Summary 

In this episode of Burn Stress. Lose Weight, I’m discussing the often overlooked concept of flexibility in weight loss, as an "advanced skill." Flexibility is something many of us crave when embarking on a weight loss journey, but I want to share why mastering consistency first is critical before playing with flexibility. Through personal insights and real-life examples, I’ll uncover the common pitfalls many women face when they try to introduce flexibility too soon. Learn how focusing on consistent execution, rather than exceptions, can transform your approach to achieving and maintaining your weight loss goals.

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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Why flexibility is an advanced weight loss skill and why you shouldn’t start there.
• The importance of mastering consistency before adding flexibility to your plan.
• How focusing on exceptions can lead to inconsistent results and frustration.
• The two phases of weight loss: consistency and flexibility.
• Three common reasons overachievers struggle with sticking to a plan.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Download the full transcript here.

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  Hey friends, welcome back to the podcast. Before we dive into today's podcast episode, we're just going to talk about how flexibility is an advanced weight loss skill. I want to make sure that you know, that my small group coaching program, Burn Stress. Lose Weight. Feel Unstoppable, or what I lovingly call the Unstoppable group is currently open for enrollment. This is my intimate six months, small group coaching program. That is. specifically geared for professional working moms who self identify as overachievers. We are starting on Sunday. If you're listening to this in real time, our coaching cohort is starting on Sunday. And if you know that the work that we have been talking about here on the podcast has been lighting you up, you have been feeling that desire to take what you're learning and put it into real implementation. You want to have a coach in your corner to show you what you're not seeing, to really help you learn the skills of what we are talking about here on the podcast. I think it might be time for us to work together. So if you are at all interested in learning about the group and in joining this upcoming cohort, head over to www.burnstressloseweight.com/group you will learn all the nuts and bolts, the bolts, the features of the program and how we work together. And you will see a button that allows you to book a consult call with me. I have opened up my calendar this week and I'm opening up space for us to talk so that we can really talk about your specific and unique journey with weight loss. Likely if you have wanted to lose weight, it's not something new. You have likely had many experiences in the past that have maybe worked, but not lasted, or you've had a really frustrating experience with weight loss. And my mission is to help my clients and to help you really let go of the frustration so you have science informed strategy that you know how to execute on. Don't wait, head over to burnstressloseweight.com/group. So you can book your consult call. And if you don't see a time or you want to skip the consult and you want to claim your spot, then it's not a problem. Send us an email at [email protected] and we will take care of you. Let's get into today's episode where we are going to talk about how flexibility is an advanced weight loss skill. 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, 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. My intention with recording this podcast episode today is to dive into why you need to really feel confident in consistently executing on your plan. And before you layer in the more complex topic of flexibility, I'm only sharing this because this is a lesson that I have had to learn after making this mistake numerous. And when I tell you numerous, I mean years upon years where I used to come into my weight loss strategy with this one perspective around where is the flexibility?

  It's one of the things that when I really take a fine tooth comb over the many years that I was gaining and losing the same five to 10 pounds, that I realized one of the things that kept me on this merry go round was this recurring theme, which was my perspective coming into my weight loss strategy. One of the very first few things that I would think about as I would start again or have my fresh start is where are the exceptions? I would wonder, will I get to have my Friday night fun? What about dessert at date night? What about the margaritas with my girlfriends? Not only did this type of perspective coming into my weight loss strategy create a lot of confusion around how I was making decisions and how I was executing on the plan, it kept my mental chatter around food constant. I would think, is this an exception? Does this count? Is this too much? Is this too little? Is this flexibility? This type of perspective coming into my weight loss strategy made every weekend, special event, walk by the pantry feel wrecked with a mental tug of war around how I was going to execute. The crazy thing is that focusing on the exceptions first is what led me to feel perpetually deprived. So if you have ever wondered coming into your weight loss plan, where is the flexibility first? You will likely see a trail of breadcrumbs where you get off track really fast. So the whole intention of today's podcast episode is to talk about how flexibility is absolutely an important skill for a lifetime of results for you to hit that number on the scale, to feel really good in your body, to really lose the weight you want and maintain it for a lifetime.

  However, before you can play with flexibility as a skill, as a weight loss skill, you have to first master consistency. Before you throw tomatoes at me, I'm here really to say what needs to be said. I don't ever want to sugarcoat, pun intended, I don't want to sugarcoat the work that I think is necessary for overachieving women to have to do so that you can stop wasting time on gimmicks and fads and strategies that are just not going to work. I'm also guessing if you're listening to this podcast episode, you know deep down that you have to first master consistent execution before you can play with flexibility. The way that I think about consistency versus flexibility is in two phases. Phase one is the foundational action of consistent execution. Building confidence in your consistent execution is something that is going to create confidence. It's going to create a groundedness that when you hit a goal, you know, that you can maintain it. You learn the skill of making a decision and actually following through on it. And as you practice that again and again, and again, as a practice, pertains to weight loss. Specifically, you start to create so much self trust you start to trust yourself in different scenarios. You're able to take your plan and take it with you to work. Take it with you on your holiday ticket with you through a weekend through special events and know that you can create consistent wins on the scale because you have mastered the skill as you practice this foundational skill phase one of consistent execution. You start to teach your brain that it's possible to lose the weight that you want to lose. While feeling satisfied, you not only are undoing years of deprivation and restriction mentality, you start to create abundance around relaxation and rest as you eat in a way that your body has been wanting to be fed in the foundational phase of weight loss, which is focusing on consistent execution. You learn how to execute. Even when you're experiencing real life stresses, moments of overwhelm, even boredom. I'm telling you in my experience now, and this is now I've lost over 60 pounds. I maintained it for years. And it's what I'm seeing overachievers in every industry do. When you learn this skill, this foundational phase one, you will feel so good about having these skills in your tool belt.

  It's priceless for you to know that you can execute on your plan consistently, even when you are encountering a challenging season of your life, when you're having boredom, stress, overwhelmed to get to flexibility, which is what I know we all want to have in our life. You want to have that flexibility and you want to be able to go with the flow. We have to give this phase enough attention. Now I can hear you asking, how long does this phase take Priyanka? How long do I have to be in phase one? How long does it take to become really skilled at consistent execution? You're not going to love my answer. My answer is it really can happen quickly, or it can take a lot of time. Just depends on you, you being able to move through phase one, becoming really good at consistent execution is going to depend on what obstacles you uniquely have to experience. The unlearning that you have to experience with diet, brain mentality, and all of the rules that maybe you've grown up with that have kept you on the weight loss rollercoaster. You have to learn how to create a weight loss plan that you. Actually like, and then take it and execute on it. You have to learn how to create rest and pleasure and relaxation without food. You have to learn how to handle mistakes without drama, right? All of these things that I'm talking about in terms of this foundational skillset takes practice. And for some people, yes, it does take time. I'm sharing this list because this is exactly what I take my clients through step by step. This is one of the things that I love so much for my clients inside the unstoppable group. Whether you have more than 50 pounds to lose or just your last five, and you want to practice easeful maintenance, we meet you right to where you are, your obstacles, your work, your progress. It's taking through the filter of your unique life because your life is not like anyone else's. But at the same time, you get to learn from the experiences, the obstacles and the coaching of other women that are very similar to you. Now let's get to phase two. This is flexibility. The thing that we all want.

  I think about phase two as a phase of experimentation, being able to play with flexibility, taking random days off, you know, making decisions on a whim. In my experience to play with phase two, to bring in flexibility into your weight loss strategy, you have to first feel completely grounded in your results. You have to feel confident in your weight loss strategy and your execution, and you have to be willing to play with. undesirable results. This means that if you go off track, if you take a random day off, if you just decide to wing it, get a little loosey goosey and you start to see results on the scale that you don't love, that there is no drama for you when that happens. This is where you need to have the capacity to handle random pounds up on the scale without any drama. The essential piece of phase two is we have to be able to handle undesirable results. We have to be able to handle seeing the pound up on the scale. And to do that, we have to have first created confidence that we can get back on track without the drama. That is why I call flexibility an advanced skill, but all too often, what I find is we want to jump ahead. To this place in my experience, when you come into your weight loss journey, thinking about flexibility first, you end up muddying the waters. There's so much confusion around what's working and what isn't working that you start making constant exceptions under the guise of flexibility. And because of this, you have a lot of inconsistent results in the scale. That creates a lot of frustration and discouragement. And then what most of us do is we throw in the towel and think we need a brand new plan. The reality is we never needed a brand new plan. We simply needed to take the plan we originally had and execute it consistently. There are three reasons that I have found that especially professional women who identifies overachievers do this. Why is it that you might have come into your weight loss strategy looking for flexibility first? Reason number one is you have been so burned in the past with restriction filled, terrible weight loss strategies, and you likely have a colorful history of all the things you have tried, like Weight Watchers, and Noom, and Juice Detoxes, and No Carb, and Intermittent Fasting, Count Every Calorie, Eat More Lettuce, Have the Cottage Cheese, even though you hate it, that your relationship with how you eat has been deeply affected. And if you never loved the way that you were trying to lose weight, if you never loved your weight loss strategy, To begin with, it's no surprise that a part of you, part of your brain is screaming at you, make sure we have some fun, make sure that we can have an exception, make sure that we can have flexibility. This will show up for you as you making exceptions under the guise of flexibility. And again, this is normal because your brain is trying to avoid the disaster experiences that you've had in your past. Here's what your brain learns. Every time you do this, your brain learns that it's not possible for you to love your weight loss strategy without exceptions.

  You subconsciously, or maybe very consciously start to believe that it's not possible to lose weight and feel satisfied without all the exceptions. And this is a mistake. My clients in the Unstoppable Group hear me say this all the time, but if you don't love your strategy to begin with. it's not going to last. The solution isn't to throw in a random cookie or a random glass of wine just to solve for deprivation. The real solution is to create a baseline day to day strategy that ensures you're getting enough. of the right nutrition that's making intentional modifications to make you a fat burner, and also that builds in rest and relaxation outside of food. It is never food's job to entertain you. Yes, I know that we love food and food is entertaining, but it's not food's job to do that. And yet we have been relying on food as a way to get rest and relaxation, which is what takes us really off track. It's absolutely true that we do have to master the skill of constraint, of how to say no powerfully to things, but when your baseline, your day to day is full of real nutrition that you actually like. When you feel deeply taken care of, your body is actually getting the nutrients that she needs. You will teach yourself and your brain that you can feel satisfied and lose weight. It is the greatest act of self care. Reason number two that I have found that a lot of high achievers, overachievers will want to look at flexibility first before they practice really getting consistent with execution is you don't want to get boxed in. This is so me. This is not even just with food. I used to do this with how I block my time out, how I make decisions around my schedule. You'll know this is you if you find yourself thinking, I just want to go with the flow. I just want to follow my intuition and I want to intuitively eat. You will think that making decisions in advance is restrictive, so you'll keep your plans loosey goosey under the guise of flexibility.

  But what this actually does is it creates a lot of space for confusion and decision fatigue. And what happens when you keep executing in this way, where you want to be free and, you know, follow your intuition, is it teaches your brain that constrained decision making is restrictive and full of deprivation. When in fact, constrained decision making is just discipline. It's like putting bumpers on your lane to ensure that you get enough of the right food, that you actually are getting exactly what you need to not just lose weight, but to actually feel good in the process. I teach my clients five levels of decision making to take to the filter of your highest wisdom. Level one is no decision making, totally winging it. I recommend this for basically no one. Level two is deciding when you're going to be making your decision by. Level three is deciding what you're going to do and when you're doing it. Level four. Decision making is deciding what you're going to do, when you're going to decide it by, and why you love this decision. And level five is deciding what you're going to do, when you're going to do it by, why you're going to do it this way, and how you're going to do it. Now really getting into the five levels of decision making is way too much for this podcast. It's really something I do with my clients in the group. But at the start to create and master consistent execution, I recommend that my clients start with level four and level five decision making in a way that impacts not just the way that you're eating and your nutrition, but making decisions around sleep. I want you to see that making decisions around how you're eating and really losing the weight you want to lose is more than nutrition. You have to look at this holistic approach to you wanting to lose the weight you want. Reason number three, you're preemptively building in off plan moments. You have probably told yourself that you can't possibly stick to your food plan 100 percent of the time because maybe you haven't in the past. So why bother? Why bother trying to create a plan that has no flexibility? AKA lack of decisions and throw in random treats here and there to make this plan more followable. This sounds familiar. You're not alone. I too have done this, but this is classic for someone who has a history of making a plan and not following through. Here's what your brain learns when you do this. It learns that you can't follow a plan, which is such utter BS. As a professional woman who has overachieving tendencies, you are literally an expert at following through. You just haven't hit your consistent weight loss results in stride. But we tell ourselves these lowest denominator thoughts because we think that somehow if we build in this flexibility, we can dampen disappointment if we fail again. Unfortunately, this creates a self fulfilling prophecy where you don't put forth your full effort. The reality is your life right now is based on the thoughts that you have been having about yourself for the past year. Look at the areas that you have had so much success in, maybe in the workplace. What has your identity been in the workplace? Likely, if you're listening to this podcast, you're a go getter who accomplishes a lot of things. Think about what that is. Thoughts you have had about yourself in the workplace. Can you imagine on the very first day of the job that you think, uh, I don't know if we're going to get this done on time. Let's build in buffer. No, don't do this in the workplace. You likely have had a thought like, I always get it done. And then you do, you don't need to plan in exit strategies, right? When you start, I want to use, you know, having a kid, for example, there's such a difference when you tell your kid, Hey, you're not going to make the soccer team. So do we really want to even bother trying out versus, Hey, let's try it for the soccer team. We're going to prepare for it. It might be tough. We're going to practice some skills. And if you hit any sticky moments, don't worry. I've got you. It is so interesting how our perspectives coming into our plan really creates so much of our successes and our fails, which is why a lot of what I'm sharing on today's episode is focusing on the foundational skill of consistent execution before we start playing with flexibility. So in a nutshell, if you have focused on flexibility first, you're not alone. I just shared with you three of the most common reasons that I have found that overachieving women tend to do this. Now you know why. However, what I'm also trying to really share on this podcast is before you can confidently make tweaks to your plan and have random days off and skip things and wing things, we have to first feel confident and grounded in your results through masterful, consistent execution. I've been sharing about this on the podcast now for the last few weeks. And I talked about this in the masterclass last week, but there's a three step approach that helps you master this. The first one is proper planning, making sure that your weight loss plan is actually based in science, that you actually feel satisfied as you lose weight.

  Step two is really getting to the bottom of consistent execution, learning how to manage your stress, your boredom, that awkward feeling, and not using food as a crutch. And step threes. Iteration really understanding that offline moments, a random pound up on scale is normal, and it's possible to get back to your plan like you never left off. These are the three pieces of what I call the PI framework, and it is going to create weight loss confidence, where you know that you can actually create results consistently before you start playing and experimenting with flexibility. If you love what you have been learning on the podcast and you want to take everything from here and put it into real life implementation, then I want to invite you to come on a consult call with me and see whether the unstoppable group is going to be a good fit for you. The work that we're talking about is exactly what I do with my clients. And what I have found is investing seriously in yourself and this goal, putting our calls on your calendar, having a coach in your corner, and Really having this time blocked off for yourself is going to create accountability. And if you know that you want to be down on the scale by New Year's, this is your time. I've opened up time on my calendar this week. Doors to the October cohort are closing this Friday. So don't wait, head over to burn stress, lose weight. com forward slash group, grab your consult call and let's talk because. Seriously, when you learn how to consistently execute the way that you do in every other part of your life, when it comes to weight loss, and then start being able to play with flexibility, you really have hit the jackpot. I hope you all have an amazing week and I will see you next time. 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 about it. 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.