Erin Maillo: Okay.
Erin Maillo: All right, everyone, welcome back to the Healing Her IBS podcast. I’m so happy to be here, and today I have a special guest, Ashley Malik.
Erin Maillo: who is a specialist in weight loss, in perimenopause health, who also has a podcast called The Family Fork.
Erin Maillo: And she’s gonna talk to us today about… The importance of gut health.
Erin Maillo: And specifically in the areas that she focuses on. So I’m super selfishly happy to have you here today, Ashley, because I’m in that perimenopause age, and I’m like, I’m feeling it.
Erin Maillo: Yeah. And I know there’s so many overlapping things going on with us as women, in terms of our hormones, our gut health.
Erin Maillo: etc. So I’m just really grateful that you’re here.
Ashley Malik: Thank you. I am so excited to be here, and to, yeah, hopefully shed some light on my journey and ways to make life easier with food and gut health.
Erin Maillo: Absolutely, and it’s… before we move on, let me just say to my listeners out there, last week I was sick.
Erin Maillo: And so I still have this little kind of tickle in my throat, so if I’m clearing my throat consistently throughout today’s episode, that’s the reason why it’s nothing… nothing big or anything. I just wanted to give you guys a heads up, because it’s kind of weird. Like, right now.
Erin Maillo: Okay, maybe I’ll try to edit those out, who knows? Okay, Ashley, so let’s get started. Could you just… I mean, I know I gave a little bit of an intro there in terms of…
Erin Maillo: what you’re… what you’re focusing on, and what you’re offering, and what you’re interested in, but could you just give us a little, better summary than I did?
Ashley Malik: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think, like most people, the necessity is the mother of invention, so…
Ashley Malik: years ago, about… I guess we’re coming on to found 15, or yeah, 14 years ago.
Ashley Malik: I found that I was really, really struggling with not only my weight, but just brain fog. I had a lot of joint pain. I didn’t feel well, and so I… for about 3 years, I went to different doctors, and they would
Ashley Malik: as most people know, like, you go to your doctor, they take some tests, and they’re like, I don’t know, everything looks normal, come back in 6 months. And after a while, I just got really tired of doing that, and so that sort of allowed me to find my way toward functional medicine.
Ashley Malik: And understanding that there was probably something else going on, I was just seeing the symptoms of what was… what was happening in my body.
Ashley Malik: And so, throughout some time with a functional practitioner, I was able to discover that I had Hashimoto’s.
Ashley Malik: and hypothyroidism, so both impacting the thyroid and the immune system. I had severe nutrient deficiencies, and what… what came out of that process was really understanding how impactful food is.
Ashley Malik: to literally every part of our body. It’s the only way that our body continues to work, is with the right kind of food. And so, it put me on this, excuse me, this long journey of understanding the food that I eat impacts my gut health. My gut health impacts
Ashley Malik: My mental health, my physical health, my ability to be patient with my children, like, literally all of it.
Ashley Malik: And so, I put myself on that journey and was able to heal my gut health. I put my Hashimoto’s into remission, which felt really great. I was able to lose 65 pounds, and all of this while
Ashley Malik: you know, continuing to manage perimenopause and that kind of thing, but what I discovered in my own journey, and what I now know in my work with other women, is that
Ashley Malik: We like to gather a lot of information about
Ashley Malik: gut health, or IBS, or what might be happening with our body.
Ashley Malik: But then there’s this gap between the information that we have and implementing. So, how do we implement? How do we implement consistently? And so, I found that there was a… a need for being able to help… I work specifically with women, but being able to help women to understand, like.
Ashley Malik: gathering information isn’t just enough. We have to do more than that. And so, I actually… I’m a… I have a master’s in social work, and I used to be a therapist, so I’ve sort of wrapped in my personal journey, my professional journey, and placed it into this area where I really am so passionate about helping women understand
Ashley Malik: You can have all the information in the world, but if you don’t feel good and happy and calm about implementing that information, you’ll never see the results that you’re looking for.
Erin Maillo: Absolutely, absolutely. I see the same exact thing
Erin Maillo: with women that I work with, and also with myself, too, you know? It’s… it’s like, I’ve been through the gamut, and it’s just…
Erin Maillo: You know so much, you… it’s like you know you should be eating blah blah blah, but then you don’t.
Erin Maillo: And then you feel the consequence of it, and then you want to make a radical change, but then the motivation drops, and then real life gets in the way, and, yeah, I think that’s why it can be so impactful to work with someone like you.
Erin Maillo: To help bridge, like you were saying, bridge that gap.
Erin Maillo: Yeah, yeah, and we just…
Ashley Malik: As humans, we don’t…
Erin Maillo: Hmm.
Ashley Malik: Like, our brain wants to avoid that gap. We don’t even want to see that it’s there, and so this is where it’s really beneficial to find someone to work with, somebody that you resonate with, to help… to help you see your own, like, how am I covering up the gap, and what do I need to do to bridge that gap?
Erin Maillo: Yes, yes.
Erin Maillo: So, you specifically focus a lot on anti-inflammatory foods.
Erin Maillo: Could you just give us a brief… because I think that a lot of us have heard, you know, inflammation, and is there a connection between IBS and inflammation and the anti-inflammatory diet, but could you just break it down, like, what
Erin Maillo: what it is, what does it mean to eat in, like, an anti-inflammatory way? And if you see…
Erin Maillo: any connections between inflammation and digestive issues, or IBS?
Ashley Malik: Yeah, definitely. So…
Ashley Malik: there is a direct correlation between your gut health and inflammation. So when your gut health, when your gut microbiome is imbalanced, or you have, you know, you have an overgrowth of a particular type of bacteria in your gut.
Ashley Malik: It sends your body into, sort of, this state of systemic inflammation, and so…
Ashley Malik: You may see digestive issues, but you can also see things like
Ashley Malik: brain fog. You know, it affects your brain and your mental health. I notice when I’m able to help my gut be really optimal, then my mental health, my depression, my anxiety kind of goes away. So you can see it in every area. Skin issues, hair issues, all of that.
Ashley Malik: So, the idea is to eat an anti-inflammatory diet, and I think when most people hear that, they’re like, ugh, that sounds gross, I think that’s gonna be a bunch of vegetables and boring, or, oh my gosh, I’m going to have to take away so many foods.
Ashley Malik: So, the approach that I take is that it’s really, really important to understand that, yes.
Ashley Malik: An anti-inflammatory diet does take out some
Ashley Malik: food groups that can be more inflammatory. Right off the bat, we look at, like, dairy and sugar, gluten here in the United States. I know there’s some conversation about gluten in other countries, but gluten in the United States, alcohol.
Ashley Malik: You know, a lot of times we forget about that, but that two glasses of wine a night can also contribute to that systemic inflammation, because all of those foods are disrupting your natural balance of your gut microbiome.
Ashley Malik: But, it’s important to look at the other side of, what do I get to add in? And it is a shift for a lot of people who are eating sort of that standard American diet, or they’re eating a lot of processed foods.
Ashley Malik: To all of a sudden shift and eat more vegetables, more lean proteins.
Ashley Malik: You know, like, fish, and some chicken, turkey, things like that.
Ashley Malik: it is a shift, but we get to add in color, variety, different tastes, different flavors. And once you transition, really, your taste buds away from processed foods, which are
Ashley Malik: created in a lab to be more desirable. They’re created so that your body wants more and more and more of them, but once you transition your taste buds away from that.
Ashley Malik: you start to recognize, wow, these herbs taste really good. This, you know, this salmon that I made tastes really amazing. So, it does take some time, but I really think it’s important to look at what you can add.
Ashley Malik: And what new things you’re trying, as opposed to just saying, ugh, I can’t have any more sugar or alcohol, what a bummer. It’s more… it’s more than that.
Erin Maillo: Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. And, I was listening to one of your podcasts, and you were talking about chocolate.
Ashley Malik: Yeah.
Erin Maillo: And about, you know, thinking about this whole, okay, if we’re removing sugar, if we’re aiming for this anti-inflammatory diet.
Erin Maillo: How does chocolate… do you eat chocolate? You include it as part of… is it anti-inflammatory?
Ashley Malik: So, I eat chocolate every day.
Erin Maillo: Oh, every day, okay.
Ashley Malik: Every single day, but I have found a type of chocolate that is not going to promote additional inflammation. So, I’m eating a very small square. I’m eating dark chocolate. I think the one that I eat is, like, 75% dark.
Ashley Malik: It is made with coconut sugar, and so by looking at the ingredients, we can find things…
Ashley Malik: I do not believe that we should feel deprived just because we’re eating an anti-inflammatory diet. I eat tacos, I eat pizza, I eat, you know, chocolate, I eat cookies, like, I eat all of these things.
Ashley Malik: It’s important to just find
Ashley Malik: Those ingredients that are going to allow us to not contribute to that inflammation storm that’s probably already happening inside of our gut microbiome.
Erin Maillo: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, when I,
Erin Maillo: I didn’t do the… I didn’t do an anti-inflammatory diet when I was diagnosed with IBS, but I did do the low FODMAP protocol. I don’t know if you’ve heard that. So, there’s a lot of overlap, you know, obviously the FODMAPs have to do with the different types of sugars, but
Erin Maillo: you know, initially, I cut out gluten, I cut out dairy, I cut out…
Erin Maillo: beans, that was a big one. I mean, I know beans are healthy, and now I do… now I am able to eat beans. Yeah. But there’s other things, like gluten, where it’s like…
Erin Maillo: is it beneficial for me to add in, even though I’ve recovered from my IBS and I think that I can tolerate it? It’s just, now it’s at the point where it’s like, yes, but I want to ensure the future health of my body.
Erin Maillo: You know what I mean? Like, I’ve… I’ve ridden myself of the IBS, and now… and I’ve learned so much, and now I want to…
Erin Maillo: take what I learned and instill those habits in my everyday life, you know, in… in… because it’s… it’s… it’s so tricky, because it’s… it’s the everyday thing.
Ashley Malik: And then there’s the, the everyday choices.
Erin Maillo: compound to make… The future of your health.
Ashley Malik: Yes.
Erin Maillo: No.
Ashley Malik: It gets really tricky, because I think there’s…
Ashley Malik: there’s… there’s phases. There’s, like, that elimination phase where, especially if you’re trying to eat a low FODMAP, or autoimmune, or AIP, you know, any of those, like, really restrictive diets, quote-unquote,
Ashley Malik: you do so… you have to start your body somewhere, and sometimes, you know, I know yours was extreme, my experience when I was really sick was extreme, and…
Ashley Malik: I would have done anything at all to feel better, and so I did. So I, like, quickly jumped off and said, okay, no gluten, no dairy, no sugar, none of these things, but then over time, you heal. But then I think it’s also this balance of figuring out, like, am I afraid of the foods, or…
Ashley Malik: for me.
Ashley Malik: I like to believe that I have healed to a point where I probably could eat gluten. I don’t really need to, because I have created a food environment in my kitchen where I have things that I crave, that I love, that don’t include gluten.
Ashley Malik: And I… that’s what I’d rather eat, and it’s healthier, and it feels solid and whole for my body, so I… you know, I think it takes time to get to that point, but I do think that there is a phase where you really… you have to start somewhere, and slow things down for your body, let your body heal, and then slowly reintroduce things
Ashley Malik: If it feels like it’s the right thing for your body.
Erin Maillo: Exactly. Like, at the beginning, when I cut out dairy, that was for a long time, and I was trying to reintroduce dairy, because I love dairy, I love, you know, Greek yogurt specifically, I feel like has a lot of protein and is a very good option, like, easy breakfast option.
Erin Maillo: So I really wanted to reincorporate it, but it just took…
Erin Maillo: it took some time, you know, and I was like, okay, well, not this month, not next month, you know? Yeah.
Erin Maillo: But with the gluten, like I said, it’s… I haven’t felt… I’ve tried it here and there, and then I’m just kind of like, ugh, I’ve been gluten-free for so long now that I’m so used to getting my carbs from other places other than, like, bread. It’s like…
Erin Maillo: I love rice, I eat potatoes, and potatoes are much more nutritionally packed than, you know, a slice of bread would be, and it’s that convenience factor.
Erin Maillo: I think. It’s the convenience factor, and you’re just doing it for convenience, rather than for real nourishment. And, you know, sometimes I’m on different sites where people are talking about IBS, and…
Erin Maillo: They’re… they’re talking about…
Erin Maillo: how much they’re suffering with IBS, and the symptoms, and, you know, it’s really intense. And then…
Erin Maillo: they’ll say, like, oh, and then I had 4 beers. Like, why, why? What? And I’m like, what? Why?
Erin Maillo: Why, like, obviously, I think there’s a lot of overlooking things, because we’re so… I don’t know, so inculturated in eating a certain way, or including alcohol into our daily lives, that we don’t question
Erin Maillo: deeply the effect that it’s having on us.
Ashley Malik: Yes, so this is, alcohol, in particular, is always an interesting journey for people, and…
Erin Maillo: Yeah.
Ashley Malik: One of the approaches that I take is, I lightly mentioned it at the beginning, is really making sure that
Ashley Malik: we like to believe that the situation that we’re in creates the outcomes that we have. So, if I have IBS, if I have Hashimoto’s, if I have an autoimmune disease.
Ashley Malik: Therefore, I am deprived, and I don’t get to eat all the fun foods.
Ashley Malik: what the reality is, is that it’s the thoughts and the feelings that we have that create our outcome. So, I can say that for me, I had Hashimoto’s, and that created a lot of gut dysbiosis, I had a lot of gut issues, I still continue to struggle to this day, like, 14 years later, I have to be really careful with some things.
Ashley Malik: But alcohol is one of those things where you could say, you know, yeah, I have IBS, but I’m just gonna have these 3 beers tonight. Like, it’s just gonna be fun.
Ashley Malik: What’s actually happening is that in our brain, in our nervous system.
Ashley Malik: we don’t know how we fit in with our friend group, our family, whoever we’re out drinking with. If all of a sudden you stop drinking.
Ashley Malik: what are your friends gonna say? And so, I like to share that I used to be a big drinker. I was not an alcoholic, but I definitely, like, I enjoyed going out on the weekends and drinking on Thursday and Friday night, and…
Ashley Malik: I would make a cocktail, and people called it the Ashley Cocktail, because it tasted really good.
Ashley Malik: But it was really, like, it was really strong, and so…
Ashley Malik: I… drinking was a part of my life. And so, when I had to stop drinking, and again, I use that word, like, had to stop drinking, I chose to stop drinking. For a while, I had those thoughts, like.
Ashley Malik: God, I feel so, like, lame around these people. Like, everyone’s drinking and having a good time, and I’m just the quiet one in the corner now. I had to really re-evaluate
Ashley Malik: who am I when I drink, and who am I when I don’t drink? I had to create a different identity for myself, and so…
Ashley Malik: it did not happen overnight. It took time. It took proving to myself that I can still be fun, even when I’m not drinking. I can still feel comfortable even when I’m not drinking. And so over time, I went from the creator of the Ashley Cocktail to the
Ashley Malik: Oh, that’s Ashley. She’s the one who’s really fit and healthy in our group.
Ashley Malik: Once you can make that identity shift, it makes it…
Ashley Malik: exponentially easier to start changing the way you eat, the things you drink or don’t drink, the things you eat or don’t eat. But it’s not… like you said earlier, we know… we know what we should be eating, we know what we should or shouldn’t be drinking.
Ashley Malik: What happens is our thoughts and our feelings get in the way of making those decisions.
Ashley Malik: And that is ultimately what’s gonna drive our outcomes, whether or not we feel good and healthy, or we keep sort of complaining and feeling stuck in the fact that, like, I have digestive issues, I have an autoimmune disease.
Ashley Malik: poor me. It all depends on your thoughts and your feelings.
Erin Maillo: Absolutely, and that…
Erin Maillo: Oh, that identity piece. You know, for me, I used to be a really big drinker, too, and it was… it was always to, deal with a certain social anxiety.
Ashley Malik: Yeah.
Erin Maillo: You know, it’s just, I felt so awkward, and it’s like, I mean, it’s so true that alcohol just immediately, at least for me, immediately relaxes you in social situations. So, if you’re gonna give up alcohol.
Erin Maillo: Yeah, you have to… you have to work through the discomfort, the uncomfortable feelings, the thoughts of.
Erin Maillo: you know, what are they thinking? Oh, I said something stupid, or this, this, that when you’re drinking,
Erin Maillo: For good or bad.
Erin Maillo: for better or worse, you’re not thinking about that, and that’s why the next day you wake up and you’re like, wait, like, what did I say? You don’t… you don’t think about the stupid things that you did or said until the next day. It’s like a delayed…
Erin Maillo: Reaction, but yeah, alcohol can be very disruptive to the body and to the microbiome, and…
Erin Maillo: It’s a hard thing for people to…
Erin Maillo: give up. But it’s like what you were saying.
Erin Maillo: if you… Are desperate enough.
Erin Maillo: If you get to a point where you’re like, this…
Erin Maillo: This symptom, this disorder is kind of ruining my life.
Ashley Malik: Yeah. At that point, you have to say, like.
Erin Maillo: okay, and I’m unwilling to change my lifestyle, my diet, or give up alcohol to see, at least to experiment.
Erin Maillo: Yeah. You know, because I think there’s also a lot of people who think, oh, but that’s not it, that doesn’t contribute, or I eat fine, I eat healthy, but they don’t really understand, like…
Erin Maillo: What does healthy mean?
Ashley Malik: Yes.
Erin Maillo: In terms of you, and your body, and your gut, and… Etc.
Ashley Malik: For those of us with chronic illness, it is very easy to have gone so long feeling like garbage.
Erin Maillo: Yeah.
Ashley Malik: That we actually forget, like…
Ashley Malik: I… I had no idea how bad I had felt for so long. And then once I started turning the tide on what I was eating, and getting some thyroid medication on board, and some different supplements to help with the nutrient deficiencies.
Ashley Malik: like, I felt like I was putting on, like, Wizard of Oz glasses or something. I’m like, I had no idea how bad I felt. And so, we do, we sort of… it’s this, like.
Ashley Malik: tug and pull of human nature that we don’t feel good, but in this day and age, everything moves quickly. Technology gives us what we need. We constantly have these, like, dopamine hits, and
Ashley Malik: When it comes to changing what you eat, and changing your identity around your health, and who you are as a healthy, fit, healed person.
Ashley Malik: it’s like, it takes a long time. And that dopamine hit does not come in quickly, whereas if you have a drink, or you have a burrito, or you have something that you know is not going to fit well with your body, maybe it felt good at the time.
Ashley Malik: But it takes days, and this is what I find with my work with women in perimenopause, like, we all know, we used to drink more, and now we have one drink, and whereas it used to take us, like, a day to recover, now it’s, like, 4 days! And so.
Ashley Malik: That’s happening with alcohol or food or anything when you struggle with this gut dysbiosis.
Ashley Malik: It’s just gonna take so long for you to recover.
Erin Maillo: Absolutely, and thank you for bringing that up, because I really wanted to make sure that we talked about the perimenopause piece. So, women who are going through that
Erin Maillo: transition, which can be for quite a long time, the process from beginning to end, you know, decades, at least a decade, I think, for most women.
Erin Maillo: What is going on there? Like, why are we becoming more sensitive to alcohol, not sleeping as well, not able… maybe gaining weight, not tolerating…
Erin Maillo: foods that we used to be able to tolerate. What’s hormonally going on with us there?
Ashley Malik: Yeah. Essentially, your body is losing all of the hormones that it used to have, and what’s challenging is that, you’re right, it does… it can be, like, 10, 12 years… like, it’s a very long cycle, and hormonally.
Ashley Malik: what starts at the very beginning is, I think it’s Dr. Mary Claire Haver, and she calls it, the Zone of Chaos.
Ashley Malik: And what it looks like is your progesterone and your estrogen and your testosterone literally are all over the place. They’re up, they’re down, one day, the next day, like, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. That happens before
Ashley Malik: the grouping of hormones really starts to decline more consistently over time. And so, in those early days, what we start to see is, like, gosh, you know, I felt so good today, but, like, the next two days.
Ashley Malik: why didn’t I feel good, or I had a lot of brain fog, or I’m not sleeping well? It is impacting so many different metabolic processes in your body that it’s kind of hard to pinpoint what’s going on.
Ashley Malik: But as women, specifically, I think we’re very geared to…
Ashley Malik: we actually listen to our bodies a lot. We know when something is not right. We also have been, I think, socialized to just push that aside, because there’s family to take care of, and there’s work to do, and there’s laundry, like, all the things, so we kind of push it aside when we don’t feel well.
Ashley Malik: But every woman that I’ve ever worked with, every woman that I talk to, my friends, my neighbors that are going through perimenopause or have already gone through it, they’re like, yeah, I just fell off. I didn’t feel myself. I didn’t feel great.
Ashley Malik: And we don’t know what to do with it. I love the conversation that has started happening literally just this year around perimenopause and helping to raise awareness that it’s impacting every part of our body.
Ashley Malik: We just have to tune in and start listening. And so when you notice that you’re not sleeping as well.
Ashley Malik: Or maybe you’re more irritable, you’re having a lot of brain fog, you’re having joint pain.
Ashley Malik: A lot of women that I’ve been talking to recently, we’ve been complaining about ringing in our ears, or ears that are itchy, like, weird, weird things. And so, trying to understand, again, gathering that information to understand.
Ashley Malik: What does… what do my symptoms of perimenopause look like?
Ashley Malik: But then that allows you to then bridge that gap to say, okay, if I’m starting perimenopause, what are some of my options? And I truly, I still think it goes back to food. So much of what your body is experiencing is creating additional inflammation in your body when you’re in perimenopause.
Ashley Malik: So, being able to…
Ashley Malik: help your body by eating an anti-inflammatory diet. Yes, there are other things you can do. You can take hormone replacement therapy or not. You can lift weights or not. Like, there’s lots of other levers to pull.
Ashley Malik: But food is going to consistently be the thing that takes you from 35 years to 85 years old, and it will benefit you every single day, if you do it right.
Erin Maillo: Yes, yes, I’m so there, and I’m very grateful, too, to that conversation now, because otherwise, I don’t think I would have known what was going on for me. You know, it was like, you know… and I think a lot of women, too, now are having babies later.
Ashley Malik: Yeah. You know? And so, for me, it was like.
Erin Maillo: I had my son, and then there was all the hormonal shifts of pregnancy and postpartum, and then very soon after that, started experiencing, like, perimenopause, and it’s like, wow, you just go straight from, like.
Erin Maillo: you know, having the baby into, wait, what’s happening? And, you know, what would happen for me is
Erin Maillo: sometimes my periods… I wouldn’t get my period for 2 or 3 months.
Ashley Malik: Yeah.
Erin Maillo: Right? And then I’d be like, am I pregnant? I’m 42 years old, am I pre… like, I’m getting pregnancy tests, and then… and then I would have a next… the next cycle would be 20 days long, and then it… and it was just like… and I would just…
Erin Maillo: be… sometimes, like you’re saying, the chaos… sometimes I would be super energetic.
Erin Maillo: And super happy, super joyful, and then the next week, just destroyed. Just like I couldn’t work, I’m on the couch, I’m crying, and I’m just like, this is definitely hormonal. Like, this is…
Erin Maillo: You know, this is intense. So, I think I am very grateful that that conversation had started as I was going into it, because otherwise I wouldn’t have…
Erin Maillo: known.
Erin Maillo: Yeah, it’s just…
Ashley Malik: So many women don’t know, I talk about my mom is turning 84 this year, I think, 85, and she…
Ashley Malik: you know, I said something, I’m like, oh, I’m gonna send a hot flash, and she’s like, you’re telling people that?
Ashley Malik: But, like, the shift that has happened between when she went through and went, you know, went to menopause and now obviously is post-menopausal.
Ashley Malik: nobody was talking about it, and, you know, the Women’s Health Initiative that really scared people away from therapies that might be really beneficial, it’s…
Ashley Malik: we have done so much this year to just raise the level of awareness, and I often look back to my journey that started, you know, 14, 15 years ago, and I think I was in perimenopause. I think that was a part of it, too, and
Ashley Malik: You know, I ended up having a baby at 44, so I know that feeling of, like, I’m pregnant, and then I’m hormonal, but I’m not pregnant anymore. Like, it’s such a shift. But just knowing that we have that conversation, that more and more information is coming out, more research.
Ashley Malik: you know, they’re looking to invest in more research around perimenopause. It’s so… it’s desperately needed, and so I feel like this is a great time to be alive as a woman, that we really get to see this massive shift societally in how we handle this transition, and who we get to become as women.
Erin Maillo: Exactly, and… and… and connecting with each other around… like, I like what you were saying about, we know that there’s something off with our bodies, but it… it’s… there’s so many responsibilities.
Erin Maillo: that it’s… Somehow it feels easier, when life is so chaotic, to just, if you can push it away.
Erin Maillo: you know, if you can push it away, it’s like if it was your child, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t push it away. You would put it top priority, and…
Erin Maillo: then we break down, you know? It’s like, that was my experience, is just like.
Erin Maillo: Okay, but my not being well has a direct and clear.
Ashley Malik: consequence.
Erin Maillo: for my family.
Ashley Malik: Yes.
Erin Maillo: like…
Erin Maillo: That’s… that too is something… it’s sad that sometimes women have to get to that point where they’re like, wait a second.
Erin Maillo: I’m not taking care of myself, and so now I’m… I’m losing my patience with my child, you know, and then you feel guilty, you feel shame, you… you know, and it’s just this cycle of just… and it’s… it’s you that’s at the center.
Erin Maillo: Yeah. You know, and reframing…
Erin Maillo: sometimes you have to invest money in yourself. Sometimes you have to invest time away from your family
Erin Maillo: And it’s not selfish, because you are an essential part, if not the most important part, of your family.
Ashley Malik: Of your family unit. Yeah, I couldn’t… I couldn’t agree more, and I read, I think it was in Dr. Mary Claire Haver’s book, I read that
Ashley Malik: One of the things that shifts when you go through perimenopause and into menopause is that you lose the amount of oxytocin that you have in your body, or the ability to produce as much oxytocin. So, if you’re not familiar, oxytocin is that bonding hormone that surges inside of a mom when she’s ready to deliver, and that’s how she bonds with her baby.
Ashley Malik: And so, what’s interesting is that because we have this ability to create less oxytocin as we get older.
Ashley Malik: all of a sudden, this… I think this is what that shift is for us to say, you know what? I’m raising my hand to say, I don’t want to feel this way anymore. I don’t want to have this level of stress. I don’t want to, you know.
Ashley Malik: feel taxed out all the time. It’s because we have less oxytocin
Ashley Malik: And we’re less, you know, less inspired. I’m so sorry, my dog is barking.
Erin Maillo: Oh, it’s all over.
Ashley Malik: Sorry. But I, you know, I have less oxytocin, and so therefore.
Ashley Malik: we as women, start realizing, you know what, it’s my turn, it’s my time, but also.
Ashley Malik: if I don’t take care of myself, like you said, it really has a detrimental effect on the rest of the family.
Erin Maillo: Absolutely.
Erin Maillo: So, talking about families, I’m curious, because I know that you talk in your podcast and in your work about…
Erin Maillo: when we’re making these dietary shifts, when we’re moving towards eating in a way that really supports our health and well-being, if we’re mothers, if we have families, if there’s people, if we’re cooking for… do you have any tips about how to make that work? Because is it like making two separate meals? I think that so many women are like, I just can’t deal with that because
Erin Maillo: then I’m gonna be cooking all the time, I’m gonna be preparing my meal and their meal, and it’s like, it’s just too much.
Ashley Malik: Yep, absolutely. So, this was a huge driving force for me in not only my own health journey, but in helping women who are moms
Ashley Malik: To shift the way they think about nutrition.
Ashley Malik: So, when I… so I have… I don’t think I mentioned… I have two different kids. I have a 23, almost 24-year-old son from a first marriage, and then, like I said, I have… I got pregnant when I was 44, so I have a 6-year-old, with my husband now, and so…
Ashley Malik: in… in my health journey, I found that… that exact same thing. Like, my son at that time was busy playing lacrosse and snowboarding and very, very active. He was growing… one year he grew 13 inches, so he was, like, growing really, really fast, and
Ashley Malik: at that time, when I was looking and saying, oh, you know, I’m gonna swap out zucchini noodles, or, you know, swap out the gluten noodles for some zucchini noodles.
Ashley Malik: he would look at me, he’s like, Mom, I love you, but…
Ashley Malik: I’m not gonna eat those, you know? Like, he wanted cornbread and ribs and, like, mashed potatoes and things that are really hearty and filling for him, and I was eating something very different.
Ashley Malik: At that time in my life, I was also working 60 hours a week, and I was commuting 2 hours a day. As a single mom, I had literally no time.
Ashley Malik: So, what I developed then is a method today that I call component cooking. And the idea is twofold. One, that you’re only going to make one meal every night that works for your entire family, and two, you’re only going to cook three nights a week, but you’re going to eat all week long.
Ashley Malik: So, the way that this works is that on maybe Sunday night, you’re going to make
Ashley Malik: say, a big, like, 2 or 3 pounds of ground beef, and you’re gonna season it with some fun seasonings. That Sunday night, maybe you’re going to make tacos.
Ashley Malik: For your family, your family can have
Ashley Malik: The wheat taco shell, or whatever, you know, whatever they want.
Ashley Malik: and all of the toppings that work for them. If you want an anti-inflammatory option, what I do is I put my taco meat on a bed of lettuce, and I add… I don’t eat tomatoes, I don’t eat a lot of hot peppers, so I add the toppings that work for me. One meal that’s made, everybody kind of puts what they want
Ashley Malik: the idea is to always have components. So, in… I provide a lot of recipes and different things. You’ll rarely see, like, a casserole or a one-dish meal, because you can’t… you can’t divide out the components to work for everybody.
Ashley Malik: But then, once you have that taco meat, you’ve done it one night in tacos, but maybe 3 or 4 nights later, you’re going to put that into Sloppy Joe’s, or something else. So it’s not like you’re having leftovers constantly, because I know a lot of families don’t buy into leftovers.
Ashley Malik: But you’re still… you’re managing and being really efficient with your time in the kitchen when you do cook, so you’re batch cooking anytime you do cook.
Ashley Malik: So you can do that 3 nights in a week, and then you can repurpose your components throughout the rest of the week.
Ashley Malik: So, it’s a… it’s… to me, it’s a very… like, it was the only way that I could cook for myself, my son, have what I needed, have what he needed, but everybody was happy, and so you can kind of get buy-in from your family if your family is saying, you know, yeah, I want…
Ashley Malik: Mac and cheese and hamburgers. Great! How can you make mac and cheese for your family? You can make hamburgers that work for everyone.
Ashley Malik: anti-inflammatory style, it’s just gonna look different. It’s not gonna have a bun. Maybe you’re using, you know, some sort of anti-inflammatory sauce as opposed to ketchup, or what, you know, whatever modifications you need to make.
Ashley Malik: I actually have a guide that I’d love to share with your listeners, that it’s a 21… it’s a 21-day anti-inflammatory
Ashley Malik: meal plan, but it’s built in this structure so that the first 3 days of the week, you’re cooking, the rest of the week, you’re repurposing. It’s really… it’s slick, and it’s good. It’s fun stuff. Your family’s gonna eat tacos, they’re gonna eat burgers, they’re gonna eat some of the things they’re more comfortable with.
Ashley Malik: But there’s a way to make an anti-inflammatory option out of all of those meals, so you’re not cooking extra, or spending tons of time in the kitchen.
Erin Maillo: Yes, thank you so much. That is such a good… such a good framework, I love that. I’m like, I’m gonna… I’m gonna read through that. I love that idea. It’s so funny that you mentioned zucchini… zucchini noodles, because I was thinking to myself, or another option is you move to Italy, and like.
Erin Maillo: My son, he eats lunch at school. A lot of kids go home for lunch, but, like, me and my husband work, so he stays.
Erin Maillo: And I’m like, what’d you have for lunch today? And it’s always like, we had zucchini… for our first plate, we had risotto of butternut squash. For our second plate, we had zucchini and carrots and, like.
Erin Maillo: salmon. I’m like, what? They have the most… and that’s what he loves. I’m like, what do you want? He’s like, I want zucchini, I want the… you know, he loves lentil soup, he loves… he just has such a… I feel so lucky. I’m like, is it Italy? Because…
Erin Maillo: I don’t know, if we had stayed, you know, if we had stayed in the States, I don’t know if he would have gravitated so much towards eating like that.
Ashley Malik: Yeah. Yeah, it’s really… it’s, you know, again, it’s human nature that we see what people are doing around us.
Erin Maillo: And so I.
Ashley Malik: I think for kids who are trying to fit in, again, it goes all the way back to our nervous system, like, wanting to feel secure and accepted, and so kids see what the other kids are eating, and I have another free guide that I can send you a link to. It’s an after-school snacks guide.
Ashley Malik: I worked with my daughter to figure out what are all of the kids at your school eating for, like, snacks, and what, like, what are they bringing? And I found anti-inflammatory swaps and
Ashley Malik: like, low sugar, no artificial colors or flavors, all of these different products that you can swap out with. So, her friends may be eating fruit snacks, and my daughter is eating, like, pressed mango, and she doesn’t care, because it kind of looks the same, and…
Ashley Malik: She is actually feeling better, and not having…
Ashley Malik: early onset digestive issues because of the processed foods she’s eating. So, yeah, I mean, I think it’s definitely… my older sister lives in Sweden and says a lot of the same thing, that it’s… the foods, the options are so different outside of the United States, and…
Ashley Malik: I don’t know. I’m a huge, huge advocate to changing what we feed in schools, what we offer on the store shelves here in America, because we’re poisoning our people.
Erin Maillo: Horrible. I was, you know, and I would just… I used to teach at public school in California for many years, and, you know, it was… it was also really hard for me to watch, too, because of the income
Erin Maillo: disparities between the kids, it was, like, the kids that were low-income received, you know, the free lunch and the free snacks, and what they offered in the cafeteria was just, like, I cannot believe… I would just, like, be huffing and puffing around.
Erin Maillo: Yep. But the kids who brought their snacks for home, it wasn’t always perfect, but it was always, like.
Erin Maillo: 10 times better than what they were offering at the school, and I’m like, but this is a place of education! Why are we doing… it just…
Erin Maillo: It… it felt… corrupt. After a while, I was like, this is… this is not necessary. You know.
Ashley Malik: It’s awful. My… one of the meals that my daughter says they serve at her school is cheese-stuffed breadsticks.
Ashley Malik: And I’m like.
Ashley Malik: can you please explain to me where the nutritional value is in that meal? Like, I’m assuming the cheese, they think, is protein. Yes, a lot… a lot needs to change, but I think that’s where, like, back to the idea of working and modeling to your family.
Ashley Malik: you know, my daughter knows. We talk all the time about gut health, and I have these little, like, clove drops that I give her when I’m like, okay, is your gut health feeling off? She’s like, yeah, I feel a little anxious lately. I’m like, great, let’s see how we can rebalance that. Let’s watch the amount of sugar that we’re having. So, by starting to have that conversation in your household.
Ashley Malik: And then also modeling the choices that you’re making around the food. Like, look at how great this tastes, you know? We have fresh fruit for dessert. We don’t need ice cream, we have fresh fruit, and it tastes so good.
Ashley Malik: It’s… your kids slowly but surely start to see the benefits, but it takes time. Again, it doesn’t… and especially if they’ve…
Ashley Malik: been eating, or anyone in your family has been eating the processed foods for a long time, it does take time to transition.
Erin Maillo: It does, because they are so addictive, and so it does take… there is a withdrawal period, especially getting off of sugar,
Erin Maillo: I’ve been through that. I was like, whew!
Erin Maillo: Wow. So, Ashley, thank you so much. Is there… I know that you mentioned those two guys, and I definitely am gonna put those in the show notes, and then, post those on social media, if you don’t mind.
Ashley Malik: No, not at all.
Erin Maillo: Okay. And, besides that, is there… could you just tell us, like, what are you offering? What… how do you work with women? What… if people want to get in touch with you?
Ashley Malik: Yeah, definitely. So, the best place to find me is either on Instagram, at TheAshley Malik, or online, ashleyMalek.com.
Ashley Malik: And I do a couple of different things. So, I have a… what I call the Supper Club membership, and so it’s a monthly membership where I’m providing recipes that are built in that component cooking style that I explained.
Ashley Malik: There’s also a ton of, like, bonus resources and guides and that kind of thing within that club membership.
Ashley Malik: And then the other thing that I do is I have a 10-week program, that’s called The Method, and…
Ashley Malik: what we do in that program, it’s really for moms in perimenopause. We do look at anti-inflammatory nutrition and movement, and how we need to, like, restructure what we eat. But most importantly in that program is really the live coaching, where we work through
Ashley Malik: how safe do you feel to try different foods? How…
Ashley Malik: how are your thoughts and your feelings getting in the way of allowing you to be fit and healthy? And I don’t… I’m all about body positivity, and I want people to feel good, but I also know that we need to feel healthy. If we want to age well, we need to be fit, we need to be healthy.
Ashley Malik: So, how do we be consistent? How do we, you know, get away from the fact that it’s like, oh, I’m not motivated today?
Ashley Malik: women that I work with, they leave the program, and motivation is not a problem, because we just know what we need to do. So, it’s a really fun, unique 10-week program that allows you to lose weight, but also rewire your brain, so that you can be really healthy and happy as you age.
Erin Maillo: Wonderful, that sounds like a wonderful program. Thank you so much. Okay, Ashley, thank you so much for being here today on Healing Her IBS, and thank you for sharing with my listeners about your expertise. I’ve really appreciated it.
Ashley Malik: Thanks for having me, this has been so fun.
Erin Maillo: Been holding onto my…