Long Hair, New Job, Same Purpose...Season 3 Returns

The mic is back on, and the purpose is louder than ever. After nearly a year off, Maria returns with an honest check-in about grief, midlife health, identity shifts, and why season three will weave together unreleased conversations with brand-new stories of resilience. This isn’t a victory lap; it’s a real-time reset where alignment matters more than momentum and purpose wins out over pressure.

Maria opens up about navigating postmenopause after big shift in hormonal imbalances, the weight gain that continued despite consistent habits, and the emotional spiral that followed. She walks us through the decision to seek medical support, including hormone replacement therapy and a GLP-1 protocol, and the due diligence behind it: questions, lab work, and a commitment to share transparently. Her message is clear—discipline and heart are powerful, but sometimes the bravest move is asking for help and rebuilding your foundation.

There’s a career chapter here too. Maria moved from entrepreneurship into hospice care—the same organization that supported her dad—starting as an assistant and earning a promotion into performance improvement within six months. The work is human, urgent, and meaningful, and it demanded the time and focus that pulled her from the podcast. Now, with renewed clarity, she’s honoring 15 recorded-but-unreleased episodes and lining up new interviews that explore comeback stories, identity pivots, midlife reinvention, and health journeys that go beyond quick fixes.

Season three promises applied hope: stories that show life is happening for us, practical mindset tools, and systems that make change stick. If you’re wrestling with purpose, struggling with health despite your best efforts, or rebuilding after loss, you’ll feel seen—and you’ll leave with next steps that matter. Hit follow, share this with a friend who needs a lift, and drop us your “against all odds” story so we can feature it next. Your chapter might be the spark someone else needs.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Season Three Context
• 1:45 Why The Long Pause
• 2:50 Health Struggles And Identity Shift
• 4:20 New Hospice Role And Promotion
• 6:00 Realignment And Editing Backlog
• 7:10 Blending Old And New Episodes
• 8:00 Health Journey, HRT And GLP1
• 9:20 Family Updates And Perspective
• 10:40 Purpose, Meaning, And Mindset
• 12:10 Call For Stories And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome back to the Against All Odds, the Less than 1% Chance podcast with your host, Maria Ponte, where we will hear stories of incredible people thriving against all odds. And my hope is that we can all see how life is always happening for us, even when we are the less than 1% chance.

SPEAKER_01: 0:18

Hey, hey, welcome back to Against All Odds, the Less than 1% Chance podcast with your host, Maria Ponte. We're in season three, guys. I'm in a different stage of my life right now. And I took a pause, longer pause than I would have thought I had to, but I did. I took a long pause from recording podcast. Actually, I'm jumping in here months and months after, actually, almost a year after I recorded some of the episodes. And to be honest, I have about 15 episodes that I have not yet published, and I will. I'm in the process of making sure that they get edited so that I can make sure that you all hear these incredible stories. However, I kind of wanted to jump in kind of like present day to give you a little bit of what I've been going through. It's been a lot personally. And if you've listened to any of my previous podcast episodes, you know that I've had a full hysterectomy. I've been postmenopausal for many, many years. And after my dad passed away three years ago now, it has been a struggle with not only my hormones. I know that like my cortisol levels shot up. I lost it completely. I started gaining a lot of weight. And so after being on a health journey for like 10 years almost, the fact that like I couldn't even control the my weight and my health, it really led me down a spiral. Not only that, I had been a part of Body, formerly known as Beach Body, as a partner with them for about nine years, and they shut that down. And so it was kind of going through another identity shift that I was not expecting. And so that kind of led to just going back inside myself rather than very extroverted as I have normally been my entire life. And so I kind of wanted to talk to you about that, about understanding that sometimes you as a person needs to scale back and kind of understand that things shift, that you are able to come back to yourself and really get to know yourself again. And then also learn in all of this that who you are does not necessarily need to change. Your purpose doesn't necessarily need to change. Sometimes you just have to come back around to it. And so we are gonna start recording episodes again. When I stopped recording, I had just started a new job. And again, I had for many, many years have been, you know, sustaining what I could with what was my body business and and then you know, some work. I worked from home for a bit as well. So I've always figured it out. So I I went back to an office and I loved what I did. It felt purposeful again as well. I work for a hospice company, the same hospice company that helped my dad when he was sick. And and so I really felt like it was kind of my turn to give back to those people that truly were there for us when we needed it the most. So I started with this position. I started as an assistant to a kind of quality control performance improvement position. And shortly after starting, about six months in, I ended up applying for the role that I was assisting for. And I got it. So in six months I got promoted. It was very unexpected. I have extensive background in you know product development. However, I've never really tapped into performance improvement, and so I I kind of as I do everything, just jumped and I figured out and I'm still learning, and I love that. It also has taken a lot of time, and by the time I get home, I really it just hard for me to be on the computer and just like edit or or do all the behind the scenes that it takes to to do a podcast. So I am figuring it all back out. I did a a week of my mindset coaches like free group again, and it kind of reinvigorated what I knew that I was missing in my life again. Like I set out to was like, I'm gonna do a third season of Against All Odds, I'm gonna go for it, and it just felt right again for some time. It I just felt unaligned because I needed to figure out a lot of myself, and so I I felt realigned with that purpose, and I was like, all right, I'm gonna jump back in. I have again 15 episodes to still edit, and I truly feel like everything that I recorded before still has a purposeful story, so those are still going to be edited and released, and I have new episodes being recorded probably starting next week. So I wanted to do kind of like a solo episode to reintroduce the season and just kind of let you know that there's just gonna be I'm gonna kind of go back and forth. So you see me now, I have long hair. Before I had short hair, so you'll see uh different phases of me. Just know that there's recordings that I'm still publishing, and then there are episodes that are coming new. So I really wanna make sure that I honor the people that I have already spoken to and share their story as well as share new ones, and that's gonna be season three is a little bit of the old with a little bit of the new, and and yeah, I just I really hope that this serves you. I am back on a health journey just to kind of give you some updates on me. I'm back on a health journey, and this is just a little bit different than what I was used to. Still doing all of the same things that I was. I'm working out and and eating healthy, you know, drinking my water and supplements and all of that still is happening. However, I'm now at a place where like I was doing all the things and I was still gaining weight and I was still not able to control all the things. So I started hormone replacement therapy, so that's gonna that's part of the newer things, and I'm also on GLP1, so I am starting that journey as well. I was so hesitant, I asked so many questions just because it was something that I really wasn't sure that that was the route that I wanted to go, and I really wanted to make sure that I was that if I was gonna share, I was gonna share authentically with something that I felt like I could stand behind. And so I asked all the questions. I'm working with the doctor to make sure that the the my health gets back on track because I have not felt myself. I've struggled so much and I have not felt myself, and so that is something that I will be sharing about now. I now have a 21-year-old, a 20-year-old, and a 17-year-old, and I'm like at that level of all my kids, all my biological kids are almost all adults, so it has been a crazy ride, so much you know, going on, and my stepkids uh one is an adult already, and there's two more, so it it's a lot, and so I just really want to kind of share what's going on now and and how you know we can still share stories where they inspire you to show you that life is always happening for you and not to you. And I really, really want to make sure you know that this is a reminder that I am also repeating in my mind every single day. Life is happening for us. What is this? You know, what is what is the purpose behind these things? I obviously went through a huge struggle. Is this new health journey gonna be so that I can help other people in different ways? You know, if that's the case, then I'm here for it. I really truly want to make sure that whatever I do in my life always has a purpose. And if this is what needed to happen, if me gaining so much weight back needed to happen so that I could help others in different ways, then you know I'm here for it. I really want to to just be very intentional with seeing the purpose behind the things that that I've gone through lately. So this is a short and sweet one, but get ready because this season's gonna be absolutely amazing. I am so, so freaking excited because I know that that it's going to be huge and purposeful, and you're gonna get so much out of these stories, and you're going to see that against all odds, you can overcome anything, and against all odds, you have the ability to push forward in your life and find your purpose and find your dreams and go after them, and there's always a purpose behind everything that you go through, and you'll see that with all of these stories that against all odds people have overcome and have been able to just be successful in their own right and see the blessings that everything that they went through has has provided for them. So I'm so excited. And you know, if you if you have any stories that you feel either connected with you or something that maybe you've been through that that you feel is your against all odds story, reach out. It really has become such a passion project, and even if I had to take a pause in doing this so that I could kind of realign with myself again, if that's the case, then so be it. And here we are, because these stories have a purpose, and these stories are there to inspire and to motivate you and and myself, and you know, share, and I would so appreciate it. This is just hitting my heart in such a meaningful way to just come back and do this. So I know that there's that I had started this for a bigger purpose than myself, and so I'm back. We are back. Jump to the next episode because this was short and sweet, and this was just to kind of reintroduce Against All Uds, the less than one percent chance podcast with your host, Maria Fonte, season three coming at you.