26: The REAL Reason It's Hard To Lose Weight Over 40

Feel like you've tried absolutely everything to lose weight in midlife, but nothing seems to work?

It's natural to want to blame perimenopause, hormones, or your age. And in desperation you start looking for a supplement, medication, or quick diet to help you kickstart weight loss.

But what if progress required something more? What if losing weight over 40 took something completely different?

In this episode of The Family Fork we explore:

• Why "eating healthy" isn't enough for midlife weight loss
• Why you believe that weight loss over 40 is impossible...and what to do about it
• What HRT really does for your waistline
• Why reverting to old beliefs is keeping the scale stuck

After listening to this episode, you'll have more confidence in knowing exactly how to move forward, so that you can finally see progress on the scale!

Ashley Malik is a women's health and life coach, helping busy moms lose weight in perimenopause. You can learn more and discover how to work directly with Ashley by clicking here.

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

Transcript

Ashley (00:07)

Well, hello there, my friend. I am so glad that you decided to tune back in today because I have a really juicy but meaningful episode for you. just a heads up, apologies if my voice gets a little raspy. I have strep throat right now. So I'm going to do my best to speak clearly today.

Okay, to start out today, I want you to look at where you are in your health and weight loss in your perimenopause journey. And I want you to get really honest about what you think is possible for you. Now, at the time of this recording, we're just getting into the month of March, so the first two months of the year are behind us.

And if you set out at the beginning of the year with lots of intentions, know, new year's resolutions to get fit and healthy, just like I did, you might be looking at your situation now and wondering what the heck happened, right? You know, two months have gone by and you haven't hit your goals and you still feel like you're floundering and maybe you feel like your health is even worse or your weight has gone up and it just doesn't feel like

I don't know that like weight loss is for you. This idea of weight loss is really nice, but maybe you've just determined that it's not for you. You've tried literally everything and I see you, I get it. I am just like you trying absolutely everything when our bodies are changing and the things that used to work don't work any longer.

So you start looking for something that will help, right? Something that will support your weight loss. So maybe you've tried a new diet or a new nutrition approach. Maybe you even tried a different supplement or you've looked for a supplement that will like increase your GLP ones or help burn fat faster. Maybe you've even tried a cleanse or you've started fasting, but literally none of what you have tried has helped you to lose weight.

So at the end of the day, when you go to bed at night and you think, you know what, is this just what, I think this is what older women just talk about, right? It's like, once you turn 40 or 45, things just go downhill and there's no hope for losing weight after that age. I wanna share a quick story. I think I shared this in an earlier episode, but it's definitely worth sharing again.

So I used to travel quite a bit for work and there were a couple of years where I would share a room with a woman who was quite a bit older than I was. you know, when we were traveling together, she was already in menopause and I just, wasn't there yet. I think I was probably in my late twenties, early thirties. And I remember us getting ready for a like fancy event one night and we were getting showered and dressed and everything.

You know, this woman, she was like family. Staying with her wasn't weird. It was like staying with another mom. We were just really close. So as we were getting ready, she looked at me and she said, you know, Ashley, enjoy your figure now because once you get older, there is nothing you can do about it. You start getting older and everything gets harder. You just pack on the pounds and there's nothing you can do about it.

And I have thought about this particular situation so many times in my life since she said that because I decided way back then that I refuse to be someone who just gets older, you know, go over that hill at 40 now closer to 50 and just let myself go. Because to me, that's kind of what it felt like that, you know, she had just given up. She had decided that it wasn't possible for her.

to lose weight or be healthy, so why bother? So I watched her, she would eat Cheetos and she really liked ice cream and she walked a lot too, but I feel like when I look back at her life, what it was back then, she did just kind of let herself go. Now, interestingly, because this might be bringing up some feelings for you, now that I am getting ready to turn 50 in just a couple of weeks, I have...

so much more empathy for her because now I know what it really feels like. And, you know, I've kind of noticed recently there's like a couple of fitness influencers on Instagram that are up and coming right now. And I see comments on their posts like, well, yeah, just wait till you turn 40 or wait till you turn 50. Now I don't want to put these influencers down, but what I feel at the age of

almost 50 years old is very different than what I felt at the age of 40 years old, which was 10 years ago. And I can relate to that feeling of like, I have tried everything and I can't get anything to work to help me lose weight. It's really frustrating. I get it. And if you are a busy

And if you're busy in your life and you're working, you're working a full-time job, you're raising kids, you're taking care of your family, still have a dog to walk, you have meals to make, the idea of putting one more thing into your life so that you can lose weight, even though you're over 40 or over 50, wow, I get it. It feels really overwhelming. And you think you're doing a bunch of things to help yourself, but it just doesn't seem to be working for you.

So I wanna dig in today to really look at a couple of reasons why it is actually more challenging to lose weight over 40. Now, we know of course that things are gonna get more challenging as our hormones change, as we get older, but I wanna look at a couple of areas specifically and I want you to take note if these resonate with you. And if there are some things that resonate,

These are probably areas that you can start working on or at the very least start paying more attention to so that you can actually start seeing some progress on your goals. I would love for you to be able to see progress for all of the work that you are actually putting in.

All right, so one of the things that I hear all the time from women that I talk to and women that I work with is, you know, I eat pretty healthy, but I am still not losing any weight.

I think we need to unpack this a little bit more because healthy eating is actually pretty subjective. know, somebody who is a lifelong vegan, who only ever eats organic food might think that healthy eating looks that way. But for you, depending on where you grew up, how you grew up, maybe you're eating healthier than what you used to do when you were a kid. And so you feel like, yeah, of course I'm eating pretty healthy.

So it's worth unpacking this thought that your brain gives you of, well, I'm eating healthy, but I still can't lose the weight. I want you to recognize that healthy nutrition at 20 years old is very different than what healthy nutrition at 40 years old should look like.

Anti-inflammatory nutrition is absolutely essential as you age. As you get older, you lose estrogen and estrogen actually helps to regulate the amount of inflammation in our body. So of course, if we have less estrogen, just by way of going through perimenopause and endometopause, you are naturally going to have more inflammation. So it doesn't matter what you're doing or not doing. This is

simply happening because changes are occurring with the hormones in your body. So one of the things that we can do is to really combat that inflammation with our nutrition. So eating anti-inflammatory, it involves making sure that you are taking things out that could be highly inflammatory. And obviously that's things like packaged foods, sugar, alcohol. I know, I know that's a hard one, alcohol, but

all the way to gluten and dairy and soy and some of the things that have been proven to be more inflammatory to our bodies.

A lot of times I run into this with my clients and my students and they're saying, you know, I'm eating really healthy, having salads for lunch. I'm eating lean chicken and fish. I'm having a good breakfast. But then as we keep digging, actually learned that they're going out for happy hour three times a week, or they're having a glass or two of wine every night, or they're going to book club frequently and drinking a lot when they're at book club.

Or maybe it's not the alcohol, but maybe it's the sugar. It's typically one of the two. So somebody might say, yeah, you know, I eat pretty healthy, but well, I guess I had a package of M &Ms yesterday and the day before. Oh, and a couple of Oreos and Girl Scout cookies today. So one of the things that I think is so important in providing evidence for our brain

When we want to believe this thought of like, eat pretty healthy, but I can't lose weight, it's actually really important to track our food. And this is not at all meant to be an obsessive thing, but if you are not tracking, it is really frighteningly easy to go like 500 to a thousand calories over what you might need. And it's probably gonna be, most likely anyway, it's gonna be foods.

that are not super healthy and not really anti-inflammatory like &Ms and Oreos. So when you say, eat pretty healthy, but I still can't lose weight, it is worth unpacking that and getting really honest with yourself. And one of the best ways to do that is by tracking your food.

Another thing that I hear from women all the time is that losing weight over 40 is just impossible. you know, going back to the story of the woman that I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, she really truly believed that once she hit 40 or 45, she was never going to be able to lose weight. Like it was just never going to happen.

And it is super interesting to note here that your brain will always, always look for evidence to prove itself right. So if you believe that you're not going to be able to lose weight over 40, your brain will always look for evidence to prove that fact. It'll look around and say, well, you know, we just, ate salads for lunch every day this week, but we still didn't lose any weight. See?

We are not going to lose weight over 40 or, you know, I'm walking 8,000 steps a day and I'm still not losing any weight. See, I am not going to be able to lose weight over 40. But going back to what we just talked about around tracking, if you can start tracking what you're eating and you see, yeah, I am definitely eating salads every day and lean chicken and lean fish. but I'm also having a lot of other snacks and I'm

kind of munching on things as I'm getting dinner ready. And then I'm also probably having a snack right before bed. That actually, that data that you've tracked gives your brain evidence to the contrary. losing weight over 40, it is difficult, but I see that it's going to be harder when I eat before bed or if I'm eating a lot of high sugar, highly processed foods. So this is where that tracking

really becomes important.

The other thought that we have when we believe that losing weight over 40 is impossible, our brain is actually trying to save us because losing weight over 40 requires different techniques than you are probably used to. So if you want to lose weight over 40, you are going to have to try a new approach to your nutrition.

definitely going to have to try a different type of workout than what you might be used to or comfortable with. And you are probably going to have to change your expectations of what is really possible.

You know, in your twenties, it was probably pretty easy for you to drop a couple of pounds in a week. No problem. Like you would just eat a little bit less and you moved a little bit more and you drank some water and poof, there it went like three, four or five pounds just disappeared. Right. But in your forties, that doesn't happen. You have to change your expectations. So all of a sudden, if you're looking at it, you're like, my gosh, I need a new approach to my food.

and I've definitely got to try some different workouts, I probably should expect some different results. And your brain is probably like, well, I should probably expect something less. It's not expecting something better. You know, I'm not going to be able to do this as quickly as I used to be able to.

your brain starts to think, whoa, I am not very good at this. I am not going to be able to do this. And when your brain starts to think that it might be a failure or that it's not capable of accomplishing something, it is going to try and talk you out of it. Your brain is going to say, you know what? This is too hard. See, I told you weight loss over 40 is impossible.

When our brain starts doing this, we have to switch that narrative and say, thanks brain, I appreciate that. But I'm actually more curious what would happen if I followed an anti-inflammatory meal plan for seven days straight. For seven days straight, what would happen? We have to start thinking about this concept of what if. What if I tried a strength training workout and back down on my cardio,

and all of a sudden I started losing weight. right? What if I started pushing myself to do 10,000 steps every single day? What would happen?

And slowly but surely, if we start convincing our brain to try different approaches and different methods, we actually do different things. And when we do those different things, we're going to see that we have a different outcome. So while you really want to believe, and like my friend, she truly believed that losing weight over 40 was impossible.

possible.

But as I look back at her lifestyle now, I can say, you know, here are a couple of things that you could have been doing differently that would have allowed you to probably see some weight loss.

But if we believe our brain and we lean into that fact that we don't want to work hard and we don't want to change our expectations, we don't want to have to think really deeply about like, my gosh, new nutrition, new workouts, new expectations, and we don't end up doing anything. And if we don't do anything and we don't do anything different, we're definitely not going to see results.

Okay. Something else that I have heard a lot of recently, and I'm in like some Facebook groups and different chat groups around perimenopause and weight loss over 40. I see a lot of women asking about hormone replacement therapy, HRT. And honestly, I love that we are having more of this conversation in the public eye these days. You know, I have mentioned many times before Dr. Mary Claire

Haver is someone that I really look up to and admire. She is a board certified OBGYN and a menopause specialist. And she is literally changing the conversation that we have around menopause and loss of estrogen and what our lives look like over 40. So with this expanded conversation, a lot of women are starting to question like, Hey, you know,

Maybe I need some HRT. Maybe that's my only option for losing weight. When I hear this, I feel like women are just looking for one magic answer, just like this one silver bullet that, oh, yes, if I just get on HRT, I am going to lose weight, I'm going to have all this energy, I am going to feel so much better. So.

Here's what I know to be true. And I'm not on HRT. Right now, I don't really think I'm a candidate for it. I'm continuing to do some research and investigation on my own and with my team of doctors. But what I do know is that even if you are on HRT and even if it does help you to feel better, you still need to eat the right foods, the ones that reduce inflammation and the foods that do not add extra inflammation to your body.

If you're on HRT, still need to move your body by walking and doing strength training because HRT, it's not going to build those muscles for you. You have to do the work to build the muscles to stay strong. HRT, it's not going to take the weight off. It might regulate your hormones so that as you are changing your nutrition and moving your body,

and building some muscle that is going to help change the way that your body looks and feels simply because the HRT is balancing out your hormones.

So while HRT can be extremely beneficial, it doesn't do the work for you. It's just a misnomer that it would. And so whether you're looking for a supplement, like the other day I ran across a tea that they're marketing as a GLP-1 tea. And so people hear that and they're like, that must mean weight loss. I'm going to drink that tea and I'm going to lose weight. No.

Whether it's HRT or a weight loss supplement or a T or whatever it is, there isn't just one thing that's going to help you lose weight over 40.

It is a blended lifestyle of anti-inflammatory nutrition and moving your body, reducing stress and supporting your hormones in whatever way that looks for you. Those are the things that ultimately will help you to lose weight over 40. So there isn't just a magic bullet and there isn't just one way to do it. We have to do a bunch of different things in combination.

And that goes back to the last thing that we just talked about that the brain likes to look and say, well, if I have to change my nutrition and I have to work out differently or work out more is probably what your brain hears. And, you know, I have to reduce my stress and that's hard enough to do. No wonder a brain just wants to look for this easy route.

All right, now when you are really struggling to lose weight, you're over 40 years old, or maybe you're like me, closer to 50, or you're even older than 50, it is really easy to just let your brain revert back to the things that you used to believe were true. So one of those things might be, well, I guess I just need to eat less and work out more. Because you truly believe in your brain that you have tried

everything. feel like you've tried changing your nutrition. You've tried changing your workouts. You've tried working out differently. You've tried watching what you eat. You've tried not eating out as much. You feel like you've tried like all these different things and pulled different levers. And so your brain just says, well, I guess the answer is that we just need to eat less and work out more.

When you are aging, just cannot revert back to the methods that used to work. You know, I said this earlier, healthy eating at 20 is different than healthy eating at 40. So the same thing applies to any method or thing that you did when you were 20 that helped you to lose weight. It is unlikely that the same thing is gonna help you lose weight when you're 40. Your body is different.

Your hormones are different. Your life, your stress, your schedule, everything about your life is totally different. I mean, really, it's 20 years ago. It wasn't like it was four years ago. It's like 20 or even 30 years ago. Your brain does not want to believe that a new approach or a different approach to weight loss, and now in your 40s and 50s, your brain just doesn't want to believe that that could work because

It's a lot of work, right? It would require doing new things. It would require failing. It would require effort and expending energy. Your brain doesn't want to do any of that. So it just kind of goes back to your old method and saying, well, you know, when I was 20, I could just eat a little bit less and work out a little bit more and I would lose that weight. If we keep reverting back to that old method,

we're not going to see any changes or progress on our weight loss journey. Your brain consistently looks for the path of least resistance. And by reverting to an old weight loss method, I mean, it was predictable back then, right? When you were 20, you knew if I do this, if I eat less and I work out more, I will lose weight. So what we have to do now in our later years is

push our brain to feel comfortable in taking a risk and trying something new that is not the path of least resistance. It's actually a path that's filled with lot of landmines. It's uncertain. It feels risky. We're not even sure if we're going to lose weight if we try eating a different way or if we try working out in a different way. Our brain does not like that risk. It's so unpredictable.

And so brain keeps thinking, well, I've tried all of the things, so I guess I just need to eat less and work out more. But you know, after this conversation and listening to this podcast, you know that nothing could be further from the truth. We really have to encourage our brain to feel comfortable in taking chances and trying something new, even though it might not work the first time or the second or the 10th time.

even though it might take a little bit more effort than what we're used to.

You know, you're probably used to picking up a healthy version of takeout, but you're not used to encouraging yourself to cook every single night of the week or to bring food from home. When you go out with friends, you're definitely comfortable going out for happy hour with your friends or your partner, but you're not as comfortable in knowing what would happen if you went out with your friends and you didn't drink any alcohol. So

we have to start encouraging our brain to take those risks, to be brave and to understand that just because it might not work the first or the second or the third time, it doesn't mean that it won't ever work. It's not impossible. So I hope you've had a chance to take some notes and to really think about these high level thoughts that your brain is offering you about why you think it's so difficult to lose weight over 40.

Because again, you know, I use this phrase all the time. If losing weight was as easy as just having the right meal plan, you would have lost the weight by now. I have meal plans. You can find meal plans on Pinterest. There's resources out there for you to figure out how to eat and what to eat and how to work out. But the real reason it's hard to lose weight when you're over 40 is because of the thoughts that our brain has.

and the thoughts that we believe are so true.

So today, let's just recap so you can get all of this in your notes. We talked about a couple of things you might be saying to yourself that are making it really hard for you to lose weight. I eat pretty healthy, but I still can't lose weight. Or maybe you really believe that losing weight over 40 is just impossible. Perhaps you're even thinking HRT is my only option for losing weight. Or,

You're reverting to old methods and really just convincing yourself, well, I guess I just need to eat less and work out more. I would be so curious to know which of these things resonates with you and really what you hear yourself and your brain saying. Which one of these things comes up most often for you? I would love for you to drop me a message on Instagram at theashleymalik.com.

and tell me which of these things, or maybe it's all of them, are really floating around in your brain. Thanks so much for tuning in today. I hope you really got a lot out of this episode. I loved having you here. I hope you have a great week, and I will see you right back here next Tuesday.