on men, specifically, metabolically unhealthy men who had obesity and/or had diabetes. The research was designed to see if they could get their blood sugar under control and lose weight quickly. It worked in that population.
What the research doesn't show is how ketogenesis affects women who are training and exercising. Research shows the keto diet has an unfavorable effect on muscle fatigue on women and also shows markers of bone remodeling are impaired after a short-term low-carb, high-fat diet (in both men and women!). Most importantly, is the reduction in the diversity of the gut microbiome, which directly affects circulating estrogens, immune cell responses for bone turnover, and body composition. None of these are good for women, especially menopausal women!
Links to research ->
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/4/955/htm
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/3/864
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007114521002609 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1186/s12970-019-0284-9
https://www.maturitas.org/article/S0378-5122(17)30650-3/fulltext https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378512218302639 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fendo.2019.00880/full?F-NTF&EMLX&PRD_FEOPS_20170000_ARTICLE
(bone+immune cell reference--> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867420304906)
As always, be sure you do your research when trying out fad diets or quick-fix "solutions".
