Cutting calories, more cardio, no carbs at night and daily weigh ins can all backfire after 45. Here’s what the research says and what to do instead.
Apparently there are four rules for losing weight, and I’m sure you’re trying to follow at least one of them right now:
Cut calories
Do more cardio
Don’t eat carbs at night
Weigh yourself every day
STOP!
These rules don’t work in menopause, and in this post I’m going to explain why not, why it’s time to free your mindset from them, and how to change tack (if you want to lose weight, that is!). It’s a long read, but it’s full of stats from real studies, so you can trust that I’m not making things up to confuse you.
The four year window nobody mentions
SWAN is a large, long running study that has followed 1,315 women through the menopause transition. In 2026 it published findings showing that insulin resistance rises by around 1.2% a year in the run up to menopause. During the transition itself, which runs from roughly a year and a half before your last period to two and a half years after it, that jumps to around 4.3% a year. That’s more than three and a half times faster, and the researchers found it happened regardless of weight gain.
Insulin is the hormone that tells your body to store energy, so when your cells stop responding to it, more of what you eat tends to be stored as fat, particularly around your middle. In other words, the shift often starts on the inside long before you see it on the scales, which is exactly why so many women feel they’re doing everything right and are still losing the battle with their jeans.
This isn’t a willpower problem, it’s a hormonal one, and that means we can work with it.
Rule 1: Cut calories
I completely understand the instinct to cut harder when nothing is shifting, but drastic restriction tells your body that food is scarce. It responds by holding on to fat and taking what it needs from elsewhere, including your muscle and bone. This is why I don’t recommend long fasts to my menopause clients, and why a protein breakfast is so important.
In a year long study published in JAMA Network Open, 101 postmenopausal women followed either a very low calorie diet or a moderate one. The crash dieters lost more weight, BUT they also lost around two and a half times as much bone from the hip, which the researchers said the extra weight loss couldn’t explain on its own. They also lost roughly one and a half times as much muscle.
Muscle is your metabolic engine. It burns energy while you sleep and soaks up sugar from your bloodstream, so every time we “start again on Monday” with a tougher diet, we chip away at the very thing that helps us through this window.
What I’d do instead is eat enough and build every meal around protein. Switching to a protein breakfast was the very first change I made at 39, and it’s still the one I’d ask every client to start with.
Your body doesn’t need less food, it needs the right food in the right amounts.
Rule 2: Do more cardio
Hands up if you’ve ever added another walk, another spin class or another half hour on the cross trainer when the scales wouldn’t move. It feels as though you should work harder and sweat more in order to lose more weight.
In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, older adults on the same reduced calorie diet were split into a cardio group and a resistance training group. The cardio group lost around 5% of their muscle, compared with about 2% in the resistance group. They also lost around 3% of their hip bone density, while the resistance group lost only about half a percent.
A separate study followed 1,450 women for more than ten years. It found that roughly one in nine kept losing muscle and gaining fat after menopause, while the more active women had around 60% lower odds of ending up in that group.
I love my runs, my swimming and my padel, so I’m certainly not telling you to give up cardio. If you’re cutting calories and only doing cardio, though, you could be losing the very muscle you need to shift that stubborn belly fat.
What I’d do instead is lift something heavy two or three times a week. It doesn’t have to mean hours in a gym, because short sessions done consistently are what make the difference, and that’s exactly why my Tuesday and Friday classes are built around strength.
Strong muscles are the best investment you’ll ever make in your future self.
Rule 3: Don’t eat carbs at night
“Don’t eat after six” and “carbs at night turn to fat” are two of the most stubborn myths I hear. So many women end up eating a dry piece of chicken with some vegetables, then lie wide awake at two in the morning with their minds racing. Carbohydrates help your brain take up tryptophan, which your body uses to make serotonin and then melatonin, the hormone that helps keep you asleep. Pistachios are also one of the richest food sources of melatonin itself, so there’s a great excuse to eat them!
This all matters for your waistline too. In a study published in Diabetes Care, researchers at Columbia University asked women to go to bed 90 minutes later for six weeks, which cut their sleep from about seven and a half hours to around six. They ate the same food as before, yet their insulin resistance rose by almost 15%, and by around 20% in the postmenopausal women. Put that together with the faster rise in insulin resistance during the transition, and a rule meant to shrink your waist could end up working against it.
What I’d do instead is include some slow release carbohydrates with dinner, such as potatoes, rice, lentils or wholegrain bread, alongside your protein and vegetables. In our house dinner is always cooked from scratch and eaten together, and I ban nothing, carbs included.
Good sleep isn’t a luxury in menopause, it’s part of the plan. I always start with sleep when my clients want to lose weight, because I’m sorry to say it’s so much harder to shift until you’re sleeping properly.
Rule 4: Weigh yourself every day
I know how much power that little number can have over your whole day, but the scales simply can’t see what menopause is doing to your body. A study published in October 2026 scanned women’s bodies over ten years as they approached their final period. Those who started at a normal weight saw their body fat rise while their weight barely moved.
Another study of 300 postmenopausal women found that 43.7% had sarcopenia, which is a significant loss of muscle. A higher BMI was actually linked to a lower chance of having it, which shows just how misleading the number can be. When researchers pooled 18 studies of menopause programmes and apps, women’s waists shrank by an average of 2.2 cm, even though their weight, BMI and body fat percentage barely changed.
What I’d do instead is put the scales in a cupboard and track other things, like a tape measure, how your clothes fit, your energy, your sleep and how strong you feel. Together they tell a far more honest story.
You are so much more than a number, and so is your progress.
Where to start
If you’ve followed any of these rules for years, please don’t feel bad about it, because we were all taught them and most of us believed them. The good news is that small, sensible changes really can make a difference: more protein, more strength, carbs back on your dinner plate and the scales out of sight. I see it happen with the women I work with every week.
My advice is to pick the rule you’ve followed the longest and start by breaking that one, because it’s probably the one costing you the most.
If you’re in Sitges, come and join my women only strength classes at Can Pei on Tuesdays and Fridays at 09.15. They’re fun and social, and no experience is necessary. If you’d like a plan built around you, email me at charlotte@menopausethrivehub.com or send me a message on WhatsApp, and we’ll work out where to start together.