Summary 

For this very special birthday episode, I’m doing something totally different. Instead of me asking the questions, I handed the mic to my amazing clients and let them interview me. What started as a fun idea turned into one of my favorite episodes ever.

You’ll hear stories I’ve never shared before, what inspired me to become a coach, and what I’ve learned through every messy, glorious, imperfect step along the way. I also answer a question I was asked one year ago: Did I actually hit the goal I set for myself? Let’s find out together.

🎉 And don’t forget—we’re celebrating the 3-year anniversary of the podcast! Get all the details below!

Enter the Giveaway: https://www.burnstressloseweight.com/celebrate

Learn more about the group: https://www.burnstressloseweight.com/group 

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• The surprising moment that made me leave medicine and step into coaching
• What shifted when I moved from 1:1 to group coaching (and why it’s magic)
• How I think about failure now—and what I wish I knew back then
• The real reason I keep coaching (hint: it’s not just for my clients)
• My favorite guilty pleasure when I have the house to myself

Listen to the Full Episode:

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• Instagram: Come hang out with me on Instagram, you'll find me in your daily feed @burnstressloseweight

   

Featured on the Show:

• Want to work with me? Learn about The Burn Stress, Lose Weight Group by clicking here. 
• Enter the giveaway by clicking here.

Download the full transcript here.

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  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Welcome to the birthday episode. Before I get into today's very special episode, celebrating my birthday, which is today, at the time of this episode airing, I want to make sure that you know that there is just one day left to help me celebrate in the biggest giveaway that I have ever had in the history of unstoppable. Listen, apart from the birthday presents, which are absolutely really fun to get, it is really, really nice to receive an awesome package in the mail just for fun, for no real reason. Sometimes a package in the mail can be the most beautiful break from what's happening in real life. It is a nice way to distract yourself from the usual day-to-day, hustle and bustle that we all have, and it is something that will be just for you the reason that I'm having the biggest giveaway ever, not just because of my birthday today, but it is to celebrate the three year anniversary of the Burn Stress Lose Weight Podcast, and it is so, so, so simple to enter. I promise it will take you less than 60 seconds. Simply pause this episode. Go to your favorite podcast platform, scroll down to the place that it says Rate and review, hit the number of stars, click the link that says, write a review and drop your honest thoughts about this show what you have learned, what your favorite takeaways are, what your favorite parts of this show are, and grab a screenshot and share it with us at burnstressloseweight.com/celebrate. That's it. It's really easy to enter. It's going to take you less than 60 seconds, and we are going to have 10 amazing winners. You leaving a rating and review of this show makes this podcast more findable by more women, and that for me is the ultimate celebration. So if you have not yet done it, I know that sometimes we get into this idea that we'll do it later or we'll do it tomorrow, but there's just one day left in this giveaway, and I don't want you to miss out. I would love for you to help me celebrate. So pause the episode right now. It will be the best gift ever. 60 seconds of your time, and leave a rating and review of the show and then share a screenshot with us if you feel confused about exactly how to leave a rating and review. I've had a couple of people reach out they're on Apple Podcasts and they can't find where the link is to leave a rating and review. If you're feeling confused about this, don't worry. Just email us [email protected] and we will email you actual step by step by step instructions to simplify the process if it's confusing. Okay, let's talk about today's birthday episode. I historically, if. You know anything about me or if you're new. I historically have not been a huge celebrator, like this is just the way that I've been for years and years. I have never been a big celebrator or a huge celebrator of most things. It's actually been part of my work is to celebrate and recognize growth and progress. But last year, one of my OG clients hope reached out to me and said. Hey, your birthday is coming up. How are we going to celebrate? And she came up with this amazing idea. She was sharing that, you know, you interview people and clients on your podcast all the time. How fun would it be? How fun for them would it be to turn the tables around and have my clients interview me. So I decided to make it happen. It was seriously one of the most fun episodes for me to record. So she got together some of my current and past clients and they talked. They came up with questions that I did not know. I had no idea what they were going to ask me, and they asked me some really, really good questions. I was rewatching that podcast episode recently because I was just thinking about what I wanted to do for my birthday this year, what kind of podcast episode I wanted to share with you all this year. And that podcast episode was so special because so many of my clients came together to ask me some amazing questions, and I thought it would actually be the perfect episode to re-air this year I think about this episode not only as a testament to my amazing clients who I am always learning from as I share on this episode, but also it really is a testament to the culture of Unstoppable. And one of my missions really for overachieving women in any and every industry is that we get to create a community of women that all want to grow, that all want to face, you know, their doubts and their uncertainties to claim growth, to claim the next big goal, whether it's weight loss, whether it's how you feel in your body, or how you feel off the scale.

   

  I also thought that this would be a really great episode to re-air because we have so many new listeners to this podcast. You're going to get a glimpse into. A little bit about me, how I went from being an OB-GYN physician to turning into a stress and weight loss coach. I share very vulnerably and very transparently as I do on this podcast, some tender moments, some hardships, some of the growth that I have experienced. I share a regret that I have experienced definitely as a mom and definitely in my journey to where I am now and it is a very unfiltered episode, and at the end of today's episode, I'm going to answer one of the questions that was asked of me on this interview. One of the questions that was posed was, where do you see yourself one year from now, which is now. So if you wait until the very end of this episode, I'm going to share my actual answer around whether or not I achieved what I had wanted to achieve. So without further ado, we are going to get into this re-air episode. It's my birthday celebration. It is such a good one, and I'm so glad to have you all here listening in on a little bit about me and having my clients ask me anything. Let's get into it. Hey everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. I already did an introduction for today's episode, but I am beyond. Just excited is such an understatement to welcome some of my Unstoppable clients who are helping me celebrate my birthday today. This was all hope's idea. I'm gonna give the mike over to Hope in just a second, she is one of my OG, OG clients who reached out to me and was like, how are we celebrating this? Like, what are we doing? You're always, you know, asking your clients questions. On the podcast, I bring my clients on to share their stories and she's like, what if we turned the tables on you for your birthday and asked you some questions? So I have no idea what they're asking. I actually told them, I'm feeling quite nervous about this episode, but I trust them and love them so much. So I am just. Unfiltered. I don't even know what's about to happen, but hope, take it away. What are we asking Priyanka today?

  Hope: Well, happy birthday. We wanted to, like you said, flip the script and interview you a little bit. We've all heard a lot about your weight loss journey, but we wanted to hear a little bit about your kind of coaching journey. So we each have a couple questions for you. So I wanted to know where along your getting coach journey when you started with your weight loss coaching, when did you decide that you wanted to become a coach? And I guess you can start with that.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah so I first discovered I didn't know coaching was much of a thing other than maybe performance coaching and like athletes getting coached. So I think I first discovered coaching as a thing in the spring of 2019 and I fell down the rabbit hole as we do. I discovered a podcast, fell in love with it, and then I joined Katrina Hubbell's program. She was my very first coach who I dearly love, adore, and respect. And I would say in the beginning, becoming a coach was like not even on my radar, I think. After working with her for about six months and really, of course not just losing the weight, but changing so much of my personal life, specifically with my son who's now eight, but at the time was three and a half, four years old. I changed so much of my relationship with him and how I felt as a mom. I just felt like I wanted to deepen my own skills for me. So the goal was not for me to become a coach for other people, it was more, I mean, as we do high achievers and like maybe if I like know, get a certification. In this process, I will be able to better coach myself and better understand my brain. And so I wanna say it was probably in the early spring of 2020, so five or six months into me getting coached, I just felt like this was something I wanted to do. And also as a physician and maybe a specifically as an OB-GYN, I think I've actually been a coach. Since the minute I graduated medical school, I don't think I realized it until I was going through coach certification. That coaching came naturally to me and it was because I had been coaching my patients as a physician. So I think it felt like such a natural fit, but it was mostly just for me to decide I wanted to take it to the next level, and then the rest is history.

   

  Hope: As one of your, I think when your very early on clients, it's been fun to watch you kind of evolve your coaching program, both your advice and going from one-on-one to kinda longer sessions, to group sessions. So I think you've talked about this a little bit too, but about your transition from individual coaching to group coaching and what you. What you hope to provide with it and what you get out of it.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Oh, this is my, one of my favorite things. So I still remember hope when you and I first talked for the very first time, this was probably the fall of 2020, I think is when we started working together one-on-one, and I posted in this OB-GYN mom's Facebook group, like, Hey, who wants to get coached? And hope was one of the brave, brave people that was like me and it was, I felt like really, honestly like kinship, right when we first started working together. I just. I mean, I loved working with you one-on-one, and I wanna say that one-on-one coaching was really beautiful. I always loved one-on-one because we get to really do a deep dive and have a lot of abundant space and time to just coach on one topic. But what started to happen, I noticed, is a lot of my one-on-one clients would be getting coached on the exact same obstacle. So they would get coached on their husbands or their kid or you know, they overate the pizza on Friday night when they didn't mean to, like a lot of these same concepts and themes would come up again and again. And a lot of what I notice is in one-on-one coaching, it's much easier to think that you are the only one with a problem. Like I'm the special snowflake who just can't stop yelling at my kids. Or I'm the special snowflake who is disconnected from my partner and it must just be me. And this, it's like very isolationist and we feel really lonely in overcoming problems. This was when, I think it was in the fall of 2021, I started doing those story time calls. So I started to bring all of my one-on-one clients together for this occasional group call where I would basically have a little bit of teaching. I would share a personal story, and then we would kind of coach on it, and that was so impactful. So many people reach out to me after the fact and be like, I did not really realize. I know you would tell me, but I didn't realize that I was not alone in this hearing. That person share that marriage struggle or hearing that person share, you know, that worry they're having about their kid, like I just felt so not alone and that was when like I just got bit by the bug of having an intimate small group and letting high achieving smart women who usually do feel really alone. I think in a lot of the struggles we have, we have this like badge of honor that we have to do it ourselves. Like this could be a space where maybe you don't have to do it yourself and getting to like really see that you are not the only one. I couldn't unsee that. And that was when I, I made a really hard switch from one-on-one to group. I was not offering one-on-one anymore. And yeah, so that was when I think that was in early 2022 that I moved to intimate. Small group.

  Hope: On that note, what do you get out of coaching others?

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: This is also, I mean these are all such good que you guys have done. Ooh, these are like really good questions. So I actually like to answer this question because I get asked often, why did you leave medicine? Like, 'cause I often share, I left being a practicing OB-GYN, not because of burnout. A lot of physicians leave practice because they hate, they, they get burned out, they're overworking, they leave For that reason I think that's a different story for me, I think it's just a testament to my experience with coaching. So I loved. Being a physician loved my practice. Of course, there were things that I did not love, but I overall loved being a practicing physician. What I think I started to experience as a coach was the kind of impact that I was able to have and the ripple effect that it was having on someone's life was far outpacing the ripple effect that I was able to have as a physician. So, for example, you know, hope I remember, you know, you're getting coached on maybe, you know, some, a relationship like maybe marriage or maybe with your children. And it wasn't just that you got to feel better or you experience something. The ripple effect in your family. They got to experience something too, and they got to experience, you know, oh, my mom is showing up in this way, that's better for them. And there's something about that that was really intoxicating for me, that it's not just my clients that are experiencing this, but their family, their friends, their local community, their staff. I cannot tell you how many times people will say like, you know, the staff that I work with are seeing so many changes in me. Or, you know, and, and that I think also is. It's like, how can we impact more people? It just felt like it was way more impactful. So I think it was intoxicating and very gratifying that number one, it could be on my terms. So I wasn't having an office manager or a senior partner say to me, you are, you have to work in this way. You get 20 minutes with a patient, you have to clock and clock out. Labs are due this time it was on my terms. I got to decide how much I wanted to do and how little. And yeah. So I would say that's, that's what I've gotten out of coaching.

  Hope: You just answered one of our next. Questions, Diana, who's not here, asked as a transition here, which parts of medicine translate to the work you do now and which parts are completely new?

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Ooh, that's a good one, Diana. I think the parts that are very similar, at least because I was in women's health and my lens as a physician was always very holistic. Like when I would be seeing my OB patient, I wasn't just doing just a pap smear or just a breast exam. Like I, I really. I think I had this lens of seeing them as a whole human and a lot of times what I would pick up, especially for my patients after the age of 35 when they've had their first kid and now they're transitioning into this mom hood, maybe they're working, they're, they had, their marriages have absolutely shifted after having a kid. I think a lot of what has been the same is addressing the fears. That a lot of women would have in that transition. So like they'd be afraid of not being enough, afraid of working hard enough, afraid of doing it just right, afraid of, you know, the, you know, the expectations that maybe their family has on them. And so I think that it's interesting because coaching helps us kind of uncover a lot of the fears that we didn't know maybe we had, we might not have called it. Fear, I might have called it doubt or uncertainty or you know, insecurity. But ultimately I think the same in terms of, you know, my practice as a physician and as a coach is uncovering what those were the difference as a physician is I would give medical advice and it would be advice like, here's what you can do to solve this problem. And as a coach, I think my biggest work has been not to tell my clients. What to do. I mean, sometimes I tell you all what to do, so I'm just like, this is what you need to do. But to help you find your inner wisdom, to help you find your highest wisdom, to help you unlock, you know the answer for you and like what has been blocking you from uncovering this that has been different as a physician, I've so practiced in like, this is what you do, this is the right answer, steps one, two, and three. And as a coach to help you really discover. Your answers and what's right for you, and finding your own inner voice and your confidence in navigating those obstacles.

  Hope: And then I just have one more and then we'll move on here. What have been the most challenging and surprising parts of becoming a coach and also, I guess, an entrepreneur that was a whole different...

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: So entrepreneur is a whole different thing. I'm gonna answer that question separately. I think the unexpected thing with becoming a coach when I first. Became a coach. I didn't expect to, because as a physician I was pretty good at compartmentalizing. I would leave the hospital or would leave the office and I was able to just be present with my kids, present with my family, and, you know, put the, the work away when I would get home. But what I've noticed as a coach is I am very often thinking about my client's problems. After the fact, I'm like, how can I coach this person in a way more powerfully? How can I teach them this concept so that they get it more quickly? And I find that I am often thinking about and trying to problem solve these things outside of our coaching call, outside of, you know, our slack cap coaching cap. I'm like, how can I explain this better so that they get it more fast? And I think that that has been something that's been my work for me to really reel in so that when I'm with my family or when I'm doing my thing that, and it's easy for me to not do that because I love coaching so much and I love my clients so much that it's easy for me to just let that kind of run away with that. Let's say that, that would probably be the biggest thing I've had to learn as a coach, as an entrepreneur. This has been, I would say, in terms of my own self journey, one of the hardest things I have done in my whole entire life is. Being an entrepreneur, and this is after becoming a physician. I thought, you know, becoming a physician in residency was going to be the hardest thing, or even early attending life. And yes, those were really hard in their own way. There was so much hustle and hardship to get through, but I think why entrepreneurship, I. Has been so challenging is that there are no rules. And as someone who loves protocol and loves a good rule, you gimme steps one, two, and three and you wanna just, you know, have the equation of what it equals, it has really forced me to let go of a lot of my perfectionism. This is why I talk about perfectionism so much with all of you, with my clients, with my audience, because I know that perfectionism as an entrepreneur has held me back. It's made me be quieter, it's made me hide, it's made me be small. It. I filter myself a lot. How am I going to say this so that maybe somebody's not offended? People pleaing, I mean, there's so many layers of how perfectionism shows up, and as an entrepreneur, I have really had to catch that and, you know, have my coaches catch it for me and show me and really make a leap. Of trusting myself that even if not, if when I fall flat on my face, how am I going to treat myself in this moment? I didn't have to do that as much as a physician. As a physician, I felt like I felt very confident. You know, you give me a C-section, gimme a hysterectomy, give me a laparoscopy, give me any emergency. There's a protocol. This is the team I'm gonna call in. This is the steps. One, two, and three. Even if there's someone hemorrhaging, there's a protocol with entrepreneurship. There is no protocol. There is, you know, you could be hemorrhaging. I mean, you know, figuratively in your mind, and there is no protocol other than you having your own back. And so I think that it has been, for me, one of the biggest self growth discoveries other than I think being a mom, I would say.

  Hope: Thanks for sharing all that. I'm gonna pass the microphone.

  Roshni: Hi everybody. So my name is Roshni and fun fact Priyanka and I actually trained together, it feels like a long time ago, but it wasn't that long ago. I know,

  Kaity: I know.

  Roshni: Yeah. Actually, one of the questions I had is the, kind of a segue from the last question, so this is good. My question is, what do you wish you knew? Before embarking, you know, on this journey, creating your business, forming a brand, what would've you told your past self, I guess?

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: So I think I would've told myself something, but I just wouldn't have listened to myself. So I'm gonna tell you why I'm saying that. I would've told myself that you're going to mess up and it's going to suck and it's going to feel terrible and that's normal and like let's just expect it. It's gonna be a part of the ride and it's okay to go through that experience. You're gonna be just fine. And I think if I had told myself this a few years ago, this is with weight loss. And, you know, in becoming a coach, in, in entrepreneurship, especially with, even with weight loss, I wouldn't have believed myself. I would've been like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would've logically understood, like, of course we're gonna make this, like, we all know logically we're gonna make mistakes, but somehow we also subconsciously are like, but we can kind of get around it, but we can just kind of work really hard. We can overwork, we can, you know, excessively plan excessively research to get the right perfect strategy and perfect execution so we can avoid the discouragement and the discomfort of failure. And I have had to learn. I think it, the only way I've had to learn this is actually by failing so many times that, oh, turns out that this is a normal part of the process and, and it's gotten to the point where it still stings every time that I fall flat or have a failure, it still stings, but I'm like, oh yeah, this is that normal time that we fail. And I also remind myself even, you know, this is true with weight loss and with entrepreneurship, even the people that are so far ahead in their businesses. People that are so far along in their weight loss journey, they've already lost all of the weight you're gonna gain. You're gonna gain it back. I think actually, this is part of the reason that I made inside the curriculum, I have that Priyanka diary module where I lost all the weight, lost all like reached my goal weight, and then I think I gained, what, seven or eight pounds back, and I was like, yep. This is normal and really recording a day in the life over 30 days, like how do I lose 10 pounds just because of the skills that we learn, like failure is normal and I think we spend so much time in marinating in the failure and marinating in the soup of discouragement. And that's what drives all the effort moments, the screw it moments, the micro quits. That's the real reason, right? That we don't launch. And I think about like launching as like letting the rocket really take off. We like. Take off and be like, fall back. Take off and fall back. But I think to let the rocket launch, it's like just know it's gonna be bumpy. I don't think I would've believed myself though if I told myself.

  Roshni: And another question I have is, where do you see yourself in a year?

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: This is really good question. I know that I also, I ask you guys often like lighthouse goals, right? Like, where do you like, you know, really visualizing yourself. That's how I got this can be so honest. Yeah. Can I be so honest? I don't know. I don't know. I feel like, I feel, you know, it's one of those things where I think I, I tell myself that I'll figure that out later. I'll figure out where I wanna be a year from now and a little bit, and then all of a sudden it's a year later and I'm like, oh, we didn't really think about that. And it's no surprise. And like we waffle around, right? For the last year, I know last year I had told myself I want to be the fittest I can ever be. Ever in my life. I told myself that last year, and the mistake I made last year was I didn't truly visualize it. I didn't actually like let it crystallize and get into the nitty gritty details of what work it was going to take. And it was no surprise I failed at that goal. So, and I shared this, I think it was in the New Year's episode, like how I failed to hit the fitness goals that I had set for myself. Because of this question, I didn't actually decide like what is it that I want for myself. So I think. A year from now, I'm just coming up with this right now, is I really want to have achieved that level of like strength is what's really important to me. The certain level of strength where I feel truly, just like I'm at my absolute peak, at my absolute physical peak. And I think this is not even just about a weight loss thing, it's just about. Vitality. I see some of these women at the gym. I've started going to these strength training classes. Some of these women, they're like 70 and their biceps are just like ripped, and I'm like, I wanna be 70 and have ripped biceps. Like these women are lifting heavy weights. I'm like, they're not gonna need help loading the groceries in their car. They're gonna come to the groceries, get to the trunk, they're not gonna say, excuse me sir, can you help me load my groceries? Like, I wanna be that person who can like load the groceries. So I would say, you know, in terms of my body goals would be to be the strongest that I can possibly be a year from now. That's gonna be a lifetime journey. I think the other one then, this is more personal. I think the other one for me is a really, really, really giving my relationships. More airtime in my life, like actually more like this is my kids and my husband again, 'cause of what I was sharing in the beginning. Like I can think about my business and entrepreneurship and my clients and it will take over me being with my kids and be, or like I'll be with them, but I'm not really with them, you know? So I think that the other goal I have is to set boundaries for me for when am I going to be doing my work. Work is work time, and like truly when I'm with my kids, especially my kids, like, they're like growing. They grow up and I'm like, where did that time go? It's because I'm not being present with them. So that would say, that's the other thing for me is to really bring that to the forefront.

   

  Anu: I'll jump in. This is Anu, so I'm gonna ask you, what three adjectives would you use to describe yourself before your Unstoppable journey versus now?

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Oh. Oh, I know. This is a good question. I want, let me think. Okay. So I would say before Unstoppable Is the first one that comes to mind. Empathetic. And hardworking. Just put your head down, just do the work. I think after my coaching experience and just the work from the last few years, I would say one adjective's willing, oh, here's another adjective from before inflexible. I was so rigid. I still am rigid in many ways. I have very all or nothing tendencies, but like really rigid. It's my way or the highway. Like that type of thinking. And now I would say I'm a lot more willing. To like basically experiment and like allow other people's opinions to be right, aka my husband. The other one would be. I think brave, like I'm more brave now than I was before. I'm more, I think this kind of ties in with willing, like I'm just willing to be wrong. I'm willing to be dead wrong. I'm willing to just fall flat even though it feels totally, totally terrible, but it's allowed me to, to make bigger choices in my life. And I think the last one, I feel like it's still empathetic. I don't know I, or like compassionate, I can't put my finger on quite what it is, but. It's like, I don't know, I just feel like my heart sometimes like surrounds my whole body and I'm just like always feeling a lot of love for the people I'm with. So whatever word that would be, I would say. Does that describe me?

  Anu: I was gonna ask you one more question. It probably ties into what sort of our theme has been. If you could do one thing differently in any aspect of your life, what would it be?

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Okay. So I think I try very intentionally to not hold any regrets. And I say that only because. I really do believe, and I know I, I say this a lot in our coaching calls, but like every, you know, misstep that I have made personally was something I had to learn. I made that misstep because there was something for me to learn in that moment. But that being said, I think that the biggest one would be thinking that I needed to change my son, and this was again, like right before coaching, and not just my son. I probably had this feeling about my husband, feeling about my job, feeling about like lots of things like feeling like. Something outside of me had to change for me to feel better. And I think it was the most for my son, you know? 'cause as a kid, if your mom is thinking like, I wish you were different, I didn't know that I was doing this at the time, but I'm just imagining like, you know, subconsciously if in my, if my energy around him was like, I wish he was just easier. I wish he was just different. I do feel some sadness when I think about like as a child, as a three-year-old, you know, how must he have been experiencing his mom who wanted him to be different than he was? I would say if there's one thing I. It would really have been to have discovered coaching earlier, like to have, you know, discovered coaching before I had kids. And also I don't know that I would've been open to it before I had kids. I feel like I had to like kind of go through it. So I would say that, and I would say even now, and this is one again, it's like kind of speaking to Roy's question, like what could I tell myself? Even now I find myself. When I do have a misstep or have a fail, I still very reflexively. It's so subtle because I'm a generally optimistic half glassful kind of person, but I still do have negative self-talk, and I think that I want to start catching earlier for myself, like, oh, that's just us doing nothing we do, and to not let myself linger in it, which. I have a tendency of doing sometimes

  Kelli: I'm up next. So this is Kelli. I'm gonna put myself in one of the OG categories with Hope. So we've, we've coached for several years. So my question is gonna be hopefully a little, little fun here. But what is your go-to guilty pleasure? And I want you to not answer full ranch Doritos or the Netflix plop.

   

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: I love it. I love it. Okay. Guilty pleasures. I think my guiltiest pleasures is to binge watch shows on Netflix that I know my husband's not gonna watch, like just by mys, and I don't want it. I don't want him to be home. So here's the okay. When for it to be truly like the most relaxing, I want to be completely alone. I want my husband to be on a work trip. That's like the best if he's on a work trip somehow. I don't know why the house feels empty. It's like it is emptier, but like I feel more like I get to just really chill and watch like 1990s, like bonnet with Sandra Bullock or like something that, you know, like old school, 1980s or trashy romance. Novels with my glass of wine and just, I mean, it's still a plop down, but it's like an alone plop down. I don't know what it is. There's something about just truly being alone, like if my kids are not at home or if my husband's not at home, that it feels like I can somehow really feel even more relaxed, like visually 'cause you, I'm like really even more relaxed. I just get to unwind. And I think a lot of it is because I'm not thinking about what, you know, my husband's going to think about this show, what my husband's gonna think about me putting on the net again, what my husband's gonna think about me picking up like, you know, Twilight, I don't know whatever book I might have read in the past. But like, I think it's one of those things where subconsciously I'm like, what is he thinking about me? Doing this. And that is why it's like, I want it to be totally alone to be able to do that. Oh, and the other one I do love. I'm just gonna say this 'cause this is something everyone should know. I don't do cool ranch Doritos anymore, but what I do do is I make fiesta popcorn. Have we talked about fiesta popcorn guys? Fiesta Popcorn. So you make the popcorn from scratch, like the fresh popped and then nutritional yeast. The paprika and the onion powder and you throw in a little bit of homemade ranch, so it's like gooey with the can. We just, I mean, that's not a guilty pleasure. Love that too. So it's not cool ranch, but it's better.

  Kelli: You, you maybe just answered my next question Yes. Which is tell me, you could choose one food to eat for the rest of your life. Mm-hmm. What would it be?

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: You guys know I love a good cauliflower crust pizza. The only reason I'm gonna say cauliflower crust pizza is because I actually get nutrients and like it hits all the categories for me where I get all the vegetables that I want, I can make it protein heavy and I feel so satisfied. I could eat it every day. I have had it on my birthday, like I remember, this might have been last year, the year before my was like, oh, what are gonna do for your birth? I'm the cauliflower crisp pizza with like our movie on Netflix. That was just lovely for me. But yeah, actually the popcorn with. Fiesta Popcorn is a close second, but it has very little nutritional value. So there's that.

  Kelli: And, and lastly again, I think it's funny that you hit on, on both of, of mine. Yeah. Your first question, what is the last book that you read and what was your takeaway from it?

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: The last. I usually have two books going at the same time. I usually have one that is just pure, like non, non self-help, non self-help category. I just got introduced, I'm reading it, it's called The Fourth Wing. It's a romantic. Romantic is like sci-fi romance, and that's like non self-help. And then I would say like the ones that I'm reading for just my own brain is I really love Dan Sullivan. He has a couple of really good books and I think that that was probably the last self-help book I, oh, the other one is us. That was for relationships. It's a pretty heavy book, but I would say that that was the other one. I actually mistakenly, I messaged hope about this, but I took that book with me on my last vacation. That was so not a good idea. It was literally talking about these like very, you know, dysfunctional marriages and like marriages that I've needed a lot of work and therapy. And I'm like on this beach vacation with my husband and I'm like having tears in my eyes crying for these like, you know, the pages that I'm reading. So that, that, that was the other book. It was, it was quite good though. I'm gonna hand it over to Katie.

   

  Kaity: So my question is if you can tell us a story about like a client journey or maybe multiple client journeys that inspired you.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: I think all of my clients, I've learned something from every client that I've coached. Actually. You know, even this call is really a testament to the culture of Unstoppable and like what my, my kind of goal has been. And a lot of what I'm teaching has often been inspired by a client. Like one of the trainings that I referenced the most, like the urges training was inspired by one of my clients, Annalisa. And I've talked about urges and cravings in so many ways over the years, but I remember last year. One of my clients was asking a question about urges and the way that she happened to pose the question and ask the question. It just ins, it like inspired me to teach urges in a different way. We create a whole training on it. So I have to just start by saying that I have probably learned it as much from my clients as my clients learn from coaching and it inspires teaching and frameworks and, you know, the coaching kind of direction that we go in. I would say I have learned something from, from every single one. I think that the clients that I feel so inspired by, actually, Katie, you're one of the clients I feel so inspired by, and I say this because you know, you and I have talked a lot about perfectionism and this desire to show up in a certain way and the way that you have navigated imperfection and those hard moments is so inspiring to me because I see how often, you know, when we are met with imperfection, when we are met with, you know, what we kind of would label as a proverbial fail. How often, and I know that I, I still do this to this day, how often we just stop showing up or we hide or we, you know, we just like check out and we've talked about this before in, in our coaching calls, but that's just a stress response, right? Like where we hide, freeze, run away, check out. And what I really feel inspired by is when we are willing to, it's like willingness to feel the discomfort and not hide. And I think what I've learned, and this is from my clients, and I think what I just see again and again through so many of your journeys is it feels maybe, you know, in the moment like hiding feels better, you like hit a roadblock or you haven't done something perfectly. So hiding feels better, but. What I have been learning, and you guys can all tell me, but hiding actually feels really terrible. And that has been a lesson that I think I've learned from you all, like from my clients and also just in my own journey, when I'm not showing up exactly perfectly. I have this tendency to hide and that doesn't feel good either. So I would say that that that would be what it is for me.

  Kaity: Yeah, I really appreciate how Unstoppable has taught me to persistently show up for myself because I think there's this journey you have where initially you're showing up for you, Bianca, like, I'm showing up because you're my coach and I'm showing up to you. And then eventually that trust kind of turns around on yourself and it becomes self-trust that I'm showing up for me. I also wanted to comment that I have also noticed a change in myself about around flexibility, where I kind of came in really rigid and have noticed. Flexibility in all areas of my life, especially with weight loss, but really everywhere, even with my relationships. So I thought this might be a good opportunity to kick off other people. Also sharing things that were different before and after Unstoppable.

  Hope: Or if you have any specific like pearls or the things that you hear Priyanka in your head saying or coaching you in I remember early on coaching on, on the cookies and, and I can still picture this moment of eating some cookies that someone else had made that weren't really that good, but I kept eating them. And you're like, what are you thinking when you're putting that in your mouth? And I remember thinking, I wish this would taste better. And I like. I kept thinking that eating it more would make it taste better and it still to this day like stops me from like eating things just 'cause you wish it was something else and it's really not serving a purpose. So that's my, anyone else wants to jump in?

   

  Kelli: I would add that I think what you've been able to do for me is just. Kind of putting that mirror up and, and being able to see the things that I maybe couldn't see myself, which again, I think is just what coaching brings, but the way you do it and, and the way that you help to push us to see those things. And, and I think the phrase I always recall you saying is, and why is that a problem? I. Like, like why truly is, is that a problem? And just that simple question really allows you to stop and, and reflect on, you know, whatever it is that, that you're coaching on, and helps to kind of shift some of that thinking. So I think that's something you've always been able to do for me and I really appreciate and it's given me the confidence. I think to really attack any situation that comes my way.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: I love that. You know, I think the other thing, Kelly, speaking on that one is I call these wiffy, right? Like the what ifs. What if I get negative feedback? What if my colleague says this? What if my kid has a meltdown? Like, what if I gain a pound, like all these wiffy. These rhetorical questions. And I think what I used to do for a really long time, and I think what you do maybe before you get coached or as you're getting coached, is we don't actually let our mind go there. Like let's just, what if, like what if you get negative feedback from a boss or colleague or a patient, right? Like if you're a physician, what if you gain a pound? And I think that's like, so what? Like, so what if that happens? Go there and then, and like really letting us go to those worst case scenarios that we've kind of kept hidden in a closet. And that's what's happened. Like we've shut so tight because we don't want to really face what might happen. But I'm like, what if we actually showed ourselves, if we got to the worst case scenario, then what would we do? I think that that's where we get to find our power. Like, oh, even in the worst case scenario, the scariest one, I even the scariest, scariest one, like reminding ourselves like we would be okay. We would figure it out even in the worst case scenario. And I think somehow that that for me has created a lot of, it's relaxed. A lot of my stresses, and it's helped me know, we talk about open stress cycles. It closes a lot of stress cycles for me, and then it lets me make decisions from a place that's not from my primitive, fearful place it's from my most wisest self because I'm like, I can handle even in a worst case scenario. So I love that that's been impactful for you.

  Roshni: I'll share something something that I've really taken away from this program and, and working with Priyanka, has been the voice I use when I speak to myself, whether things are going great or I'm falling flat on my face, and that voice just translates in all my other areas of life. So that's what I'm working on and that's been my a been a really impactful lesson from all of this. Like, what is the voice I wanna choose? And that's gonna really help me get through the, you know, failures and the highs and the, you know. All the different parts of life. So thank you for that.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: I love that. I always think about, and I forget if this was rushing with you or maybe we were coaching someone else in the group, but you know, the way we talk to ourselves, like, would I ever say this to my child when they're like, I want you to imagine your child when they're like two years old, like real baby. Like real, like a tiny, tiny baby. And you're like, no, of course I would never say this to my child. And yet we say things to ourselves all the time that we would never say to our loved ones or to our best friends. And I'm like, what? How come we don't get that regard right. And I think that that, it's just a good question. I love that. Mm-hmm.

   

  Anu: Yeah. I'll go to, I think probably I signed up for Unstoppable, not knowing really anything about coaching really. I was looking for kind of an accountability group to help me get the weight off, and it's been so much more than that. And I think probably one of my big aha moments was, I think I brought to coaching about. Something just kind of relationship wise with my daughter about kind of having, having to navigate like difficult emotions. And I remember Priyanka asking me like, well, whose emotion are you really trying to deal with? I mean, are you gonna let her, is it her emotion or is it your. Like feeling about her emotion and that shut really kind of made me stop and think about, yes, it really is me not wanting her to feel bad. And so I would try to like kind of shut everything down or go into my kind of typical like, let's fix it. Let's see how we can fix it, before allowing her or my other kids or even my husband, like just kind of experience what they need to experience. And so I've shown up very differently as a wife and a mom. I know my family appreciates that, so thank you, Priyanka.

  Kaity: I love that. That one was really impactful for me too, where I all of a sudden realized like, oh, every time I'm uncomfortable with somebody else's feeling, it's really my feeling I'm uncomfortable with. And starting to unravel that and realizing that I don't have to do that, like I don't have to fix their emotion to fix mine. I can just fix mine.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: That's been so good. I love that one. I actually noticed that, I mean, even to this day, sometimes when I'm in a gathering, I've been the person that brings everyone together. So for example, let's, it's my parents and then my husband and I'm like the main central character. That is the reason that we're all kind of in a group. I find myself really worrying about like. How does my mom feel right now? How does my husband feel? Like I notice that there's, there's a little ping ponging action hat like there. There's a little that looks like an irritation on his face, and that looks an irritation on my mom's face. And this is exactly the work I used to really leave a lot of those kinds of weekends feeling so number one, frustrated and wishing that everyone would just. Be different again than they are. But I would totally not have fun on weekends like this because I was so worried about how's my mom feeling and how's my husband feeling? And like, oh, I hope my kid behaves so that my mom like likes how my kids behave. Like all this kind of stuff. And I think that, you know, what we kind of have gotten to navigate is letting. Really seeing people for the feelings that they do have. I know I'm thinking of you like, you know, if your kid is feeling disappointed or nervous about something, like seeing that nervousness and like, what is it like to not be complacent about it? Because I think as moms we don't want to be complacent about our children having a negative experience. How can we not be complacent? And also how can we just let them be having, you know, their, their feelings and then how can we get to have ours? I, I think that is the work actually, that is the constant work. Which I just love so much. Thank you guys so much. This has been such a fun call. If anyone has anything else they wanna share or add, you can jump on in. Truly, this was such an amazing idea, hope. Thank you for thinking of it. Thank you guys all for coming on and sharing your questions and also your stories and your takeaways. You know, Katie, I really appreciate your question around what have I. Been inspired by. And truly, truly, I think, you know, I have learned something new from every single client I've worked with and been inspired in different ways, and so I thank you all for that. I thank you all for trusting me as your coach. I think that's a really big deal and something I do not take lightly at all. And I thank you all for being here. And to everyone listening, I hope you all enjoyed this little conversation that we had in the group and answer some of all your questions. Thanks so much guys.

  Hope: Thank you.

   

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Thank you all for participating. That conversation was so incredibly fun. We basically kicked everyone outta the room so that I could just thank hope for setting up a call like this and having the idea to celebrate my birthday this way. I feel like, you know, there were some questions. I think Anu question with the adjectives. What adjectives would I used to describe myself? Really stumped me. So hope, thank you so much for organizing this. Call and it was amazing for me. How did you, what did you think?

  Hope: Yeah, it was super fun and it was fun to hear people's questions and for me to guess like, how is she gonna answer this? Because I feel like working with you and I know some of your some of your answers. One thing I forgot to ask, I wanna ask is what do, what kind of coaching do you get coached on now? You talk about. You have your, your own coaches. I'm curious what, imagine. Yeah. This is business.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: This is such a good question. There's different phases, I think, or different seasons of my life based on what I want to prioritize in that season of my life that's the coaching that I will usually invest in. So I think, you know, after weight loss coaching, I. I would say the first coaching that did was the certification, like the actual life coach school certification and I, that was a lot of coaching. And then from there, the next layer or level of coaching that I did was my advanced certification. So I did deep dive coaching with Bev Aaron, and that was probably one of my number one most favorite coaching experiences as a client because it was. I was getting coached on my marriage. I was getting coached on myself as a mom, as a physician. I got coached on like I think multiple areas, which is what I liked about it. It actually reminds me a little bit of Unstoppable, where you get coached on lots of different areas of your life, which is what I think I loved about my experience with Bev. And then the. Probably the next kinds of coaching that I got was business coaching. And I'll say this very openly. I've never thought of myself as an entrepreneur. I've always had this identity of being a physician, like I've put the physician head on. That's who I am. So I had to learn, had to, number one, I had to unlearn a lot of the things I had learned as a physician, which is a lot of my perfectionism tendencies, protocols, and learn how to have the mindset of an entrepreneur. That's still to this day, I think coaching that I will somehow invest in. You know, I might take breaks every now and then, but generally I will invest in business coaching because it just helps my brain have higher quality, problem solving and higher quality thinking. And I think the other coaching that I have done is relationship coaching. So marriage and relationship coaching has been, again, and this is one that I was sharing even on the call, where it's easy to put on the back burner, especially with me and my husband, we've always. I've always thought of us as like, you know, we have this solid relationship and I think what happened, and I was telling my coach about this, is it's, it was easy to take for granted, almost like, because we're fine, you know, we're cool, it's cool. We kind of, at least not we, I would let you know the problem of the day in my work or with the kids or just with the laundry list of tasks just supersede the marriage and the relationship and it's. Easy, I think, to start to drift when that happens. Maggie Reyes often talks about this. Mm-hmm. She says, you know, when you're two people in an ocean, you know, if you're not taking the occasional stroke towards each other or like swimming towards each other, the natural waves of the ocean will drive two people who do love each other to drift apart. And I think, you know, at the end of last year, in the beginning of this year, that was something that I was like, I don't want that to be the case anymore, and I don't want to have the drift happen anymore. So I would say that that's been something that I really want to bring to the forefront. This year.

  Hope: Thanks for sharing that. It's been fun to watch you over the years grow in your coaching and changing your approach and kind of clarifying your approach to weight loss and how you explain it and have kind of simplified it over the years and made it clear, and then just fun to watch you grow your business and see you shine. I think with you just gaining like confidence and now that you're like. Being speaker at certain events and things like that. It's been fun to see you, how you describe yourself when you were a little shy and didn't wanna talk and for sure come out of the shell, I imagine.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: It's so fun and I think that that's something that I forget about where. I still call myself an introvert in some ways, like a social introvert. If I go to a group of people that I don't know, I hesitate to say hello first, or I feel kind of awkward and shy in those moments. Yeah. But I think you're right. Probably over the last few years, just practicing speaking to people that I don't know and putting myself out. Out there and you know, I mean, the podcast is a big example. You just releasing a podcast for the universe to hear. I think that that has allowed me to really realize that it's okay to speak up and to not, I don't have to be scared of being shy. Actually, this is so interesting because my daughter, she's five and a half, she is so, so shy, she's so confident. If she goes even to people, she kind of knows. And if they ask her direct questions, she won't answer because she's so shy. So it, it is interesting you, because I see myself in her.

  Hope: The bits that you share about her, I imagine her just being this like raging extrovert. That's interesting.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah, she is. It's like, I think when she's feeling, it's like that safety thing. When she's feeling safety and she's like, with me or with. Someone like her, maybe her cousin or like a best friend, then she's fully like full fledged doing her thing. But if she is in like one degree away, you know, from even someone that she sees often, she's so shy and I can see her face, I can see her little brain thinking about like she wants to say something, but she's holding herself back. And I think that that's the thing with coaching. And I say it's a lot where, you know, a lot of what we get to coach in is generational. And I can imagine before coaching I might have. I tried to force her out of her shell. I felt, when I was a kid, I felt like I was being forced out of my shell. Like just speak up and just, you know, basically don't be who you are and what I'm trying to, I think do with her is just val validate that she's shy and normalize it. And then I'm hoping that maybe that safety will translate to other situations for her. But I guess we're gonna see, yeah. Fun. Amazing. I love it. Hope thanks for staying on. I got, this is a good one. I loved it. And I'll see you guys all next week. Bye bye-bye. I hope that you enjoy today's birthday episode. It was really one of my most favorites to re-air, to have so many of my clients current and past come together to ask me questions that really hopefully let a lot of you get to know me a little bit better. I think a lot of my clients get to know me very well because inside the Unstoppable group I share a lot more with them. They hear a lot of my tender moments, a lot of fails whenever we are coaching on. Not just epic fails, but whenever we are coaching on vulnerable and tender moments, a lot of what I coach on, a lot of what I coach my clients on, I have personally experienced and I think that that's what really makes for such a powerful coaching container, the Unstoppable Group, because I have really been through a lot of fails. So I wanna answer the question. Somebody asked me, where do you see yourself a year from now? And my answer in the episode was, I want to be the fittest that I have ever been in my adult life. And I think the second thing I had talked about was I want to be more present, especially with my kids and my husband. I want to have more boundaries between when I'm working, which is sometimes hard to do because I love coaching and my clients so much. And I wanna have boundaries around when I'm working and thinking about my clients and thinking about my business and being present with my family. And I have to say, after a year of this, and this has been a many multi-year journey, after having many epic fails in achieving this, I have to say that I have made massive progress forward in both arms. I would say that I'm probably the strongest that I have ever been in my adult life, and I have also been the most present that I think I have ever been with my family, and while I still have a journey ahead of me, I still have a growth goal for myself in terms of my fitness goal and in terms of how I want to be as a mom and how I want to be with my friends and my family. If I think about what is it that led me to have such massive success in the past year to overcome the massive, multiple, massive fails that I've had in both of these areas. It was investing seriously in both of these goals. It is what made this past year such a success. I invested in fitness, I invested in coaching, and it created a level of accountability and structure that leveled up how I was showing up. So whenever I would have a pain in my ass. You know, figuratively speaking, my coach could show me where the tack was. I think before coaching, when I would have a pain in my ass, figuratively speaking, I kept thinking that something outside of me had to change. I thought that I needed more time. I thought that I needed to have easier, you know, an easier family, easier kids, more understanding husband. I thought I needed to have less on my to-do list, for me to feel better. And I think the number one thing that coaching has showed me was there is just a tack in your ass that you don't know how to take out unless someone shows you. One of my favorite things that I love sharing with my clients, and my clients will hear me say this all the time inside the Unstoppable Group when we coach together is results on and off the scale. When I say that, I mean you can lose the weight you want, hit your body goal and feel better in your relationships with your time in the workplace with your productivity. I'm talking about feeling better inside out, up and down. It's like green eggs and ham. What I mean by that is. You can hit goals, you can lose weight, you can feel better here. You can hit goals, lose weight, and feel better there. You can hit goals, feel better, and lose weight. Anywhere, and it is one of the things that I feel so passionate about, for especially overachieving women who believe that they just need more time or more space on their calendar to feel better. I've realized that that is such a sneaky, sneaky, sneaky lie that a lot of women tell themselves. When you have coaching and strategy, literally you can decide to fill anything you want on your result line, the results that you want six months from now, a year from now, you can put anything on that line. And with strategy and coaching. You can make it happen. Anyways, I hope that you enjoyed this birthday episode and my clients very forthcoming asking me all the questions. I really like to think about myself as an open book when it comes to this podcast, when it comes to sharing value with all of you, sharing real life obstacles and strategies on how I've navigated a lot of these issues, being a professional, busy working mom, and I hope that you feel inspired. By listening to this podcast, and I hope that you feel inspired to know that it's possible. If it's possible for me, if it's possible for my clients, it's possible for you too. And if you can just take less than 60 seconds to leave a rating and review. Don't wait for tomorrow. There is one day left in this giveaway. Please head over to burnstressloseweight.com/celebrate. All the links are there the step-by-step process and exactly how to leave a rating and review is right there. It just takes a few moments, but it really does help us out and I would absolutely love it if you joined us in the celebration. Thank you so much, my unstoppable friends, and I will see you next week. Bye bye.