What's shifting, and what helps. Midlife brings real changes in how our bodies hold on to muscle and handle cholesterol and blood sugar. The encouraging part is how much of that responds to what we put on the plate, and a simple, flexible way of eating goes a long way.
Why Mediterranean is my starting point. It's the pattern the research keeps coming back to. Vegetables, fruit, whole grains, beans and nuts make up most of it, olive oil is the everyday fat, fish shows up a couple of times a week, and dairy, poultry and eggs play smaller parts. Herbs and spices carry the flavour that salt usually does.
What it does. In the PREDIMED trial, people cooking with extra olive oil or nuts had roughly a quarter less heart disease than those on a low-fat diet. A study that followed more than 25,000 women for 25 years found that those who ate this way most consistently tended to live longer, with less inflammation and healthier blood sugar along the way. Best of all, people stick with it, because it's a way of eating rather than a list of rules, and it tastes good.
Want to eat this way all day, without the guesswork? The Mediterranean Diet Recipe Bundle plans out every meal for you, most of them ready in thirty minutes, so eating well stops being one more thing to figure out.
Drawn from my Harvard Medical School executive education in women's midlife health and in lifestyle medicine nutrition, including the SWAN study of the menopause transition and the PREDIMED trial.
