74: Alcohol & Perimenopause: The Truth About Midlife Drinking

Feel like a lightweight when you drink in perimenopause? Does that nightly glass of Cabernet pack more of a punch than it used to (and you find it's harder to recover in the morning?)

In this episode, we're digging into the relationship between alcohol and midlife, but it's a different take than you're used to.

Because you already know the science. You’re a smart, driven, professional woman. The struggle isn't a lack of knowledge.

It's the challenge of doing better when your brain and nervous system are wired for belonging.

I'm pulling back the curtain on why your brain views social exclusion as a life-or-death situation and how alcohol often serves as an "off switch" for heavy feelings like inadequacy or frustration.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

📌How to Change Your Identity: Why alcohol becomes an "identity marker" and why your nervous system feels threatened when you change the rules of your social rituals.


📌 Why You're Suddenly a Lightweight: Why your liver prioritizes clearing toxins over processing fluctuating hormones, leading to a "hormonal backup" and worsened hot flashes.


📌 Your Need to Belong: How your primitive brain scans for moments of connection and why saying "no" at a work happy hour feels like a threat to your safety.


📌 Avoiding Tough Emotions: How to identify if you are using alcohol to cover up feelings of apathy, inadequacy, or deprivation on your health journey.


📌 Practical Tools for Change: How to find a "tribe partner," use "anchor habits" with your spouse, and choose your emotions ahead of time so you wake up feeling proud instead of hungover.

More Support For You

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

Transcript

Hello there, my friend, and welcome back to the Family Fork podcast. I am so incredibly glad you're here today because we are diving into a topic that I just know it's probably been on your mind why it's so hard to recover from alcohol now that you're in perimenopause and menopause. Now, I have to be honest with you.

I've kind of been fighting with my very linear A type brain when it comes to how I wanted to share this episode. My logical brain wanted to start by sharing all of the reasons that alcohol is really hard on your body in midlife, both physically and mentally. And I wanted to tell you all about the science of alcohol and perimenopause, and then explain exactly why your liver is struggling to process

that nightly glass of Cabernet while your joints are aching the next morning and why alcohol is contributing to you waking up at three o'clock in the morning, not being able to go back to sleep.

But interestingly, I've noticed a trend in the last couple of months in my conversations with you here on Instagram and with my coaching clients and students in the method. I recognize that you already know all of this. You're smart, capable, you're a professional woman, and you've read the articles, you've seen the health reports, you know that alcohol is basically like liquid inflammation.

for a body that is already having a lot of hormonal disruption. So the challenge isn't that you don't know better because you do. The challenge is that you are struggling to do better.

I hear you saying it, know, Ashley, I'm so tired of trying to figure out a diet or white-knuckling my way through dry January or a no wine week. I know it's hurting me and I know it's the reason that I can't lose that extra like 15 or 20 pounds that has kind of settled around my midsection. But you're probably thinking, I can't figure out why it's so hard to say no.

Why do I lose my motivation the minute I walk in the house from work? Why does it feel like I'm losing my social life or my personality if I don't actually have a drink in my hand?

So I'm going to rebel against my very linear thinking brain today. And we're not going to start with the how to or the science of alcohol in perimenopause. Instead, we're going to start with the why.

we are going to look at your brain and your nervous system and your deep seated need for belonging.

We're going to talk about why it is so difficult, both emotionally and neurologically, to slow down your alcohol consumption, even when you know that it's not helping you create the woman that you want to be.

To really understand this, we have to look at how we use alcohol as like this identity marker. You know, for some of you, alcohol isn't a problem, quote unquote problem, but it's a very important tool. Maybe it's how you relax in social situations.

Maybe you're in the corporate world and your company culture is built around happy hours or meeting in the hotel bar after a day of conferences. Or maybe it's your way of like turning off that busy mom brain at the end of a long day where you've been juggling your career and school pickup and sports practices.

For me personally, alcohol was always my way of feeling more outgoing. I'm actually an introvert and I like to call myself an extroverted introvert because when I'm out, I can definitely be on. I can talk to anybody and I can be engaging and I have a great time. But the minute I get home, I wanna go into this little cocoon. I want silence and I really need to recharge because my battery is completely drained.

For a long time, drinking was actually how I survived those social settings. It made the conversations flow easily and it actually made me feel like who I used to call fun Ashley. I was laughing about this with my sister recently.

If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you may know that my dad passed away not too long ago. And at his memorial service, there was a lot of alcohol and we definitely put in all of his favorite beers like Guinness and Fat Tire, Blue Moon, but I don't drink anymore.

And I joked with my sister that my dad's funeral was actually the perfect social situation for an introvert who doesn't drink. I mean, it was my job to talk to everybody who came to pay their respects. So I'd have about three to four minutes with a person. We share a memory and then I'd kind of have to move on to the next person. So it felt very time limited and structured and short. So for a non-drinker who's an introvert,

It was a breeze. But interestingly, it just reminded me how in the past, I would have relied on a drink just to feel safe and comfortable enough to stay in that room and talk to all of those people.

If you can relate to that, so if you're drinking to fit in at work or to cope with being an introvert or just so you can survive another social event, I want you to know that there's actually a reason that your brain is making it so hard for you to say no.

Today, I want to help you shift your mindset. I want you to walk away from this episode not feeling frustrated or guilty, but feeling like you finally have a manual for your own brain. I want you to feel empowered to make small, sustainable changes that are going to let you feel healthy and energetic and proud of yourself again.

Let's dig into the why behind this struggle. And to do that, we have to talk about one of the most powerful drives in the human brain, this need to belong.

One of the most important jobs your brain has, and this goes way back to like our primitive ancestors, is to constantly scan your environment for moments of belonging. So back in the day, if you didn't belong to a tribe, you just didn't survive. You needed people around you to stay alive. So today, even though we aren't running from bears or wild animals anymore,

your brain still treats social exclusion like a life or death situation. So let's use an example. I want you to put yourself in a work situation for a moment. So imagine that you've traveled to a different city to meet up with some colleagues and you're at a big conference and you've had two full days of really these like high intensity meetings.

and everyone has decided to head to the hotel bar for cocktails afterwards.

I really want you to picture, close your eyes and picture that scene and imagine how you would feel if you put up your hand and said, yeah, I'll come, but I'm probably not gonna drink or thanks for the invite, but I'm actually gonna head back to my room because I'm not drinking right now. Do you feel that? Like where in your body do you feel that? That little like twinge of, ⁓ I'm gonna be the odd person out.

Your brain is already thinking 10 steps ahead of you. It's kind of whispering to you, are they going to think I'm totally weird? Are they going to wonder if I'm like not going after it because I'm not partying with the team? Are they going to think that I'm really boring?

Your brain is working overtime to avoid being in a situation where you don't belong. It wants to fit into the company culture because it associates fitting in with being safe and successful.

And this doesn't just happen at work. It happens in your really close relationships too. So if you enjoy a glass of wine every night, I'm guessing that you probably share that ritual with your husband or your partner. It's probably like just time for the two of you.

So think about what happens when you decide to change that system. You come home after a long day and your husband opens a bottle of wine and pours you a glass, just like he always does, and you look at him and you say, you know what, I'm actually choosing not to drink during the week anymore.

So how does that land? If he looks at you and says, wait, what, why? It's just one glass. We've had such a long day or such a long week. Your brain immediately feels like it's disconnected from your partner. And you suddenly lose that sense of belonging in that established rhythm of your relationship. You change the rules. And because you haven't quite yet built a new habit,

You don't know how to handle those feelings of being different, just standing there in your own kitchen.

Your brain is also incredibly smart. It is always scanning for ways to create predictability. So when you've been that person who drinks with your colleagues or shares wine with your partner, that is a predictable, safe identity for your nervous system. When you choose to stop or limit your drinking, you're essentially changing your identity.

And to your nervous system, that change in identity feels like a threat because the reactions from other people, they're unpredictable. You don't know what they're going to say or think.

I really experienced this heavily when I decided to stop drinking altogether. So I've mentioned this in previous episodes, but I used to be the one in our friend group who made this like Ashley cocktail. It was a weekend staple really. And it was a strong vodka drink, but I had perfected the mixers. So you couldn't even tell how strong it was. So when I stopped making those cocktails and I stopped drinking them myself,

I really had to face that identity shift. My brain wanted to sort of default to, well, you're just not going to fit in anymore. Your friends are going to wonder where fun Ashley went and maybe they'll even tease you a little bit for not drinking or they'll try to get you to just have one, just one.

deciding to limit alcohol so that you can actually feel good in perimenopause. So you avoid hot flashes and brain fog. It actually forces your body into this unpredictable situation. You wonder, what are they gonna say? How are they going to treat me?

I really had to work at this. I had to learn how to go to the places that I love to hear DJs and live music and nightclubs, but without the buffer of the Ashley cocktail. I had to teach my nervous system that I could still fit in. I could still be fun and I could still be me just without the alcohol.

But I really want you to hear me. This shift, it does not happen in a weekend. It really does take some time to show your brain that you are safe in this new and healthier identity. I also want to talk honestly about something that we don't always like to admit to ourselves. Drinking alcohol is a really effective way to mask

feelings that we don't want to feel. Now, to be clear, I am not saying that you have a drinking problem in the way that the world typically defines it, but I see this with my clients and my students inside of the method. It is incredibly common to choose not to address feelings that are difficult or heavy and to just actually reach for a cocktail or a glass of wine instead. It's sort of like this off switch that we can turn off.

to not pay attention to the uncomfortable parts of our day. So let's talk through a couple of the feelings that I see often, and I want you to pick up on whether or not you relate to any of these.

Maybe you find yourself feeling frustrated. I mean, here you are in midlife. You know that your hormones and your body are shifting and you are working so hard to lose those extra 15 pounds that literally they just came out of nowhere. You're trying to change how you eat. You're hitting your steps every day. You're prioritizing sleep, but you are honestly just tired of feeling deprived.

So you start thinking, I can't eat this, I can't do that, I have to work out, I can't sleep in. And eventually that frustration boils over. You kind of throw up your hands and you just say, you know what, it doesn't matter. I'm just gonna have a drink. I'm tired of feeling deprived and I just wanna have fun or I just wanna enjoy myself. I hear these phrases all the time. I just wanna have fun, I just wanna enjoy myself.

In that moment, instead of actually addressing the root of your frustration or finding a way to make your lifestyle feel more sustainable by drinking, actually masking that feeling of scarcity with the alcohol.

Along those same lines, I see women who feel apathetic. It's sort of that like, why bother energy? You feel like you've tried everything to have more energy and get better sleep, but nothing is moving the needle. So you think to yourself, you know what, just screw it. I'm just going to keep my nightly glass of wine because I've already tried all the healthy stuff and I still feel like garbage. Alcohol?

it kind of becomes this like consolation prize for a journey that feels like it's going nowhere.

A big one that like a feeling that I see with a lot of my students and clients is feeling inadequate. It's kind of this nagging feeling that I can't figure out my health or maybe you're struggling to stay present at work or you feel like you're failing at parenting because teenagers is raising teenagers is so hard and they're kind of like sucking your spirit away.

So you look around and you think, you know what? I'm not doing anything very well right now. It all feels so hard and I'm just not doing a good job.

that feels bad. And so it's a lot easier to say, you know what, I kind of feel like a failure right now. I'm just gonna go out with the girls this weekend and not worry at all about what I'm gonna drink or eat.

It makes you feel fun or happy for a few hours, but when you aren't addressing that underlying sense of inadequacy, you're just covering it up with cocktails. In your...

your brain and your nervous system do not want to feel those heavy, sticky emotions. They want safety and comfort. And alcohol actually gives you a really predictable shortcut to both safety and comfort. But as I say that, you have to remember that that shortcut, it comes with a really high physical price tag, especially in perimenopause and menopause.

Now I don't want to spend a ton of time on the physical side of things. I'm not a doctor, but I do want to just take a peek at the very real areas where alcohol becomes a specific challenge for your body during this phase of life. Do you suddenly feel like you are a total lightweight or that like one glass of wine hits really differently than it did five years ago?

You're not imagining this. Your body is changing and its ability to bounce back from toxins like alcohol, that's shifting right along with your hormones.

We know for a fact that alcohol actually worsens your symptoms. So if you are already struggling with hot flashes and night sweats or sleep deprivation, my gosh, mine is so bad. Alcohol, it's like pouring gasoline on a fire and then mood swings. Anyone have those? Remember that alcohol is a depressant. So even though that cocktail or that wine is gonna help you feel relaxed or kind of high energy in the moment,

When it leaves your body, you often feel significantly worse, like more anxious, more irritable, more depleted than you did before you started. Research also shows that drinking alcohol during this stage of life increases your risk for things like heart disease and osteoporosis, which that's that lowering of bone density that we worry about in midlife. But let's look at

the immediate impact on your daily life and specifically your liver.

When you are in the middle of perimenopause, and I think it's Dr. Mary Claire Haver, she calls this the zone of chaos, and it can feel like that. Or if you're dealing with a lack of hormones completely and you're in full blown menopause, your liver is already completely taxed out. It's trying to process and clear out the fluctuating hormones just to keep things balanced. So when you drink alcohol, your liver, because it's a

protective organ, it prioritizes clearing that toxin first. And then your hormones kind of get backed up, so to speak, which actually that disrupts your entire system even further. Now on this podcast, we talk a lot about inflammation and alcohol is a direct trigger for systemic inflammation. So if you're waking up feeling puffy or you have brain fog,

the kind that like you walk into a room and you're like, I don't know why I'm here. Or maybe you have sore joints and body aches that make you feel really old, like older than you are. That is your body sending you signals. It's saying, I can't process this anymore. This doesn't feel good. So it's important that you pay attention to what your body is trying to tell you. I also wanna talk about weight gain. So I am...

all for finding sustainable solutions for weight loss and weight maintenance here at The Family Fork. But alcohol, it is the epitome of empty calories. In this stage of life, your metabolism, it's already slowing down. That's just the natural progression of midlife. So when you add alcohol, you're adding calories that give you absolutely zero fuel.

I wanted to do the math on this, because I want you to see how this works. So a standard five ounce glass of wine is somewhere in the neighborhood of 125 calories. measure out five ounces tonight. And I want you to tell me, are you really pouring five ounces? Most women I know are probably pouring closer to seven or eight ounces. So imagine if you have

two of those in a night. You think, just had two glasses of wine last night, but you're actually looking at close to 450 calories of empty energy. So if losing weight or maintaining your health is the goal, adding 450 calories of that liquid inflammation every night, it's gonna make that goal nearly impossible to reach. When we know better,

we can do better and your body, it is begging you to listen to those signals that it's sending. All right, like I said at the beginning of this episode, when we know better, we can do better.

But I am guessing if you've probably struggled with that like doing better part when it comes to drinking alcohol, you might not have even been aware of why. So hopefully looking at these situations and the ways your brain and your nervous system are just trying to keep you safe, trying to help you belong or to hide from those heavy feelings. Hopefully it helps you understand why it's been so hard to go from a nightly glass of wine

to maybe just one glass a week. Or like in my case, why it was hard for me to go from the Ashley cocktail every weekend to absolutely no cocktails at all.

And with that, you can start to understand the why.

you know what alcohol is really doing to your body physically in perimenopause. So now I want us to look at what you can actually do about it. How in the world do you shift from drinking every night or relying on it in social settings to being an advocate for yourself to say, no, I'm not drinking tonight and actually feeling good about that choice.

The very first thing I want you to do, and this is the most important step, is to ask yourself, what feelings am I trying to avoid? We talked about those big feelings, frustration, apathy, feeling like you're struggling with deprivation, or maybe you are really feeling inadequate. I want you to really get quiet and honest with yourself. When you go to reach for that glass of wine at six o'clock,

What emotion is sitting right under the surface?

To me, this awareness, it's magic. Because once you recognize that feeling, you can start to address it. So if you realize, you know what, I am drinking because I feel so inadequate as a parent today, then you can look at small shifts that you can make in your parenting or your mindset. If you're drinking because you feel deprived on your health journey,

you can look for ways to bring more joy and more treats into your life that don't involve inflammation. But if you don't know what you're trying to avoid, you can't fix it. So you have to name that feeling first.

Next, I want you to consider how you can create safety in changing your identity. So this goes right back to that need for belonging. What are some things that you can do to give your nervous system some predictability? So if you know you have say a business trip coming up and everyone's going to meet out for happy hour, don't just wing it. I want you to look around. Is there a coworker that you trust?

Maybe someone that you can confide in and say, you know, I'm finding the alcohol. just doesn't feel good in my body anymore. I'm gonna stick to soda, water and lime on this trip. Do you wanna be my partner in crime and go alcohol free with me? Finding just one confidant creates like a little mini tribe and it lets your nervous system be okay because you aren't that lone wolf anymore. You still belong somewhere.

Another great tool is to find comfortable and safe alternatives for alcohol. Now this can look a couple of different ways. Of course, like mocktails, those are an option. And if you've listened to this podcast for a while, you will know that I love to carry drinks in my cute little tumblers.

I almost always bring my own drink to social gatherings and it's usually like a protein coffee or a smoothie or maybe a sparkling water. And I like to put it in a really cute travel mug or a tumbler. Now, believe it or not, that tumbler becomes this like jumping off point for conversation. So people say, my gosh, that's so cute. Where did you get that? And suddenly we're talking about shopping.

and I'm actually not even having to explain why I'm not drinking.

And to be honest, it also gives my hand something to do and my brain just a sense of normalcy.

But beyond what's inside of your glass, I want you to look at your social circle. There's that saying that you are the sum of, I don't know, the five or six people that you spend the most time with. So if every single social interaction you have revolves around drinking, you're probably facing an uphill battle. So when I was shifting my identity, I actually had to realize that I could still go to nightclubs to hear DJs.

but I also needed to find people who liked to do other things. I found friends who wanted to meet at the park or go for a hike or grab a fun lunch at a restaurant with amazing anti-inflammatory options. And if for you, it's that like nightly ritual with your partner that's a hurdle,

Find a new anchor for your evening time together. Can you do a puzzle together? Can you watch a show that you only watch when you're together? I know for my husband and I, we watch Formula One. ⁓ Is there a book that you both wanna read so that you could start reading it and then talk about a chapter at nighttime? You have to give your brain an alternative that feels just as safe and connecting as the wine did.

Finally, and this is one that will truly shift your life, I want you to think ahead of time about how you want to feel. We have this amazing but underutilized ability to decide our emotions in advance. So we usually let our feelings just happen to us, but you can decide right now, I am gonna go to that happy hour on Friday and I'm going to feel proud.

I'm going to feel proud because I am prioritizing my health. I'm going to feel confident because I'm leading by example. And I am going to go home feeling happy because I know that at nine o'clock when I'm at home, I'm going to get a good night's sleep. I'm going to wake up on Saturday morning feeling energized and refreshed enough so that I can get in a workout or get in my 10,000 steps for the day. Meanwhile,

your girlfriends from happy hour, they might wake up with a hangover, that bloating and the brain fog, but you are going to wake up in alignment with the woman that you want to be.

You have agency here, my sweet friend. You have control. You now know why it's challenging and you actually have concrete tools to do better. You weren't losing anything by stepping away from alcohol. You're actually gaining your energy, your clarity and your health. And that is a trade-off that is worth it every single time.

I want you to recognize that you have agency over the role that alcohol plays in your life, especially as you navigate perimenopause and all the way into menopause. We've spent today looking at, of course, the significant physical impact it has on your body, that inflammation, disrupted sleep, and really like the slow metabolism. But more importantly, we've looked at the why.

We pulled back that curtain on your brain and your nervous system, the parts of you that have been making it feel so hard to say no, even when you know better. It's not that you lack willpower. Seriously, I want to say that again. You don't lack willpower. It's that your brain has been trying to protect your sense of belonging and to shield you from uncomfortable feelings like frustration or inadequacy. But now,

Now you have the manual. You understand that your brain is really just looking for predictability and safety. So by recognizing the feelings you might be masking with alcohol and asking yourself those big deep questions, what feeling am I trying to avoid? How can I create a new identity? What are my fun non-negotiable alternatives? You are actually taking back the wheel.

You are deciding that fun Ashley or professional you isn't tied to what you drink at happy hour. You're deciding that your health, your clarity, your energy, they are worth the effort of a few awkward social transitions or a change in your nightly routine. I really hope that this episode has sort of unlocked something for you.

I hope it helps you see that you can change how much you drink and you can actually feel good about it. You do not have to feel deprived or isolated. You actually can feel confident, proud, and in total alignment with the best version of you. ⁓

If this episode resonated with you, I would love to hear from you. Come find me over on Instagram at the Ashley Malek and tell me what feeling are you going to choose ahead of time before your next social event? Are you gonna choose clarity, confidence? I want you to tell me so I can celebrate that shift with you. And if you're ready to take this deeper, if you really want to master this mindset,

and the nutrition that makes weight loss and health overall feel really simple in midlife, come visit me over at ashleymallick.com. I have a ton of resources there for you to help you navigate this journey without feeling overwhelmed. You have got this. You have the tools, you have the knowledge, and you have the power to do better because now you know better.

So thanks for joining me for today's conversation and I can't wait to see you back here next week.