30: The ONE Thing You Need To Lose Weight

You "thought" you knew what it took to lose weight, but since it hasn't worked, it's left you wondering...what does it really take to lose weight, anyway?!

In this episode of The Family Fork, get ready to dive deep into the real reasons you might be struggling to lose weight, especially during perimenopause and menopause.

Forget the endless meal plans and grueling workouts! We're tackling the mindset behind your health journey. We'll uncover how your thoughts and feelings are actually driving your results, not just your actions.

Here's what you'll discover:

• Why traditional weight loss strategies often fail us in midlife.
• The powerful connection between your thoughts, feelings, and weight loss.
• How to break free from negative thought patterns that sabotage your progress.
• Practical tips to shift your mindset and create sustainable change.
• Real-life examples of how changing your thoughts can transform your results.
• The power of a supportive community and coaching, like The Method, to guide you through this process.

If you're ready to ditch the quick fixes and embrace a sustainable approach to health and wellness, this episode is for you! You're smart and capable, and you deserve a solution that truly works. Let's unlock your potential together!

Links mentioned and ways to get in touch:

• Learn the simple framework for unraveling your thoughts and feelings in The Method
• Jumpstart your weight loss with a healthy, family-friendly plan here
• Wondering how much protein you need in perimenopause? This gives you everything you need to know!

Transcript

So glad that you're here today because we are going to get down to the nitty gritty of what it actually, honestly, really truly takes to be able to see total transformation with your health and your wellness. Now, you may be somebody who's come to me because you want to eat healthier or maybe you're trying to get your family situated with healthier meals.

Or maybe you're like many of my listeners and many of my clients and students and you're here because you want to lose weight. And if I had to guess, you're probably the age where you're in perimenopause or maybe you're even already in menopause and you can't figure it out. Like no matter what you try, you've tried all of the things and you just can't seem to unlock that right combination in order to lose weight. Does that sound about right?

In a minute, we're going to get into what you probably think that it takes to have a major transformation. And what I can tell you after losing 65 pounds in my late forties is that it probably doesn't have anything to do with the things that you think it does, like food or working out. And like I said, we'll get to that in just a minute, but we need to get very granular and we need to look at the way you think

and feel about your health from a really different lens so that we can start to understand what it is that's stopping you from actually getting the results that you are looking for. To be honest, looking at health from a different perspective is the main reason that I started my program called The Method, which is a 10-week program for moms who want to lose weight in perimenopause.

Now the reason I offer this program is because I want to meet you where you are. I want to be able to coach you through what phase of life that you're in so that you can actually get the results that you want and the results that you're actually working really hard to achieve.

Right now, it is so easy to just go online and find a meal plan or a list of anti-inflammatory foods or to try Whole30 or look and try keto for a week. There's so many different options out there. But as I have always said, if it was just as easy as finding a new meal plan or a new recipe, you would have lost weight by now. You would have seen a transformation with your health.

and you would definitely be more consistent with healthy eating in general. So there is something that's stopping you and that's what we uncover in the method.

So really, there is something that's stopping you. And that's what we uncover in the method. We dig so deep into understanding where you're at, what things you have tried. And then we actually pull back to a more broad view. And we stop looking at the strategy. And we start thinking.

So honestly, there is something that's stopping you and that's what we uncover in the method. We dig so deep into understanding where you are, what things you have tried, and then we actually pull out, we pull back and we stop looking at strategy and we start looking at the way you think about weight loss, the way you think about the foods you eat or the way you think about having cocktails with your partner or your spouse or your friends on the weekend.

because that is where the true work really lies in order to see a transformation. It's also the hardest work to do. I needed a space that would allow me to work more closely with women who are really committed to losing the weight and who are so tired of not seeing results. You know, I've got free guides and easy ways to get started on anti-inflammatory nutrition or to kickstart your weight loss.

But for women who are ready to make this deep commitment and stop trying to figure it all out on your own, I needed something more. You're smart, right? You are smart. And you probably believe that, gosh, I should be able to figure this out on my own. But the reality is that you have been trying to figure it out for a year or three years or five years, and you still haven't been able to figure it out on your own.

If you're ready for that lifelong lasting transformation with your health, to lose the weight, to see yourself as a healthy eater, and to really make this your lifestyle, the method is truly the place for you. Now, when I talk about what it takes, and it takes more than just a meal plan, right? This is the work that we're doing in the method, but...

I want to walk through this in detail with you today, right here, so you can really understand where that disconnect is coming in. It's a disconnect between the strategy and your thoughts and feelings. And I think you'll see a lot of yourself in the examples that I use throughout this episode. So let's start by talking about what you think it actually takes to lose weight, because there's a whole laundry list of things that you have

probably already tried to lose weight.

course, you have tried eating right. you know, eating right, it's kind of subjective because if you're eating keto, you know, like high fat is good. But if you're following macros, the right way to do that is having the appropriate balance of fat and carbs and proteins. Maybe you've been counting calories. So eating right is a subjective thing. But you obviously know that nutrition is going to do something for your weight loss, right?

The same thing goes for working out consistently. You believe that if you work out consistently, then you will lose the weight. If you are in perimenopause and mer... If you're already in perimenopause or menopause, hormone replacement therapy or HRT is definitely a conversation out there.

I have a lot of women who reach out to me wondering if I am on HRT or if that's how I was able to lose the 65 pounds. To answer that question, to clear it up, no, I'm not on HRT, but you might have a belief that if I could just get on HRT or if I could just get dialed in with the right combination of hormones, I would absolutely be able to lose weight. Maybe you've thought about fat burners. So I have an episode, I think it's episode 17.

where I talk about the fact that not too long ago, like about a year ago, I bought a bottle of fat burners thinking, my gosh, nothing else is working. Surely fat burners are going to be the thing. Now in full transparency, I never opened the bottle because I got really scared with the warnings on the label. So I just didn't open them. But I actually leave them on my nightstand as a reminder that fat burners

You you think, gosh, this is going to be the way to lose weight, but in the back of your mind, you know, that's not the answer. All right. How about more protein, right? More protein is something you hear everywhere right now. Increase your fiber, increase your protein. But what does that even mean? You know, I have a protein guide that you can get and I'll link to it in the show notes, but you think, all right, I'm in perimenopause.

Everyone's talking about increase your protein and build more muscle. So of course, that's going to be the thing that helps me lose weight.

How about a good meal plan? If I just had the right meal plan, again, I know that word right is subjective, but I just need a meal plan that's gonna help me lose weight or become a consistent, healthy eater and without a lot of effort.

You really truly believe in your soul that it is all about taking the right actions, the right nutrition, the right HRT, the right amount of protein.

But the truth is your actions do not create your results. I want you to listen to that. I'm going to say it again. Your actions do not create your results. So I know you're questioning me and you probably don't believe me, but I want you to stick tight because I've got some examples and I'm going to walk through why that is actually true. What your brain is doing is it's searching like a detective for the right

solution. What is going to work? What's going to help you to lose the weight? What is going to help you to cook healthy meals without a ton of effort? You just keep searching for something outside of yourself, some app, some tool that is going to be the thing that will help you to lose weight and transform your entire body.

We can look at this in a little bit of a different way too. We can say, you know, all of these things like eating right, HRT, more protein, more fiber, the right meal plan. It's all going to help you lose weight. But sometimes you need to look at it the other way and point out things that kind of make it impossible for you to lose weight or to get healthy. You might say, my genetics will not let me lose weight. It's all my genetics.

I'm heavier or I carry weight in a certain part of my body. And so you might make that the reason as to why you can't lose weight or why you can't transform.

Or maybe you just don't have any idea what to do. One of my students said this to me one time. She said, you know, I have all of the tools, the resources. I have everything. I've downloaded things. I've joined classes, challenges. I've done everything. And at the end of the day, I still have no idea where to start. Because she was completely inundated with information. And maybe I think some of the information was conflicting.

And some of that information she had tried and it actually didn't work for her. So she decided, well, that approach doesn't work either. And when that might not be the case, maybe it's just that she didn't give it enough time. A lot of people think that the situation that you're in makes it impossible for you to lose weight or to transform. I hear this all the time with menopause and perimenopause. Women will say, there is no way in the world.

ever gonna be able to lose weight.

You know, maybe you have kids and your kids make it difficult for you to lose weight because they want to eat different things than you do. Or you have like a weird schedule and it makes it hard for you to get in a workout. Or maybe you get sick or you are busy at work. You see, our brain comes up with all of these reasons as to why we can't lose weight. So we have a bucket of like

I believe these things will help me to lose weight, but we also have a huge bucket of, well, this is exactly why I don't think I can lose weight.

So let's pull it back and remember what I said, that actions or strategy is not actually the thing that is going to create your result.

Last year, I worked with a client and it was really interesting. What I noticed in our time together is that every time her monthly cycle would come around, so every time she would start her period, she would just stop doing all the things that we were working on. And we were really dialing in on a lot of good things like portion sizes and a consistent workout schedule and prioritizing protein. But when her cycle would start, it would stop everything.

just everything would stop. And I get it. I was super empathetic because I know she was really frustrating. She was super low on energy and she didn't have much of what she termed as motivation. But as I dug a little bit deeper, we started to uncover that she was actually building this bucket of reasons or excuses in her mind.

And it really came down to, know, when I have my period, I'm so tired, I don't have energy. And all of a sudden that meant, there's no energy to cook healthy meals or to work out or to drink my water or to take a walk. Everything just came to a standstill for five or six days out of every single month, even though she was on point the rest of the month.

We talked about this and I really pushed her because I wanted to know how she would feel if she took the time to focus on just nutrition during her period. And when she really thought about it, she said, you know, actually, I probably would feel pretty proud of myself that even though I was tired and even though I didn't have a lot of energy, I was still able to stick to my nutrition. And that she thought might make her feel proud and accomplished.

but instead her brain was feeding her these thoughts like, my gosh, this is so hard. I am out of energy. I'm not thinking super clearly, takes a ton of effort to get a healthy meal on the table or to pack my lunch for work the next day, let alone get in a workout or to even think about adding a walk or adding some steps.

When I asked her how she felt knowing that every month she just stops working on her health and her wellness.

When I asked her how she felt knowing that every month she just stops working on her health and wellness for like five or six days, she thought about it and the word that came up was defeated. She felt defeated that she was putting in all this work the rest of the month, but for an entire week she would do nothing, like absolutely nothing. So what this example illustrates is that it's not the situation. It wasn't

that her cycle was zapping her energy, it was actually the way she thought about it. She thought, I don't have any energy to do anything. And when she had that thought, she felt defeated because she knew that she was going to stop doing the things. And then when she felt defeated, she didn't put in any of the work, even if it was only a fraction or a part of what she was used to doing. And as a result,

she wasn't hitting her weight loss goals and she definitely wasn't hitting her health goals.

What we can see here is that it was her thoughts that were really creating her results. It wasn't the fact that her cycle came around every month. It was how she felt about it, which was defeated. mean, think about it. When you feel defeated or maybe disappointed in yourself, you will do anything possible to avoid that feeling. So clearly she wasn't hitting her health goals.

So I hope you're wondering by now, great Ashley, if your actions don't create your results, then what does? If it's not eating the right foods or HRT or more protein or more fiber, if it's not your genetics, where do the results come from? So believe it or not, your results actually start with a feeling. And I'm gonna repeat that one, remember, your results start with a feeling.

This is exactly why you literally cannot fake it until you make it, because your body knows better. Your body knows when you are trying to trick it. If you say, my gosh, I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna go work out for like six days this week. How do you feel when you have that thought? Like, do you feel it kind of like at the top of your stomach or your chest and you think, that kind of makes me feel anxious. I've never done that before.

not sure that I could actually stick with it for six days a week. That feeling of anxiety, it stems from a thought that you have. Because when you're thinking about working out six days that week, you start thinking, I have never done this before. I don't know how I'm going to fit it in. I don't even know if I have time for all that. All of those thoughts lead you to feeling anxious.

common thought that comes up with some of my students is I will never be able to lose weight and perimenopause. I just won't. Or because I'm over 40 or over 50. And when you think that, you kind of think I'm going to fail, right? You think I will never be able to do that. I wouldn't even want to try because I won't be successful. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't accomplish my goal. I wouldn't be able to do it. Well, think about it. Those thoughts.

are gonna lead you to feeling defeated. And if you are defeated and disappointed in yourself, are you gonna work really hard to show up for yourself? Probably not. Your body, your brain, it wants to avoid feelings of anxiety and defeat and disappointment because they are painful. So you're going to turn around and you're gonna do anything else. You're not gonna watch what you're eating,

you're probably going to do what I call buffering. You're going to find other things to do in your life so that you don't have to focus on your health, your nutrition, your weight loss, your workouts.

It's not the situation you're in, menopause, perimenopause, that you're overweight, that you don't have enough time. It is truly about how you think about the situation that initiates a feeling. And that combination of a thought and a feeling is actually what drives your results.

Now, I get it. Sometimes our thoughts and our feelings, they feel so true. Like they feel like they are a fact. These thoughts, they feel so true. But what's happening is that the thought is triggering a feeling in your body. And that feeling leads you to either do a certain thing or not do a certain thing.

depending on what the thought and feeling are telling you. So the goal here is to learn how to adjust your thoughts so you can adjust your feelings.

Now, feelings aren't, they're never right or wrong. They just are what they are. But your feelings are truly a reflection of the thought that you are having. So if you don't adjust your thought, you can't adjust the feeling. And if you don't adjust the thought and the feeling, you are not going to get the results that you want.

One of the feelings that I hear from clients and students all the time is frustration around motivation. I can't stay motivated. My motivation is gone. I wasn't motivated yesterday. Motivation is not something that you can fake. And what you need to do is you need to find a thought that feels so deeply true in your body that it actually triggers a feeling of excitement or confidence or forward thinking.

because that is what motivation looks like. But if you don't have a thought that will trigger that feeling that makes you feel excited and motivated and ready to go, you're not going to quote unquote, feel motivated. Now I get it, I know a lot of this is very much in the feels, but it's really important to understand that this understanding thoughts and feelings is why

only using strategy for weight loss is just not going to work.

there is definitely a place for strategy. I mean, in the method, you get a full baked strategy that gives you everything you need around anti-inflammatory nutrition, what to do for workouts, how to cook for your family, how to stay consistent. There's even a whole component cooking method in the program that lets you cook just three days a week. But as we've been talking about, if you don't have the right thought about transforming your body and eating healthy, losing weight,

healthy meals, if you don't have the right thought, you're going to have a feeling that leads you down a path where no amount of strategy will do anything for you.

It won't matter that you have a macro calculator or a brand new meal plan or five new recipes. It won't help if you don't have a thought that spurs the right kind of feeling, which then helps you get the results that you're looking for. Okay, so have you ever said, I have tried literally everything there is to lose weight, but nothing at all is working?

If that's you, you're in that place because you continue to believe that nothing will work for you, which remember a thought triggers a feeling. So if you believe that nothing will work for you, that gives you a feeling of disappointment or frustration or even shame. Like I've done it, tried so many things and nothing works. And with those feelings, disappointment, frustration, shame,

You are not inclined to try something different or a different approach because maybe it just didn't work the first time. Your body is not spurred into.

your body is not spurred into taking the right kind of action because you're coming from this thought of, I've tried everything and nothing works, which leads you to a feeling of defeat, which when you feel defeated, what do you do? You look away, you look away from the thing that makes you feel defeated and you look for anything else in the world to pay attention to other than that thing that's making you feel defeated because that doesn't feel great.

This is the kind of coaching that I get to do in the method. And I am so passionate about it because again, you can have all of the tools and I give you all the tools in the method, but it does not matter if you don't have the thoughts that lead you to the feelings that get you to take the actions that eventually give you your results.

Seriously, when you can start to look at transformation this way, everything changes. So I want to give you a couple of examples or talk through a couple of ways that you can see this in action because I think it's gonna help bring it home a bit more.

You know, when I first started...

You know, when I first started uncovering this way of thinking and applying it to my own life, it took me a while because you have to retrain your brain and sort of turn things upside down so you can look at physical transformation, your health in a really different way other than just saying, I just need a new meal plan or I need a different workout. So one of the complaints that I have heard for a very long time is that I just don't have time.

I don't have time to make healthy food. Well, what I see a lot of moms do is that they jump onto Pinterest and they start looking for some easy, healthy recipes. So you spend time searching and you get a few recipes that you think are gonna work and then you think, all right, this looks pretty good. Maybe my family will like this. Maybe they won't, I don't know, but it looks easy. So I'm gonna go ahead and try these five recipes for this week.

And what happens almost every single time is that you get burned out. You get burned out on making these elaborate or in... You get burned out on making these elaborate meals or maybe working with ingredients that you're really unfamiliar with. And all of a sudden you're like, wait, I just, can't do this anymore. You're not consistent with making the meals because they've been too hard. And then...

there's always a lot of other things going on in life that lead you to not have enough time to make the meals that you had printed off from Pinterest. And so in your mind, you're thinking, see, I am totally failing at this. I don't want to feel like a failure, but I feel really ashamed or defeated or frustrated because look at this. I printed all these recipes from Pinterest and see, I was right. I don't have any time to make this healthy food.

When you start to feel this defeat or this frustration, your brain completely stops having the capacity for creative problem solving.

Because any other time you could have come up with the fact that like, well, an easy solution would be to make one new recipe that week as opposed to five. But if you believe, well, I don't have any time to make healthy food, that thought leads you to feeling defeated or like a failure. And if you feel like a failure,

And if you feel like a failure, you're actually going to abandon ship altogether. You're going to walk away from that plan and say, well, see, that didn't work for me. See, I told you, I don't have time to make healthy food. But if you had a different thought, well, okay, maybe those five recipes didn't work, but what if I parodied down to two recipes a week? Or maybe I found recipes that were less time consuming or used more familiar ingredients.

all of a sudden you start, all of a sudden you feel like, huh, okay, maybe I could make some healthy recipes. Maybe this healthy eating thing, it might work for me. So you see, it's all about the thought that you have and how that makes you feel as to whether or not you are going to get that shining goal or that result that you are really looking for.

In a similar vein, one of my students had this ongoing thought. She kept telling me, know, Ashley, I know exactly what I am supposed to do, but I just don't do it. And I can't figure out why. So we started digging into this a little bit. And what we uncovered is that every single time she had to cook dinner, she froze.

When she was sitting there in her kitchen, she would start realizing, you know, I don't like to cook. It takes too much time and too much effort. And she was cooking for herself and her husband at the time. And she had kids, but they were out of the house most nights. And so she just wasn't sure anymore how to cook for one or two. She just didn't know what to do.

So as a result of this and that thought of, don't know what I'm supposed

So as a result of this thought of, know what I'm supposed to do, but I don't do it, that thought led her to feeling really frustrated in the kitchen. And because she felt frustrated in the kitchen, she just stopped. She stopped trying to come up with meals that worked. She stopped believing that it was possible for her to actually cook healthy meals. And the result that she got,

is that she was resorting to a lot of takeout and like frozen and packaged meals and she wasn't hitting her weight loss goals. It was the thought that got her here, not the fact that she was cooking for fewer people.

Let's do one more example. Maybe you have been searching for the quote unquote right meal plan and maybe that's even how you found me. I have this meal plan called the family fork. It's not just my podcast name, but it's a meal plan and it is a complete method. A fun little backstory here. The term family fork is actually a move in the game of chess where one piece, the knight,

takes out multiple pieces in just one move. Pretty cool, right? So with the Family Fork Meal Plan, it does this. It wipes out everything at once. It just solves for everything. If you are trying to lose weight, eat healthy, it solves for that. It has anti-inflammatory nutrition and it has lots of variations that are family friendly. So your family will love all the recipes there. It also has you spending less time in the kitchen.

And it uses this really amazing approach called component cooking, which is completely in line and supportive of trying to lose weight.

And what's more, I know this plan works to kickstart weight loss and help keep you in this like healthy lifestyle or healthy eating lifestyle. This is the plan that I use to lose 65 pounds in my late forties. And so I know that it works. But if you printed off that meal plan and you looked at it and you started getting overwhelmed, you're like, my gosh, I don't know that I can do this.

And maybe you looked at one of the recipes and you're like, I do not like broccoli. Your brain offered you this thought like, have tried all the things and nothing seems to work for me, right? Or I don't know that I'm going to be able to do this. This plan, it kind of looks overwhelming.

And so if it looks overwhelming, that's a thought, you are starting to have this feeling of, you know what, I'm probably just gonna fail at this. I'm totally gonna fail. And therefore your body reminds you, ooh, we do not like failure. Let's not even go there. So you quietly tuck that meal plan into your drawer, your kitchen cabinet, you don't look at it again. But every time you see it,

When you go into that cabinet, you get this tinge of a feeling that's like, another thing that I failed at, another meal plan I failed at.

Interestingly, it's not because the meal plan was bad because again, I've lost weight with it. I have clients who have lost 15, 20 pounds, one client who lost 37 pounds using that plan. But because you had an uncomfortable thought and an uncomfortable feeling around the plan, it led you to just putting it back in the kitchen cabinet and never touching it again. So yeah, the plan's not going to work.

because you actually didn't do it all the way through.

I completely recognize that this is a very different way to look at weight loss and health transformation, nutrition, healthy lifestyle. But I also know that it is the only way for you to be able to see lasting change in your health journey. There will always be things that throw you curveballs and that make it really difficult for you to stay on plan. You'll never get to do it perfectly per your strategy.

And you can have the strategy, but life will get in the way. A kid is going to get sick. You'll have a meeting that runs late. Maybe you go on vacation. There's a birthday party. There's a holiday. There is always something.

And it really, to be honest, it drives me nuts when people are like, well, I'll start after the holiday or I'll start after summer break. Why? Why would you do that? The faster that you can learn to identify the thoughts and the feelings that are not serving you and that are not helping you get to your goal, the faster you will actually start to see change and transformation and weight loss. And better yet, if you can learn how to create these thoughts that in

return, create the feelings that lead you to wanting to take the actions that are in support of what your goals are. That is exactly how you're going to see the change. You will transform. You will reach your goals. You're going to lose weight. You're going to feel healthier because those thoughts and those feelings will allow you to stay on track. That is what's going to let you dig really deep at 4 30 in the morning for a workout.

on a super snowy morning when the last thing you want to do is work out. If you have the thought that drives a feeling that drives the right action, that is going to help you reach your goal. And this is precisely the foundation inside of the method. I really, I encourage you to check out this program if it piques your interest, because we are doing weight loss differently over there.

I really want this to be an opportunity for me to disrupt the weight loss industry because it isn't about the strategy. It's not the strategies, the approaches that you've used before. All of these things are why you're looking for something different. Inside of the method, that is the something different.

I am so curious to know how this is all resonating with you. I would love for you to come leave me a message on Instagram at the Ashley Malik and tell me like what thoughts do you notice yourself having around weight loss or healthy eating or nutrition and what kind of feeling is coming from that thought? I want us to see if we can dig into it a little bit more. So definitely come leave me a message on Instagram.

I encourage you for sure to check out the method, I'll put a link in the show notes for that. And just really consider, if you have tried all the things to lose weight and eat healthy and to be consistent and motivated and nothing is working for you, you really need to take a different approach. Aligning your thoughts and your feelings is a completely different approach, but it will

finally let you achieve the results that you have been after.