She Lost Weight, So Why Can't I?

Ever looked at your colleague, your neighbor, or your sister who is successfully losing weight in midlife and quietly wondered "why can't I?!" It doesn't have anything to do with willpower, hormones, or how disciplined she is.

In this episode, I'm sharing the one thing that quietly drives every health outcome you have — and how to start building it for yourself.

Here's the hard truth: your success (in any area of your life) is directly correlated to your ability to manage risk.

In this episode I walk you through what risk really is when it comes to your body, your health, and your weight (hint: it's not what you think), and why high-achieving women who take risks all day long at work often get stuck the moment it comes to advocating for their own health.

I share three real examples — the gym, a girls' weekend with my student Kathy, and my own New Year's Eve story — to help you see exactly where your relationship with risk might be holding you back. This is the kind of work I do every week with my students inside The Perimenopause Weight Loss Method, and is likely the missing piece you've been looking for.

What You'll Learn
- Why your ability to manage risk is the quiet driver behind every health outcome you've ever had
- The sneaky reason successful career women can't seem to follow through on their own health goals
- What's actually happening in your brain and body the moment you consider doing something new for yourself
- Why the woman next to you who is losing weight isn't smarter or more disciplined than you — she's just doing this one thing differently
- How to start building your risk tolerance the same way you'd build a muscle
- The one question to ask yourself this week to see exactly where you're stuck

Resources and Ways To Connect

- Explore the Perimenopause Weight Loss Method
- FREE 21-Day Anti-Inflammatory Guide
- DM me on Instagram and tell me where you see your relationship with risk
- Learn more about working with me

Transcript

Ashley (00:07)

Hello there, my sweet friend, and welcome back to the Family Fork. I am going to do something fun today. We are going to shift the way that you look and think about your entire health journey.

The premise of what I'm going to share with you today, when I heard it, it really made me think. And the more that I sat with it, the more I've applied it to my own life, shared it with my students inside of the method, and I'm just really recognizing how true it really is. So it is this, your success in any area of your life is directly correlated to your ability to manage risk.

Listen to that one more time. Your success in every area of your life is directly correlated to your ability to manage risk.

Now, your first reaction might be like mine was, you might think, yeah, of course, that applies to people, you know, when you're starting a business or doing something scary, like jumping out of airplanes or making big career moves. But what does that have to do with me trying to lose 20 pounds in perimenopause? What does that have to do with whether or not I can stick to my anti-inflammatory eating plan or even get to the gym this week?

So stay with me because this is exactly what we're going to unpack today. And by the end of this episode, you are going to see your own relationship to risk in a completely new way. And more importantly, you're going to understand why the woman next to you, the one who seems to be losing weight while you are still struggling is probably, she's not, she's not any better than you. She's not smarter than you or more disciplined than you. She just has a different relationship with risk.

And that is something that you can absolutely build for yourself.

Okay, so when most of us hear the word risk, we think about the big obvious things like financial risk, career risk, investment, maybe physical risk. If you're somebody who loves adventure sports, which if you know me, that is not me at all. And as a high achieving woman who has built a career and managed a family and held a hundred things together at the same time, you probably think to yourself, well, I take risks all the time.

You take a risk every time you launch a new product at work, put together a new team, or pitch a new idea in a meeting. You take a risk every time you share some new marketing language or teach something new that you've never taught before. So you might be thinking, know what, Ashley? I'm not that risk averse. I take risks all the time.

I agree, but here's the nuance. When we are talking about risk in the context of your health, your weight, your body, your wellness, we're not talking about a financial transaction or a business decision. We are talking about your ability to regulate your emotions, your thoughts, and your feelings when you do something new or hard or unfamiliar.

That is what risk is at its core. Risk amplifies your relationship with failure. Risk, it asks you the really uncomfortable question, can you handle this not working out? Can you handle trying something and watching it fall flat? Can you handle your feelings that come when something does not go the way that you would hope?

When you consider taking a risk, here's what happens in your body and in your brain. The strategic or logical part of you is trying to calculate, hmm, I don't know, is this a good idea or a bad idea? Is this safe or unsafe? Is it worth it? But more often than not, that logical decision gets completely overrun by your thoughts and your feelings. So your thoughts, they start sounding like this. Well, what if it doesn't work out? What if this is not the right choice?

What if I waste my time? What if I look silly? But what if this makes somebody else unhappy?

And when you have those kinds of thoughts, you actually start to feel anxious, worried, nervous, maybe concerned, and depending on the risk, maybe a little bit scared. And what do you do when those feelings get loud? You make a choice that feels safer. You pick the option that doesn't require you to feel anxious. You stay right where you are because staying where you are feels familiar.

even when staying where you are is exactly what's keeping you stuck.

This is why so many women I work with are incredibly successful in their careers, but they can't seem to get traction on their own health and weight loss journey. It's not because they're not smart or they don't have the information. It's because their relationship with risk in the area of their body and their health is completely different than their relationship with risk in their job.

So I want to give you a few examples so this can really start making sense for you in a super powerful way. So let's start with going to the gym. So imagine, or maybe you don't have to imagine, but that you are a woman who has not been in a gym for a really long time. Maybe you have a gym membership even that you've been paying for, but you've just never gone. So the thought of actually walking into that gym, it brings up a whole bunch of different thoughts. If I go.

Am I going to know what to do when I get there? Am I going to look around at all of these machines and feel totally lost? What if I waste my time wandering around because I don't know how to use anything? Am I going to look silly when everyone else on the workout floor knows exactly what they're doing? I know. Maybe I'll just pick a fitness class so I can kind of hide in the back row and follow along.

If any of those thoughts sound familiar, I want you to tune in to how you're feeling right now, because your aversion to risk is showing up in really sneaky ways. Those thoughts are creating these feelings of apprehension, nervousness, embarrassment. And for a lot of women I talk to, shame. Shame for what they often say, I let myself go. Shame for not having stayed on top of this sooner.

and shame for just being in this position at all. That shame is the thing that keeps you out of the gym because going to the gym means being vulnerable, being a beginner. means asking questions and it means being seen in a body that you probably don't love right now. It means doing something hard in front of strangers. So now think about what this all means to your perimenopause weight loss journey. You know that you need to be doing strength training.

I know you've heard me say it a hundred times. Cardio, it's just not the answer anymore. Strength training is non-negotiable for women in midlife who want to lose weight and protect their bones and keep their muscle mass all the way through menopause. But if the very thought of going to the gym to lift weights makes you feel apprehensive, nervous, or embarrassed, you're not going to do it.

And it's not because you're lazy or because you don't want it badly enough. Of course you do. It's because your relationship with risk in this area of your life is not strong enough yet to override those uncomfortable feelings.

Let me give you another example. So this one is about food and alcohol, and it comes from one of my students, Kathy So Kathy had been working really hard on her anti-inflammatory nutrition. She had stopped drinking at home, and she would still have like a cocktail or a glass of wine when she was out with friends,

but she realized that not drinking was actually serving her really well. She was feeling great. She was sleeping better. Her cravings had gone down and she was really considering taking out alcohol altogether. So when she got ready for a girls weekend trip, she was feeling really motivated and prepared. She had packed some snacks and she had a plan for what she was going to eat on the trip. She knew what she wanted and she was ready to stick to it.

When she got back from the trip, she shared with me what actually happened. So on the very first night, everyone arrived really late at their Airbnb. And it was going to be hard to get a table at a restaurant nearby. So the entire group decided to just order pizza. And Kathy knew that pizza, the kind that they were going to order with lots of pepperoni and heavy cheese, it was not in line with what she had been doing for her body. Her friend said,

Let's just order a couple of pizzas and a big salad and we'll just all share. And then a few minutes later, one of her friends grabbed her and said, hey, let's run to the liquor store real quick so we have a box of wine when the pizza gets here.

Kathy is a strong, capable, independent woman. She leads a large team at her job. She makes high stakes decisions all day long, has hard conversations with her team, and yet in that moment with her girlfriends, she could not bring herself to raise her hand and say, you know what, I'm going to order something different for myself, or I'm going to run to the grocery store really quick and grab something that works for me. She kept telling me afterwards, I didn't want to be a burden or rock the boat.

I didn't want to make a big deal of it. Everyone was so happy and excited to be together. I didn't want to be the one to interrupt that energy. So she ate the pizza and had a glass of wine. And the next morning she woke up feeling terrible. Her joints were sore and she kind of had a dull headache that lasted the rest of the weekend. She was so frustrated with herself for not advocating for what she wanted.

And she felt physically bad on a trip that she had been so looking forward to. So here's the thing about Kathy's story. Her friends, probably like yours, they wouldn't have cared. She knew that in her heart of hearts, if she had said, I'm just going to order something different, they would have said, cool, do your thing. It was actually zero social risk. The risk was entirely internal. It was this discomfort of being seen as different or

the discomfort of advocating for herself in that moment when she didn't want to interrupt the vibe that was so good. It was the risk of feeling even for a few minutes like the odd one out. And that internal discomfort was enough to make her choose the option that felt easier in the moment, more familiar, but it cost her three days of not feeling her best. So this is what I mean when I say your health journey is correlated to your ability to manage

risk. The risk in Kathy's situation, it was really small on the outside, but it felt so much bigger on the inside. And the inside is where the decisions actually happen, which either leads you to success or not.

I want to share one more example, and this one is from my own life because it took me some time to figure it out for myself. Every single year on New Year's Eve, my husband and our group of friends love to stay up late and celebrate and ring in the new year together. And for the last several years, I have always left the party early. It's not because I can't stay up late, although let's be honest, it's harder to stay up late these days.

It's because I get so excited about getting up the next morning and doing my New Year's Day workout. To me, starting the new year with a really fun and pretty hard workout, it feels like the most incredible way to set the tone for the next 12 months. It's really one of my favorite things. But it also means that I have to take a risk. I have to risk people teasing me when I say, well, I'm heading home early.

I have to risk people thinking that I'm no fun. And I have to risk people judging me because I don't drink and I would rather leave a party so that I can work out the next day. I have to risk being the woman who does something so different from everyone else in the room. And for a few years, that risk, it felt too big. I would stay later than I wanted to. I'd feel resentful the next morning when I was tired and dragging through my workout.

or didn't get it done at all. And I would tell myself, you know what, next year I'll leave earlier, but then I would never do it. Eventually I got brave enough to take the risk. I started saying, you know what, I love you guys, but I'm heading home. I'll see you in the new year. And you know what happened? Nothing. Literally nothing happened. Nobody stopped me. They didn't stop inviting me. They just accepted that about me. And now it's not even a conversation.

They know Ashley's leaving at 10 30. That's just the way that it goes. But I had to be willing to take that risk first. I had to be willing to sit with these thoughts and feelings that came up before I took the risk. The fear of judgment, the worry about being seen as no fun, the discomfort of being different from everybody else.

So here's where all this comes together. When you look at another woman in perimenopause or menopause and you see that she's losing weight and getting stronger or her body is changing in ways that you want for yourself and you find yourself thinking, how is she doing it? Why is she able to lose weight when I cannot? I want you to consider this possibility. It's likely nothing to do with your willpower or discipline.

probably nothing to do with metabolism or genetics or hormones or any of the things that we tend to blame. It has everything to do with her relationship to risk, her willingness to walk into the gym without a clue of what she's doing, her willingness to say no thanks to the pizza when everyone else is saying yes, her willingness to leave a party early, and her willingness to be the one who's a little bit different.

so that she can have the outcome that she actually wants. The beautiful thing is that your relationship with risk, it's not fixed. It's not something you were born with or without. It's actually something you can build in the same way you build a muscle. This is the kind of work that I love doing with my students inside of the perimenopause weight loss method. Because we talk about how uncomfortable it is to take a risk in the moments that matter for your health.

We work on regulating your thoughts and your feelings before you take that risk so that you know what's coming. You know how to handle that discomfort and you know that the anxiety or the nervousness or the apprehension, it's just a feeling that will pass.

When you know how to manage what's happening on the inside, the risk on the outside gets a lot smaller. That decision to go to the gym becomes less about whether you feel ready, whatever that is, and more about whether you have the tools to handle the discomfort of being a beginner. The decision to say no to the pizza becomes less about whether your friends will be mad.

and more about whether you can sit with just a few minutes of feeling like the odd one out. The decision to leave a party early becomes less about what people are going to think and more about what you actually want for yourself.

I want you to walk away from this episode with one question for yourself this week. Where in your health journey is your relationship with risk actually holding you back? Is it going to the gym? Maybe eating out with friends? Is it advocating for yourself with your partner, your husband or your family? Is it speaking up at the doctor's office? Is it trying a new way of eating that feels unfamiliar?

You're not going to fix this overnight, but you do have to notice it because once you see it, you can actually start to do something about it. I would really love to hear from you on this one. Please send me a message on Instagram at the Ashley Malik and tell me where do you see your relationship with risk? I read every single message and I really would love to know how this is resonating with you.

And if you are listening and you're thinking, yes, Ashley, I need to figure out how to take those risks so that I can actually reach my weight loss and health goals. So this is exactly the kind of thing we work on every single week inside of the method. This is my eight week group coaching program where we combine mindset work and anti-inflammatory nutrition so that you can finally lose the weight.

Get your energy back and truly feel like yourself again.

There's a link to the method in the show notes. So come check it out. I know we would love to have you with us.

Thank you for being here today and thank you for being someone who is willing to look at hard things in your own life and consider doing something different. That right there is the willingness to take a risk. So you are already on your way.