17: 5 Things I Did To Lose 65 Lbs In My Late 40s

When I tell women that I've lost 65 lbs in my late 40s, they're always shocked, and want to know how I did it.

I'm not always sure of the best answer, to be honest! You already know the typical things for weight loss: watching what you eat, working out, getting sleep.

But losing 65 lbs took more than that! in today's episode I'm excited to share with you 5 very-useful things that I did to lose the weight. It's not your traditional advice, but these these things are going to help you move the needle, especially in perimenopause.

If you're stuck on your weight loss journey, feeling like it's not possible for you, this is a must-listen-to episode!

For more details about the building blocks of weight loss, check out these episodes:
- All about anti-inflammatory diets here
- Why gut health matters to your weight loss journey here
- And exactly what you need to do to lose weight in perimenopause here

For Component Cooking meal plans, check out:
- The Method
- The Supper Club

*** Ready to lose 15 lbs in 10 weeks? The Method gives you all the tools to make it happen! We start April 2nd. To learn more about The Method, click here!

Transcript

When I tell women that I have lost 65 pounds in my late 40s, they always look at me and say, whoa, how'd you do that? It is a great question. And honestly, I'm never sure of the best way to answer. I could talk about how I transitioned to an anti-inflammatory diet, I ate more protein, I lifted heavier weights, and I moved more every day. But you already know all of that, right?

already know the basic nuts and bolts of how to lose weight, whether you're in perimenopause or not. Many of my previous episodes talk about each of things in greater detail, so I'll link to some of my favorites in the show notes.

But it took more than just the basics to finally lose 65 pounds. The basics, they were a good start, but when things got challenging and life went off the rails, it was pretty tough to stick to those basic guidelines of healthier food and moving more. So today I want to share with you five things that I did to lose 65 pounds in my late 40s.

that really truly go beyond the basics.

These are the things that helped me pull through when life got really difficult, like when I was solo parenting for six weeks or after my hysterectomy last year, or when my dad fell and I had to take care of him while he was in rehab. You'll hear me say this over and over. If weight loss was as simple as having the right nutrition plan, you would have lost weight by now. There is so much more to it.

So I hope that these five things today give you a few more areas to focus on as you work through your own perimenopause weight loss journey.

Okay, the most impactful thing I did by far was to take responsibility for my choices. It's probably not what you were hoping to hear, right? It is so easy for us to lean into this belief that we are a victim to our genetics or our hormones. But if you get really honest with yourself, what do you see?

You fully own it when you decide to order a gluten-free bun and no cheese when you're out for dinner and having a burger. But do you fully own the fact that you also had three beers at that same dinner? When you step on the scale a few days later, you think, but I've been eating gluten-free and I've been watching what I eat. Your body doesn't want to feel uncomfortable feelings like guilt or shame.

So you conveniently forget that you had those three beers, which unfortunately can really have an impact on your weight loss goals. On my journey, I found that I often left out things that I ate when I was trying to track my food. I'd skip tracking, I don't know, things like a handful of olives or a spoonful of almond butter, or maybe a small cookie or two from Suraya's plate. There's this idea of BLTs, which stands for bites, licks,

and tastes. Enough BLTs is enough to really add to your caloric intake for the day depending on what you're having a taste or a bite of. So you really have to be honest about what you're doing, the choices you're making, and how that's impacting your goals. Now this is not to say that you should feel guilt or shame when you don't follow your nutrition or your workout plan, but you do

have to be honest with yourself. If you have a weight loss goal and you're missing it consistently, you have to look at the choices you're making, both the choices that support your goal and the choices that stop you from reaching your goal. And honestly, this is where it's really helpful to have a coach because it is so easy for us to hide from our own reality, even when we think we're being honest with ourselves.

Okay, the next thing I did to lose 65 pounds in midlife was to lean into functional medicine. I spent years going to conventional traditional doctors and they never helped me to feel better or to lose weight. They would just tell me, I don't know, come back in six months. But after doing that for three, over three years actually, I had had enough.

Functional medicine doesn't give you a pill for your symptom like conventional medicine does. It actually looks at why you're having the symptom in the first place. So this is what's called looking at the root cause. When it comes to weight loss, it's directly correlated to the health of your gut microbiome. Conventional doctors are not taught this type of information in med school. So they're not gonna bring it up in your appointment.

If you ask them about why you're struggling to lose weight, they'll probably just tell you the same answer. Eat less, workout more. Functional medicine on the other hand, looks at why you can't lose weight. Do you have underlying inflammation? Do you have an infection or an overgrowth of bacteria?

Functional medicine taught me how to really tune into my body to understand what symptoms I was having. And knowing my body better taught me to ask better questions.

I see this with the women I work with too. I had a client and she was struggling with weight loss and she also had lots of constipation and bloating. She really just figured, well, that's the way my body has always been or since having kids anyway. And in perimenopause, she just assumed it was going to get worse. She was taking laxatives pretty much every other day and didn't really think that there was a way out.

After meeting with a functional practitioner and doing some testing, she found out that she had a pretty severe overgrowth of bacteria in her small intestine. So after following a specific diet for eight weeks, she stopped taking the laxatives, she stopped struggling with constipation, and she finally started losing weight and has continued to do so. Now, had she just thought, well, I guess this is the way it is now, she would have spent the rest of her life feeling

pretty miserable. But relying on functional medicine helped her to see that the constipation and inability to lose weight was actually a symptom of something else. It wasn't her willpower, it wasn't her motivation, there was something wrong with her body.

Now she knows how to clue into the signals that her body is giving her and ask better questions when she does meet up with her functional practitioner.

Okay, number three on the list of five things I did to lose 65 pounds in my late 40s. Well, I leaned into experimenting and pivoting quickly. In my weight loss journey, I have tried a lot of things. I mean, like a lot. Probably the only thing I haven't tried and won't try is weight loss injectables. But trying different things has taught me to understand what would work in

my life and what wouldn't? You know, working out at 6.30 a.m. at a gym with a class when I have to get my daughter to school at 8.30, well, for me, that would just never work. But working out at home before my daughter gets up, yeah, that did the trick. Seriously, I lost all 65 of my pounds by working out at home. You don't need a gym. So experimenting with different approaches

helps you to get really honest about what you will do to lose weight and what you can stick with, and it helps you see what doesn't fit into your life.

If an approach to nutrition or fitness doesn't sync up with your family schedule or your work calendar, it is not going to be sustainable. But sometimes you can only figure that out if you experiment and try a few different approaches. Now, that said, while I encourage women to do some experimenting with nutrition and workouts when they're trying to lose weight,

I don't want you to get to a point where the experimenting becomes overwhelming because that is when you will quit. My entire business model is based on the experimenting I have already done. And my goal is to share with you what I know works for weight loss, even in perimenopause, so that you don't have to do all the trial and error. For example,

I tried buying paleo and anti-inflammatory meal plans, but my family didn't always want to eat what I was offering. So after lots of trial and error, I came up with this method that I now use called component cooking. I use this approach for all of the meal plans that I provide in both the method and in the supper club, and I'll link to those programs in the show notes.

But knowing that I needed to eat one way and my family needed to eat another way and that I didn't have time for meal prep on the weekends. Well, all of that experimenting helped me to come up with an approach that worked for everyone. And now component cooking is the only way that I make meals. And it was one of the most helpful tools in my weight loss journey. So do some experimenting and see what works for you.

But also look to someone who is exactly like you, a busy working mom who still needs to put dinner on the table every night. That would be me. Look at me. And I'll lead you to some tried and proven approaches so you can finally stop experimenting and start losing the weight.

Speaking of component cooking, the fourth thing that I did to lose 65 pounds was to prioritize family meals. So I just walked you through how helpful component cooking was for being able to eat what I needed for health and weight loss while still feeding my family. But prioritizing family dinner time has done so much more.

family meals became my time to get creative and have variety.

Part of my weight loss goal was achieved by making basically the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day. Doing this really helped lighten my mental load, knowing that I was going to have a filling breakfast bowl and a big salad for lunch. I don't know, it just made life a lot easier. And I do add in some variety by changing up ingredients or sauces, but essentially the components or the building blocks were the same for

every breakfast and lunch. Now when it came to dinner time, I actually got excited to try new recipes and to test different things out with my family. I enlisted my family's help asking them what they thought of different recipes before I made them. It was also a great way for me to get my family involved, whether they were chopping veggies, maybe learning how to grill, or even just setting the table.

By sitting down for a family meal together, again, made in component cooking style, we all had a chance to just talk about our days and connect with what was going on in our lives. While we were eating what we wanted and needed, the focus, it turned to our conversation, which meant that there was less focus on the food.

I would find myself leaving the dinner table, feeling satiated from what I had just eaten, but also feeling really filled up, knowing that I had just spent some quality time with my family.

Plus, it was a great way to model healthy eating for my daughter. We often talked about what we had made, the ingredients, or how certain foods made us feel. I mean, talk about a really fun way to be a role model over the food that we're eating.

If you're struggling with weight loss, try prioritizing your family dinner. Even if you just get everyone to sit down for like 15 minutes, get everyone to sit down at the table, eat on proper plates, please let go of the paper plates, and then spend that time talking and connecting while you eat your food. I guarantee you'll feel full in your heart and your stomach.

Finally, the fifth thing that I did in my weight loss journey was to stop looking for a quick fix. Well, mostly, anyway. Part of this goes back to number one, which was learning to take responsibility for my choices, the good and the not so great. When I'd made some not so great choices, I of course wanted to look for a quick fix since my choices were making it harder for me to lose weight.

But if I'm honest with you, I am human. Sometimes I want to look for a quick fix or a slight edge too. It wasn't always easy and it still isn't easy to be consistent with all of the things all the time. Just for context, it took me 19 months to lose 55 pounds. And I did that when I was 45 years old. It took me another two and a half months to lose

10 pounds and I did that when I was 49. So if you add all of that up, that's about two years total to lose 65 pounds. It's hard to be consistent for that long. We often look for quick fixes when our weight loss has stalled or we feel like we're not making any progress at all. I get it.

I have looked for those quick fixes. I've tried supplements, matcha tea, different probiotics. In one really weak moment, and this was like six months ago, I ordered fat burners. And after getting them and reading the warning label, I actually got scared. I knew I couldn't take them. But now I leave them on my nightstand as a reminder that consistency over time is what helps me reach my goal, not

quick fix that could actually damage my heart or my health. But overall not leaning into quick fixes ultimately helped me to lose that 65 pounds. And yeah it took two years which might seem like a long time but I did it the healthy and sustainable way and that is what matters.

All right, so if you are trying to lose weight and perimenopause, but you're feeling frustrated with your lack of progress or how long it's taking, I want you to remember these five things. Take responsibility for all of your choices. Lean into functional medicine. Experiment with what works for you and then keep at it. Prioritize those family meals.

and stop looking for quick fixes. I would really love for you to drop me a message on Instagram at TheAshleyMalik and let me know which of these tips has been most helpful for you. I really love hearing about where you are in your weight loss journey and I wanna know what information is going to help you move forward towards your goals. Weight loss, it's possible in midlife, even in perimenopause.

but you have to make healthy, sustainable choices in order to make it happen. Being honest with yourself, tuning into your body and asking better questions, that will ultimately help you reach your goal. And while the path isn't straight and it typically is not fast, just know that weight loss is possible for you. Be sure to check the show notes for some of the resources and links that I've mentioned today.

I really wanna help guide you and cheer you on. And I definitely wanna be there to help you celebrate when you hit your weight loss goals. Thanks for being here today, my friend. We'll see you next time.