Fasting has been practiced for thousands of years, offering various benefits such as improved mental clarity, weight management, and spiritual growth.
However, it is not without its challenges. Especially for menopausal women, fasting requires careful consideration to avoid potential pitfalls like muscle loss and nutritional deficiencies.
The History of Fasting
Historically, fasting has been used primarily as a tool to successfully enhance meditation and spiritual practices, aiming to clear the mind and body from distractions. Fasting requires discipline and the ability to delay gratification, which can help individuals develop greater self-control and strength of will.
By reducing physical distractions, fasting can help improve concentration and mental clarity, aiding in personal introspection and spiritual awareness. Certain cultural rituals and ceremonies involve fasting as a means of purification and preparation. Many philosophical schools of thought in ancient Greece, such as the Pythagoreans and Stoics, practiced fasting as a way to gain self-control, clarity, and spiritual insight.
Fasting has been used as a powerful form of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience, drawing attention to injustices and demanding change.
Most notably, Mahatma Gandhi used fasting as a political tool to protest British rule in India and promote nonviolent resistance. Other activists have used hunger strikes to draw attention to various social, political, and human rights issues.
The Benefits of Fasting
Fasting has also been used for health and healing. Ancient medical traditions, including those of the Greeks and Ayurveda, considered fasting a way to cleanse the body of toxins, improve health, and treat various ailments.
It has also been used to provide rest for the digestive system, promoting better health and well-being.
Current fasting practices have many benefits and can help some women manage weight, improve insulin sensitivity, and resync hunger signals.
This is especially true if a woman has a history of eating issues, has a bad relationship with food, or is out of sync with what a real hunger signal feels like.
This can be common in women who eat for reasons other than energy, such as emotional reasons, stress, anxiety, boredom, distracted eating, depression, sadness, self-soothing, or out of habit.
For this reason, the benefits of fasting become apparent for anyone who has ever quit sugar for a time and then had a piece of fruit. The fruit seems to explode with sweetness after so much time without tasting sugar.
The Western diet is so full of added sugar that your taste buds literally become desensitized to it, and fruit can taste bland.
Doing a sugar fast or eliminating unnecessary substances can help people understand impacts they may not even be aware of or have become desensitized to over time.
Although fasting has many benefits, if you consider fasting just for weight loss, it hasn’t been proven to be more beneficial than any other diet that reduces calories to lose weight.
In fact, the benefits found in fasting related to weight loss show the same improvement in both weight loss and biomarkers as any other calorie-restricted diet, especially when you match calorie intake.
Dr. Ethan Weiss, a cardiologist at the University of California San Francisco and strong Intermittent Fasting supporter, recommended intermittent fasting for years but quit fasting after his most recent study, saying the only distinction for fasting appears to be less positive than originally thought.
He says people lose significantly more lean mass than fat mass compared to those who had regular meal times. Dr. Weiss is quoted as saying,
“What the study showed was that this is a lousy tool for weight loss for most people, and it may not even be the right kind of weight loss even if you get the pounds to come off.”
Many women find fasting a helpful tool for reducing overall calories. Other potential challenges with fasting are potential nutritional deficiencies and fasting’s impact on muscle mass.
If not planned properly, nutrient deficiencies might result in inadequate intake of essential nutrients. Fasting can also lead to muscle loss, negatively affecting overall metabolism and strength.
If you are considering fasting to reduce your caloric intake, you might want to know the information and how this diet may impact your future health goals.
9 Key Considerations for Fasting in Menopausal Women
During menopause, women face unique challenges such as sarcopenia and hormonal changes. While fasting can help reduce caloric intake and manage weight, ensuring adequate protein intake and muscle maintenance is crucial to avoid adverse effects on metabolism.
There are 9 key considerations you should be aware of before utilizing this tool for body recomposition.
- Sarcopenia and estrogen decline in menopause
- Protein intake and muscle
- Blood sugar balance
- Replenishing glycogen stores post-exercise
- Sustainability
- Downregulation of BMR and metabolism
- Thyroid hormone and metabolic rate
- Impacts on mindset, potentially mental health, and relationship with food
- Plateaus and next steps
Let’s address each of these key considerations in a little more detail.
1. Sarcopenia and Estrogen Decline in Menopause
Sarcopenia is the age-related loss of muscle mass, strength, and function. It is a common condition in older adults, starting as early as the 30s or 40s and becoming more pronounced over time.
For women, especially those in middle age or going through menopause, sarcopenia can have significant impacts.
Research indicates that adults can lose approximately 3-8% of their muscle mass per decade after age 30. This loss increases between ages 50 and 60.
Over 50 years, from age 30 to 80, a 150-lb woman could potentially lose between 7.4 lbs (3% per decade) and 17.9 lbs (8% per decade) of muscle mass, depending on various factors, including lifestyle and genetic predispositions.
These estimates highlight the importance of proactive management through physical activity and nutrition to mitigate muscle loss.
During menopause, a woman’s body downregulates the hormone estrogen, making it more difficult for her to retain lean muscle mass. As estrogen declines and we lose lean body mass, we increase in fat mass.
Basically, the muscle-to-fat ratio shifts, and not in our favor. As our bodies transition into a higher fat ratio, our metabolism also downregulates since lean muscle is the tissue that keeps our body’s metabolism running high (Muscle tissue is active and catabolic). This is the main reason for the dreaded menopause belly.
The metabolic changes are further compounded by lifestyle behaviors such as exercising less, not strength training, yo-yo dieting, eating low-calorie diets for long periods, eating processed, less nutrient-dense foods, and potentially increase stress levels, all of which combine to make a soup of poor metabolic health.
A more significant concern is that muscle strength and muscle mass decrease at a similar or slightly faster rate. The strength decrease can be around 1.5% yearly, particularly after middle age.
This is concerning since strength is the leading indicator of longevity. Medical practitioners and researchers use tools like the grip test to predict the strength of aging individuals, which translates to life expectancy.
2. Protein Intake and Muscle
As women age and estrogen levels begin to decline, our body composition shifts from a higher percent of muscle to a higher percent of fat, especially in the abdominal area.
This is due in part to the downregulation of estrogen. This reduction in estrogen leads to an increase in risk for all-cause mortality factors such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, and more.
In fact, once women go through menopause, women will begin to have the same risk factors as men.
Another repressed process is how well our bodies utilize protein. As we age, our bodies get less efficient at utilizing the protein we consume. This is an issue since most women generally don’t eat enough protein, which is essential to retaining the muscle needed as we age.
Muscles protect us by keeping us strong, and a strong correlation exists between strength and longevity. In fact, you will hear many medical doctors say break a hip and die of pneumonia. What doctors are referring to is that one in three adults dies within 12 months of suffering a hip fracture, and this risk goes up with age.
Protein is the only macronutrient that helps to build tissue in the body, and it’s an essential nutrient, meaning you have to get it through diet. A big issue for women in menopause is that we become less sensitive to protein as we age.
Middle-age and menopausal women need to increase protein during this stage of life to ensure their body spares much-needed lean body tissue that becomes harder to build as we age. For more on how much protein you need, check out this article.
Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR): Muscle tissue is metabolically active, requiring more energy (calories) to maintain itself than fat tissue. The more muscle mass you have, the higher your resting metabolic rate is and the more calories your body burns at rest.
Caloric Burn: Muscles are responsible for movement during physical activity and burn calories to produce energy for those movements. More muscle mass means that your body will burn more calories even during physical activities.
Hormonal Effects: Exercise that builds muscle can influence hormone levels, such as increasing growth hormone and testosterone, which can boost metabolism.
Improved Insulin Sensitivity: Muscle tissue helps improve insulin sensitivity, meaning the body uses glucose more effectively, which can help regulate blood sugar levels and prevent metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes.
One consideration with fasting is that you have what’s defined as an “eating window” where you are allowed to eat your meals because you fast the rest of the time. There are many different styles of Intermittent fasting, and all have different protocols or rules to follow to be compliant.
Eating windows can be anywhere from one hour a day (24-hour Fasting or One Meal a Day-OMAD protocol) to up to 12 hours on the 12/12 method and anywhere in between. )
These protocols are great if your only goal is calorie reduction. Still, at this stage in life, where protein consumption is essential to health and longevity, it is extremely difficult to consume the right amount of protein your body needs in fewer meals and available hours in the day.
Let’s face it: eating protein is filling. Most women drastically under-eat protein as it is, and it negatively impacts metabolism because they don’t have enough of the essential amino acids found in protein to retain the muscle needed to stay strong as they age.
Eating the right amount of protein in less time is even more difficult. Protein is super important for retaining or building muscle, but limiting your eating windows only reduces your ability to consume the one nutrient that supports lean tissue and, therefore, keeps your metabolism running optimally.
3. Blood Sugar Balance
Brain Health: Stable blood sugar levels can enhance cognitive function and mental clarity. High blood sugar levels and insulin resistance are linked to cognitive decline and an increased risk of neurodegenerative diseases.
As long as you eat calories to match your energy needs, keeping your diet steady by using protein and slow-digesting carbs to help regulate hunger and blood sugar spikes will help keep your body in a homeostatic place vs. a hyper or hypoglycemic state.
All-day Energy: Stable blood sugar can provide you with a source of stable energy throughout the day. It can help you feel fuller longer, reducing your appetite and food intake with fewer energy crashes.
Cognitive Function: Blood sugar imbalances can lead to difficulties in concentration. Researchers are now calling Alzheimer’s Disease, dementia, and cognitive impairment the new “Type 3 Diabetes” because there is such a strong link between insulin resistance and cognitive decline.
Long-Term Organ Damage: having high blood sugar for long periods of time can lead to complications such as eye, kidney, hearty, and nerve damage
Mood Swings: If you have ever been “hangry,” then you know how this feels. Low blood sugar and drastic mood swings can lead to irritability and less positive emotional balance.
Cardiovascular Health: High blood sugar can lead to issues within the cardiovascular system, resulting in the damage of blood vessels over time and cardiovascular issues such as heart attacks or stroke
Improved Insulin Sensitivity: Muscle tissue helps improve insulin sensitivity, meaning the body uses glucose more effectively, which can help regulate blood sugar levels and prevent metabolic diseases like type 2 diabetes.
4. Replenishing Glycogen Stores Post-Exercise
Have you ever felt sluggish during a workout or fatigued more easily than you normally do while exercising? Replenishing glycogen stores post-exercise is important for anyone engaging in regular physical activity.
Glycogen, stored primarily in the liver and muscles, is a key energy source during exercise. Fasting can impact the replenishment of these glycogen stores, and understanding this relationship is crucial for optimizing recovery and performance.
Eating Windows: If an individual is practicing intermittent fasting and their eating window does not align with the post-exercise period, the intake of carbohydrates may be delayed. This delay can slow down the replenishment of glycogen stores.
This has several impacts, such as increased muscle soreness and stiffness, less optimal muscle repair, lower energy levels, reduced exercise capacity, inadequate or inconsistent recovery, hindering your ability to train at the same intensity or volume, and long-term training adaptations could be compromised.
Muscle Catabolism: Without sufficient glycogen, the body may break down muscle proteins to produce glucose (gluconeogenesis) to meet its energy demands. This can lead to a longer recovery period of muscle loss and a detrimental effect on muscle strength and mass over time.
Compromised Training Adaptation: Consistent training depends on adequate recovery. Inadequate glycogen stores can hinder the ability to train at the same intensity or volume, potentially compromising long-term training adaptations and improvements.
Increased Stress Hormones: Prolonged low glycogen levels can increase stress hormones like cortisol, which can further promote muscle protein breakdown and impede recovery. Elevated cortisol can also negatively affect immune function and overall well-being.
Limited Immediate Nutrition: Without immediate post-exercise nutrition, the body’s ability to quickly restore glycogen is impaired. The first 30 to 60 minutes post-exercise, known as the “glycogen window,” is a critical period for glycogen replenishment due to increased insulin sensitivity and accelerated glycogen synthesis.
As an aging woman, it is imperative that we bookend eating our high-quality carbohydrates around training to ensure that we are replenishing these glycogen stores so we have the energy to continue engaging in much-needed physical movement and strength-building exercises.
5. Sustainability
We are not meant to live in a calorie deficit all the time. In fact, dieting has been proven to reduce your metabolic rate if done for a long duration. In fact, there have been many cases of athletic women staying in a calorie deficit while participating in sports, where they eventually lose their periods due to eating such a low level of calories over a long period of time while training.
There is nothing wrong with reducing calories for short periods of time to reach a specific physical goal or keeping your calorie intake at an appropriate level for your energy output, but staying in a calorie deficit over long periods can be detrimental to your health in the long run.
Plus, who wants to constantly reduce calories more and more to get the same results you did before dieting? I don’t know about you, but I want to eat as much as possible while losing weight, not eat like a baby squirrel all the time. I want to be able to eat with my family, have drinks with my girlfriends, and not feel like I have to choose between health or quality of life every darn time.
It’s just not a realistic long-term approach for most people. I say go for it if it works for you, but I’m a fan of eating. I want to increase my metabolism to eat more and lose weight, not less, and less, and less…
6. Downregulation of BMR and Metabolism
What is Basal Metabolic Rate? Basal metabolic rate (BMR), or resting metabolic rate (RMR), is the number of calories your body burns while performing basic life-sustaining functions, such as breathing, circulation, and maintaining body temperature. BMR accounts for about 60–70% of the calories you use each day.
Metabolic Adaptation: When you don’t eat enough calories, your body’s basal metabolic rate (BMR) slows down, which means it burns fewer calories over time, essentially slowing down your metabolism.
This is mostly due to muscle loss, which occurs if the dieter isn’t eating enough protein or strength training. Muscle tissue is a calorically expensive tissue; the more muscle you have, the higher your caloric need. This translates to a higher overall metabolism. The loss of this muscle tissue makes it more difficult to maintain weight loss in the long term.
7. Thyroid and Hormone Changes
Thyroid Hormone: When the body loses energy during long periods of fasting, it can decrease thyroid hormone levels to lower metabolic activity and conserve energy.
Metabolic Rate: Changes in T3 and T4 levels can affect metabolic rate and overall health. For example, high TH levels can increase energy expenditure by shifting from type I fibers (slow) to type II fibers (fast).
Bone loss: Prolonged calorie restriction can reduce estrogen and testosterone levels. Both hormones contribute to bone formation and breakdown (remodeling).
8. Impacts on Mindset, Mental Health, and Relationship with Food
When dieting, there is already a school of thought suggesting you need to take away or do without constantly. Do without calories, do without carbs, do without sugar, alcohol, etc. This mindset sets us up to fail because we ultimately hyper-fixate on the thing we are “giving up.”
Nutrition and weight loss can be challenging. It can be stressful and overwhelming to take the time, make mistakes, and learn how to optimize nutrition to better our health.
I know it’s so much easier to follow one rule, like “no carbs” or “don’t eat between 10 pm and 10 am,” so I understand why this type of dieting is popular. It takes the pressure off, and you don’t have to learn many rules to succeed.
Learning something new always feels hard in the beginning. Remember to learn how to drive a car, and try to remember every traffic rule, put on your turn signal, look over your shoulder before changing lanes… Is it easier to stay in the right lane the whole time so you don’t have to remember all the driving rules?
Yes, and temporarily, it feels easier, but in the long run, it will take you longer to get somewhere until you take the time to learn the rest of the rules. Until they become second nature, and you don’t even remember driving home because you had to put zero mental bandwidth into the process. Nutrition is similar.
This style of eating can also create a negative relationship with food. We think we cannot feel we are successful unless we give up something, but constantly finding ways to reduce, burn more, and skip eventually wears on our mindset and overall relationship with food.
We start to see food as good or bad, or even worse, we see ourselves as good or bad. Food is essential. We can’t live without it forever. In fact, ideally, we would find the foods that optimize our health journey.
My point is this: Can you successfully fast to lose weight? You 100% can. You can lose weight on almost any diet where you reduce your intake in some fashion. Is fasting better than any other diet? I see pros and cons, so I’m just sharing some thoughts to consider.
9. Plateaus and Next Steps
Adaptive Thermogenesis: When you cut calories and lose weight, your body undergoes adaptive thermogenesis, a process where the body becomes more energy-efficient and conserves calories. This reduction in energy expenditure can slow your weight loss.
Loss of Muscle Mass: If your calorie deficit is too large or you’re not getting enough protein and resistance training, you might lose muscle mass and fat. Since muscle tissue is metabolically active, losing muscle decreases your BMR, so your body burns fewer calories at rest.
Decreased Total Energy Expenditure: Your body mass decreases as you lose weight. A smaller body requires fewer calories to maintain its weight, thus lowering your overall energy expenditure. This includes reducing your BMR and the calories burned through physical activity.
Hormonal Changes: Weight loss can lead to changes in hormones such as leptin, ghrelin, and thyroid hormones, which can decrease your metabolic rate and increase hunger, making it harder to continue losing weight.
What are your next steps if you hit a plateau while intermittent fasting (and sooner or later, you will…)? Eat less for fewer hours of the day? Workout harder? Longer? There is just nowhere to go from zero. Not in a way that is healthy and sustainable.
Conclusion:
Fasting can be a valuable tool for achieving various health goals, but for menopausal women in particular, it is essential to approach it with a balanced perspective. While there are many benefits, especially regarding mental clarity, the potential drawbacks cannot be overlooked. By tailoring fasting practices to individual needs and consulting nutrition professionals, one can maximize the benefits while minimizing the risks.
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