In this episode of Fitness Simplified Podcast, Brooke Davis, women’s functional nutritionist and fitness coach, provides insight into how carbs and menopause are interconnected. She debunks the common misconception that carbs are the enemy of weight loss during perimenopause and menopause.
Carbohydrates play a crucial role in hormone regulation during this life stage. They help convert inactive thyroid hormones into active ones, regulate insulin levels, and support the production of sex hormones. Cutting carbs too much can disrupt these processes and worsen hormonal symptoms. Low carb diets can also elevate cortisol levels, actually leading to weight gain and hormonal imbalances. Additionally, low carb diets can impact energy levels, sleep quality, gut health, and mental health. To support hormone balance, it is important to eat enough nutrient-dense food, include adequate carbohydrates, manage blood sugar levels, prioritize sleep, and maintain a balanced diet.
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Contents
Welcome to the Fitness Simplified podcast. I’m Brooke Davis, Women’s Functional Nutritionist and Fitness Specialist with Elysian Women’s Wellness, and I’m here to simplify your fitness. Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Fitness Simplified podcast, where we dive deep into all things women’s wellness, especially during the life transitions that matter most.
I’m Brooke Davis, Functional Nutritionist and Fitness Specialist, your guide to feeling empowered, informed, and at your best, no matter what stage of life you’re in. Today, we’re covering a topic I know way too many women struggle with in general, but especially in perimenopause and menopause, because there is so much misinformation surrounding Carbs and Menopause, and fat loss. If you experience hot flashes, mood swings, stubborn weight gain, and cutting carbs in hopes of losing weight, this episode is for you.
While low-carb diets might have their place and time for certain individuals, they can actually make menopausal symptoms worse for a lot of women. The hormonal shifts with carbs and menopause are already challenging enough, so throwing a low-carb diet into the mix might be adding fuel to the fire. Whatever you do, don’t stress.
I’m going to break it all down for you, explain why this is happening, and then give you some practical tips on how to adjust your diet to feel better. So, grab your favorite cup of tea, get comfy, and let’s dive into why carbs are not the enemy when it comes to managing menopause. When women approach menopause, the two main sex hormones involved are estrogen and progesterone. These are produced by the ovaries.
Testosterone as well, but we’re not really going to dive into that too much today. Estrogen gradually decreases, but often goes through random surges in kind of a last-ditch effort to supply the body with what it needs, which can lead to symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings. Estrogen also affects the brain, bones, the gut, and the skin, so its decline can really impact mental clarity, bone density, digestion, and then of course, vaginal changes as well.
Progesterone also drops, which causes the irregular periods and affects your sleep patterns, which leads to the insomnia and restless nights. These hormonal shifts and the stress that they put on the body can create a whole host of menopause symptoms, including ones we mentioned along with things like muscle, joint, and aches, weight gain, specifically around the belly, anxiety, depression, low energy, memory loss, and really a non-exhaustive list of things that can happen to the body. So how does going low-carb impact those things? First, I want to define what a low carb diet is and talk about what foods have carbohydrates in them or are considered a carb.
So, a low carb diet is anything under 100 to 150 grams per day of carbohydrates. There are two main types of carbs: that is simple and complex. Simple carbohydrates are processed like sugar, bread, crackers, pasta.
These are fast digesting, which can cause spikes in blood sugar if they’re not paired properly, and they’re often not very nutrient dense. Complex carbs are whole foods like rolled oats, quinoa, barley, potatoes, squash. All fruits and vegetables are also complex carbohydrates.
Despite having simple sugars in them, simple natural sugars in them, the fiber, vitamins, and minerals make them a complex carb. And because of the fiber in these kinds of carbohydrates, they have less of an impact on blood sugar and are important to have in the diet. So, what role do carbohydrates play in menopause and hormonal balance? While we do need carbohydrates to function as they’re our body’s main and preferred source of energy, they’re more than just a source of energy.
They’re actually really crucial for helping our bodies produce hormones. When we eat carbs, our body breaks them down into glucose, which fuels the cells, but this process also helps our thyroid function properly. The thyroid is essentially our metabolic regulator slowing down or speeding up energy and hormone production.
Carbohydrates help convert the inactive thyroid 4 hormone into T3, the active thyroid hormone. In addition to T3 and T4, estrogen and progesterone are also hormones that are regulated by the thyroid. Insulin also plays a role in how the ovaries produce sex hormones like estrogen and progesterone. In perimenopause, if insulin levels remain low for extended periods, this process can be further disrupted.So, what happens when you cut carbs way down, like in a low carb diet? Lowering your carb intake too much can reduce insulin levels.
And while it’s a large part of what it does, insulin isn’t just about blood sugar. It’s also involved in how the ovaries produce sex hormones like estrogen and progesterone. So, when insulin dips too low for too long, this process is disrupted even further when in perimenopause.
Despite being popular for weight loss, these diets can actually worsen hormonal struggles, particularly during perimenopause, leading to increased symptoms and making weight loss more difficult. So next up, we’re going to touch on cortisol. I’m not going to dive too deep because my last podcast on stress did that.
Go give that a listen if you have not, but this is a really important aspect of carbohydrate intake and hormone regulation. So, cortisol is the stress hormone, which is a normal response to help us manage stress. But when it’s constantly elevated, it can cause a lot of issues, especially in menopause.
Being on a diet or in a caloric deficit is already a stressor on the body. When you then drastically cut carbs from your diet, your body also perceives this as a stressor. This can lead to an increase in cortisol levels as your body really tries to deal with what it sees as essentially a lack of fuel.
So, on top of everything else that your body’s going through, this is insult to injury. The biggest problem with chronically elevated cortisol is that your body is redirecting the energy it needs to produce your sex hormones like estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone in order to keep you safe with that cortisol. I’m putting that in quotes, quote unquote.
Elevated cortisol is also linked to weight gain specifically around the abdomen, even outside of perimenopause. I know that this type of weight gain is not only frustrating, but it also increases the risk of other health issues like heart disease and diabetes. Another component to consider when it comes to low carb is that low carb equals low fiber.
Fiber plays a huge role in gut health as well as detoxification. Prebiotic fiber is the main source of food for your good gut bacteria, which these help break down food and absorb nutrients along with breaking down toxins that end up in the gut and help send them to the liver, then dispose of them in the feces. Fiber also helps add bulk to the stool and clean out the intestines making for healthy, regular detoxification.
When disrupting this process, toxins can recirculate, overwhelming the body and contributing to hormonal problems.”Moving on to some of the ways it specifically impacts your symptoms. So, starting with energy levels.
Perimenopause is already a time when most women are experiencing fatigue, brain fog, they’re struggling to get through the day. And when you cut out carbs, you probably notice, if you’ve tried this, that your symptoms actually get worse. Like I said before, carbohydrates are your body’s main and preferred source of quick energy.
So, without enough carbs, your body struggles to produce glucose. Again, not just for the body, but also for the brain, which is why you have that brain fog. And then in addition to the low energy levels or that afternoon crash.
Diving into sleep. So good quality sleep can be really hard to come by during perimenopause. And unfortunately, a low carb diet can make it even harder.
When you cut carbs, your blood sugar levels can become unstable, and this can actually cause you to wake up in the middle of the night as your body tries to stabilize itself by using cortisol, which is a glucose regulator. Again, more on that in the previous episode, but elevated cortisol levels at night keep you wired and make it really hard to fall back asleep or stay asleep. When the liver overloaded you might experience night wakings between one and three in the morning. This can lead to a vicious cycle of poor sleep, increased stress, and overeating.
Finally, touching on mental health. So many women experience mood swings, anxiety, depression through peri and carbs play a really big role in the production of serotonin, the transmitter that helps regulate your mood. So when you cut carbs, your serotonin levels can drop leading to irritability, anxiety, and depression.
This is probably the second most common symptom in perimenopause and something that most doctors will usually just prescribe you an anti-anxiety antidepressant for before even asking about your diet. In addition to this, estrogen actually plays a huge role in regulating serotonin production. So when this declines, we see an increase in those mood disorders.
While depressants may help, it’s not actually the root cause, and it could really benefit you to talk with your doctor about hormone replacement therapy and eat your carbs, of course, instead of using an antidepressant. Lastly, cortisol dysregulation can also contribute to these mood swings through the disruption of those serotonin pathways through the hypothalamus. So we have a triple whammy when it comes to emotional dysregulation if you’re trying to navigate perimenopause on a low-carb diet, making those emotional ups and downs, that roller coaster of menopause, even more intense.
Now that you’re aware of all of these impacts, I’m sure you’re sitting there screaming, well what can I do to lose this belly and gain some control over my body again? First of all, you want to make sure you’re eating enough nutrient dense food in general to support your body and all of its functions. This is the most common mistake I see.
Second, being inadequate carbohydrate intake on a regular basis. It’s easy for most women to go way low carb during the week, feel all of these things, get all these symptoms, maybe even see some progress on the scale, which is just water weight, and then over the weekend indulge in some high carbohydrate foods, go a little wild, and then go through that vicious cycle again in restricting and over indulging. For most women, their calorie intake at an absolute minimum should be somewhere around 11 to 13 times your body weight, potentially working toward 12 to 15 times your body weight in calories, depending on your body fat percentage, which this might seem like a ton of food to you, but I promise it’s not.
Even 15 times my body weight puts me at 2100 calories, and I can regularly eat 24 to 2600 calories to maintain my weight. Secondly, for most people, we want 150 grams of carbohydrates per day, or three to five servings, also to be a minimum. You can start with just one to two servings, then slowly increase from there, and I will warn you, you will see a small spike in the scale initially, which is purely water weight.
Every gram of carbohydrate is three grams of water attached. This will level out once you solidify and regulate your daily intake, and you can use that as your baseline if you have a fat loss goal. Ideally, the majority of those would be complex carbohydrates, like I listed above, limiting the simple carbs, but not even really needing to eliminate them completely to see fat loss results.
For those of you specifically concerned about the blood sugar component of eating carbs, maybe you know you have some insulin resistance, again going into perimenopause, that is a consideration. There are a lot of things you can do to mitigate the impact of those carbs. The first is to choose primarily complex carbohydrates.
The fiber in them will reduce the impact on the blood sugar. The other is to never eat a naked carb, or a carb alone. Eating fats, vegetables, and protein prior to any carbs will slow the digestion of them, reducing the blood sugar spike that follows.
You can take short walks after meals, include apple cider vinegar in or before your meals, both have been shown to reduce glucose spikes. I have a whole guide on managing blood sugar that I will link in the show notes in case you need some more guidance on that. To specifically address the sleep issues, a lot of women find they have less interruptions during the night when they have a balanced snack that includes carbohydrates before bed, as it helps stabilize the blood sugar and avoids that cortisol spike in the early morning hours.
As far as sleep goes, progesterone is another hormone that you could talk with your doctor about potentially replacing or supporting the body with, and that often can reduce the night interruptions and improve sleep patterns. Fiber intake should also be about 25 grams minimum per day, but up to 35 and 40 per day for optimal digestion and detoxification.
The majority of that should come from your food. Supplementing the last 5-10 grams, that is also a really good option. Omega-3 fatty acids are another really important aspect of maintaining healthy hormone production and reducing inflammation in the body.
Eating fatty fish 2-3 times a week, avocados, nuts, seeds, can help provide that in the diet, but you can also be supplementing with omega-3s, fish oil, or cod liver oil. Other major considerations are going to be adequate protein. For most people will be between 130-150 grams per day or 4-5 servings.
These should be in balanced meals throughout the day. Ideally evenly spaced out in order to support balanced blood sugar levels, which reduces stress on the body and can reduce your symptoms of perimenopause. And lastly, but not leastly, is hydration. Working toward half your body weight in ounces up to a gallon a day can be really beneficial for muscles, joints, but also detoxification, gut health, and reducing inflammation in the body.
Try to avoid drinking water 1-2 hours before bedtime to avoid that night waking to use the bathroom. I have had client after client come to me trying to lose fat, struggling with fatigue, brain fog, not seeing the results they want, restricting their food, restricting their calories, and after incorporating carbohydrates, eating enough food, they think I’m an absolute magician because not only do they look great, but they feel great. So I promise you, it works.
These are kind of the main points when it comes to discussing the role of carbohydrates supporting hormonal shifts during perimenopause, but if you feel like you need more support in navigating your health or fat loss goals, I have 3 other podcasts that specifically address nutrition, fitness, and supplementation in perimenopause, as well as a free hormone analysis that I will link in the show notes where I will create a personalized plan for you.
If you have any questions, suggestions for future topics like this podcast about Carbs and Menopause, or just want to chat, feel free to reach out to us on Instagram at Brooke underscore Elysian and Facebook linked in the show notes or via our website ElysianWomensWellness.com. If you enjoyed what you heard today, we’d be thrilled if you could take a half-second to leave us a 5-star review. You will be helping others find our show, but you can also be entered into our monthly $100 giveaway for no reviews.
New episodes drop every Monday, so make sure to hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more. Thanks for listening. See you soon.
Coach Brooke Davis Links:
Website: bdavistraining.com
LinkedIn: Brooke Davis – Owner – Davis Fitness
Facebook: Brooke Davis, CPT
Instagram: Brooke Davis (@brooke_elysian)
Free Community: Women’s Fitness Simplified: Lean down, tone up, build confidence!
Hormone Analysis: https://brookedavis.typeform.com/to/quKUjmTI
God, family, fitness – in that order. Fitness isn’t my job, it’s my passion. My favorite things include traveling the world, being a momma and making a difference.
10 years of experience in the wellness industry has brought me to an understanding that when you’re ready – you’ll do it. So when you are, I’m here to help simplify your fitness.
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