As a GP and lifestyle medicine practitioner, I've spent years wrestling with a fundamental problem: the nutrition advice we give doesn't actually work for everyone. And there’s good science to back this up. There's so much conflicting evidence out there—should you go low-carb and high-fat? Should you be vegan? Should you do keto? Everyone seems to have the answer, yet women come to me still struggling and confused.

For a long time, I thought there had to be one right answer and I continued researching to figure out what was the best food advice to give. But after years of practicing medicine and lifestyle medicine, I've come to a crucial realization: there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

I discovered this truth first through my own body. I personally experienced the challenges I see in so many of my patients—weight gain around my abdomen, energy fluctuations tied to what I was eating, constant hunger even when trying to do the "right thing," and cravings that left me swinging between trying hard and feeling starved. Add to that a family history of type 2 diabetes on both sides of my family, and I knew I needed answers that went beyond generic advice.

A couple of months ago, I decided to trial a precision medicine app on myself—one that uses a comprehensive, closed dataset developed over ten years in collaboration with health professionals in the United States and Australia. I like to test things on myself before I consider recommending them to others. I was skeptical at first, especially about how effective it would actually be. Was it legit? Or just another fad? Looking at not just my weight, but also skeletal and muscle structure, genetics, health history, family history, and even details like eye color and hair color seemed excessive. I couldn’t see how my eye colour was relevant! But I decided to be brave enough to try it.

The insights I gained were remarkable. Through something called "phenotyping"—looking at my body where it is now, comprehensively—I discovered that some of the advice I'd been following wasn't actually right for me.

The biggest shift? I realized I'd been eating too much protein. I'd gone down the high-protein route based on common menopausal dietary advice, especially since I was doing some strength training to preserve muscle mass as menopause changed my body composition. But the precision nutrition approach showed me that I actually needed to eat a moderate amount of protein instead—and increase my intake of green vegetables significantly.

I also discovered I wasn't drinking nearly enough water. When I started monitoring it and actually tracking my glasses of water in the app, I realized my water intake was far below what my body needed. This simple change made a huge difference in my energy levels.

These changes were right for my body type, but not necessarily for yours!

Popular dietary interventions like the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet and the Mediterranean diet have substantial research supporting their cardiovascular benefits. Both have been shown to improve cholesterol levels, lower oxidative stress and inflammation, and enhance endothelial ( the lining of your blood vessels) function—all crucial for heart health during menopause.

But here's the catch: these "one-size-fits-all" approaches neglect individual characteristics such as your unique genetic predisposition, your personal food preferences, your lifestyle demands, and your environmental factors. They fail to account for the fact that what reduces cardiovascular risk for your neighbor might actually leave you feeling depleted, hungry, and unsustainable in your life.

One of the major challenges I see as a lifestyle medicine doctor is that there's so much noise out there—everyone saying "you should do this" and "you should do that"—that women just get really confused. We start to wonder what's actually going to work for our own body.

Precision nutrition represents a paradigm shift in how we approach dietary guidance during menopause. Rather than prescribing the same diet to everyone, precision nutrition considers your individual factors holistically. This includes your genetic profile, your body composition, your food intake preferences and behaviors, your health history, and your current health markers.

Recent research from large-scale investigations into the menopause transition suggests that nutritional strategies addressing two key areas show particular promise:

Postprandial glycemic responses (how your blood sugar responds after eating) and gut microbiome health may significantly improve some of the unfavorable effects of menopause on cardiovascular risk factors. By personalizing these aspects of your diet, you can work with your body's unique physiology rather than against it.

Here's what I've discovered through my own experience: it's not just about which foods are good for your body—though that's obviously critical. It's also about which foods you actually enjoy eating, which foods fit your lifestyle, and how you're going to integrate this into your daily life.

As women, we're all busy enough. We're often trying to figure out how to prepare food for our families while managing our own health. We don't need nutrition advice that requires making three different meals for three different people in the house each evening. The real challenge is integrating these personalized strategies into a life that actually works for us.

When I trialed this precision approach myself, I was initially overwhelmed by the sheer amount of advice the program gave me. But with some health coaching support, I was encouraged to just give it a try for a couple of weeks, focusing on a few key changes rather than trying to do everything at once. That made all the difference.

The results? For the first time in a long time, I've seen my weight come down by a couple of kilos. More importantly, I have the energy to do my resistance training at the gym a couple of times a week without dragging myself around. My recovery has been solid, and I feel genuinely good in my body—not like I'm starving myself or fighting against my own physiology.

During menopause, your cardiovascular system undergoes specific changes that make dietary intervention particularly powerful. By tailoring the principles of heart-healthy diets (like DASH or Mediterranean) to your individual metabolic profile, you can create a nutrition plan that not only reduces your cardiovascular disease risk but also supports your energy levels, maintains your muscle mass, manages your weight, and feels sustainable for your life.

This might mean modifying the standard recommendations based on your blood sugar response patterns, your microbiome composition, or your genetic markers—creating a truly personalized prescription rather than a generic template.

If you've tried various diets and felt like something was missing, or if you've succeeded on one diet but couldn't sustain it—you're not alone. I've been there too. Precision nutrition might be the missing piece you've been looking for.

You are not a statistic, and your menopausal journey deserves more than a cookie-cutter approach. The future of women's health nutrition lies in precision medicine: taking into account your unique body, your genetics, your preferences, and your life circumstances to create a dietary strategy that actually works for you.

Working with a practitioner who understands both the science of menopause and the individual variation in nutritional needs can help you create a plan that feels effective, sustainable, and aligned with your life. Because here's the truth I've learned through my own experience: when we stop guessing and start personalizing, that's when real change happens.

Your health is personal. Your nutrition should be too.

Stay happy and healthy!

Erika.

Reference: Cabre HE, Woolf EK, Redman LM. Precision Nutrition for Management of Cardiovascular Disease Risk During Menopause. Nutrients. 2024. DOI: 10.1159/000540337

PS: Menopause: It's like puberty's evil older sister, except instead of pimples, you get an extra 10 pounds.