Menopause & Perimenopause Nutrition
Your body changed the rules. Here's what the evidence actually says — and what to do about it.
Menopause & Perimenopause Nutrition
What actually changes — and what doesn't.
Here's the part almost nobody tells you: the steady weight gain that shows up in midlife — roughly half a kilo a year — tracks with getting older, not with menopause itself. What the hormonal transition genuinely changes is where your body stores fat. As oestrogen falls, storage shifts from hips and thighs toward the abdomen, and visceral fat rises. That's why the scale can barely move while your clothes fit completely differently, and why this feels like a betrayal rather than a slow drift.
Two things follow from that, and they change what you should actually do. First, the problem isn't mainly a calorie problem, so eating less and less isn't the fix — and it's usually what makes things worse. Second, muscle and bone are what's genuinely at stake in this decade, which means the goal isn't shrinking. It's holding onto the tissue that keeps you strong, steady and independent for the next forty years.
What works.
Protein, and more than you think
Protein protects muscle, and protecting muscle is the whole game in this decade. For active women the evidence supports somewhere around 1.6 to 2.0 grams per kilogram of bodyweight a day — for most women that's noticeably more than they're currently eating, and it's the single change that makes the biggest difference to how you look and feel. We build it into meals you'd actually eat, not shakes.
Lifting heavy things
Strength training is the other half, and nutrition without it is half a plan. Muscle and bone both respond to load — that's the signal that tells your body to keep them. I coach powerlifting, so this isn't a bolt-on afterthought for me: if you're not training yet, we start where you are, and if you are, we make your eating match it.
Eating enough to recover
The instinct in midlife is to eat less, and it backfires. Under-eating costs you muscle, wrecks your training, worsens your sleep, and leaves you smaller but softer. Most women I'd work with need to eat more protein and more food overall than they expect, alongside a deficit only if and when one is genuinely warranted.
What I won't sell you.
There's an enormous industry built on this decade of your life, so it's worth being blunt about what I don't do. I don't balance, reset or regulate your hormones — no nutrition coach can, and anybody claiming otherwise is selling something. There are no detoxes here, no cleanses, no seed cycling, no cortisol protocols, no menopause superfoods, and no supplement line I earn commission on. I don't treat hot flashes, night sweats, mood or sleep disorders — those are real, they're medical, and they belong with your doctor.
What's left when you strip all of that out is unglamorous and it works: enough protein, enough food, progressive strength training, sleep you protect, and someone checking in every week to keep it going when life gets in the way.
About HRT.
Hormone therapy is a medical decision between you and your doctor, and I have no business steering it in either direction. Plenty of my kind of work sits comfortably alongside it, and plenty sits alongside choosing not to. Either way, what you eat and whether you lift still matter — that part doesn't change based on what you decide.
One thing you should know about me.
I haven't been through menopause. I'm not going to pretend otherwise, and I'd be sceptical of anyone in my position who did. What that means in practice is that I don't guess and I don't generalise from my own body — I work from the evidence, and I listen carefully to what you tell me about yours, because you're the one living in it.
What I do bring: I lift, I coach powerlifting, and I've spent years studying nutrition properly. The muscle-and-strength part of this problem is the part I know best, and it happens to be the part that matters most here.
What coaching looks like.
Targets built for you — calories and macros set for your body and your training, with protein high enough to actually protect muscle.
A meal plan rebuilt weekly — real food you like, with the grocery list. See how meal plans work.
Weekly check-ins — you send your week; I read it and adjust. Energy, training, sleep and how your clothes fit all count as data, not just the scale.
Habit coaching — one or two things at a time, so it survives a bad week.
Direct messaging — questions between check-ins come straight to me.
$80 a month, month to month, cancel any time. See exactly what's included.
Questions people actually ask.
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Usually because the goal quietly changed. What worked at thirty was often just eating less, and in midlife eating less costs you muscle at exactly the point you can least afford to lose it. The approach that works now is more protein, real strength training, and enough food to recover from it — which feels like the opposite of what you've been told.
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The evidence is reasonably encouraging for postmenopausal women, particularly for strength and lean mass, and mostly in studies where it's paired with resistance training rather than taken on its own. Typical maintenance dosing in that research is 3–5 grams a day. Worth knowing: it's been studied far less in perimenopausal women specifically, and it's a supplement, not a strategy — it does nothing much without the training. Ask your doctor or pharmacist if you take other medication.
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Not directly — those are medical and they belong with your doctor. What I can tell you honestly is that eating enough, training regularly and stabilising your routine tend to help how you feel overall, and that's worth having whatever else you're doing.
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Yes — coaching is fully online across Canada, in every province and time zone.
If you're tired of guessing.
Book a free consultation. Twenty minutes, no pitch — we'll talk about what's actually changed for you
and whether this is the right kind of help.