71: You Aren't Behind: New Year Pep Talk For Midlife Women

Feel like you're already "behind" in the New Year before it’s even gotten off the ground? This episode is for you!

Happy New Year, my friend! If you’re listening and feeling less "reinvigorated and refreshed" and more like "exhausted midlife mom just trying to survive," I want you to take a deep breath. You are exactly where you need to be.

In this episode, I’m scrapping the "how-to" to give us both what we actually need: a real-talk pep talk. I’m sharing how the messages you hear in January can lead you to feeling like a failure, when it comes to your midlife health and wellness.

I'm breaking down the toxic myths that tell you you're "behind" if you didn't start on January 1st. I’ll explain why your body doesn't have an expiration date for health. and how your brain’s "freeze response" is actually what’s stopping you (hint: it's not your lack of willpower!)

We’re moving away from the "all or nothing" mentality and leaning into the "bare minimum" so you can actually start living a vibrant, anti-inflammatory life in the middle of your messy, beautiful, chaotic reality.

Inside this episode:

📌 Why January 1st is arbitrary, and how you can focus on your health anytime

📌 Borrowing from your professional side, let's stop firing yourself from your own wellness goals.

📌 How to identify the "when" stories that give you permission to procrastinate.

📌 The biological reason your nervous system sees big goals as a threat (and how to lower the stakes).


Links Mentioned and Ways To Connect:

🙋‍♀️ Work with Me
⭐️ Connect on Social
🥑 How I Cook Just 3 Nights/Week
🧠 Mindset Framework to Stop Relying On Willpower or Motivation

Transcript

Hello, my friend and welcome back to the Family Fork. I am so glad that you are here with me today because honestly, I think I need you here today just as much as you might need me. So I want you to take a deep breath, really deep breath for just a second, because if you're anything like me, you have been running at about 110 miles an hour since like mid-November, right?

And here we are, if you're listening to this live, it is the brand new beginning of a brand new year. We made it. We're officially in that first week of January. And the world is giving us these messages that we should feel refreshed and reinvigorated and ready to conquer our goals. But let me ask you, how are you actually feeling?

because if I am being totally honest with you, I'm not exactly skipping into the year with a perfectly color-coded planner and a fridge full of all of my prepped kale salads. You know, if you're sitting there in your car, maybe on your way to work, or maybe you're in the middle of folding a giant mountain of laundry that somehow multiplied over the holidays, and maybe you're feeling a little bit, I don't know, like heavy or exhausted.

maybe you're already feeling like you have failed at the new year before it's even gotten off the ground. If you feel like this, I want you to know that you are in the right place today because in this episode, we're going to do things just a little bit differently. I actually had a different episode plan, but I kind of decided to scrap it because I realized that what we both need right now

is not another how-to on your anti-inflammatory diet or the right workout for the new year. We'll get back to all of that in later episodes, but I think what you, what I need today is a pep talk, a real honest heart-to-heart between two good friends who were navigating that same messy, over-scheduled midlife reality.

I see it all over my social media and you probably do too. Those like new year, new me transformations, people who have these like perfectly curated morning routines or those emails that are flooding into your inbox promising that if you just buy this greens powder or this collagen or join this 30 day fitness program, you will finally have the body and the life that you want. But for you and me,

women who are juggling these high demand careers and managing our family and trying to figure out why our bodies are reacting so differently to everything because we're in perimenopause, those ads, those messages, they don't feel very inspiring, do they?

Sometimes they can actually just feel like this giant neon sign pointing at us and saying, hey you, you're behind. You feel like you missed the perfect start to the year. Like everyone else is already 10 miles down the road and you are still just trying to find your running shoes in the back of the closet.

If you're telling yourself this story that it's too late to get started or that you're already so far behind, there's no point in trying until life slows down, whatever that is, I want you to listen closely. Today, we are going to break down those stories. And I want to share with you exactly where I have been over the last couple of weeks, all the hard and the heavy stuff. And then we're going to talk about how to move forward when

you feel like you are just starting from zero or can't even get off the ground. So take another deep breath, grab a glass of water or hot tea and let's get into it because I promise you, you aren't behind. You are exactly where you need to be.

Now for just a minute, I want to share why I need this pep talk as much as you do. So if you've been a regular listener of the podcast, you will know that 2025 was a big year of transitions for me. I spent a good portion of last year navigating breast cancer. I went through surgeries and recovery and treatments, the whole like physical and emotional marathon that comes with a health crisis like breast cancer. So coming into this holiday season,

I had this really deep desire to just feel normal again. You know what I mean? You just want to feel normal. Like when you've been at it for so long, whether it's health related or a big project at work or like that grind of parenting, especially teenagers, and you finally see a break in the clouds and you think, okay, this is it. I'm just going to relax. I'm going to host a big family dinner. We're going to have fun. I'm going to be the fun mom.

I'm going to be present with my partner." And we did all of that here in my house. We invited everyone for the holidays. We had eight people staying in our house over the holidays. And it was loud and busy and crazy, but it was perfect. And it felt so good to focus on something other than my next doctor's appointment or what was going on in my business.

It was really important for me to lean into that joy because after the year that I had had, to be honest, I felt like I had earned some joy. But as life often does, there were other plans. So while we were in the middle of all of the holiday celebration, my dad, who had been declining with Alzheimer's for the last probably three or four years, he fell and it...

very quickly became clear that he had actually entered his active stages of dying. So all of a sudden, I wasn't only planning for a house full of holiday guests, but I was also working very closely with my dad's hospice team. I was the one who was responsible for administering all of his medications, taking care of him, and truly for being there until his very last breath. It was a really

difficult and heavy time and I'm so glad I could be there for my dad. And I'm not telling you this to like bring the mood down, but I want you to see the reality of what was happening behind the scenes while I was actually supposed to be having the holidays and planning for a big program launch in early January.

You see, in my head, I had this plan. I was going to roll out of the holidays and launch a fresh round of The Method, which is my perimenopause wellness and weight loss program. And I had all of these visions of being ready by January 1st so that I was prepared to help women just like you who were ready to get started at the beginning of the year. But as January 1st got closer and closer, I was sitting there.

with my dad struggling through his last final days. And I started telling myself like, my God, Ashley, you've totally missed the boat. It is too late. Everyone.

Everyone will have already signed up at a gym and scheduled their new meal plans and decided on their wellness routines. You're just too late. You're so behind. Have you ever said these things to yourself? Maybe it wasn't about, you know, a business launch or something related to work. Maybe for you it's like, I didn't start my anti-inflammatory diet on January 1st. So I should probably just wait till February or, I missed my workouts for the first five days of this month.

I'm already so behind. We tell ourselves these kinds of stories so that we can protect ourselves from the disappointment of not being perfect. But really all they do is keep us stuck. So I had to sit with the feelings that came up when I thought to myself, my gosh, I am so behind. I needed to take some time to honor the fact that I was grieving and I was exhausted from taking care of my dad.

and from like a half a year of cancer treatment. So instead of feeling frustrated with myself, I decided to ask myself, how can I honor the challenges that I've been through without letting them become an excuse to give up on the things that really matter to me?

So I'm posting that question to you today. What are the challenges that you need to honor from last year? Maybe you didn't have a health scare or a loss, but maybe you had a career shift that really drained you. Maybe you've been carrying that really heavy, invisible load of supporting a teenager that's struggling at school or a marriage that feels a little bit like it's on autopilot. Maybe.

you're just plain burned out from being that person who does everything for everyone else. I want you to give yourself grace for all of those things, like real, true grace. The kind of grace that says, you know what, it actually makes sense that I'm really tired. It makes sense that I didn't hit the ground running on January 1st. My circumstances, my situation, it was heavy.

you need to honor your season that you're in, but you also need to recognize that your health, your vibrant, energetic, anti-inflammatory lifestyle, it isn't a seasonal project. It is a forever project.

I realized that the women that I serve, women like you, you don't just need help on January 1st. You need to be healthy all year long. You're looking for resources and support on January 7th and February 14th and on a random Tuesday in July.

So I gave myself permission to quote unquote, be late. And I am giving you permission to be late too, because the truth is there's no such thing as being behind when it comes to taking care of yourself. There's only right now. So I wanna dig into this first story, this myth that is playing on a loop in so many of our heads right now. That idea of it's too,

late. Have you ever noticed how we treat health and wellness like it has some kind of expiration date? It's like January 1st is the only open door and if we don't run right through it, the second the clock strikes midnight, that door is closed until I don't know, after Monday or after spring break or maybe until next year.

I want you to use this analogy. want you to think about it like a train station. So imagine that you're sitting on the platform. If you are a Harry Potter fan, you're sitting on platform nine and three quarters and you're carrying all of your luggage, which in this case, it's the work stress, your kids schedules, holiday decorations that you haven't cleared out. And you see the 8 a.m. health and wellness express that's pulling away from the station.

you're standing here and you're out of breath because you were running watching those lights disappear and you think, okay, well, that's it. I missed it. I missed the train. My season is gone.

But here's the reality that we seem to forget when it comes to taking care of our body. There's actually a train leaving from that platform like every 10 or 15 minutes. There's actually a train leaving every time you pick up a fork or decide to go to bed 20 minutes earlier. There's a train leaving every time you drink a glass of water instead of another cup of coffee.

we have been conditioned to believe that there are these cutoff dates, honestly, because marketing companies love them. They love this urgency of like a new year challenge or a six week transformation. Because what that does is it creates this now or never pressure that talks you into buying that thing, that challenge or that transformation. So the truth is,

your body, it has no idea if it's January 7th or March 3rd. And it just doesn't care that you ate a ton of sugar cookies two weeks ago. When you choose to eat an anti-inflammatory meal, maybe it's like a nice big vibrant salad with healthy fats and clean protein. Your body doesn't look at that and say, wait a minute, she didn't start eating this on the first of the month. So you know what? I'm just not going to use these nutrients.

No, that doesn't happen. Your body is literally waiting for you to give it what it needs so that it can start that work and repair so that you can reduce inflammation right now. So if you're telling yourself it's too late to get a healthy routine in place with dinners

or that you've missed that window to start a strength training routine that actually fits into your super busy schedule, I want you to realize this is just your brain's way of giving you an out. It's like a defense mechanism because if it's too late, then you don't have to do that hard work of starting, right?

So as someone, me, who is currently, again, quote unquote, starting late on my own goals this month, the best time to start, sure, maybe it was January 1st, but the second best time is today. And the third best time, that's like 10 minutes from now. I don't want you to let a date on a calendar be the reason that you say stuck in a body that feels puffy and tired and sluggish.

You have not missed the train. You can start making small, tiny changes today.

Okay, but even when you start to wrap your head around the fact that it's not too late, there's another story that pops up. And this one I see everywhere, and especially with social media. It's that feeling that even if you start now, you are already so far behind, it's going to take you forever to reach your goals.

Have you felt that way before? I'm already so behind.

Unfortunately, this is your brain's way of comparing your progress to the progress of others. And that is not going to do you any favors when it comes to your health journey. Think about what happens when you open up Instagram or you check your email and you see like currently in this time of year, you'll see a lot of like before and after weight loss photos. The woman who just lost 15 pounds in December.

while you were sitting there trying to survive the holidays. Or you see one of those fitness influencers with a perfectly organized kitchen and she's showing off, this is day five of my anti-inflammatory diet. You're hit with marketing language that says, if you didn't start on the first, you are totally missing out on the best version of yourself. Now, the intent behind that kind of marketing

is supposed to be inspiration. But for women like us, we're busy, high achieving professional women. We already have a lot on our plate. That kind of marketing doesn't always feel like inspiration. It can actually feel like evidence. Evidence that we've already failed. we look at those photos and we don't think, my gosh, that's so great for her.

Instead, we think, oh my gosh, look at her. I am so far behind. The first week of January, it's almost over and I haven't even bought fresh veggies yet. I haven't cleared out my pantry. I haven't even looked into that gym membership that I wanted.

And here is where I want to challenge you. You're focused on your career, and you are used to being on top of things. So let's look at this story through a professional lens for a second. If you walked into a boardroom for a really high stakes meeting and found out that a competitor had started a similar project one week before you, would you throw up your hands and say, well, that's it. I guess, whatever. They have this seven day head start.

we're just going to cancel the project. Let's fire this team and I don't know, we'll try again next year. No, you would not say that. You wouldn't do that. You would think that was the

No, of course not. You would think that that was the most ridiculous thing you'd ever heard. What you actually would do is you would look at the data, you would adjust your strategy and your timeline, and you would get to work. You'd recognize that a week or even a month is really just like a blip in the grand scheme of a long-term goal. So why don't you give yourself that same professional courtesy when it comes to your health?

Why do we think that because we didn't start our anti-inflammatory project at the same time as that other woman on Instagram, that our results won't count or that we'll never get there?

This is the danger of that story of I'm so behind because it creates a spiral. If you've listened to me for a while, you will know my core philosophy that your thoughts drive your feelings and your feelings drive your results. It is not the situation that you're in, know, being late to your wellness journey in the beginning of the new year. That's not what stops you. It's what you think about the situation.

So if your thought is, I'm so behind, think about that. How does that make you feel in your body?

For most of my students and for me too, that thought, I'm so behind, it actually just leads straight to anxiety. It's like this low grade buzzing hum of, I don't feel like I'm enough. It makes you feel frantic. Like I've got to do something big to catch up. But because you're already exhausted from life, right? That big thing, it just feels impossible.

And what happens when our brains feel anxious and overwhelmed, we actually go into this freeze response. So your brain looks and says, whoa, this is feeling like too much pressure. I don't like feeling behind. So you know what? We're just gonna stop thinking about it. We're gonna go have some of those leftover holiday cookies because we've already ruined the start of the year anyway.

I want you to stop and realize that saying I'm already behind is just this made up concept. You are exactly where you are meant to be. There is no master schedule for when you're supposed to feel better in your body. If you start your anti-inflammatory swaps today,

If you start your anti-inflammatory swaps today and you stay consistent, you will be in a completely different place three months from now. But if you spend this entire month telling yourself, I'm too far behind to even get started, three months from now, you'll be in the exact same place, which is still tired and puffy and maybe overweight. We tell ourselves that we'll catch up when things quote unquote slow

down. We tell ourselves that once the holiday decorations are put away and the kids are back in school, we will have the bandwidth to really do what we need to do to take care of our health.

But I want to get honest with you about what slowing down actually looks like in our world. Because if you're nodding along with me and you're like, oh, yeah, I'm seeing that behind, I'm behind is just a story. I want to look at this one more story that keeps you stuck. And this is what it sounds like. Well, I will get back into the swing of things when the kids are finally back in their school routine.

Or I'll start my anti-inflammatory diet when the holiday decorations are all boxed up and the house is put back together. Or my personal favorite, well, I'll be able to have time for my health when my Q1 project launches over and I have a little bit more breathing room. Can you hear it? We're always saying we'll do something when. We tell ourselves these stories because they make us feel better in the moment.

It gives you a hall pass to procrastinate.

you convince yourself that there's some like magical slower time just around the corner, like a season when the calendar is clear and laundry is done and you'll have all the bandwidth in the world to do exactly what you need.

The harsh truth is that looking for that time when life slows down, it's just not coming. If you are waiting for your life to slow down before you take care of your body in perimenopause or menopause, you're actually choosing to wait forever. In this stage of life, when you're managing your career and your family, maybe you are also caring for aging parents, life, it's not gonna slow down.

that busy just looks a little bit different every day.

I actually had to work on this with myself over the weekend. So I was looking at my own to-do list and I was feeling that like excitement and motivation to show up for you and for my students and everything in my business. I have so many things that I'm excited about in this year. But then I looked at my actual life for the month of January and I kind of felt this need to say,

I may not be able to do any of that. think I'm going to have to wait until February. Granted, again, if you're listening right now, that's like a whole month away. So I thought I was wrong, but I thought there was this slower time coming after the holidays were over. But when I look ahead at my January, I have a funeral to plan and to host. We will have house guests for a week and I need to plan a lunch for the people that are coming out of from out of town for the funeral.

My daughter, Saraya, she's turning seven in January and we're planning a fun party for her. But to be honest, I haven't even started planning it yet. The competitive dance season starts for Saraya, which that takes up a ton of time on our weekends. And my husband is traveling out of the country for five weeks. So I will be solo parenting.

So that is what my slow January looks like. So if I tell myself, I'll start doubling down on my anti-inflammatory nutrition and my strength training when life slows down, I'm basically saying I won't start until what? I don't know, March, April, and we know it. By then it'll be spring break prep and then end of school and then it's summer and summer vacations. There is no.

perfect time to start. There's only the life that you have right now in all of its chaos and its messy joy.

when you're waiting for your life to slow down, when it slows down, what you're actually doing is letting the chaos of your life dictate the quality of your health. Because here's the thing, you actually need your health and your energy more when you are super busy, not less.

Think about it. How am I supposed to be a solo parent for five weeks when I'm exhausted and crashing at three in the afternoon because I'm not fueling my body the right way? How are you supposed to lead your team at work or to manage a family crisis or a sick kid if you're struggling with those midlife perimenopause symptoms that are already leaving you feeling pretty empty and depleted?

I want you to stop thinking of your health as a project that requires a slow season. I need you to start seeing it as the fuel that allows you to survive your busiest seasons.

So let's pause for just a second and talk about the why behind all of this. When your schedule is packed with parenting and career demands, it's really easy to just say, I just need to buckle down. I need to be more disciplined.

my sweet friend, please hear me. You are not lazy. You do not need more discipline. What you're actually experiencing is this biological response from your nervous system, your brain. It is wired to help you survive. And so when life feels so chaotic and busy, your primitive brain wants to see safe as familiar. So

When you give yourself a huge list of goals at the beginning of the year, and you're already feeling taxed out by the invisible load that you carry for your family and of midlife and perimenopause, your nervous system does not see those goals as this beautiful opportunity for self-improvement. Your brain actually sees a threat and a huge drain on energy that you simply don't have.

So to your nervous system, this all triggers a freeze response. So this is probably why you look at your running shoes to go on a walk, but like you just can't even put them on. Or maybe you order takeout when you intended to prepare a healthy meal. Your brain has decided that your new goals and routines, they feel too risky or they're gonna take too much energy. So it shuts down your motivation.

And in midlife, in perimenopause and menopause, your cortisol levels are already super high, which it's going to make you more prone to being in this freeze state.

So how do you get out of it? You have to lower the stakes. You need to make changes so tiny and small that your nervous system doesn't even recognize that you're using that energy. You need to stop trying to do everything at once and just start doing the bare minimum so that you can get yourself moving. So if your nervous system is currently in that freeze state, cause you looked at the calendar and you realized January 1st is already gone,

or because your to-do list looks a mile long, I've got a couple solutions for you.

First, you're going to stop trying to do everything at once. I know, I get it. It's the beginning of a new year and every fiber of your high achieving being wants you to just like wipe the slate clean. You wanna wake up tomorrow and be that woman who loses 15 pounds and transitions to an anti-inflammatory diet. You get your 10,000 steps in and you do some strength training and you drink a gallon of water every day.

But be honest with yourself. If you have not been doing these things already, you're setting yourself up for disaster, which is only going to make you feel worse about yourself. So when you try to do all the things at once, you inevitably are going to drop a ball. And I know you, because I'm the same person. You're really hard on yourself. So the second you drop that ball, you just kind of throw the rest of them on the floor in frustration. You say, you know what?

I can't even manage my water goal today. So whatever, I'm just going to have pizza tonight and skip the walk. I'll start again tomorrow. This is going to lead you to a cycle of frustration and eventually shame. You start thinking, my God, why can't I just figure this out? Why are all of the women around me figuring it out, but I can't?

that shame, it will not help you lose weight, it won't help you lower your inflammation, and it actually increases your cortisol, which is going to make it harder for you to reach your midlife health goals. This is where we need to lean into this concept that I talked about in last week's episode, which is episode 70. So if you haven't listened, go back, but it's this concept of the bare minimum.

So I wanna share a story about how this showed up for me outside of my health journey, because I think it illustrates this point really well. So for a long time, I have had this goal of writing a book and it's a project that is so dear to my heart and I'm really excited about it. But for months, I made very little progress. Can you guess why? In my head, I told myself that writing my book required like perfect

four hour blocks of uninterrupted time. I thought that would help me get in the right head space with a clean desk and no distractions to really get my writing out. But guess what? Those four hour blocks of time, they never happened. Between my family obligations, my business, my cancer recovery, and just life in general, those blocks, they never happened. So the book sat there unwritten,

And I honestly, felt like a failure every time I thought about it.

So after doing this for a couple of months, I finally decided that, okay, if I can't do it all, all at once, I would just do the bare minimum. And so I committed to spending just 20 minutes, three times a week, writing my book, just 20 minutes, that's it. Can you guess what happened? Because that 20 minutes felt safe to my nervous system. Like I wasn't expending a ton of energy, I actually started writing.

I didn't procrastinate and I didn't freeze. And because I did it consistently over time, I made a ton of progress.

Had I just done those 20 minute chunks of writing months ago, instead of waiting for that like perfect four hour block of time, I probably would have been finished with my book by now. So the same thing applies to your health and wellness. If you can't do a 45 minute strength training workout because you're going on a work trip or you have carpool this week or you're just plain exhausted, can you do 10 minutes instead?

Can you do five minutes of squats in between a meeting? If you can't overhaul your entire pantry today to be 100 % anti-inflammatory, which it's unlikely, can you just make one single swap? Can you swap out your afternoon soda for sparkling water? Or can you add one handful of spinach to your dinner? When you stop trying to do everything at once, you actually take back

from that like all or nothing monster. And what it does is it stops the cycle of shame before it ever starts. So today I am giving you permission right now to just pick the smallest possible version of your goal. The version that is so easy, your brain doesn't even have a chance to like argue with you about it because it's not too late to start small. And in fact,

starting small, like my 20 minute blocks of writing, it's the only way to ensure that you will still be going on your goals by the time we get to February and March and later in the year.

Okay, so you might be thinking, cool, I can start small, but how do you know what small things to start with? How do you stop that mental swirl of all of these competing priorities?

So for this solution, I need you to put down your phone and I want you to find an actual piece of paper. Trust me, not your phone, not a notes app, definitely not your computer. I need you to find an actual piece of paper and a pen, that's it. Something magical happens when we take our brains from digital to analog. So computer to writing with our hands.

You know, research has shown that the act of writing by hand, so that like feeling of the pen hitting the paper, it actually helps your brain process information differently than typing does. And what it does is it engages your senses so that it can help offload that mental clutter. So when everything is just swirling around in your head and it feels like this big ball of yarn, when you write it down on paper, you

can actually start to see some individual threads or themes. So this is what I want you to do. I want you to do a giant brain dump. Write down every single thing that is currently living in your, my gosh, I should be doing this brain.

You know, maybe you need to call your gynecologist or family doctor and have that conversation about hormone replacement therapy because those hot flashes, they're totally keeping you up at night. Or maybe you want to transition to, you know, more anti-inflammatory meals, but you haven't even looked for recipes yet. Maybe you are ready to start strength training. So, because you know, those muscles will protect your bones.

and that will help you to feel better as you go through perimenopause. Maybe it's as simple as just needing to drink more water or remembering to take your vitamins. Whatever it is, I want you to write it all down. Don't filter it, don't judge it, get it out of your head.

I did this exercise over the weekend and while I was feeling the heavy weight of the upcoming funeral and solo parenting and my program launch, my list was super long, like the front and back of a full sheet of paper. And when I looked, there were probably, I don't know, 20 different things on that list that felt really urgent and super important.

But think about that. When you look at a list of 20 things that are urgent, when you're already exhausted, that is enough to make anyone want to just put that list down and walk away. So here's the secret to making this work. You're going to look at that list and pick exactly two things, not five, not three, just two. Remember what we talked about with your nervous system? Three or more things that can still feel like a

threat or like it's too much energy, but two, two is going to feel manageable. It'll feel like something that you can actually do while your kids are at dance or you're between meetings. Now, everything else on that list, you just can't worry about it right now. We're not quitting those things. We'll schedule them later.

If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you will know that I am the queen of time blocking. I love it. So if on your list you have make a doctor's appointment, don't just let it sit on your paper or your sticky note. I want you to open your calendar, find a 10 minute block of time on maybe a Thursday afternoon, like between your team meeting and school pickup and put it in there.

So it's no longer an item on your to-do list, it's actually a scheduled event. So your brain can stop thinking about it because it knows that there is a time and a place for you to call your doctor. So are you curious?

Are you curious which two things I chose from my list? So number one was drink more water. That's it. Like not a gallon. I just need to drink more than I was drinking over the holiday season. And number two from my list was to make the list. I'm serious. One of my two things was literally this exercise of sitting down and organizing my thoughts. I know for me, just that act of making the list was

the thing that gave me the most amount of peace, it helped me feel like I had a little bit of control on my life again.

I want you to recognize that making the list or clearing the clutter, that's also a valid health goal. If it lowers your stress, reduces your cortisol, it's actually supporting your weight loss and your wellness just as much as a workout could. So what are your two things? Maybe it's drinking an extra glass of water and taking a 10 minute walk, or maybe for you it's calling the doctor to get information on HRT.

and eating an anti-inflammatory breakfast. So I want you to pick your two things. I want you to schedule the rest as you can. And hopefully you'll start to feel this weight lift off of your shoulders.

Now there's one more piece to this puzzle. Your third solution for shaking off those feelings of feeling really like I'm behind or it's too late. It's all about your internal mindset work. I've mentioned it before and I'll say it a thousand times. It is your thoughts and your feelings that drive your results. It's not the situation that you're in. It's not just your chaotic schedule.

or the inflammatory foods in your fridge, it's actually the energy and the feelings that you bring to those situations. So you're gonna start a new habit today or tomorrow morning. Every morning before you roll out of bed, especially before you touch your phone, I want you to ask yourself, how do I want to feel today?

Believe me, I get it. Life is chaotic right now. If you're trying to get your kids back into a school routine and you're balancing your own career and you're trying to figure out how to manage perimenopause, it's easy to feel overwhelmed or frustrated. But what if you consciously chose a different way to feel? Maybe you wanna feel confident or in control. Maybe you wanna feel peaceful.

Once you land on that feeling, that should be the feeling that drives your choices throughout the day. So you know that it's true. In life, you get what you look for. So if you wake up trying to look for free reasons, like, why am I behind? Your brain will find them everywhere in that pile of laundry that's still sitting there, in your email inbox, in the mirror.

But if you put that feeling of the day, let's say it's empowered on a sticky note that sits on your computer or at the top of your planner, your brain starts looking for evidence of that instead. You'll start noticing the small wins and you'll notice, hey, I chose salad over french fries. Or you'll notice that you handled a stressful meeting with grace. As you start doing things that bring you confidence or happiness,

your brain will continue to look for more of those things. It's this really beautiful like upward spiral. By choosing your feeling of the day, you aren't just doing a health routine. You are becoming a woman who prioritizes your well-being even in the middle of a super busy life. These small shifts in how you feel are what will ultimately drive your health journey forward.

far more than any New Year's resolution ever cut.

Okay, as we wrap up our time together today, I want you to take one more deep breath. If you came into this episode feeling like you were already failing at new year or like that window of opportunity for your health, it already slammed shut. I hope you feel that weight lifting off your shoulders a little bit. Please remember you are not behind. It is not too late. You haven't missed anything.

You are exactly where you need to be to make a choice that supports the woman that you want to be.

Your body doesn't need perfect. It doesn't need you to have a flawless January 1st. It just needs you to show up for it today. It needs that extra glass of water, that 10 minute walk at lunch, or that one anti-inflammatory swap. It needs you to choose a feeling, confidence, peace, being in control, and let that lead the way instead of that all or nothing pressure.

I am right there in the trenches with you. am navigating grief of losing my dad. I'm preparing for a busy January, preparing for solo parenting marathon, and I am starting late on my own business goals, but I'm choosing to give myself grace and I'm choosing to focus on my feelings every single day because I know that consistency in the small things

is actually what creates that big lasting transformation that we are all looking for.

I would love to hear from you because this journey, it can feel a little lonely at times, especially when you're juggling so many things in midlife. So let's build this community together. I want you to head over to Instagram. You can find me @theashleymalik and send me a DM. Tell me what are your two things for this week or share with me what your feeling of the day is. I read every single message and I really would love to cheer you on as you take these small

empowered steps. If you're ready to dive deeper and you want a structured, simple anti-inflammatory support that fits into your chaotic real life schedule, head over to ashleymallick.com. I have solutions for busy professional moms who are so ready to create healthy habits in midlife so that you can start living your best life. I'll see you back here next week and until then,

Let's do this together one small bite at a time.