YOUR TUMMY NEEDS THIS WOMAN

Got a meno belly that won’t budge? Dr Haver (below) hears you – she’s been there. She tells Maddy Fletcher that her Galveston Diet is the answer – loads of healthy fats, and almost no carbs. Sigh

While working as a gynaecologist, Dr Mary Claire Haver found that her menopausal patients would all come to her with the same problem. ‘They would grab their tummies and shake them at me,’ says the 54-year-old Texan. ‘They were like, “What is this?”’

Haver is now a trained nutritionist whose programme for menopausal women, The Galveston Diet, has had more than 100,000 participants. But back then, she did not have a satisfactory answer. Instead, for 20 years, she trotted out the same line to patient after patient: eat less, exercise more.

It was, she admits, all she had been taught in medical school. It was only when Haver gained almost two stone herself that she began to question her ‘more calories out, fewer calories in’ mindset. ‘I was going to the gym twice a day, I was calorically restricting to a dangerous level.’

Yet nothing changed. ‘I’m not saying that calories aren’t important,’ Haver says. ‘But if you’re trying to lose weight and you’re menopausal, counting calories is simply not enough.’

Why? Because menopausal weight gain is influenced by hormones. Specifically, when your hormone levels change, so do the areas where you develop fat. Pre-menopause, most women tend to gain weight around their hips, thighs, breasts and bottoms, says Haver.

‘But once we start seeing hormone changes, we see a new and dangerous deposition of fat in the intra abdominal cavity in the viscera.’ (For non-boffins, that’s your stomach.)

So what can you do about it? Haver’s debut book The Galveston Diet, which comes out this month, has some answers.

INTERMITTENT FASTING

Haver reckons you should have a 16-hour period of fasting and an eight-hour window of eating. The good news? Eight of those 16 fasting hours are when you’re asleep. Fasting helps lower inflammation and boost metabolism, altering hormone levels to make stored body fat easier to burn. In particular, growth hormones can increase as much as five-fold when you fast intermittently – these are the ones that help burn body fat and create lean muscle. (The new recipes to go with Dr Michael Mosley’s The Fast 800 Keto diet are good for this. For meal ideas, turn to page 38.)

ANTI-INFLAMMATORY NUTRITION

When the hormones fluctuate in menopause, inflammation tends to worsen, too. This is a nasty cycle: inflammation triggers weight gain, weight gain triggers inflammation. What helps is to avoid actively inflammatory foods (those with omega-6 fats) and to eat as many anti-inflammatory foods (those with omega-3 fats) as possible.

Actively inflammatory foods contain refined vegetable oils such as sunflower, corn, soybean and cottonseed oils. They also pop up in snacks (biscuits, crackers) and fast foods. Luckily, anti-inflammatory foods are yummier than they sound. Try fatty fish (salmon, mackerel, sardines), some plant foods (flaxseeds and walnuts), and grass-fed meat. Taking an omega-3 supplement such as fish oil helps as well.

FUEL REFOCUS

This is the step that makes sure you don’t put weight straight back on. As Haver states in her book, ‘Your body must shift its energy usage to rely more on fat as its fuel, rather than on glucose. If you don’t burn all the glucose you have in your bloodstream, the excess is stored as body fat.’

Glucose normally comes from carb-heavy diets and processed food with heaps of added sugar. Haver’s suggestion is this: your diet should consist of 70 per cent healthy fats (avocado, olive oil, seeds, raw nuts, mayonnaise, butter), 20 per cent lean protein (grass-fed meat, wild-caught fish, eggs) and 10 per cent quality carbs (fruit, veg and wholegrains).

The Galveston Diet is not short-term – Haver encourages people to follow it for life. But she promises the effects are worthwhile: ‘Not only are we going to lose the pounds that are irritating us, we’re going to get healthier, we’re going to live longer, and we’re going to have a better quality of life.’

It’s also not as daunting as it sounds, she promises. If you’re knackered and want to take a break from the diet, do.

(‘I always say, if you get a flat tyre, don’t slash the other three.’) And you shouldn’t make all the changes in one huge, exhausting, lifestyle-altering swoop. (‘You’ll overwhelm yourself’.) Instead, Haver encourages a one-step-at-a-time approach. ‘Just try to get one per cent better every day. That’s it. Just one per cent every day and then over 365 days that will add up.’

Dr Haver’s book The Galveston Diet is published by Penguin and available now, priced €16.