INTRODUCTION

From our first day of life until the last, our bodies are always changing. This is a part of aging—a natural process no one can escape. But the changes that happen to women in midlife are unique and are often unsettling. Suddenly we’re having odd symptoms like hot flashes and an accumulation of strange, new weight gain around our midsections. Our skin can be very dry or wrinkling more. We may have joint pain, hair loss, headaches, bloating, and worsening anxiety or depression. Sleep becomes elusive. Sexual intercourse can hurt. Little things set us off.

A lot of this may be happening to you right now. Trust me, you are not alone. Let me introduce you to someone who knows exactly what you’re going through: me.

I was a busy physician, a mom, and a wife in my late forties. My main health challenge at the time was polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a condition caused by insulin resistance, in which insulin can’t do its job of ushering glucose into cells for energy. PCOS leads to erratic periods, acne, infertility, ovarian cysts, and unwanted hair growth.

About 1 in 10 women of childbearing age has PCOS. The majority (about 70 percent) are overweight or even obese, but I was among the 30 percent of normal weight. Fortunately, PCOS is treatable, and in my case, taking hormones greatly helped.

Then came a death in my family; I lost my brother, Bob, to liver failure. I was despondent. He was my daughters’ favorite uncle, a creative fun spirit with whom I had a special bond. We were dance partners when I was younger, winning dance competitions all over Louisiana. When he died, I was heartbroken, and losing him brought crushing pain.

Grief does strange things to each of us. For me, I coped by bingeing. Night after night after long clinic shifts, I stood in front of my pantry, gobbling handfuls of Goldfish crackers. I’d wash them down with glasses of wine. Pretty quickly I gained nearly 20 pounds. I looked like a different person, and I felt miserable.

With my medical background, I knew that at my age it might be time to come off the hormones for a while. So, I talked to my own doctor, and we agreed that I should.

But taking the hormones had masked the perimenopausal symptoms that occur during midlife, so within two weeks of being off them, everything abruptly changed—and not for the better. I had hot flashes and I felt like I was burning from the inside out. Along came sleepless nights and, most troubling of all, the fuzzy and forgetful feeling called brain fog. My long, thick hair started falling out by the brushful. My skin felt parched from head to toe, and I had to completely change my skincare routine to keep my skin moisturized. My body ached so much that I kidded with a friend that I’d give up my firstborn to get relief. My sleep became a recurring nightmare of multiple awakenings through the night—at first drenched in sweat, and then freezing once the hot flash passed.

I knew I was going through a period of hormonal change—perimenopause—but the symptoms it produced were so profoundly intense that I was really alarmed. All this on top of the weight gain? I was a mess.

Then I heard my brother Bob’s voice in my head. “Girl, you don’t have to wallow in this anymore. You got yourself into this; you can get yourself out.”

I went to work on my weight first. I did exactly what I and other doctors had always counseled patients to do: eat less, exercise more.

My efforts paid off, sort of. I’d lose a pound or two, but that was it. Then the weight would come right back on. I was starving myself and working out obsessively, but hardly dropping any weight. It was very frustrating. I just wanted to fix me, but nothing I did or tried was sticking.

I realized that I was struggling with the same weight issues many of my patients had told me about. They would sit in the examining room, often clutching paper gowns, and ask for advice about losing weight, frustrated with the fact that they had changed their diet and exercise habits and yet the scale kept moving in the wrong direction. I’d spend the next several minutes speaking with them about the combined power of diet and exercise. But for the majority of these women at this age, what I had been taught, and what had worked for me in the past, stopped working. They had fought for years to shed stubborn weight, without much permanent success. I’m sorry that it took having this same thing happen to me to change my tune, but that’s the truth. When my own good advice didn’t help me, it really hit me that I was doing something wrong.

I then threw myself into researching weight management and human metabolism—specifically as they relate to women. Medical school and my OB-GYN residency had taught us “calories in/calories out” as the only way, but clearly there had to be another. I didn’t have all the answers, but I wanted them—so I could feel better myself and then I could guide and teach women how to reach the weight, the energy level, and the good health they want and deserve. I yearned to understand why we have such a tough time losing weight and keeping it off, especially as we approach and enter midlife.

My deep passion for finding answers, combined with motivation and determination, took me to some unexpected and exciting places. What kept popping up in the research were three themes: intermittent fasting, anti-inflammatory nutrition to help manage our hormonal changes, and important new science on the exact ratios of protein, carbohydrates, and fat we need to consume to burn fat.

Could these be the keys?

I decided to create my own plan using these three principles. That’s when my individual health journey began. I tried out the newly minted diet on myself first. I focused on timing first and then gradually started intermittent fasting. After I mastered that, I focused on content: I began to eat more protein and fiber. I used olive oil, avocado, nuts, and seeds as my principal sources of fat. I steered clear of refined, processed carbohydrates (no more Goldfish crackers!). I restricted foods and ingredients like artificial colors and flavors that promote inflammation and disrupt the gut. What I never did was count calories. Next, I further refined the macronutrient percentages to supply more fat, moderate amounts of protein, and fewer carbohydrates.

Within several months, I lost those 20 pounds—especially around my abdomen. I was ecstatic but quickly realized the weight loss was just a pleasant side effect. More important, I felt healthier, stronger, and more energetic. My hot flashes dramatically diminished, and I was sleeping better.

I was on to something, so I asked my friends to try it. As I had been, they also were amazed about the pounds and inches they were losing. Best of all, they agreed this was easy. We didn’t feel hungry all the time. No cravings. No terrible feelings of deprivation or restriction.

Next, I made copies of this three-tiered plan and handed them out to my patients. There were the same results: weight loss, fewer menopause symptoms, and more energy. Plus, they were keeping the lost pounds off, something they’d never been able to do on any of their many previous diets.

After seeing these success stories, I felt it was time to share my plan with a wider audience. I launched the initial program on Facebook for free and asked volunteers to try it. Word then spread that people were losing significant amounts of weight, including belly fat. I then wanted everyone to have access to its secrets and experience its success.

I further formalized the plan and took it to an even broader audience through an online program. Not sure of what would happen, I noticed that women began enrolling in the plan, week after week, and we were off and running. I have to admit, I was astonished to see how popular the program had become in such a short time. It was the medical diet everyone was talking about.

Enrollment in the program further skyrocketed, and to date, the plan has now helped tens of thousands of women shed unwanted pounds, shrink their waistlines, and improve their health.

I named my diet after Galveston, a coastal resort town in Texas. Although I wasn’t born there, my husband and I have raised our daughters in Galveston. I call it home, and it is where I’ve spent much of my medical career. Now it is the birthplace of The Galveston Diet!

After the program took off, I wanted to further sharpen my nutrition knowledge. I enrolled in the prestigious Culinary Medicine Program at Tulane University, in Louisiana. It educates and trains doctors and other medical professions to understand and apply medical nutrition principles in a practical manner. That way, we can help our patients with nutritional modifications that improve their health.

Sixty hours of coursework and many hands-on labs later, I was certified in 2019 as a Culinary Medicine Specialist. The experience solidified and affirmed that I was on the right path with what I had developed for The Galveston Diet, particularly the importance of anti-inflammatory nutrition. The course also emphasized something that really stuck with me: Nutrition is the most under-utilized medication, yet it is the most effective.

So here I am today, humbled and gratified that so many women are finally achieving what they’ve always wanted: a beautifully fit body on the outside and an incredibly healthy one on the inside.

The Galveston Diet and You

This book expands my online program with new information and strategies. These new features include help for detoxing from sugar, new insights into menopause issues, the importance of certain under-appreciated nutrients, new science behind how macronutrients support midlife health, completely new recipes, brand-new meal plans, a maintenance plan, and other information you can’t get online.

Even if you’ve worked through the online program, this book will be a helpful guide and resource for you as you continue your Galveston Diet journey. And if you’re new to my program, welcome! You now have an opportunity to gain a 360-degree experience to achieve long-term weight loss and make a happy, healthy transition through perimenopause and menopause to postmenopause.

And, for both new and online students, this book will help you get to know your body and teach you how to treat it like a loving friend. You’ll achieve peace of mind, knowing how to form new habits that give you joy and better health, and that work with your body to make you look strong, lean, and beautiful.

My plan is not the typical diet—the 21 or 30 days and you’re done approach that you see so often now. Not at all! Although many women come to the program to lose weight safely and steadily, my main goal is that you use it every single day permanently—a total lifestyle change.

With that goal in mind and staying true to the principles that worked so well for me initially, I have designed three components of The Galveston Diet. They are essentially health-promoting actions that make the program work for you because they lead to good habit formation. All habits are built from actions, learning, and repetition, so that the behavior becomes automatic. In other words, you do it without much thinking. To develop good habits, you’ll work on these three actions at the same time:

1. Intermittent fasting. This practice has enormous benefits for women in terms of hormone balance, metabolism, and lowering inflammation. Of all the components of the program, this is the one that moves the needle for most women. They’ve told me they felt best after learning how to fast intermittently.

On the Galveston Diet, you’ll do something called the 16:8 form of intermittent fasting: 16 hours of fasting with an eating window of 8 hours. I prefer this method because the fasting window is overnight. That means you sleep for many of those 16 hours (ideally half of them)! So, it becomes an easy habit to form.

2. Anti-inflammatory nutrition. The underlying issue in many diseases, chronic inflammation triggers weight gain. But weight gain also triggers inflammation, so they feed off each other in a crazy cycle. Inflammation tends to get worse in women as we age and experience menopausal hormone fluctuations. A lot of the foods we eat don’t help, either, because they create inflammation throughout the body. Yet it doesn’t have to be this way. There are many foods that actually fight inflammation. The Galveston Diet focuses on limiting the pro-inflammatory foods and increasing the anti-inflammatory foods.

3. Fuel refocus. For consistent, lasting weight loss, your body must shift its energy usage to rely more on fat as its fuel, rather than on glucose (which is generally supplied by carb-heavy diets). If you don’t burn all the glucose you have in your bloodstream, the excess is stored as body fat. This metabolic fact led me to create a nutritional protocol made up of 70 percent healthy fats, 20 percent lean protein, and 10 percent quality carbohydrates. This ratio accomplishes three major metabolic feats: It encourages the body to burn fat. It trains the body to break the addiction to sugar and processed carbs. And it refocuses your eating on healthy sources of fats, protein, and carbohydrates.

Later, as you’re ready to start maintenance, I’ll introduce you to the Galveston Diet for Life program, in which you gradually decrease the fat percentage and increase the carbohydrate percentage, ultimately stabilizing at 40 percent fat, 20 percent protein, and 40 percent carbohydrates for lifetime success.

By the time you’re well into all three actions, your body is beginning to burn fat more easily, and it will stop depositing fat in undesirable places like your abdomen. Accordingly, you could lose a tremendous amount of weight on the program. Kelli is a good example. She started the Galveston Diet and stuck with it, month after month. She ended up losing 100 pounds! She also trimmed 14½ inches off her waist and 9½ inches off her hips. But along with the weight loss, Kelli also noticed dramatic improvements in her sleep patterns, energy level, and digestive function, as well as decreased menopausal symptoms like hot flashes and a greater feeling of overall wellness.

Here’s the big secret behind why the Galveston Diet is so effective: All three components work together synergistically to give you the best results. You have to intermittent-fast to lower inflammation and start to burn fat. You can’t just fast, and still eat the standard American diet of inflammatory foods, then expect to burn fat and keep it off. You have to nourish your body with a great variety of anti-inflammatory foods. And you have to refocus your macronutrient choices to include more fat, moderate protein, and healthy carbohydrates.

Maybe you’re wondering how long this diet takes to return you to great health? Well, the answer is pretty simple: There is no set amount of time; everyone loses weight and regains health at a different pace. But more important than that, remember and understand that the Galveston Diet is not a diet in the conventional sense of the word. It is a lifestyle.

Please don’t be discouraged that this is a forever plan. Once you learn to live and eat this way, it becomes second nature to do so, and those old, health-harming habits—of reaching for fast food or sugar-laden carbs all the time—will become things of the past.

Yes, the Galveston Diet starts with a tightly orchestrated four-week plan to help you change the way you eat, but that is only the beginning. To help you stay with it forever, you’ll transition to the Galveston Diet for Life program, which I cover in the final chapter. Most books present nutrition plans that are short term, with no guidance on what to do after you’ve followed the plan for several weeks. They leave you hanging, tempted to return to your old, unhealthy ways of eating (along with a frustrating return of pounds!). But with this maintenance program, that won’t happen. It is a plan that shows you how to put additional anti-inflammatory foods back into your lifestyle, change your macro percentages to include less fat and more carbohydrates, and use intermittent fasting as the powerful weight-maintaining tool that it is.

Keep in mind that the word diet comes from the Greek word dieta, meaning “to live normally.” However, nowadays the word mostly refers to cutting calories, even entire food groups, to help weight loss rather than a way to enjoy food and health. The Galveston Diet will help you lose weight and keep it off for sure, and this is critically important to health because weight gain contributes to many chronic and serious conditions in women. But the Galveston Diet, along with its maintenance plan, is primarily an eating pattern in the original sense of the world—a way of life—that promotes long-lasting health.

If you follow the Galveston Diet and change the way you live, you’ll ultimately find, like I did, that weight loss is only one great benefit. (By the way, you can do this plan even if you are happy with your weight. I’m at a healthy weight now, and I live this way all the time.) There are so many more benefits besides weight loss: fewer menopause symptoms, blood sugar control, normalized blood lipid ranges, quality sleep, better gut health, greater energy, smoother skin, and more. You’ll just feel better overall. Remember, The Galveston Diet is not a temporary stop on your journey. It is the journey! There may be ups and downs. You may take a few steps back before you charge ahead, but that’s okay. This is ultimately a forward journey, and you’re on this path to take better care of you. Just solidly commit yourself to moving down this path, and you will see your life and health change. I’m so happy to be on this journey with you.

Mary Claire Haver, MD