As women get older, their bodies experience hormonal changes that can lead to a slower metabolism and increased difficulty in maintaining fitness levels. The Galveston Diet, created by Dr. Mary Claire Haver, a board-certified OB-GYN specializing in perimenopausal women, is designed to address these challenges by helping hormones work in favor of weight management. This online program focuses on anti-inflammatory foods while limiting processed options, artificial ingredients, and added sugars.
What is the Galveston Diet?
The Galveston Diet stands out as a weight-loss program tailored to address the unique challenges women face during perimenopause and menopause. Dr. Mary Claire Haver developed this innovative approach after realizing that the traditional "eat less, exercise more" advice was ineffective for women in midlife. The diet combines intermittent fasting with an emphasis on anti-inflammatory foods and a specific macronutrient ratio to combat inflammation and promote weight loss.
The Core Components
The Galveston Diet consists of three main components:
Intermittent Fasting: This involves adhering to a specific schedule of eating and fasting. The Galveston Diet recommends the 16:8 method, where you fast for 16 hours and eat during an eight-hour window. This approach has shown potential benefits for hormone balancing, weight management, cardiovascular health, blood sugar regulation, and inflammation reduction.
Anti-Inflammatory Nutrition: This focuses on limiting or avoiding foods associated with inflammation, such as processed snacks, fast food, vegetable oils, fried foods, white flour, white rice, refined sugar, and foods with high fructose corn syrup. Instead, the diet encourages the consumption of anti-inflammatory foods like fruits, vegetables, healthy fats, and lean protein.
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Fuel Refocus: This involves adjusting your food intake to encourage your body to burn fat for energy. The Galveston Diet recommends a specific ratio of macronutrients: 70% of calories from healthy fats, 20% from protein, and 10% from carbohydrates. This shift aims to move the body away from using glucose as its primary energy source and towards burning fat.
How the Galveston Diet Works
The Galveston Diet works by combining intermittent fasting, anti-inflammatory nutrition, and a focus on macronutrient ratios to address the hormonal changes and inflammation that can lead to weight gain in women during perimenopause and menopause.
Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is a cornerstone of the Galveston Diet, restricting calories to promote weight loss. During the fasting window, no calories are consumed, although zero-calorie beverages like water, unsweetened tea, and coffee are allowed. By limiting the time you are allowed to eat, you tend to eat fewer calories overall, creating a calorie deficit that promotes weight loss.
Anti-Inflammatory Nutrition
The Galveston Diet focuses on anti-inflammatory nutrition by encouraging the consumption of fruits and vegetables rich in plant compounds that fight inflammation. It advises cutting back on or eliminating inflammatory foods such as white rice and refined sugar.
Fuel Refocus
The Galveston Diet resembles the Keto diet in that it encourages followers to get most of their calories from fat instead of carbs. It focuses on a split that involves getting 70% of calories from fat, 20% from protein, and 10% from carbs. This allows for a Fuel Refocus as you are getting more fuel from fats as opposed to carbs, which is recommended for promoting weight loss.
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Foods to Eat and Avoid
The Galveston Diet encourages the consumption of whole, unprocessed foods that are naturally low in sugar and high in fiber and other nutrients.
Foods to Eat
- Healthy Fats: Olive oil, coconut oil, MCT oil, butter, ghee, avocado oil, sesame oil, avocados, walnuts, olives, coconut flour.
- Proteins: Lean ground beef, chicken, turkey, eggs, lean pork, salmon, trout, tuna, shellfish, anchovies, legumes, tofu, almond milk, edamame, cottage cheese.
- Carbohydrates: Leafy green vegetables, apples, bananas, and other fruits.
- Other: Nuts, seeds, plain Greek yogurt, black, green, oolong, and chamomile teas, and fresh herbs.
Foods to Limit or Avoid
- Processed Foods: Refined grains, fried foods, processed meats, processed snacks, fast food.
- Sweeteners: Added sugar, artificial sweeteners, sugar-sweetened beverages (sweet tea, colas, soft drinks, and juices).
- Oils: Vegetable oils high in omega-6 fats (soybean, sunflower, safflower, and corn oil).
- Alcohol: Beer, wine, and spirits.
- Food Additives: Artificial additives (flavors, colors, and preservatives).
Potential Benefits of the Galveston Diet
The Galveston Diet offers several potential health benefits, primarily related to weight loss, inflammation reduction, and disease risk reduction.
Weight Loss and Management
The Galveston diet can be effective for weight loss and management. By limiting the intake of added sugars, fried food, and processed foods and adhering to intermittent fasting, the eating regimen “seems to help people lose stubborn pounds gained in their perimenopausal years,” says Lisa D. Ellis, a registered dietitian in private practice in Manhattan and White Plains, New York.
Intermittent fasting and low-carb dieting, two main components of the Galveston Diet, have been extensively studied for their weight loss effects. Studies have shown that intermittent fasting can reduce belly fat and waist size, while low-carb diets can lead to significant weight loss, particularly fat loss.
Inflammation Reduction
The Galveston diet eating regimen is designed to fight inflammation in the body, Haver says. Research published in 2019 in the journal Nature Medicine suggests that social, environmental and lifestyle factors can lead to systemic chronic inflammation. In turn, such inflammation can lead to an array of health problems.
Read also: Galveston Diet Approved Lunch Options
By emphasizing anti-inflammatory foods and limiting pro-inflammatory ones, the Galveston Diet aims to reduce chronic inflammation, which is linked to various health problems like heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease.
Disease Risk Reduction
Intermittent fasting and low-carb diets have been shown to protect against various lifestyle illnesses, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and insulin resistance. They’re also associated with a reduction in visceral fat, fasting insulin, and insulin resistance. All three of these are risk factors for type 2 diabetes.
Potential Drawbacks of the Galveston Diet
While the Galveston Diet offers potential benefits, it also has some drawbacks that individuals should consider.
Restrictive Nature
People that find it difficult to follow a low-carb diet may not have an easy time sticking to the Galveston meal plan. The restrictive nature of the diet may cause overeating. Intermittent fasting may help some people lose weight, but it could trigger overeating after periods of restriction, Ellis says.
Potential Low Fiber Intake
Very low carb diets tend to be low in dietary fiber. Most dietary fiber comes from high carb foods like fruits, whole grains, beans, and vegetables. Thus, drastic carb cutting affects your fiber intake.
Lack of Scientific Research
To date, there are no peer-reviewed studies evaluating the effectiveness of the Galveston diet. While studies looking at similar eating patterns have been conducted, the Galveston diet itself has not been the subject of a large clinical trial yet.
Cost and Accessibility
The Galveston Diet offers two main levels of access:
- Program Level: This costs $59 and provides access to all of the diet’s course material, including a step-by-step plan, meal plans, and educational videos.
- Platinum Coaching: This subscription starts at $24.99 for the first month, then costs $49.99 per month. It includes everything in the basic program plus ongoing coach support, live coaching sessions, a downloadable workbook, progress tracking, and weekly bonus content.
Success Stories
Diana Johnson, a 57-year-old from Galveston, Texas, experienced positive results after adopting the Galveston Diet. She lost 25 pounds and found relief from hot flashes and knee and hip pain associated with menopause. Johnson's experience highlights the potential benefits of the diet for women experiencing menopausal symptoms.
Galveston Diet vs. Other Diets
The Galveston Diet combines elements of the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting while emphasizing anti-inflammatory foods. While it shares similarities with other diets, such as the Mediterranean Diet, its focus on weight loss and hormone balancing sets it apart.
Implementing the Galveston Diet
Implementing the Galveston Diet involves adopting the three core components: intermittent fasting, anti-inflammatory nutrition, and fuel refocus.
Sample Meal Plan
A sample weekly meal plan might include:
- First Meal: Shrimp and broccoli with parmesan, pistachios, and garlic.
- Second Meal: Two portobello mushroom caps topped with red onion, grape tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil.
- Snack: Grilled chicken breast over mixed greens with fresh mushrooms, feta cheese, and half an avocado.
Recipes
The Galveston Diet offers several recipes, including:
- Mary Claire's Smoothie: A blend of full-fat Greek yogurt, sliced strawberries, blueberries, chopped walnuts, ground flaxseed, chia seeds, hemp hearts, unsweetened coconut flakes, ice cubes, and water.
- Hard-Boiled Egg with Avocado: A simple snack consisting of a hard-boiled egg and half an avocado.
- Chicken and BLT Wrap: A wrap made with romaine lettuce leaves, sliced avocado, shredded rotisserie-cooked chicken breast, chopped tomato, turkey bacon, homemade ranch dressing, black pepper, and grated cheddar cheese.
Long-Term Maintenance
After the initial six-week meal plan, the Galveston Diet transitions into a maintenance program called "Galveston Diet for Life." This program emphasizes making intermittent fasting a lifestyle change, continuing to focus on anti-inflammatory foods, and adjusting macronutrient ratios to find a sustainable balance.