Evidence library · Mood

Does exercise with diet affect mood in menopause? What 7 studies found

Studies of exercise with diet in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women that measured mood. 4 reported an improvement and 2 found no difference against the comparison group.

  1. Overweight postmenopausal women did 12 months of diet, aerobic exercise, or both; combined diet and exercise improved quality of life and stress more than exercise alone.

    Mixed resultsRandomised trial · 439 women · 52 weeks · 2011PostmenopausalCited 133 timesPubMed

  2. Obese postmenopausal women walked and strength trained with diet and GH or IGF-I injections for 12 weeks; all groups lost fat and gained muscle strength without losing lean mass.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 28 women · 12 weeks · 1998PostmenopausalCited 60 timesPubMed

  3. In 137 overweight postmenopausal women on a 6-month weight loss plan, adding resistance training to caloric restriction did not further improve psychosocial measures beyond diet alone.

    No difference foundRandomised trial · 137 women · 26 weeks · 2010PostmenopausalCited 25 timesPubMed

  4. Overweight postmenopausal women in a 12-month weight loss program with aerobic exercise and vitamin D or placebo showed no improvement in depressive symptoms or quality of life from vitamin D.

    No difference foundRandomised trial · 52 weeks · 2016PostmenopausalCited 33 timesPubMed

  5. Perimenopausal women received education, diet guidance, or diet plus resistance exercise for 3 months; all groups reduced climacteric symptom scores, with the combined group showing broad symptom improvement.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 78 women · 12 weeks · 2022PerimenopausalCited 10 timesPubMed

  6. Women over 40 with celiac disease combined a gluten-free diet with resistance exercise for 12 weeks and reported improved urogenital symptoms and higher vigour mood scores versus diet alone.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 28 women · 12 weeks · 2022Midlife womenCited 2 timesPubMed

  7. A pilot lifestyle programme adapted for midlife women with HIV, ages 40 to 59, reported increased physical activity, cardiovascular disease knowledge, and improved fatigue and mental health.

    Reported an improvementBefore-and-after study · 14 women · 2021Midlife womenCited 8 timesPubMed

How to read this. Each line is one study, summarised in plain language from its PubMed abstract, with the authors' own sentence underneath on the study page. A count of studies is not a verdict: trials differ in size, length and quality, and a result in one group of women may not hold in another. Nothing here is medical advice.

Summaries are generated, then checked by machine against the abstract they came from; any summary that could not be matched word for word was left out. Our clinical lead is reviewing the summaries topic by topic, and this note will change when that is done. Corpus last refreshed 2026-11-03. Spotted a mistake? Tell us and we will fix the summary or remove the study.

Other exercise types and mood