Summary 

Have you ever found yourself waiting for the perfect moment of motivation to take action on your goals—whether it’s weight loss, wellness, or personal growth? In this episode, I’m sharing an analogy between a struggling mother in a rainy parking lot and the way we try (and fail) to reason with the more primitive, impulse-driven part of our brains. What if you didn’t need full motivation or permission from your inner “toddler” to follow through on your commitments? If you’re ready to stop the inner tug-of-war and take consistent action toward your goals, this episode is for you!

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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Why waiting for full motivation before taking action is keeping you stuck.
• How the two parts of your brain—your logical “mom” brain and your impulsive “toddler” brain—impact decision-making.
• The key difference between deprivation and discipline when it comes to weight loss.
• A practical mindset shift to help you follow through on your goals with more ease.
• How to set loving yet firm boundaries with yourself to create lasting success.

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Download the full transcript here.

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  Last week I was in the parking lot about to go into a grocery store. It was raining and I saw this very young mother by young, I mean in her twenties twenties or maybe early thirties talking to her baby, who I'm guessing was around seven or eight months old, like not brand new, brand new baby, but definitely not yet a toddler. And this baby was flying out of control. If you're a mom you've been there where maybe for no apparent reason your baby is crying and you're trying to console this baby and this very very sweet mom she asked this little baby multiple times it's raining sweetheart are you ready to get into the car are you ready are you ready like she would give the baby a moment the baby just kept crying and this sweet mom kept Asking the baby, almost for permission, to put the baby into the car seat. And then this 7 or 8 month old baby just kept crying. Now, I had quite a ways to go in the parking lot, so I was watching this unfold for many, many, many minutes. And even as I was walking into the grocery store, this mom was trying to reason with her baby in the rain. Now, in this moment, my heart kind of leapt out of my chest for this mom because I know that feeling. I think if you're listening to this podcast and you're a mom, you've also been in that scenario where you're just trying to get your child to cooperate with you. And they're not. And as we do on this podcast, I'm going to use this story and this kind of example to paint a very detailed picture of how we do this exact thing in our personal and professional lives. Now, before I get into how the story, what the story even has to do with hitting your weight loss or wellness goal this year i just think this disclaimer is really necessary because i don't want you to be upset as i make the parallel the baby was perfectly fine and completely safe and this is not a mom shaming story this mom was clearly trying to do her absolute best. But for some reason, and this is kind of the intention of today's episode, the mom really felt a very important need to try to get her baby on board to put the baby in the car seat. And I wanted to use this example because this is the part that kind of feels crazy for me because there were so many years where I just didn't know this. I used to think that I have to get myself completely on board with a plan. I have to be completely excited. I have to be completely motivated. I have to feel completely aligned with a strategy to actually take serious, consistent action. And especially on the heels of last week's episode, where I did talk about how it's important. If you have a goal, you have to love the work to get there. You have to like, get your brain on board with loving the work and doing the work. to get there. Today's podcast episode is the other side of that coin. When your brain isn't completely on board, when the baby part of your brain is crying and screaming about something, how to take action anyway.

  Hey, unstoppable friend, you're listening to The Burn Stress, Lose Weight podcast. I'm your host Dr. Priyanka Venugopal, a physician turned a stress and weight loss coach for professional working moms and the founder of the Burn Stress, Lose Weight, Feel Unstoppable small group coaching program. This podcast is going to inspire change at the root for you on and off the scale. I've lost a little over 60 pounds while being a busy physician mom with two young kids and an unpredictable schedule. And along my journey, which was full of many, many imperfect moments, I have learned how to skip past the fads and the gimmicks. I am on this mission now to share with you how you can have a real strategy and mindset skills to really have more of the life you want that you have worked so hard for. Let's get into it. One of the most liberating realizations for me that I really did not know forever up until a few years ago is that we have two parts of our human brain. There's the most evolved prefrontal cortex. This is the mom that is making the decision in the parking lot. And then there is the other part of our brain, the more primitive toddler part of our brain that is simply wanting immediate gratification. Immediate ease, immediate pleasure, does not want to feel any discomfort. That's like the baby in the parking lot. Now for a very long time before I was really aware of the difference between these two parts of me, I used to think that I have to be completely on board, completely aligned, completely motivated. To take action, a.k.a. to put myself into the car seat, to buckle in and start driving the car. And because of this, I often felt this push and pull where one part of me really wanted the results. I wanted to lose the weight. I wanted to hit my goal, but this other part of me didn't want to put forth. The effort, it felt like too much or it felt annoying. And just putting in the effort, my brain created a lot of very convenient, compelling and convincing stories for why we didn't want to do that. And this led to the perpetual push and pull. One of the things that created an incredible amount of freedom for me and a lot of power was realizing that these two parts of my brain were normal.

  Listen, a toddler crying in the rain when it's about to go into a car seat is normal. Right? We've all been there. Nothing is going wrong. It's a baby, just being a baby. Yet somehow we have this idea with ourselves that maybe because we're adult, grown women, or that we know the impact of having a positive mindset on hitting a goal, we think that we have to be completely positive all the time, or we have to be completely on board all the time. And that can create a lot of second guessing and a lot of struggle on hitting your goals. Without realizing it, at least for me, before I realized that there are these two very normal and important parts of my brain, I used to let the primitive toddler part of my brain run the show. So I was living the life of an adult human where I had responsibilities. I had my work responsibilities and my kid responsibilities. But when it came to those small moments of following through on what I said, Whether it was the way that I was going to eat, whether it was hitting the gym, whether it was opening up and reading a chapter for my oral board exams, which is a story that I often like to share. There was that small toddler in me that didn't want to put forth the effort. I wanted immediate gratification. I didn't want to feel any discomfort. I wanted to have fun and joy. And without realizing it, I started to let the toddler part of my brain call the shots. I've talked a lot on this podcast in different episodes in the past on the difference between deprivation and discipline. And I think that this is worth re exploring again. And I'm going to use this analogy in this example of the mom and the baby in the parking lot to paint the picture. There is a tender truth, which is particularly when it comes to weight loss. And hitting a body goal, you might have actually experienced deprivation in the past. Just the way that the diet industry has peddled its strategies to girls and women from a really, really young age, you might have counted every single calorie that you ate. or felt hungry or dissatisfied in your journey to lose weight. And it's that unfortunate experience that most girls and women have experienced when it comes to their bodies and body goals, that a part of your brain has maybe hardwired that weight loss requires deprivation for it to be successful. But in my experience, and I have lost over 60 pounds and maintained it for years. And it is a strategy that I teach my clients. who I see having incredible success and lasting results with, hitting your dream body goal is actually not at all about deprivation. It is though about discipline. When you have a strategy, and I talk about this on the podcast a lot, your strategy has to encompass nutrition, guilt free rest, play, movement, and mindset. When your strategy actually encompasses you getting enough Nutrition and actual rest when the time comes to follow through on your plan, it's not deprivation, right? It's simply up leveling discipline. Let me go back to the baby and the car seat example. If you go back to that parking lot and you're in the rain and maybe the baby doesn't have a car seat or is not getting enough food or doesn't have a warm home or the love and tenderness of the big people that are charged with taking care of her. Yes, the baby would be deprived, right? And it's possible that you have experienced some flavor of that either literally or figuratively in your journey up until this point. Forcing that crying baby into a car without these basic bare minimums would be inhumane. But when a baby has. enough food, enough clothing, a warm place, and love of the big people in her life, then putting the baby in the car seat, even when she's crying, is not depriving or restricting the baby. It is simply placing a firm boundary and being disciplined. As you can tell from the last few episodes on the podcast, I have really been focusing on this theme of not just helping you lose the weight you want or hitting your body goal. But I want to really show professional women that have overachieving and perfectionist tendencies, that you can lose the weight you want and feel better at the same time. And if you feel deprived or restricted in your journey, I think it is so worth the effort and attention to figure out why are you missing your proverbial car seat? A warm home, enough nutrition, enough rest, enough play. Are you missing talking to yourself with kindness and compassion and with some self love? Are you missing any piece of that? Because no matter what your plan looks like, you will feel deprived and restricted on the journey. However, if you have a strategy that guarantees that you're getting enough nutrition, That you're getting guilt free rest and play, that you're going to meet yourself with tenderness and compassion and with love. Following through on what you said, saying no to something, even though you want it, is never, ever going to be deprivation. The reality is there is that moment where you're standing in a parking lot and it's raining and the baby is crying. And because you and I both know that telling a crying baby to not cry or trying to get a baby's permission to go into a car seat is borderline impossible. We get to take that exact example and start applying it to our weight loss and wellness goals. This is where last week's episode is going to be an amazing stepping stone, reminding yourself why you want this and why you want to do the work, why you want to buckle in, strap into the car seat, even if there's a part of your brain that is protesting toddler in you wants immediate gratification. Maybe the toddler in you just wants the cookie, wants the pizza, wants snack and nibble, just wants whatever it is that is going to create the immediate dopamine hit. Just remember that there's this adult part of you, the evolved. Prefrontal cortex that can actually set the disciplined boundary. All that has happened is for many, many years, maybe that evolved prefrontal cortex has been trying to ask the toddler for permission to go into the car seat. And just imagine that we didn't need to ask the toddler in us for that permission anymore. I want to say this with a little bit of a caveat because especially professional women.

  Overachievers and perfectionists have a tendency of swinging from, you know, the all or nothing thinking. So while you don't need to ask your toddler, the inner toddler that just wants immediate gratification for permission to get strapped into the car seat, you also never have to yell at yourself or shame yourself or blame yourself or judge yourself. I call this the third road. Here's what the third road is all about. Imagine that you didn't need permission from the toddler part of you to buckle into the car seat and imagine that you didn't have to yell at your toddler for not getting into the car seat. The third road is all about being firm with yourself and loving at the same time. It's actually what we have wanted, what we have likely wanted from our youngest, youngest years. We just want to be loved. And acknowledged for how we're feeling and also our brains craving firm boundaries and clear direction. So what this will look like and going back to the parking lot example is telling the toddler part of you, I know you're upset. It makes perfect sense. We're getting into the car seat. We're going to buckle in. We're going to go. And then just following through on what you said. The more that you repeat this piece of the process where you do what you said, you follow through on exactly the plans you made. Again, with the caveat that your strategy is actually a winning strategy that takes into account nutrition, rest, play, and movement. When you do that again and again and again, you actually start to train the toddler part of your brain. You train the toddler part of your brain that just crying and having tantrums is never actually going to work for us to not follow through, but we are going to be taken care of. One of the biggest mistakes that I made for a very, very long time, and I see a lot of professional women doing this is we make ourselves wrong for having the crying toddler on the inside when in fact, toddlers cry, babies cry, nothing is wrong. Nothing is going wrong. If there's a small piece of you that is protesting, putting in an effort or doing the work because there's It doesn't want to I really think about last week's episode and this week's episode as two sides of a coin Last week we really talked a lot about if you have a goal and you want a goal You have to want to do the work to get there or you're going to feel completely miserable in the process and we talked through My strategy on how to go from feeling fatigued and miserable to feeling freedom and empowered in your weight loss journey and this side of the coin is There might be moments that you don't feel like it, that your motivation dips, that you have the crying toddler that doesn't want to get into the car seat. And this is where we have to start accessing that most evolved prefrontal cortex to. Firmly and lovingly place a boundary, strap us into the car seat because it is actually what is good for us now and in the future so that we can actually start hitting goals with a lot more ease. Just remember, the only way that today's podcast episode is going to work Is if you have a strategy that is actually restorative, your strategy has to be healing for your body. It has to heal your hormone health. It has to support your metabolism. It has to help make your fat burning hormones actually able to burn fat without you feeling hungry or deprived. Along the way, this is one of the things that I absolutely love doing and teaching my clients in the Unstoppable group. It's the very first call that my clients get access to. It's called a strategy mini class where I talk through the exact five step process around nutrition, guilt free rest, play, movement, and mindset. Because when you have those building blocks in place, buckling yourself into the car seat is going to feel so much better.

  I hope you all enjoyed today's podcast episode, and if you did, share it with a friend, leave a rating or review, and I will see you all at the next one. Thanks for spending this time with me on the Burn Stress Lose Weight podcast today. I hope that you are leaving today's podcast episode feeling a little lighter and more inspired than when we started. It turns out that you don't need to have a stress free life to hit your goals on and off the scale. But when you feel more empowered to respond to your real life stresses with true strategy, we will game change how we show up and how we hit our goals. If you want to take what you're learning here on the podcast and put it into real life implementation, it might be time for us to work together in the Burn Stress, Lose Weight, Feel Unstoppable group coaching program. Head over to burnstressloseweight.com and you can learn all of the details, the nuts, the bolts, when the next group is starting and exactly how you can join. Okay, friend, I'll see you next time.