There you are, standing in a fitting room. The fluorescent lights are doing you no favors. There’s a pile of about twenty rejected swimsuits on the bench beside you, and the one you’re currently wearing is… well, it’s a tiny triangle bikini top with your boobs sagging in it, and a bottom that has your butt cheeks halfway hanging out. Not to mention your stomach that is folding over the front of the suit.
You look at yourself in that mirror, and the first thought that comes flying in is, oh my god. There is no way I can wear this out in public. No way.
And then it shifts. Because right behind that first thought comes the disappointment, and right behind the disappointment comes the anger. How does this happen the same way every single year? I knew summer was coming. I’ve known for months. I knew I wanted to lose weight, I knew I wanted to feel comfortable at the pool, and yet here we are, a couple of weeks out, and I’m standing in this dressing room in this horrible swimsuit feeling completely defeated.
You walk out of that store and the conclusion you’ve come to is that swimsuits these days are only made for two kinds of women. Tiny teenagers, or older women who have already let themselves go. And neither of those is you.
You see yourself as someone who is still young. Still vibrant. Still wants to feel confident at the pool. But when you look at yourself in a swimsuit, all of that confidence just gets crushed.
My friend, welcome back to The Family Fork. I am so glad you’re here today, because we are going to talk about something I have honestly skirted around for a really long time on this podcast.
And that is the very real, very specific feeling of wanting to feel good in a swimsuit this summer.
I’ve avoided this topic because a lot of conversation out there about body positivity, about being comfortable in your own skin exactly as you are. And I love that conversation. I think it’s important. But what I see in my own life, and what I see with the women I work with inside the The Method, is that they actually want both.
My students (and I!) want to feel good about the body we have right now, and maybe you’re right there with us. But I see you…you also want to feel genuinely confident at the pool, on vacation, at the lake. You want to be able to walk around without a towel wrapped around your waist or a cover-up that goes from your neck to your knees.
I want to be proud of the body that I have today, but also don’t want to feel ashamed about working toward a better, stronger version of my physical self. I want to look good in a swimsuit, and have people say “oooh, she looks so fit and strong!” And I don’t want to hide this fact anymore, for the sake of being neutral for my audience.
So if that’s not what you’re looking for, this episode might not be the one for you. But if you’re sitting there nodding along, thinking yes, that is exactly what I want—I want to feel confident in a swimsuit this summer BUT I also feel like it’s way too late to do anything about it—please stay with me. This one is for you.
Because what I just described in that fitting room? That’s me almost every single year. I’m guessing you can relate.
And this is something my students have been bringing into our coaching calls inside The Method lately, and I have been coaching them through it in real time. Almost word for word, here is what comes up. I’ve let myself go. It’s too late for me this summer. There’s no way I can pull it together in time.
And these are not women who are sitting around doing nothing. They are doing the work inside the program. They are showing up. But that thought, that it’s-too-late thought, still creeps in for them, the same way it creeps in for me, the same way it probably creeps in for you. So if you have ever felt it, please know you are in good company.
So here’s what I want to do today. I want to talk about why your brain keeps landing in that exact same place every year. And I want to give you the actual way out, because there is one.
Now, let’s clear the air about something: I can’t convince you that it’s not too late.
If I just sit here and tell you, my sweet friend, it is not too late, you wouldn’t believe me. You’d push back and say, Ashley, you don’t get it. Summer is a couple of weeks away. I have a vacation booked. I have a girls’ trip right around the corner. There is no time to lose weight AND feel confident in my swimsuit.
The reason you believe it is too late, with so much certainty, is not because it’s actually true. It’s because your nervous system is running the show right now.
Let me walk you through exactly what that looks like.
Whether you’re standing in that fitting room I just described, or you’re lying in bed at night thinking about a vacation that’s coming up where you’re going to need to wear a swimsuit, you have a stream of thoughts that go something like this.
I’m too heavy to wear this swimsuit.
I’m too fat for the pool.
Everyone at the pool, at the lake, on the cruise, they are going to look at me and judge my body.
I will just have to wear a cover-up, and I’m going to keep that cover-up on the entire time.
Any of that sound familiar?
Now here’s what happens. Those thoughts trigger feelings in your body. Real, big feelings.
Maybe what comes up for you is disappointment. Like, oh my god, I am repeating this same exact cycle every single year. Why can’t I figure this out? Why can’t I just get myself together and lose some weight and feel confident in my body before summer ever gets here?
Maybe what comes up is shame. Because when you’re in perimenopause or menopause, your hormones are all over the place. You feel like you can’t control your body weight. You’ve been able to manage it most of your life, but now here you are in midlife, doing what feels like all the right things, and nothing is moving the needle.
And maybe what comes up is embarrassment. My students say this to me a lot, and I mean a lot. I’ve given up. I’ve let myself go. Those exact words.
These are real feelings. I feel them with you. I feel them in my own life.
SO here’s what changes that conversation that’s going on in your mind:
When you are thinking those thoughts and feeling those feelings, you are sending a signal to your body and your brain that it is not safe to make changes right now.
Let me say that one more time. The thoughts and the feelings I just described are signaling to your nervous system that change is not safe right now.
Your brain has a few jobs, one is to keep you safe, and another is to conserve your energy. Your brain is constantly running the calculation of, is this worth the effort? Should I expend resources on this?
So when your brain looks ahead at the summer and sees that it’s only a few weeks away, and it hears you thinking it is too late for me to lose any weight, it is too late for me to fit into a swimsuit, your brain goes, okay great. We’re not doing it. We’re stopping now (even before you get started).
Because your brain knows that making real changes takes effort. It takes work. And your brain especially does not want to put in that effort if it’s not even sure the effort is going to pay off.
And let’s be honest. How many times have you tried to lose weight and not lost it? Or you lost it and then gained it all back, and then some? Your brain remembers all of that. Your brain has receipts.
There’s the time you committed to working out five days a week and you made it through one week before life got in the way. Or the time you tried the counting macros and you barely pushed through it for 5 days. There’s the supplement you bought that promised everything and delivered nothing. Your brain has logged every single one of those experiences as evidence that you can’t do it, or that weight loss won’t work for you.
So now, when summer is coming and you’re thinking about trying again, your brain runs the numbers. And the numbers say, last time we did this, it cost us a lot of energy and we ended up right back where we started. Why would we sign up for that again, especially right now, with only a few weeks until summer.
So essentially, your brain is giving you a hall pass. It’s giving you an out. It’s saying, you know what, I don’t want to put in all that effort, and the easiest way for me to get out of putting in that effort is to convince you that it is too late.
Too late to make changes. Too late to lose weight. Too late to do anything meaningful before summer.
But here’s the problem with the hall pass. The hall pass leaves you in the exact same place you are today. Overweight. Disappointed. Embarrassed. Hiding under a cover-up. Repeating the same loop next summer, and the summer after that.
So just understanding what is happening, what your brain is doing and why, is honestly half the battle. Because once you can see it, you can do something about it.
And there is something you can do about it.
There is a solution here. It does require a little bit of work. But the payoff is enjoying your summer. Feeling confident in a swimsuit, even if it’s with a cover-up sometimes. And not getting to the end of August feeling like you wasted yet another year on the same exact cycle.
Here’s what I want you to do.
I want you to slowly step into a version of your summer self who can hold two things at the same time.
Number one, acceptance for where you are today.
Number two, the belief that you can change.
Both. At the same time. Not one or the other. Both.
Let’s talk about the acceptance piece first, because I think this is the harder one for most of the women I work with.
When I say acceptance, what I mean is accepting that in midlife, your body is going to change. Your hormones are dysregulated. They are shifting constantly, and that has a direct, measurable impact on your scale weight.
On top of that, you’re probably not sleeping all that well. Maybe you’re managing more stress at work than you used to. Maybe your family stress is at an all-time high. All of that means more cortisol, and more cortisol also impacts the number on the scale.
There are absolutely things you can do to support your body through all of this. We talk about them on this podcast all the time. But the reality is that perimenopause and menopause are going to impact every single woman on this planet. There is no skipping it. There is no opting out.
You have to accept that you need to do things differently than you did in your twenties or thirties. Your body might look different. And none of that is a reflection on who you are, what you’re capable of, or your worth as a human being.
I have to bring this up because it comes up so much with my students inside The Method. The women I work with are high-achievers. They have built careers. They have raised families. They are the person everyone turns to when something needs to get done.
And the very last thing they want is to be seen as someone who can’t figure out how to take care of their own health and wellness. So they resist this acceptance piece really hard, because to them, accepting where they are feels like admitting defeat. It feels like saying, I am inadequate.
But that is not what acceptance is. Acceptance is just saying, this is the season I am in. This is what is true for my body right now. I do not have to like it, but I do have to acknowledge it, because if I don’t, I cannot do anything about it.
Acceptance is also the thing that takes the shame out of it. Because as long as you’re standing in that fitting room thinking, this is happening because I am failing, this is happening because I am lazy, this is happening because something is wrong with me, you cannot make a clear decision about what to do next. You’re too busy beating yourself up to actually do some problem solving.
When you can drop into acceptance and say, oh, this is happening because my body is in a completely different hormonal landscape than it was ten years ago, and what worked then does not work now, that is a totally different starting point. From there, you can actually look around and figure out what to do.
Now the second thing you have to hold, at the same time, is the belief that you can change.
And the changes I’m talking about don’t have to be these huge, sweeping overhauls of your life. They can be smaller, more specific shifts.
It might look like pivoting to anti-inflammatory nutrition. Building your plate around the foods that work with a perimenopausal body instead of against it.
It might look like lifting heavier weights in your workouts. Not adding more cardio, not punishing yourself with longer workouts, but actually getting stronger.
It might look like saying no to alcohol, because you already know you don’t recover from a glass of wine the way you did ten years ago, and honestly, it does not even make you feel that great anymore.
It might look like bringing your own food to a potluck, or a barbecue, or a summer party. Not because you’re being weird about it, but because you are confident that supporting your body with the foods that actually serve you is going to get you to the goals you want.
I have a student inside The Method who started doing this, and I love this so much. She brings a beautiful big anti-inflammatory salad to share at her neighborhood barbecues, because she knows she can eat it – and that it supports her weight loss and wellness goals. And here is the best part. That salad is quickly becoming one of the top hits at her neighborhood BBQs. People look forward to it.
That is the kind of small change that ends up making a huge difference. Not because the salad itself is magic, but because she made a decision that supported her body, she felt good about it, and her belief in herself got a little stronger because of it.
These are real, doable changes. And they are the kinds of changes that move the needle for women in midlife.
So the goal here is to be able to hold the acceptance and the belief at the same time. I am where I am. And I am going to make some changes anyway.
I want to tell you about a student of mine inside The Method.
Before Heather joined the program, she told me she was thinking about waiting until summer to actually get started. She had a work trip coming up, and a couple weeks after that, she had a vacation planned with her girlfriends. She figured, you know what, I’ll just wait until all of that is behind me, and then I’ll really commit.
I encouraged Heather to do exactly what I am asking you to do right now. Hold the acceptance that this is what her life looks like, with the trips and the obligations and the schedule that was already in motion. And at the same time, hold the belief that she could start making changes right now, even with the work trip on the calendar.
She jumped in. And then off she went on the work trip, where her schedule was inconsistent, and her food was honestly whatever she could get, whenever she could get it. Not exactly a clean, controlled environment to be starting a weight loss program in.
And do you know what happened? Between her work trip and her girls’ trip, Heather lost 4 pounds. 4 pounds. With a chaotic work trip in the middle of it. While still living her actual life, with all of the things that were already on her calendar.
And here’s the lesson I want you to pull from her story. Heather did not have to overhaul her life to make meaningful progress. She did not have to cancel her trips. She did not have to wait for some perfect, clear, empty calendar to start. She just had to accept where she was and believe she could start anyway.
So let me bring this back to you, sitting wherever you’re sitting right now.
Real talk. You are probably not going to lose 20 or 30 pounds before summer gets here. I am not going to sit here and pretend that is on the table for most women in a few short weeks. That is not the goal.
The goal is to start moving toward the version of yourself you actually want to be. And to stop repeating this same loop next summer, and the summer after that, and the one after that.
Acceptance plus belief is what breaks the loop. Because when you can sit with where you are and at the same time choose to do something different, you give your nervous system the signal that it is safe to change. And once that signal is there, the rest of the work gets so much easier.
I want you to imagine yourself, end of August, looking back on this summer. And instead of the same exact disappointment you felt last year and the year before, you can look back and say, you know what, I did not get to my dream body in six weeks. But I did something different this year. I made some real changes. I lost a few pounds. I felt better in my swimsuit. I did not spend the whole summer hiding under a cover-up. I started something I am actually going to keep doing.
That is so different from where you were going to land if your brain got to keep telling you the it’s-too-late story. That version of summer is so much better than the alternative.
Now, if all of this is sounding good to you, but you are sitting there going, okay Ashley, but how do I actually do this. How do I actually learn how to hold both of those things at the same time, on a Wednesday morning, when I’m looking at myself in the mirror and facing a long day ahead. This is exactly what I teach inside The Perimenopause Weight Loss Method.
It is my 8-week, high-touch program for women in midlife who want to lose up to 15 pounds and actually keep it off this time. You do that by learning how to accept who you are today, and at the same time, looking at the specific changes you can make right now that will move you toward the future version of yourself you want to be.
And yes. You absolutely can jump in before summer gets here. That is the whole point. You do not have to wait until the trips are over. You do not have to wait until your calendar clears. You can start exactly where you are.
If you want to find out if The Method is the right fit for you, the next step is to book a call with me. We get on Zoom together, I learn about where you are and what you want, and we figure out together if this is your next step. The link will be in the show notes.
My sweet friend, I want this summer to feel different for you. I want you to walk out to the pool, or onto the beach, or onto the cruise ship, with a little more confidence than you walked into this episode with. Not because your body is suddenly perfect, because that is not how it works, but because you finally know what to actually do with the brain and the nervous system and the body you have right now.
It is not too late. Your brain is just trying to tell you it is, because that is the easier story.
Choose the harder story, and you’ll get a MUCH better outcome.
Thanks for joining me today, and I’ll see you next week on The Family Fork.
