Hello, my friend, and welcome back to The Family Fork. I am so glad you're here with me today.
So the other day, I was walking my dog. I walk my dog twice a day, every day. It's just part of my routine. And the other afternoon, I headed out for my usual walk. It happened to be warmer than I expected, but I figured no big deal. I had on my yoga pants and a long-sleeved shirt. My walk is only 30 minutes. How bad could it be?
Well. About ten minutes in, I realized I had made a huge mistake.
The sun was absolutely scorching. I was baking in my long sleeves and long pants. I started rolling up my sleeves. I thought about rolling up my yoga pants, which, let me tell you, is not a great look. I was sweating and trying to cool down, and right there in that moment, it hit me.
Shorts season is coming. Summer is right around the corner. Whether I'm ready or not.
Now, I want to be clear about something. I've never been the kind of woman who believes you need to have a bikini-body for the summer. I don't think that's a realistic standard for most of us, unless that's something you really want to work toward.
But here's what I do think. Summer means vacations. It means more time at the pool. It means hiking and biking and hanging out at barbecues with your friends and family. And for a lot of those moments, you're probably going to want a cute sundress or a really fun pair of shorts. You want to feel good when you're wearing those summer outfits. You want to feel comfortable in your own skin.
In that, the next couple of episodes are part of the "Spring Into Summer" series. It's a four-episode series, and the goal is to help you make some meaningful progress on your health and how you feel in your body before summer arrives.
But let's be realistic. There's only so much time between now and the summer months. So we're not going to chase some impossible standard. Instead, we're going to focus on the things that actually work for women in perimenopause and menopause. The things that will help you feel healthy and strong and confident when summer rolls around.
Maybe for you, it's toning up your arms so you feel great in a tank top when you go on a cruise. Maybe it's feeling lighter and more energetic so you can keep up with your family at Disneyland. Maybe it's just wanting to put on a pair of shorts and not spend the whole day tugging at them and feeling self-conscious (that's ME!)
Whatever it is for you, I want to help you get there.
Now, here's what makes this series different from all the generic summer body content you're going to see flooding your social media over the next couple months.
This series is built on the same framework I use in The Perimenopause Weight Loss Method, which is my group program for midlife moms. Inside that program I teach a four-part framework: Think, Thrive, Master, and Maintain. Each episode in this series maps to one of those four phases. And today, we're starting with Think.
Because here's what I know. Spring is the time when motivation naturally spikes. You open the windows, you start cleaning the house, the weather gets nicer, and suddenly you feel like you want to shake things up. That makes it a great time to clear out the health and wellness habits that no longer serve you.
But spring is also when old health and weight loss approaches tend to resurface.
Your instinct heading into summer is to do more. Restrict your calories more. Work out more. Be more disciplined. Be more perfect on whatever plan you're following.
If you're a woman in perimenopause or menopause, that approach is going to backfire. I've seen it happen again and again. And I've lived it myself.
The reality is, the answer isn't doing more. The answer is thinking differently.
Your thoughts are not just background noise. They're not just the chatter in your head while you go about your day. Your thoughts are actually producing your results. And if you want different results, you have to start with different thoughts.
That's what this episode is about.
Let me start with what I think is one of the most detrimental thoughts a perimenopausal woman can carry around with her.
It's this: "I just need more discipline," or "If only I could get more motivated."
Have you ever thought that? I definitely have. When something isn't working, our first instinct is often to blame ourselves. We think, if I could just be more disciplined. If I could just stick to the plan better. If I could just have more willpower.
But here's what's actually happening when you lead with willpower. Willpower is a finite resource. It runs out. You can push your way through a diet for a few weeks, maybe even a few months, but eventually, life happens. You get stressed. You get tired. You have a bad day. And when your willpower tank is empty, you're right back where you started, except now you also feel like a failure.
Identity is different. When you shift from willpower to identity, you're not relying on a resource that depletes. Updating your identity allows you to operate from a belief about who you are and who you are becoming. And that belief sustains you even when things get hard.
So instead of thinking, "I need more discipline to get through this diet," what if you started thinking, "I'm the kind of woman who takes care of her body"? Or, "I'm the kind of woman who makes choices that support my health, even when it's not convenient"?
That's a completely different foundation to build on. And it holds up a lot better when life gets messy.
Now, let me talk about goals for a minute. Because I know it's natural to want to create goals for yourself, especially when you're feeling motivated.
So you might be thinking something like, "I want to lose 10 pounds before summer." And that sounds like a reasonable, achievable goal, right?
But here's the problem. What happens when summer gets here?
The barbecues happen. The vacations happen. You're spending more time at the pool with the cocktails they serve poolside. And suddenly, all that momentum you built up just... disappears.
I don't want that for you. I don't want you working hard to lose 10 pounds before summer and then losing all of that progress just because you're living your life during the summer months.
So what if you shifted that goal a little bit?
Instead of, "I want to lose 10 pounds before summer," what if you started thinking, "How can I use this season as a springboard for getting healthy and fit for the rest of my life?"
Can you feel the difference in that?
When you shift from a deadline to a direction, everything changes. Suddenly, you're not sprinting toward some finish line and then letting it all fall apart. You're building something that lasts. And when you're at that summer barbecue, your choices feel different. You're not cheating on a diet. You're making choices that align with who you are and where you're headed.
That's a completely different experience.
Now I want to talk about two specific thought patterns that I see keeping women stuck all the time. And I want you to really listen to these, because there's a good chance one of them sounds familiar.
The first one is this: "Nothing ever works for me."
Does that resonate with you? If you've been trying to lose weight for years, if you've tried diet after diet, program after program, and you still haven't gotten lasting results, this thought probably feels very true to you.
And I get it. You have evidence. You can point to all the things you've tried that didn't work. The Whole30 meal plan that only lasted 4 days. The online pilates program that you bought but never started. The weighted vest that sits at the front door, collecting dust. The 4 different protein powders you bought, but they all taste gross. So it feels like a fact: nothing works for me, no matter how hard I try.
But when you think "nothing ever works for me", here's what that thought is actually doing. It's closing you off. When you believe that nothing ever works for you, you stop being open to possibility. You stop being open to creative problem-solving. You approach every new thing with this underlying belief that it probably won't work either, so what's the point?
And then, guess what? That approach, that meal plan, that protein powder doesn't work. Because you were already halfway out the door before you even started.
So what if you replaced that thought with something a little more open?
Try this: "What if this one thing I try today works just for today?"
That's it. You're not committing to a whole new lifestyle. You're not promising yourself you'll be perfect forever. You're just saying, what if I try one thing today, like drinking 80 ounces of water, and what if it works just for today?
You don't have to fix everything at once. You stitch together one small success, and then another, and then another. And eventually, you've built something tangible and sustainable.
The second thought pattern I see all the time is this: "I don't have time."
This one is huge for busy women. You're juggling your career, your family, maybe aging parents, your relationship, your household. You barely have time to shower some days, let alone meal prep or get to the gym.
So when you think about your health goals, your brain immediately says, "I don't have time for that." I don't have time to cook a healthy meal. I don't have time to workout. I don't have time to watch an online workshop about weight loss.
And here's the thing. If you believe you don't have time, you won't find time. That thought becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your brain takes it as an instruction and stops looking for opportunities.
But what if you replaced that thought with something like this: "What if I had 10 minutes today? What could I do in 10 minutes to support my health and wellness goals?"
Ten minutes. That's it. Not an hour. Not a whole morning. Just ten minutes.
When you give your brain that prompt, it starts looking for solutions instead of obstacles. And you'd be surprised what you can do in ten minutes. A quick walk. Some stretching. Prepping a healthy snack. Drinking a big glass of water. Writing down your goals.
It adds up.
I want to share a story with you about a client I worked with, her name was Sheri.
Sheri came to me feeling completely defeated. She had tried to lose weight before vacations, before big events, so many times. And she could never keep the results going for any long period of time. She'd lose some of the weight that she had planned, but then once the vacation was over, the event with the fancy dress was done, her habits never stuck around long enough for her to maintain the results.
Sheri had a lot of self-doubt. She'd tried so many different diet approaches and meal plans, and nothing ever stuck. She'd tried Whole30 and Weight Watchers. She had some online pilates workouts that she liked, but it was hard for her to build them into her regular schedule. She didn't believe she would ever be able to lose weight and maintain it.
And she spent a lot of time blaming herself. She would say things like, "I'm not disciplined. I don't have any willpower. Nothing ever works for me." She really thought there was something fundamentally wrong with her that wouldn't allow her to keep the weight off.
When we started working together in The Method, we uncovered something important. A lot of Sheri's thoughts revolved around doing things perfectly or "the right way". She believed she had to follow a meal plan to a "T", or she had failed. She believed she had to do a workout program every day, or it didn't count.
This all-or-nothing thinking was the thing that was actually keeping her stuck.
So we worked on a mindset reframe. And the reframe was simple but really important. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
Sheri started practicing this new way of thinking. She learned that she could enjoy a vacation and still stay on track outside of vacation time. She learned that one setback, or even two setbacks, didn't mean she had failed completely. It didn't mean she wasn't capable of keeping her weight loss journey going.
And something shifted for her. She stopped seeing health and wellness as a one-and-done thing. She started seeing it as a journey. A journey with bumps and detours, sure. But a journey she could actually sustain.
That one mindset shift changed everything for her.
So here's what I want you to take away from today's episode, a reframe that's going to help YOU spring into summer:
It's not really about what you want to look like. It's about how you want to feel.
When you think about summer, how do YOU want to feel? Light? Happy? Energetic? Confident? When you think about that vacation to Disneyland, and you imagine yourself wearing shorts or a cute tennis skirt (because they're so trendy right now!), how will you feel in that outfit? Or when you go to your neighbor's summer BBQ, how confident will you feel when you wear that strapless dress and someone compliments your toned arms?
When you get clear on how you want to FEEL this summer, it makes your choices so much easier. Because you're not just trying to hit some number on the scale. You're trying to create a feeling, an experience for your life, and identity for who you are. And you have much more control over your feelings than you think.
Your thoughts create your feelings. And your feelings drive your actions. So if you want to feel light and energetic this summer, you can start by thinking thoughts that support that feeling.
Here's your homework for this week.
I want you to start watching for your automatic thoughts. Just notice them. Don't judge them. Just pay attention to what's running through your head, especially when it comes to your health and your body.
And if you catch yourself thinking, "Nothing ever works for me," I want you to try replacing it with, "What if I try one thing today, that just works for TODAY?"
And if you catch yourself thinking, "I don't have time," I want you to try replacing it with, "What if I had 10 minutes today? What could I do in those 10 minutes?"
That's it. Just practice those two reframes this week. And notice what shifts for you.
Because here's the bigger picture. By changing your thoughts, you actually change your outcome. One success stacked on top of another, on top of another. That's how you build habits that last. That's how you create a summer where you feel amazing in your body, not because you tortured yourself for three months, but because you started thinking differently.
Before we go, I want to remind you of one resource that can really help you spring into summer. If you want to take what we talked about today and put it into action, I want you to grab my 21-Day Anti-Inflammatory Guide. It's a free resource PLUS a private podcast that all pairs perfectly with this series. You can find the link in the show notes.
And next week, we're moving into Episode 2 of the Spring Into Summer series. We're going to talk about nutrition, specifically why anti-inflammatory eating is the most underrated tool for midlife women who want results before summer. I'm really excited about that one, so make sure you're subscribed to this podcast so you don't miss it.
Thank you so much for spending this time with me today, my friend. I'll see you right back here next week on The Family Fork.
