39: THINK Your Way To A Healthy Summer (Summer Success #4)

Get ready for an episode that truly unlocks the magic behind your summer goals!

We've talked about workouts, healthy meals, and time blocking, but today, we're diving into the most powerful tool of all: your mindset.

I share how our thoughts and feelings directly shape our reality. If you've ever felt stuck with "not enough time," struggled with making progress, or felt deprived while trying to eat healthy, this episode is for you! We're exploring how to use your brain to design the confident, energetic, and fun summer you truly desire.

Here's what you'll discover:

Your Brain's Hidden Blocks: Unpack common thought patterns around time, progress, and desire that might be sabotaging your summer health goals.
Shifting Your Story: Learn how to recognize feelings like frustration, shame, or feeling left out, and proactively shift your mindset to unlock creative solutions instead.
The Power of Proactive Thinking: Understand how a positive, intentional mindset makes healthy eating, consistent workouts, and effective time blocking so much easier to achieve.


⭐️ This episode is the cornerstone of our "Summer Success Series," bringing all the pieces together. It's about empowering you to control your narrative and make choices that lead to your dream summer, no matter what challenges come your way.

More support just for YOU

🥗 Cook just 3 nights/week AND have a list of emergency/back-up meals, when you join the Supper Club
🍡 Fast, easy, and healthy snack ideas that your whole family will love can be found here and here
💪 Learn how to create an effective workout schedule here, then sign up for my favorite workouts here
⏰ Check here for essential time blocking tips, for your best summer ever!

Transcript

Hello, hello, my friend. Welcome back to this week's episode of the Family Fork podcast. Today, we are talking about absolutely one of my favorite things to really dig into, which is mindset.

So stick with me because I know this might feel a little bit out of the box for you. But today, we are really going to explore how you think, how you use your brain to actually get the summer of your dreams. I promise it is totally possible. So really think about it. What do you want this summer? You probably want to be

energetic and wake up and feel ready to go to do all those fun activities that you've planned and you know like go on a hike or the pool or just to feel relaxed right and not stressed. We tend to believe as humans that whatever situation we're in is what dictates whether or not in this case we're going to have a good summer. So maybe you're feeling like you are in the

thick of it with perimenopause and you're like, oh my gosh, you know, eating the right foods is hard and working out, doesn't really do anything. I just feel heavy and here you are going into the summer and you actually aren't feeling really good or confident about your nutrition or your body. It's not the fact that you're in perimenopause. It is actually how you think and how you feel about perimenopause that is

going to give you the outcome or the result that you're looking for this summer.

I know I get it. It sounds a little bit woo, but seriously, just stick with me today. You know, this entire series that we've been doing the summer success series is all designed to help you have your best summer ever. It does not matter where you're starting out. Doesn't matter what you're facing, what you're up against. Doesn't matter what your schedule looks like. I promise you can still design.

the best summer ever. So in the first episode of this series, we talked about working out and how you can not only work out ahead of summer to feel really comfortable in your body,

But we talked about how you can set those realistic expectations for you, a real mom, somebody who has a job and a career and family obligations and vacation and juggling all of that. We talked about how to work out even through all of that. And I gave you a fitness toolkit that allows you to do your workouts at home or on the go, on vacation, wherever you need so that you can feel your best.

In the second episode of this series, we really dug into healthy meals for summer. Everything from how to eat well while you're traveling and also how to come up with some really fun and creative ways for family meals throughout the summer so that you can get your family and yourself to eat more of those healthy options, but without feeling like you're stuck in the kitchen all summer or that you and your family are stuck at the kitchen table, especially when the weather is so nice outside.

So there's a lot of fun creative options in episode two. And then last week, we talked about how to time block for your healthiest, happiest summer ever. And again, time blocking. think, come on, Ashley, I know how to schedule my calendar. But what we walked through was a number of areas that you actually gloss over and probably don't even plan for them, like scheduling time to grocery shop or scheduling time to cook meals.

In that episode, we also talked about how important it is to schedule all of your fun stuff first. So you know exactly what time you have remaining to get your work done, do house chores, and then also have enough time to shop for healthy meals and cook those meals for your family. So today, what we're doing is we're digging into how you need to think in order to make

all of that stuff come together. Because honestly, it is one thing to have the tools for working out or eating healthy meals or planning the right calendar, the right schedule. But if you're not thinking about it in the right way, I guess, you know, maybe attitude is one way to say it. If you don't have the right attitude or the right approach for it, it will be harder for you to actually accomplish those things. So that

That piece is what we're going to tackle today. I'm so excited.

I want you to see if you can relate to some of these challenges. When I talk to my clients and my students, I hear a lot of stories or frustrations when it comes to things like drinking alcohol or having what I call food freedom, just being able to eat whatever you want. You know, maybe you're one of those people, like you try to stay consistent, but when it comes to vacations or trips or long weekends, you have this story that says, you

Gosh, I'm on vacation. I should be able to eat whatever I want. It shouldn't matter.

And then, you know, if you're trying to eat healthy to support your perimenopause or a weight loss journey, social events can be a really big challenge because there you are at the barbecue and like everything looks so good and you want to join in and have all of the food or maybe you want to like go to the pool and feel good at the pool.

A really common frustration or complaint I hear, especially in the summer months, is around, should be able to drink alcohol. I know it doesn't make me feel great, but everyone else is drinking at this barbecue or this party, and I want to have a beer too. So when I hear some of these stories, and maybe you've thought a lot of these things too, I've actually taken some time to distill these down into

three different categories. When you start having these stories, it all comes down to time, progress, and desire.

time relates to either you don't have enough time to support a particular goal that you have, or maybe you've decided that it's not the right time right now. It's not the right time this summer to stop drinking alcohol, or it's not the right time to try and eat differently or to start losing weight. So time is one category, but when it comes to progress, I often hear stories around the fact that

It is just too hard to make progress right now. Your schedule is too busy or you haven't started a workout. So like, why even start now? Right? Like what's the point? It's summer. So maybe it's something around being consistent. Like I know I can just make progress if I can stay consistent, but it feels really hard to just do that. The third category is desire.

This is where the stories come in of, you know, I really want to be healthy, but I do not want to feel deprived. I mean, how many of you have said that? I don't want to feel left out when, you know, everyone is having cocktails at a barbecue or the lake house, or everyone's enjoying, you know, the brownies that your neighbor brought to the party that are supposedly like the best brownies on the planet. I don't want to feel left out.

That all relates to desire. You desire to be healthy, but you don't necessarily desire to do the things that it's going to take to be healthy. Okay, so time, progress, and desire. Those are our three main categories. What I want to do now is I want to break down each of these categories, and we're going to run through each one with a really specific example.

I want you to think about whether or not my example makes sense or resonates with you. Hopefully there's enough context around it that if you have a different example that kind of fits into that category of time, progress, or desire, this framework that we're walking through will actually make a lot of sense to you. And then you can plug in an example that works better for you. But honestly, these examples are based off of stories and feelings and frustrations.

that my actual clients and students have had. So I know they're pretty generalizable and I bet you will probably see yourself in some of these as well.

OK, let's start with a category of time. I want you to go back and sort of think about, what do I want to get out of this summer? That is going to be your driving thought through all of these examples. How do you want your summer to look? How do you want to feel the summer? Do you want to feel energized? Do you want to wake up in the morning and have tons of energy to do all of those fun things that you planned and put on your calendar?

I'm sure you don't want to feel like two or three in the afternoon when that rolls around. You don't want to feel tired and sluggish. No, you want to have energy. So when it comes to time, the thought or the story that I hear women saying is, well, I just, don't have time, right? I don't have time to eat the good food that I know will help me to have that energy I'm looking for the summer. I don't have time to cook.

because our schedules are so busy or I don't have time to do all that cooking and meal prep at home. You know, maybe if I had time, I could do some of those like meal delivery services, but even that, it just doesn't feel like there's enough time in the day to plan a healthy meal, get everything prepped to grocery shop, and then actually make that meal and sit down to eat it. There's just not enough hours in the day.

So when you're sitting there saying to yourself, there's just not enough time, I want you to really check in with your body and start understanding what am I feeling right now? When I feel personally like there's not enough time, when I'm feeling really stretched thin, I know that I feel really frustrated that I can't actually do everything that I wanna do. I mean, hello, A.

high achiever raise your hand if that's you too. You're probably feeling annoyed with yourself like come on I should be able to figure this out.

I should be able to figure out how to put enough time in my day to not only do my work, you know, for my job and take care of my family, but also how to cook a meal. Sometimes I've heard clients say, you know, when it comes to not having enough time, they actually just feel apathetic and they don't always use that word, but we get to that feeling eventually. Cause it's like, you know what, who cares? Like there's just not enough time. I just can't be bothered to deal with this anymore.

So you ignore some of those thoughts that you're having and you kind of give up because there's just not enough time.

So let's talk about that one. When you feel apathetic or resigned to the fact that you may or may not have enough time to cook a healthy meal, what happens in your life? Maybe you resort to more takeout and fast food because you don't have time to cook that meal. But really, like your family's gotta eat, you've gotta eat something. So you just do your best and...

and find some takeout that feels kind of healthy and at least something that everyone will eat. You're definitely cooking less at home, right? So we've talked about this in past episodes, how beneficial it is to cook at home when you want to support your energy levels. Because when you eat at home, you get to choose the ingredients that go into your meals. And so you can eat the things that you know are going to give you energy. So when you're eating more takeout,

you're not really cooking at home, what outcome are you going to get? You are probably going to feel sluggish. Maybe you're even going to gain some weight because you you're eating that takeout that's filled with a lot of hidden fat. And remember think back your ultimate goal was that you wanted energy. You want to wake up in the morning feeling super energized but if you're eating a lot of takeout and you're not cooking your own meals

you're not going to have that energy and you're not going to be sleeping well. And at the end of the day, you are not creating the summer that you want.

you lose that ability to say, yeah, the food that I'm eating is giving me the energy to live the life that I want. So you end up feeling really stuck, right? It is really easy to think that you are in that situation, like not having any energy and you're not sleeping well, you're there because you don't have enough time. But really,

It comes down to the fact that when you think about how little time you have, you get frustrated, annoyed, apathetic, and you make choices that are not the choices that will lead you to healthy eating, which ultimately will give you that energy. When our brains feel stressed out like this, like, ⁓ my gosh, I have no time. It starts to feel filled with anxiety and frustration.

your brain then struggles to really come up with any kind of solution.

You know, in this example, a creative solution that you might be missing in all of that frustration and apathy is, hey, you know what? I remember that Ashley told me about a really cool meal plan that she has that's free that shows me how to cook three nights a week. Gosh, I wonder what would happen if I just tried that meal plan for one week, just one week. What might happen? The meals are already planned. The shopping list is there.

What if I just tried it for seven days? Would I feel like I had more time and then ultimately more energy because I was only spending three nights in the kitchen? But because your brain is really stuck in feeling frustrated and apathetic, it just is unable to come up with that creative solution. So I need you to be aware of how those feelings stop you from making different choices.

Let's talk through another category, the one about progress. When we talk about progress, again, this is really just looking at the fact that this summer, you want to make some progress, let's say with your weight loss journey. And when you look at where you are today, you might feel frustrated that you haven't made much progress and that your schedule kind of gets in the way, or maybe you haven't even gotten started really on that weight loss journey.

And you know that this is something that you want to do and you'd actually hope to lose some weight by summertime. But now that summer is here, you're like, ⁓ man, I am so frustrated. I'm kind of ashamed. I promised myself that I would lose weight before summer got here, but summer it's here and I haven't lost the weight. So I don't know, maybe I should just forget it. Like what's the point now? I haven't made any progress.

What kind of progress am I actually going to make over the summer anyway?

I want you to go back to how is it that you feel about your weight this summer. You probably want to feel like you feel good and confident when it comes to wearing shorts or a sundress or a bathing suit. I know for me personally, it's always about the shorts. When I carry some extra weight, it always hangs out in my hips and my thighs. So for me, my biggest struggle is wanting to feel comfortable in a pair of shorts.

But again, when you look and say, gosh, I haven't made any progress, even though I promised myself I would lose weight before summer, right now, it just seems like it's too hard. Schedules are crazy, kids are out of school, vacation is happening, and gosh, maybe I never really got started anyway with the right kind of workouts that will be sustainable over the summertime. Like maybe you're just not even sure what to do at this point.

So when you start thinking about that and you realize that like January through May, you could have made some progress and you haven't, it's really easy to feel embarrassed or mad at yourself or shame because, oh my God, like what have I been doing? Why didn't I make it a priority? It is really easy to get so hard on yourself. And I want you to catch yourself because...

When you start getting hard on yourself, your brain, your nervous system, it feels that. It feels that shame, that embarrassment, that frustration. And as a result of feeling that way, your brain wants to find any way possible to just move away from that feeling as quickly as possible because it's too uncomfortable.

So your brain might say, you know what? Yeah, yeah, it is just too hard this summer. Let's just forget it altogether. The kids are out of school. There's too many things going on. I'm trying to juggle work and vacation, having the kids around a lot more. Like, it's just not gonna be possible for me to make any progress at all. So when we look at that, those feelings of shame and frustration and the thought that it's too hard to make progress now,

That outcome is not what you wanted. Remember, you wanted to feel really good and really confident in your shorts or your sundress this summer. Like you knew exactly what it was going to take to maintain your weight loss or to at least have, you know, some consistent workouts throughout the summer.

But when you're feeling shame and frustration, you make choices that do not give you your desired outcome. You make choices like just saying, forget about it, or you know what, I'll start a weight loss program or some workout programs in the fall when things are more calm, when schedules are less crazy, when the kids go back to school. But doing that, making those particular choices, sort of like pushing off that action, it's not gonna give you the summer that you want.

If you want a summer where you feel good in shorts or you feel confident at the pool, not working out all summer long, that's not going to get you there. Like we talked about when we were looking at the category of time, same thing goes. Like we talked about when we talked

Like we talked about when we were reviewing that category of time and not having enough time, the same thing applies here with progress. When you feel shame and embarrassment, it is almost impossible for you to come up with a creative solution that might actually work to help you get what you want, which is feeling comfortable in your shorts or feeling confident at the pool. But because it's too painful to feel shame or embarrassment or frustration with yourself,

you don't tend to be a creative problem solver.

But because it's too painful to feel shame or embarrassment or frustration with yourself, you don't tend to be a creative problem solver.

So you might be curious then, OK, what does the solution look like in this example? It would actually be easy to say, hey, you know what? Back in episode 36 of The Family Fork, Ashley handed out some really creative ways to be able to work out in the summer whether I'm on vacation or not. Maybe I should check some of those out. Maybe I should try a free sample of the workouts that she really likes. Or maybe I can schedule in just

two days a week of working out the summer and just see if I can be consistent with that because if I'm consistent that is actually going to help me have more of that confidence in the shorts. Whether I'm losing weight or not I'm just going to feel better because I'm doing something proactively to try and support my goals of being confident in that pair of shorts.

So can you see what's happening here? We have to push against those feelings that we often have. You know, when we looked at that category of time, we talked about feeling frustrated or apathetic. Now that we're looking at progress, we feel shame or embarrassment. The trick, the answer here that you're looking for is to catch yourself having those feelings and to turn on the creative problem solving part of your brain.

so that you can make some choices, some like really intentional choices that are going to get you closer to your goal of having enough time to cook those healthy meals that are ultimately going to give you energy or being able to create a consistent schedule of working out even in the summertime.

But if you lean into those painful and uncomfortable feelings, your brain is not going to let you come up with a unique and creative solution that's going to work for you and your schedule.

Okay, let's walk through one more example.

I would imagine that you've already seen yourself in the time example or the progress example, but this one I know will relate to you and it's around desire. The desire you have for this summer to be healthy and feel good and fit and just overall fit and healthy. But here's what happens. You go to a barbecue and everyone, like we talked about earlier,

You know, everyone is eating that amazing brownie that your neighbor brings that is supposed to be just like the best brownie in the planet. Or this is the most common thing that I hear. Everybody's drinking alcohol. They're having, you know, beer, like the hot summer day and that cold bubbly beer just tastes so refreshing. So good. You know that the brownie, the beer.

They're not going to help you feel healthy and to have your healthiest summer. But here's where your brain goes. You know what? I don't want to feel deprived. Why should I have to say no? Everyone else gets to eat the brownie and drink the beer. Why shouldn't I be able to have the brownie and the beer? I don't want to feel left out. I want to enjoy my summertime. Or, you know, my entire family is having a great time on vacation. They all get to eat whatever they want. They don't have to work out.

but I feel like I have to isolate myself just so I can get a walk in the morning before everyone else gets up. No, I don't want to do that. I don't want to feel left out. I want to be healthy. It's just too hard. It's too hard because we're on vacation. It's too hard because our schedules are crazy. It's too hard because I don't want to feel deprived. Sound familiar?

Believe it or not, all of these feelings, all of these thoughts like deprived or feeling left out of the group because you were trying to take a walk early in the morning while everyone else in your family is at brunch, all of these thoughts stem from the feeling of belonging.

As human beings, we want to belong. We need to fit in.

Hundreds of years ago, belonging and fitting in was essential for survival. So even today, it does not matter how confident you are or how independent you are, belonging is a basic human need. So this is why, you know, like when you hang around people long enough, you kind of start to wear similar types of clothing or you start to drive similar types of cars or maybe the language or the words that you use

all sound kind of the same. As humans, we want and need to belong. So even though you have a really strong desire to have a super healthy, fit, active summer, it might lead you to feeling like you don't belong because other people around you aren't getting up early to take a walk while they're on vacation before the day gets started. Other people around you,

They're not saying no to that brownie or the beer at the barbecue.

So all of a sudden you feel like you don't belong. And then what do you do? Kind of think back to middle school or high school. What did you do then when you didn't feel like you belonged? Honestly, a lot of times you'd give in. You'd put your own needs and your own desires aside because you just wanted to belong. You wanted to belong to the group or the family that you're hanging out with. And if you're doing things that are so radically different,

You often just give in and you push your own goals aside.

But what outcome does that actually give you? If you are going to barbecues frequently and having the brownies and the beer or you're on vacation and you're not prioritizing some kind of movement every day, are you going to have your healthiest summer ever? Are you going to feel healthy and fit and strong and energetic all summer? No, you're not. So you have this strong desire to

be a certain way, but it requires you to test your sense of belonging.

Yet again, this is where we have to call on our brain to say, okay, it's time for some creative problem solving here. If I want my best, healthiest summer yet, what are some things that I could do to make sure that I feel like I belong?

Here's an idea. You could have a conversation with your family before you ever go on vacation. You could say, you know what, I'm working really hard this summer to try and be very fit and healthy and in control of my choices. One of the things I'd like to do when we're on vacation is get up early in the morning and take a walk before our day gets started. And then ask your family, is there anyone who would like to volunteer to come with me one day?

That way we can take turns and how cool. Like you might actually get time to walk with each one of your kids or your spouse, your partner while you're on vacation. What a cool way to have kind of a heart to heart conversation to spend that like one-on-one time together.

But if you let your brain think, ⁓ it's just vacation, I don't wanna walk, nobody's gonna wanna go with me anyway, that's you putting your goals to the wayside. Instead, if you can get creative and have that conversation before the vacation ever starts, you'll already have a schedule of who you're going to walk with each day. That's really cool. Like how fun to get to spend some special time with each member of your family.

When it comes to feeling like you belong within your friend group, here's an idea. Send out a text and tell your friends, hey, I am working really hard to be healthy this summer. Does anyone want to come up with some fun and healthy dessert recipes that we could each bring to our barbecues this summer so that we all have some healthy choices to choose from? Yeah, the brownies, they're still going to be there. That world-class brownie from your neighbor, it's not going anywhere.

But this way, you've already made arrangements to have other healthy dessert options with your other friends and your neighbors. And all of a sudden, you are going to get yourself closer to having the summer where you feel healthy and fit and strong and energized. That's cool, right?

Okay, so I get it. This episode is pretty meaty and it's a little bit different. I really wanna encourage you to go back and listen again when you have some extra time to plug in some of your own examples to those different categories, time, progress, and desire.

Maybe the examples that I talked through actually really resonate with you. But if not, I want you to think about, when it comes to time, am I making time for the things that I want? Am I making choices that help me hit my goals? Am I thinking about the progress that I want to make over the summer? And are those choices that I'm making getting me closer to that goal?

Do I know exactly what my level of desire is for what kind of summer I wanna have? Am I making the choices that get me to my ideal summer? I really need you to do this exercise for yourself and pay close attention to when you start having a thought like, I don't have time or I feel left out or I don't wanna do that because it's summer and I shouldn't have to do that.

When that pops into your brain, what kind of feeling comes up in your body? I want you to get very clear, like close your eyes and think about that feeling. Once you can name one feeling, that is going to show you what kind of choices you will make. And when you know those choices, you can look at those and say, I don't know, is this choice going to get me where I want to be? Is this choice going to help me feel comfortable in my shorts the summer?

Or is this choice going to give me all the energy that I need for that really fun stuff we have planned? If not, you need to re-examine how you might be able to shift your feeling about your goal or what you want summer to look like, and then how you make choices that will actually lead you to achieving your goal of having your best summer ever.

I really, really would love to know what you thought about this episode. This is the kind of stuff that will give you a true life lasting transformation. This episode, brings together the last three episodes of the series where we talked about working out, healthy eating and time blocking. Because if you have the right mindset, like

proactive thoughts and stories and feelings around working out, healthy eating and time blocking, I guarantee it will be so much easier for you to have the summer of your dreams, that summer that you have always envisioned.

But if you're struggling to find time to eat healthy meals or tuck in a workout, or you feel like you don't have any time at all, it's not that you don't have time or desire. It is how you're feeling about it and what choices you're making. So that is actually where the hard work needs to go. You know, I debated about whether or not I wanted to put this episode first in the series or towards the end.

But I really wanted to start you out with the actionable tools for working out, healthy eating, and time blocking. So you already got all of that information in the last three episodes.

But this episode truly brings it home. It helps you to say, how do I need to think about my goals this summer? How do I need to think and feel about what I want to achieve this summer? And that's where you do the hard work so that you can really, truly, finally have the summer of your dreams.

I would really love for you to pop over to Instagram and leave me a message at the Ashley Malik and tell me exactly what you thought about this episode. Are you starting to understand the power that your thoughts have over the outcome that you ultimately get? I really hope you're starting to see how thinking one way can really change your outcome towards what it is that you want to achieve.

Now we've got one more episode left in the summer success series, so be sure to tune in here next week as we will be having a ton of fun talking about poolside eats and vacation treats. It is a value packed episode. I promise you're not going to want to miss it. As always, I am grateful that you chose to spend time with me today. Be sure to tune in next week and I will see you then.