“I know I don’t want to diet anymore. But I feel lost when I don’t have a meal plan or some kind of structure to follow for my eating. And when I feel lost, I just eat whatever is easy, which isn’t usually healthy. What’s the best diet for women over 40 anyway?”
AB, Alpine Nutrition client
I hear a version of this statement from every woman I work with. Everyone wants to know what’s the best diet for women over 40 – without dieting.
This is the “messy middle” between not dieting for weight loss and practicing intuitive eating with intention.
If you’ve ditched diets but don’t know how to get started with intuitive eating, or you wonder if intuitive eating is the best diet for women over 40 (i.e. will intuitive eating help you lose weight). This episode is for you!
As a woman in your 40s or 50s, you’ve spent your adult life influenced by messages about what’s the best diet for women to lose weight.
From the time of puberty, you were taught the size and shape of your body mattered. Since then, you tried all the weight loss plans, programs, and apps. Your weight has shifted up and down more times than you can remember. You’re tired. You’re frustrated that your same weight loss tricks don’t work like they used to. Now what?
Maybe you’ve heard about intuitive eating and wondered if it’s the best diet for women over 40. You think, “It sounds great! I don’t have to track my food. I can enjoy going out to eat with friends or my spouse. I finally get to enjoy real pasta and fresh bread or cookies!”
You go to the store, and buy M&Ms, Oreos, and tortilla chips – all the favorite snack foods you miss. You look for comfort-food recipes and aspire to cook more of your favorite meals. After a handful of weeks, dread sets in.
Your pants fit tighter. Cautiously you step on the scale. You gained 5 pounds! Now what? Did you fail at intuitive eating?
The short answer is no. You rejected your diet mentality and allowed full permission will foods that were off-limits when you were dieting. These are critical first steps to create an intuitive eating practice. Don’t stop here!
Intuitive eating can create the best diet for women over 40. But to fully heal your relationship with food, you do need to move past what one of my clients called, “fuckit” eating or the messy middle. Here’s how.
To get past the messy middle of intuitive eating and create your own best diet for women over 40, first identify your why.
Why did you stop dieting in the first place? Why do you want to try intuitive eating? If it doesn’t feel like intuitive eating is working, why not start a new diet or another program you haven’t tried?
Defining your why sounds like a self-helpy cliche. However cognitive behavioral science shows the benefits of focusing on what motivates you to make a behavior change. Whether it’s with food, your job, exercise, or relationships, defining your why gives meaning to the outcome you hope to get. How will defining your ‘why’ help you know what to eat without a meal plan?
Here’s a scenario. If you’re a woman over 40, you may be concerned with increases in blood sugar, and cholesterol, and developing insulin resistance. If you have a family history of breast cancer, you want to know how to reduce your risk. Maybe you struggle with classic symptoms of perimenopause like night sweats, difficulty sleeping, mood swings, brain fog, and fatigue. All of these can increase your desire to improve your health and well-being. However, there’s a diet culture approach to health and a non-diet approach. What’s the difference?
The non-diet approach takes your focus off weight and puts more emphasis on overall health-promoting behaviors. Such as what foods you can add to your daily eating routine to boost fiber, offer sustained energy, decrease hot flashes, stabilize moods, and improve metabolic health. This mindset is more expansive – what can you add? Instead of contractive – what shouldn’t you eat? How does an expansive mindset take you through the messy middle?
An expansive mindset will help you create the perfect balance of nutrients in your meals and snacks.
It also helps you continue to reject the diet mentality, practice full permission with food, and honor your hunger, satisfaction, and fullness.
For example, one of my clients was frustrated because she relied on convenience foods rather than cooking fresh meals for herself. She was critical about her food choices saying she wasn’t eating enough healthy foods like salads and whole fruits. At the same time, she has a busy full-time job with long hours, and it’s important for her to exercise most days. In this case, convenience foods are the best way for her to feed herself consistently and avoid getting primally hungry (hangry). “Fed is best.” How did she find a balance between convenience foods and healthy eating habits?
With a large dose of self-compassion and a big-picture perspective, we applied an expansive mindset to her current eating behavior. Instead of just eating pizza or Taco Bell for dinner, she tried adding a salad with the pizza or cut vegetables and fruit with her Taco Bell meal. This allowed her the taste satisfaction of the convenience foods while supporting her health goal of eating more fruits and vegetables. She was able to move through the messy middle. Are you ready to do the same?
If you practice reducing black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking, intuitive eating can be the best diet for women over 40
To do that you have to be willing to find a gentle nutrition balance that lies between the extremes of fuckit eating and food restriction. This takes time, mindfulness, and support.
Click here to learn more about how I support women over 40 who want to get out of the messy middle and improve their health without restrictive food rules.
