Your Back Up Plan: The Key To Midlife Weight Loss

For every midlife woman who has built a solid weight loss plan, only to watch it fall apart the minute life got chaotic -- this episode is for you!

You know how it feels...you quit, then feel like you have to start over from scratch. And during this time of year it can feel like you're getting a fresh start, but life doesn't really slow down when the kids go back to school. It just looks different.

In this episode, I'm digging into something that most women skip when they're building a weight loss plan: the backup plan. Because a plan that only works under perfect conditions isn't really a plan. I walk through why our brains build plans around the best case scenario, why that sets us up to spiral when something goes wrong, and what to actually do about it so you stay consistent on your weight loss and health journey no matter what life throws at you.

I'm also sharing a personal story from this summer involving a cyclospora outbreak, two of my go-to foods, and a very rude reminder that you cannot plan for everything. Plus, I'm talking about one of my clients, Cathy, who has been in one of those seasons where things just kept coming, one after another, and what staying in the game looked like for her.

Inside This Episode

- Why your brain builds plans around perfect conditions (and how that's actually working against you)
- The one thought pattern that causes most women to quit when their plan gets derailed
- What "non-negotiables" are and how to build them for both nutrition and movement
- Why asking for help is not a weakness, and how to plan for it before you're already in crisis mode
- How to stay in the game when life keeps piling on, even if progress is slower than you wanted

Resources and Ways To Connect

• FREE Guide: Five Easy Steps to Lose 1 lb a Week in Perimenopause
• Work with Me inside the Perimenopause Weight Loss Method
• Connect with me on Instagram

Transcript

Ashley (00:00)

Hello, my friend, and welcome back to the Family Fork. I am, as always, super glad that you're here today. Now, if you are listening as this episode drops live, you're probably right in the thick of back to school season. Maybe you're getting kids settled into their new routines, or maybe you're getting an older one off to college. And somewhere in the back of your mind, you're thinking, okay, finally, finally things are gonna calm down a little bit. And finally, I can take some time to focus on me.

I get it. I feel this way every year at about this time.

There's something about the end of summer that makes you feel like you can just breathe again and like you might actually have a shot at getting back on track with your health and your wellness. But here's what I also know to be true. Just because you have a plan and a desire to get back into a routine, it doesn't mean that chaos isn't just right around the corner. Because the second kids go back to school, things start popping up, right? Kids get sick.

Their fees due for new books or college courses. Something blows up at work. Maybe your partner has unexpected travel or the dog gets a stomach bug. And that really perfect plan that you had to finally focus on your weight loss, your nutrition, strength training, it all starts to fall apart, even before you get it off the ground. So today I wanna talk about something that you might kind of be glossing over when you're building that perfect plan.

And that is actually the backup plan. How do you build a plan for your health and your weight loss that can actually hold up when life gets chaotic? Because chaos, it's a given. And if your plan doesn't account for it, your plan is gonna fall apart every single time. So that's what we're gonna get into today.

So let's start here. When you sit down to build a plan, whether it's a weight loss plan, a new approach to eating, a workout routine, whatever it is, your brain does something really specific. It imagines things going really well. Good job, brain. You imagine grocery shopping where you get everything on the list. You imagine a morning where you wake up on time and you actually do the workout that you had planned.

You imagine dinner where everyone sits down and eats what you made and nobody complains.

Your brain builds a plan around perfect conditions because that's how the planning works. Your brain, your nervous system, they want to know exactly what to expect and exactly what steps to take. And then your brain kind of fills in all the blanks with the best case scenario. And this is not really a bad thing. Having a plan is great. That's how you get started. But knowing what you're going to eat.

Knowing how you're going to move your body, what your grocery list looks like, all of that structure, it is super important. But the problem is that we live in a real life. And in real life, something always comes up. So think back to the last weight loss plan that you built. Did you include contingencies? Did you have a plan for what you would do if something went wrong? If you got sick, if you had a migraine one night and couldn't cook.

If your workout just didn't get done that day. Because if your plan didn't have that, it's just not a complete plan. That's the kind of plan that works when everything goes right under perfect conditions. And with that kind of plan, the first time something doesn't go right, you don't typically just pause, you kind of start to spiral.

So let me give you kind of a funny example from my own summer. So I had a very intentional weight loss goal going into the past few months, and I was eating salads every day, which I love. And raspberries were also one of my go-to foods. I love raspberries. I have to watch what kind of fruit I eat. And so the raspberries were a perfect fit. Well, if you remember in the United States here over the summer, there was a cyclospora outbreak.

Now, if you don't remember that or you're from outside of the US, Cyclospora, it is a food-borne illness that comes from contaminated produce. And it can give you explosive diarrhea for a couple of weeks. That's terrible. So lettuce, raspberries, those were both included in the foods not to eat, thanks to Cyclospora. Those were two of the things that I had been counting on every single day. Poof, they were just gone. Now

Maybe I could have built a plan for getting sick in some general way. I honestly don't think that I could have planned for a cyclospora outbreak specifically. But that that's my point. You can't predict every single thing that's going to happen. Life is gonna throw things at you that you never saw coming. So here's what I want you to understand.

When you take even a little bit of time right now to think through the most likely things that could throw you off, your nervous system actually gets a chance to relax because your brain has already done some of the prep work. It's already thought through, okay, so if this thing happens, here's what I'm gonna do. And instead of a derailment feeling like a complete disaster, it just feels like, okay, this is the thing that I planned for.

Here's what I'm gonna do now. And then you get to keep moving.

This is such an important shift that you can make if you really want to stay on track with your weight loss goals. So I want to walk you through three different things that are going to help you to build your backup plan to keep you consistent on your weight loss and your health journey, even when it feels like life is kind of falling apart.

The first thing is this: you need to pay very close attention to your thoughts. Yes, this has everything to do with your mindset, but it's also incredibly practical. So here's what happens when a plan that you've built starts to fall apart. Say that you have been eating breakfast every morning because you notice that having breakfast gives you fewer cravings and it helps you feel better throughout the rest of the day. And then three days in a row.

Something gets in the way of breakfast. Maybe you woke up late. Maybe there was a snowstorm. Maybe you had an early meeting that restructured your whole morning plan. Whatever it was for three days straight, that breakfast, it just didn't happen. So this is where those thoughts come in. Maybe you say, this is what happens all the time to me. Or maybe you say, see, nothing ever works out for me. I am never going to be able to figure this out. So

Hear me when I say this. Those stories, those thoughts, those are going to keep you stuck every single time. Because when you say to yourself, this is what always happens when I try and eat a healthy breakfast, your brain hears that and says, yeah, you're right. This is always what happens. There's no point in continuing. And just like that, your brain gives you the go-ahead to just quit.

Not because you're lazy or unmotivated, not because you don't care, but because your brain is doing what it's supposed to do. It's listening to the instructions that you're giving. And when those instructions say, this never works, your brain is gonna follow what you're saying.

Your thoughts are not just feelings that you're having in that moment. They are instructions that you are giving yourself. So if you don't watch them closely, they're gonna take you out before you even realize it. So staying very aware of your thoughts, especially when things are falling apart, you must learn to catch yourself.

Being aware is an easy and practical skill that you can do to protect your consistency. And when you catch a story that starts with always or never, that is your signal to stop and question it. Is that actually true? Or is your brain just trying to protect itself from the discomfort of starting over?

All right, number two, you must have a go-to backup plan. So inside of the method, I make my clients build daily non-negotiables. And the idea here is really simple. What are the things that you can do to move towards your health goals no matter what? Even on the really hard days, even on the days when you're not sure that you'll ever get back on track.

Let's start with a nutrition example because I think this is where a lot of midlife women really give up when their perfectly planned plan falls apart. So for my clients, inside of the method, one of the resources that they get is called the shit meal planner. You know, those moments when your plan has gone sideways and you're standing in your kitchen, it's six o'clock at night, you have nothing prepared for dinner, and you look in the fridge and you think, shit, I don't have anything for dinner.

And right then, the only reasonable solution that you can come up with, it's like going through the drive-thru or ordering DoorDash. But with the Oh Shit Meal Planner, my clients get 10 meals that can each be made in 10 minutes or less using only things from their pantry or their freezer. Pretty cool, right? Nothing fresh that you may or may not have on hand, just things that are stocked all the time. And

Every single one of those meals is gonna get you closer to your weight loss goals than a run through the Chick-fil-A drive-thru or chipotle at the end of a long night.

And trust me, I know how tempting that is. I have been there. When you are exhausted and your day did not go according to plan and your family is hungry and you just want to be done the drive-thru, it's super easy. But if you have a meal that takes 10 minutes and uses things that are already in your freezer in your pantry, then you have a backup plan that does not cause you to compromise on what you're working towards.

So this is the point of building daily non-negotiables. You decide ahead of time, before the chaos hits, exactly what your fallback is. So that you're not making a decision from a really like tired and depleted space at the end of a hard day. Now you need that same kind of non-negotiable for your movement. So say you're doing really well with strength training, you've been consistent, you're feeling good, you're kind of starting to see some muscles show up. And then

The chaos hits. You run late. You have a commitment in the evening. Maybe some last minute travel. But for whatever reason, your workout is just not happening that day. So what is your movement non-negotiable for that day?

One of my clients, Heather, she has this completely dialed in and I love it. No matter what's going on in her life, she does 20 squats and 20 lunges. It doesn't matter if she can't get her full workout in. It doesn't matter how chaotic her day was. 20 squats, 20 lunges, and she drinks her water every single day. Is that her full workout? No. But it does keep her connected to her goal.

It keeps her identity intact as a woman who moves her body and takes care of herself. And that is the kind of thing that you need to build as a woman in midlife because consistency, it's not about doing it perfectly or all the time. It's about keeping moving no matter what.

When you have a non-negotiable already established, you just don't stop altogether. But that also means that you never have to start over from scratch. You just get back to your full plan from a place that is already in motion.

Okay, number three, ask for help. I know, I know. Trust me, I get it. If you're just like me, it feels so much easier to just do it yourself than to stop and explain to someone else what you need and why and how they can help. my gosh, that sounds so hard. But if you want to stay consistent on your health journey, especially during these difficult moments, you're going to need to let other people in sometimes. And it's okay.

Maybe that looks like asking your older kids to help get dinner on the table. Maybe it's asking your partner to take the dog on a walk so that you have 20 minutes to do your workout. Maybe it's being honest with the people around you about what you're trying to accomplish so that they actually can figure out how to support you.

The thing I want you to do is think about this before you're in the middle of the chaos. Because when you're standing in your kitchen at the end of a very hard day and everything feels like it's falling apart, that is not the time to be figuring out what to delegate to who and how to ask for help. But if you have already thought through it, okay, if I am really squeezed for time, I can ask my teenager to throw something together from the freezer or

I can ask my partner to handle bedtime tonight so I can get my workout in. That conversation takes 30 seconds. And in those 30 seconds, that could be the difference between staying on track or not.

I promise you, asking for help is not a sign that you cannot handle things. It's a sign that you are playing smart. And if you are serious about your weight loss and your health goals, asking for help, it's just going to be part of the plan.

Now let's sidestep for just a minute on a slightly different situation because everything that I've described so far, it assumes that you have some version of a plan that you are trying to protect. But what about when you're in a season where things keep happening one after the other and you can barely get that plan off the ground at all? Can you relate to that? One of my clients, Cathy she has been working really hard on her weight loss and just better health overall.

And this past year has been one of those years where life just didn't stop. Her mom fell and was seriously hurt. Kathy herself has been navigating some ongoing health challenges that have been just really exhausting for her. and every time that she thought she could take a breath and really focus on herself, something else would happen. So if you are in a season like Cathy's right now, I want to share this with you.

The three things that I just walked you through: being aware of your thoughts, non-negotiables, and asking for help, those are not just strategies for protecting a good plan when things fall apart. They are also how you stay in the game when there is no perfect plan to protect. When stuff just keeps piling on top, the goal is never to be perfect. The goal is actually not to stop completely.

To keep doing something, even something really small that keeps you connected to your health and moving in the right direction, to catch those stories before they convince your brain to just give up entirely, to have a handful of non-negotiables that you can always come back to even when everything else has fallen away. And being willing to ask for help instead of trying to push through everything alone until you are just completely depleted.

Cathy she's still in it. She hasn't stopped. She is still showing up for herself in whatever way she can on any given day. And that's what I want for you, whatever season you are in right now.

All right, so here's what I really want you to take away from today's conversation. That chaos in life, it's gonna happen. Things are gonna come up, and your plan is gonna fall apart at some point. And honestly, probably more than once, right? But you're not failing. It does not mean that your plan doesn't work. This is just life. What makes the difference is whether you have done a little bit of thinking ahead of time about what you will do.

When things fall apart, whether you have a few non-negotiables you can always return to, whether you're watching your thoughts closely enough to catch the stories before they take you out, and whether or not you're willing to ask for just a little bit of help when you need it. That is your backup plan.

And that is what's going to keep you consistent on this journey. Not when everything is perfect, but actually when it's not. All right, my friend, I really hope this has been very helpful for you. And I want you to do something. I want to make sure that you are following the show if you aren't already. Because next week there's a big announcement coming. There's something exciting happening with this podcast. And I am really excited to share it with you. So

Make sure that you are following the show in your favorite podcast player so that you don't miss the exciting announcement. Thanks again for being here, and I will see you right back here next week.