The Menopause Diet

How I got older and thinner after a lifetime of dieting

Me in a bathing suit. Or: A photo I could never have imagined publishing publicly before now.

I am the oldest menstruating woman in America. Based on an exhaustive survey of nine of my friends, I am the only 54-year-old in the world who still gets her period every month. You’ve heard of people being young at heart? I’m young at uterus. Since neither my crow’s feet nor my crepe-y elbows are similarly youthful, I’m clinging for dear life to my monthly reminder that it’s not all over. I may not still have it, but I still get it, like clockwork, every month.

But peri-menopause, that’s a different story. That, dear friends, is kicking my butt. Hot flashes, mood swings, irritability, a fibroid the size of Minneapolis. Name a symptom, I’ve got it. So while I’m unashamedly basking in the glory of the monthly reminder of my womanhood, I know my estrogen-filled days are numbered. While I am worried about what the loss of estrogen might mean for my health–osteoporosis, higher risk of heart disease or stroke–I’m mostly worried about what it will mean for my weight. Priorities, amiright?

Until my mid-forties, when the joys of peri-menopause began, I had weighed the same since I was in my late twenties. Which is to say, I had spent twenty years trying to lose the same ten pounds. Between 40 and 45, I put on five pounds. I wasn’t happy, but I made the mental adjustment. At…