I’m Just Starting Menopause and Really Struggling. Any Tips?
15 Dec 2025 · 8 min
Dr. Anna Kabeca recommends a keto green approach for menopause: alkalinizing low-carb vegetables, 16-hour intermittent fasting, and an 80/10/10 pattern of eating to support hormone balance and energy. Ketones provide brain fuel during this transition.
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Hey, it's J.J. here.
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I'm just starting menopause and really struggling. Any tips? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert and fitness hall of famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Tricia from Facebook asks, hey, I'm just starting menopause and really struggling. Any tips? Hey, it's JJ and I've got the perfect person to answer this question. It's my longtime friend Dr. Anna Kabeca, author of Keto Green 16 Teen. She's a hormone expert physician and she specializes in using a keto approach during menopause. Plus bonus, she's quite the tequila aficionado. We'll be right back.
Well, how sexy are you feeling today? Menopause can take some of that away if we let it. We've got some fine tuning to do in menopause because of the fluctuation in hormones. But listen, menopause is no more a disease than puberty is. It is a natural transition and a hormonal shift that when we master it, we really can benefit. I like to say we can breeze through menopause into our second spring and feel energetic, passionate and just on fire. Now, not the hot flash way though symptoms of menopause that really women struggle with. Weight gain, hot flashes, mood swings, irritability, depression, irregular menstrual cycles, breakthrough bleeding and hair loss as well as fatigue. These many symptoms and incontinence and vaginal dryness. I mean, I could keep going here, but I'm going to stop there because when we go Keto Green, we when we get our body to balance our hormones naturally and support healthy gut bacteria, our microbiome of our body and estrobolome, the estrogen detoxifying gut bacteria, we are going to be empowered and have a healthier and seamless transition through menopause and this is important way past menopause as well. Not just in the menopausal transition or premenopause, but doesn't matter how old you are, these changes and tweaks are necessary. So the key component of my recommendations for mastering menopause and breezing through it into your second spring are really to focus on those alkalinizing low carbohydrate veggies and 16 hours intermittent fasting on a regular basis. Now and then getting into ketosis with using healthy fats and intermittent fasting and no more snacking. These components combined with those alkalinizing low carbohydrate vegetables to keep our body into ketosis make a huge shift. With that said, we also have times in our life where we're feasting and times where we're fasting. So I always say let's go 80% keto green, 10% feasting and 10% fasting. And this incorporates the concept of metabolic flexibility into our life plan to keep us energized and imbalanced and able to face anything. It really does enhance our resilience. A key issue when we're aging is that with progesterone and estrogen decline, the brain's utilization of glucose as an energy fuel is decreased as well. But the use of ketones is not hormone dependent and we by using ketones have tremendous amount of fuel for our brain. I always say glucose is to gasoline as ketones are to jet fuel. So this little switch of getting keto green in the menopause and beyond makes a huge difference in our overall hormone balance, energy, clarity, shape and stamina.
This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.
Hey jj, Virgin here. Okay, real talk.
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Me, travel, gifts, hosting, you know, all the things, and suddenly it's like, wait.
Who spent what and where?
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