Summary 

In this deeply honest and unfiltered episode, I'm sharing something I originally recorded just for my clients inside The Unstoppable Group: how I navigated a massive epic fail on a recent family trip to India. I'm pulling back the curtain on exactly what went wrong, what I used to believe in these moments, and the specific mindset and strategy shifts that helped me turn it all around without the usual spiral.

If you've ever felt like one off-track moment means you've "ruined everything," this episode is for you. I walk through the real-life breakdown, the uncomfortable truth about gut health and fried food (yup, we go there), and the five-question retrospective that changed everything.

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

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Why imperfection (not perfection) is the real secret to sustainable weight loss
• The unexpected gut disaster that left me bloated, constipated, and up 7+ pounds
• The exact mindset shift that helped me avoid the dreaded “F it” spiral
• A step-by-step breakdown of the retrospective I use to recover from setbacks — fast
• How oxytocin and dopamine can become your secret weapons for results that stick

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Download the full transcript here.

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  Hey, my unstoppable friends, welcome to the Burn Stress, Lose Weight podcast. I am sharing with you today a very personal style video. This was actually a, not a training, but it was a video that I actually recorded specifically for my clients inside the Unstoppable Group, where I shared with them how I navigated a massive epic fail. One of the things that you learn when you're in my orbit, whether it's here on the podcast or when you work with me as a client, or if you follow me on Instagram, one of the messages and the really key takeaways that I want anyone in my orbit to know is that you don't ever have to be perfect to hit your goal, but you have to get really, really, really good at being imperfect. You have to have a relationship with yourself that is founded in trust and compassion and patience, and you have to be able to take radical ownership and responsibility over what is leading to your lacking results. I share this because a lot of the time, especially smart. Overachieving professional women think that we are assessing and evaluating results when really what we're doing is we're judging our results. We are being impatient with ourselves, we're acting confused. We are completely abdicating responsibility over the thoughts that we were having about ourselves, the feelings that that creates and how we really showed up in the process to actually create the results that we have on the scale and off. I teach my clients inside the Unstoppable Group a very step-by-step framework on how to handle what I like to call plot twists or off plan moments with not just a mindset strategy, but an actual science informed strategy to help you really turn around moments that you have gone off track. If we just imagine and believe the truth, just believe me for a minute, that you reaching your goal weight is not going to be a perfect linear line down that there's going to be choppy waters at times. There's going to be unanticipated obstacles at times. There's going to be moments that you go off plan or the scales up a pound or something comes up. If we don't deeply navigate that moment more powerfully, we're going to stay stuck. One of the things that I'd really love to talk about on this podcast is how we can go from feeling disempowered when we have results. We don't love to being completely empowered in the process. So to that end, I just opened up my camera. I recorded it kind of unfiltered in how I navigated the massive epic fail I experienced when I was on recent travel with my family. We took a very long trip to India. It was an amazing family trip. We were hopping from city to town to village. There was a lot of travel, and I have in the past now for many years, I've been able to travel. I've gone all around the world. I shared with all of you on Instagram, and I have a strategy that really works. It helps me maintain my goals without any problem. So I came into my strategy into this trip with the same plan. It was very simple. It's very doable. I have a lot of evidence that it worked. However, I hit quite a few roadblocks, so I share with my clients the experience of me hitting those roadblocks. How I realized that it was really derailing me at some point on this trip, I was probably seven or eight pounds up on the scale. My belly was very uncomfortable. It was not a good scene. And I share with my clients the mindset that I had I in how I realized that this was happening, the mindset that I did not have the thoughts that used to take me off track, that I did not have, and the thoughts that I had instead, and how I turned it around. So I might have been seven or eight pounds up at some point during this trip, and now just a few days after I was returning, I'm already back down to where I was before I left off this one skill. This is a power tool. It is a super skill. I want this in the hands of every professional woman that wants to hit. Goal. This is a weight loss goal, but this framework that you learn in today's podcast episode is a framework that you can take into your professional goals, into any relationship goals, productivity goals, time, goals that you have. It applies for everything I get into the five questions that I recommend you ask yourself on a routine basis. And if you don't have this built into your life, then it will not be surprising to me if you feel confused about your results and how to turn it around. So I really hope you enjoy today's podcast episode.

   

  I'm taking this video, we can call it a training. We can call it a video diary that I shared with just my clients, and I decided to turn it into today's podcast episode because I believe it's going to help, even if this helps one person on the other side listening to this, I think it is worth me sharing it with you. So I really hope that you enjoy today's podcast episode. It's a doozy of an episode. It's very unfiltered. So I hope you enjoy it. And if you do love this episode, then I would love for you to tell me that you love this type of episode. So I can do more of these. You can message me, send me a DM over on Instagram at Burn Stress, Lose Weight, or send me an email [email protected] so that I can hear from you. I love to know the kinds of episodes that are resonating with you that you love, and if you love it, I would love it if you shared this podcast and this show with a friend who needs to hear this message. So without further ado, let's get into this little video diary slash training that I shared in how I handled massive epic fails on my recent trip to India. Hey, unstoppable friend. You're listening to the Burn Stress Lose Weight podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Priyanka Venugopall, 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 have lost a little over 60 pounds while being a busy physician mom with two young kids in 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. Hello friends, I wanted to share a actual realtime retrospective and how I talk to myself through it. This is gonna be a little bit of a all over the place video because I'm going to walk through the five questions that I asked myself to assess and to evaluate my trip to India. I shared in one of our recent coaching calls, I had a two and a half trip where we went with the family. I called these family trips, they're not even vacations. It was a family trip where we were traveling to cities and towns and villages. And I came into this trip with a really, what felt like a very solid plan. It's a plan that has worked for me in multiple other trips. I have taken international trips. I've taken this plan with me to Italy, to Hawaii. I've actually even taken this, this plan with me to a previous trip to India a couple of years ago, and it worked really well. So when I went into my trip, I actually felt really solid. I felt very confident in it. And yet we hit some major, major obstacles and I wanted to share the mindset that I had in engaging with the obstacles that I encountered. I will, I will call, I called it a massive epic fail by mid trip. I'm gonna share with you what that was and the thoughts that I never had about the massive epic fail experience, the thoughts that I had instead, and the impact of simply managing my brain in how I engaged with my entire experience. And then I'm also going to answer some of these questions, how I've answered these questions mid trip and how it really helped me turn my trip around. And what I have done since I have come home from my trip, so I've come home, I got home a week ago. I actually was waiting to record this retrospective until I got exactly back to my usual maintenance weight. But I didn't wanna wait another one or two days, which is how long it might take. I really wanted to share with you the massive impact of what doing a retrospective assessment can look like, how it can, number one, change your experience of hitting any goal, any weight loss goal, any wellness goal, any personal or professional goal. We have to remember that as a human living, a very busy human life, it will just not go perfectly. We can have the perfect plan and the best laid plans, but being a professional woman, real life is going to happen. Things are going to come in choppy. Waters are going to happen. Circumstances out of your control might get in the way, maybe you don't do exactly what you said you were going to do, life is going to happen. And it's that moment, the way that we engage with that moment that either will make us lose more of our wins, make us sabotage our wins a lot more, have us gain more weight, feel worse, or how we get engaged with that moment can really turn it around. And one of the messages that I have been wanting to share, I've been really saying it on repeat again and again, is. Rather than chasing perfection and chasing perfect systems and perfect plans, I want us to make a perfect plan once we make active decisions. Really like once that you actually love and then do the much more valuable worthy work of getting really, really good at being imperfect, getting back on track like you never left off. That's the theme of unstoppable, because when you learn this skill and it's a learnable skill, you have to just do it with practice. You cannot learn this in a textbook. You cannot learn it from a podcast. You won't even learn it from just watching this video passively. Sometimes you have to go through the sticky, messy middle. You have to actually go through the epic fail and do this work. Actually put it into practice. Let it feel very vulnerable. If you feel some feelings around it, I see you and I get you because I have been there, but it is going through it that teaches you how you learn it. It is one of those things I know that especially overachievers, we want to learn. We want to like learn the step by step. We want to learn and we are going to get into the step by step. We want to learn how do you do this? How do you embrace imperfection? I cannot tell it to you just in a book. You're going to learn the steps in this video, you're going to learn these steps by listening to the podcast and just by being in this group, but it is going through the experience, taking the plan that we've created together in our strategy mini class, making those decisions, and now putting it into practice in real life, like how your very normal human brain engages with real life and then getting coached on those moments, doing these retrospectives every single week, no matter what is how you're going to teach your body and your brain that it's safe to make mistakes and it doesn't have to compromise your most massive wins and your biggest successes, it will heal something in you when you do this work. That's been my experience. There was a little priyanka that felt like if I didn't get the A plus all the time, or the gold stars or the words of praise and the accolades from my peers or even my husband or my kids, that somehow I felt inadequate. It's what kept me overworking and constantly addicted to being very productive. But it's doing this work, it's getting coached. It is really being vulnerable and honest and taking 100% responsibility. That's, we're gonna talk about doing that without a lick of shame or disappointment or embarrassment or judgment has healed that part of me. And what I have found is. Healing that little part of me that maybe felt like I always have to get the gold star and the A plus all the time, it has taken the pressure off, and by taking the pressure off of this journey, which is wild, we get to show ourselves it's possible to have fun and lose weight to have fun and hit your next massive growth goal at the same time. That doesn't mean that it's fun all the time. That doesn't mean that it's, you know, rainbows and daisies all the time, but just this work can be deeply impactful. It can actually be a lot of fun. I call these win-wins and I think that it is worth the effort. So I hope that I've made a compelling case for why doing retrospectives are so important. In the beginning when you are doing a retrospective for the very first time, it might feel kind of cumbersome. It might feel like, I don't know how to answer these questions I've never answered because you likely have not been answering these questions before. So just know if you're like, I don't know how to answer these questions, it's because your brain has not done it before. So you're coming up against a little like invisible wall. This is where you just have to embrace. The discomfort of not knowing and just do it messy. Just do it anyway. Just get started putting it on the calendar. I recommend picking a day of the week where you can set aside 15 to 30 minutes where you can be with yourself. Make it a ritual where it feels cozy and enjoyable. Put on the fuzzy socks, get out your hot tea. Do it free of. Kids climbing all over you, free of your client list and your patient inbox, and all of your emails and the laundry, and give yourself 15 to 30 minutes where you have a CEO meeting with yourself where you're asking yourself with honesty of the hat, of the objective, playful scientist, with a kindness, with a compassion. What happened over the last seven days? Let's find, were there any strategic gaps? Were there any mindset gaps that I want to fill? And when we come into our retrospective. Without shame and embarrassment and criticism and judgment, which can be hard to do in the beginning, which is why you have me supporting you as your coach. When you start to do this again and again, your brain actually starts to think in retrospectives all the time. It starts to think in instead of sitting in the problem and marinating in the soup of. Like the discouragement and the disappointment of an undesirable result, your brain automatically, you start hardwiring your brain to think in solutions, which is what actually happened in my trip to India. I didn't actually sit down and do a written retrospective mid epic fail. And while, you know, while I was on my trip, my brain, because I have done a lot of these retrospectives as I was losing weight, as I lost all of the 60 pounds and I've been maintaining it now for many years, my brain has started to think in retrospectives. It's starting to think about what's my strategic gap? I wonder what was missing. I wonder what I didn't do. I wonder what I did, and I want you to hear the tone and tenor. I'm not asking these in rhetorical questions, laced in judgment. I'm asking these questions from real, honest curiosity. I wonder what happened. I wonder what it was, and what did I do? What did I, it's like with a smile on my face and when I can do it from that lens, my nervous system. Because I, I'm not feeling attacked by my own brain. I'm not judged and criticized where I get defensive and righteous and indignant because I'm being curious with myself from a playful place where I have my own back. I'm like, of course I went off track. Of course this happened. This is of course, so human. My nervous system is relaxed enough and regulated enough where I can actually take ownership. That is what the magic sauce is, taking radical responsibility so you can make real tweaks. So I hope that this is like a long intro, but I really wanna share that background around retrospectives. I really like to do retrospectives. We can do them on a live call, but I feel like they are way, way, way more impactful when we do them in writing. In Slack, I post every single week we post these same five questions. Sometimes I might modify the questions every now and then, but it comes down to some flavor of these questions. I wanna walk through each of them why they matter and. I invite you to pick your day of the week. It doesn't have to be the day that I post, but pick a day of the week for you and share it with me so that we can have a back and forth conversation. I'm going to encourage you not to post and ghost if you post or retrospective. If you don't want any feedback or if you don't want any coaching from me or any questions from me, then you can just say at the bottom, PR, I feel complete. I don't need any coaching on this. I've had clients do that in the past. They're just doing it more for accountability. But if you post a retrospective, you can expect that I will be responding to it. I'm going to look for or help you find any strategic gaps. I might ask you questions that push you a little bit where you might see something that you did not know the tack in your ass that you couldn't see that maybe created some of the pain that you experienced, or the problem that came up for you will help solve it together. So don't post and ghost stick with me until the end of the thread where you feel clear and confident in how the retrospective is going to help inform you moving forward. Okay, lemme tell you a little story time and what my massive epic fail. So up until April 7th is when I left for my trip to India. It was a family trip. It's a massive trip for our family. We don't go very often. I used to go to India every single year when I was a kid, and then for many, many years, high school, college, medical school, residency, we stopped going and I did get married in India 17 years ago at the time of this video being recorded. But we had not been back very much. We've gone back once with the kids a couple of years ago where I did this. It was a very successful trip. I maintained my weight in India visiting family, and I got a little confident because I've taken my plan with me now to multiple international trips, conferences, retreats, date nights, and it's been very simple for me to maintain. Here is what I came into my trip with. I came in feeling very solid in my weight, feeling like I have a very, very simple and also very robust strategy that has been not just focusing on weight loss for the last few years, I have shifted my attention from weight loss to body recomposition. So I'm focusing on building muscle and dropping percent body fat. I'm less interested now in the number on the scale, and I did it in this way purposefully because to lose a lot of the weight, I had to change my relationship with food. I had to really find where was I giving food a job of joy and pleasure, and breaks from life that it wasn't meant to have. And once I did that work where I really cleaned up my relationship with food and felt really confident in having a plan and being able to follow through with it, then I was able to shift into some more detailed work in body recomposition and really upleveling my fitness. So I share this because this is an important part of what went wrong me going into my trip to India, I had a very regimented schedule. This is true of a lot of professionals, right? Monday through Friday, you feel like you have a really, really regimented schedule, and then maybe the weekend feels like it's completely crazy. So for me, I actually felt like I had a very regimented schedule, including the weekends. I know the exact days that I'm strength training. I know the days that I'm going to yoga. This is magic action structure. We have a whole video on this, and it's taken me a long time. It took me multiple months to create this structure that feels really good for me and my family where I have a, a really nice routine. I know when I'm going to wake up. I know generally when I go to sleep, I have, you know, my, my plans on the days that I have my coaching calls, I know exactly what my meals are going to look like, what my workouts are going to look like on the days that we have a lot of afterschool activities for my kids where I'm, you know, the soccer mom and the swim mom, and I'm doing a lot of the afterschool car travel. Again, this has taken multiple iterations. I've had to practice this. Multiple times I finally. Have had a routine now for multiple months where my magic action structure felt solid. And with my magic action structure, I was able to do a weekend away a couple of days away because it didn't impact my life. I would just follow eating when I was hungry, stopping when I was not, and eating as high quality of food as available that would, that's really how I went to Italy and to Hawaii, and even my last trip to India, because we were in some major cities, it worked really well. I ate when I was hungry. I did not treat my body like a suitcase. So if we had a long travel day, or if we had a long, you know, flight or car ride, I didn't preet because of possible hunger later. So this is like not treating your body like a suitcase. I didn't overeat. That was the other step two, I'm not gonna overeat, so I'm not gonna treat my body like a trash can. That means if there's a few bites left, if my kids ordered something and they didn't eat it, instead of me treating my body like a trash can and just. Finishing all the scraps on the on the table. I either packed it or I would throw it away. And then the third one is I stopped treating food like a precious commodity. And this is the work that I did back, you know, when I first lost 60 pounds, is I had to remind myself food is available all the time. Even if I get to a slight grumble of hunger, it's not a big deal. I'm okay. I'm safe. I will eat again. This food will be available again. I'm totally fine. And it's that actual mindset element. The third piece that's created a lot of satisfaction and it's empowered me to say no to the special foods, right? There's a very special dessert or very special treat, and I feel like I've gotten to my personal place of comfort. I don't have to force myself to stuff it down to try to, you know, like, like squirrels and nuts. We try to scroll it away because I have taught my brain that I can get this again later. It's just food. It's gonna be fine. I'm taken care of. So that was the strategy. My plan, going into my family trip to India, I did not know the menus of what we were going to be eating. I did not know exactly what the restaurants were going to be at. I didn't know when we were going to be visiting a family member or visiting their home. I didn't know when we were going to be eating out or whether we were just gonna be stopping on the road. I knew very little. Again, a lot of what I teach eating when you're hungry, stopping, when you're not choosing high quality foods like protein and fiber, and picking the best quality foods has served me very well and has simplified my entire weight loss journey. However, when we went to India this time, there was a couple of things that were different that I did not account for the very first one is we were traveling a lot more to non-major city locations, so this trip was full of us actually visiting my husband's ancestral villages, like where his family is originally from.

  I'm from North India, my husband is from South India, and so we actually flew in to Delhi and then from Delhi we went to Bangalore where we visited his grandparents. And from Bangalore we went to Coin Betho, which is another city. And then from Coin Betho, we took a drive through multiple villages and we were visiting you know, old towns that his family was from, and this was different. This was a way, you know, the foods that were available. The, the quality of foods that were, were available, while they might have been freshly cooked, all the foods that we ate were freshly cooked. They were super, super high in oil. There was a lot of oil in the foods that we were eating that we were exposed to, and there was very little protein. And again, maybe this is also partly because in vegetarian, that protein, you know, can sometimes be a struggle. And when I'm at home and when I'm in my routine, I have a awesome strategy to get enough protein and to prioritize the nutrition breakdown of the way I am eating. But when we were traveling in India for such a long time, this was not just a short trip, which again, my body can sustain, but for a very long trip, it started to take a toll. So that's the very first thing that I didn't account for. I was eating when I was hungry. I was stopping when I wasn't, but the quality of foods that were available, at least that was how I felt initially, the quality of foods that were available we're very, you know, they were fried or there was a lot of qui, a lot of oil, and my gut did not love that. Now, again, I didn't notice it for a few days because I came into this trip feeling awesome. My gut felt great. I was, I've been at my maintenance now for a while, so I came in feeling really good. I didn't notice it in the beginning, but what I noticed after a couple of days is my belly started to feel bloated. That was the very first signal to me. It started to feel a little bit bloated. We're gonna get into TMI by the way, in just a minute. So just like keep a lookout. There's some TMI about to come, but I started to feel bloated and my digestion slowed down. I was, I, I had this idea in my mind that we were going to be walking a lot. That was not a thing. The time of year that we went. It's extremely, extremely hot in India. So we weren't actually walking around the villages. We weren't really walking around very much in the streets of Delhi. We were in cars going from home, you know, from one family member to another, or from, you know, hotel to a family member's house. We were sitting in cars a lot. So that's the second thing that I did not very purposefully plan for or account for coming into my trip. I was strength training twice a week. I was doing yoga twice a week and I was walking a lot. So my energy expenditure, if you look at the math of weight loss and weight maintenance, my energy expenditure was very high because of my exercise routine and my regimen coming into my trip. And the moment that my trip started, my exercise routine went to zero, not just like I was walking a little bit less than usual. It went to zero because we were sitting a lot in cars and of course in people's homes and on airplanes. So those were the two. It's very simple, but had a massive, massive, massive effect on my body and on my gut.

  So the impact of both of these things where I went from working out very routinely to working out zero and eating high quality protein and fiber and vegetables and you know, all of like the best foods ever to having really delicious food, but having it be really, really high fat and a lot of white rice, and very little protein wreaked havoc on my body. So again, I didn't notice it for two or three days, but I had like day three to day four, my belly is feeling kind of like full, like over full. He's feeling very bloated. And this is the part that's TMII did not, I did not poop for days. Now if you're like a GI doctor watching this, like you might, I, there was one point, there was one point during the trip. Because it became, it was so many days that this went on for that. I literally wondered, is it possible that my colon might explode? I actually had that thought. The thing that was interesting for me and what led me to have so many days go by and not take an active intervention, is I wasn't in pain so this is a learning for me. I was waiting to get to pain to make a change. Okay, so I've learned this lesson now. I'm never gonna wait for pain ever again. My body was accommodating the food. My body was like taking it in. I was not in any pain. I wasn't having, I would feel a little uncomfortable for maybe half an hour or an hour, but then I would go away and I would just go back into enjoying my time with my family. Enjoying my time with my husband and my kids. I was focusing on, like taking in all of, you know, my old childhood memories. I was really focused on taking in, you know, the, the country and the experience that I wasn't paying attention to my gut as much, but multiple days in it's like almost embarrassing and all was shocking how many days went I had not pooped. And if I looked, I, I really wish that I had taken a picture. I mean, do I wish I had taken a picture? Maybe, maybe not. I wish I could have taken a picture of me, like side, like a side angle, picture of my belly. I looked. About seven months pregnant. So I don't know if any of you have ever experienced that, but like I was able to push out my belly and look very, very pregnant. It wasn't just the inflammatory effect of having very oily and fried foods I was eating because the foods are fried, like the calorie density of a of fat compared to the calorie density of everything else is so high that I eat actually gained weight. So not just inflammation and not just bloating and not just gas. I actually gained weight. I could tell in my body, I wanna say that about six or seven days into this trip, when I used to go on trips, I would bring a travel scale. I'm at the point now where I can just tell you what the number is. I don't have to stand on a scale. It's gotten to that point. So I didn't bring a travel scale on this trip. I didn't need to, if I had to guess. I think I must have been around seven or eight pounds up on the scale from the day that I left. So within a week I was about seven or eight pounds up on the scale, and that was when finally my attention got peaked because first couple of days I wasn't paying attention. There's jet lag. We are traveling. I'm not paying attention. By day four, I'm like, this is kind of uncomfortable, but my belly feels kind of bloated, like, maybe we'll get better. Let me just do what I usually do. I'm gonna eat when I'm hungry. I wanna stop when I'm not. I'm gonna focus on. My usual routine and the lessons, I ignored it. Day four, day five, day six, day seven. So I have four more days past that. I let it go. I ignored it and I've taken a little fine tooth comb like so. My results were, I was up seven pounds in about seven days. My belief scale. I was a 10 out of 10. Belief in my plan, in myself, in taking in everything, my belief to not waver.

  I was very committed to my plan. I was eating when I was hungry. I was stopping when I wasn't. There might have been a couple of moments in a few of the car, in the, in the long car rides where I felt a little restless and bored. So I might have grabbed a couple of like the hot chips, like the banana chips that were like freshly made. I might have grabbed a couple of banana chips. So maybe, you know, an emotion that got in the way was a little bit of restlessness and some boredom like. Just in long car rides. But overall, this was like a minor thing. I was following the plan that I had set out for myself. So the learning for me is I ignored how I was feeling in my gut because I didn't want to be a nuisance. That's what it was. I was kind of thinking about day four, I started to realize like we haven't pooped in in a while. Our guts feeling kind of bl, like we're starting to get bloated. We're like the belly is really popping out. This is not comfortable. I haven't, but like what is going on? The thought that I had was, I don't want to be annoying to the whole family. I don't wanna be a burden. I don't wanna change something and figure this out. Everyone else is having a great time. This is a trip for not just me. This is a trip for my husband. This is so important for him. It's a trip for my kids. I don't want to burden them. And so I just kept quiet in my mind and, and again with them. So lesson learned. I was waiting to get to pain. To take action because I didn't wanna burden my family. Now finally it became a burden. 'cause what I started to notice. Day, five day, six day. Finally, day seven, I decided to do something about it. I noticed on day five, day six, I was starting to become a little irritable. I was starting to become a little snippier and my kids were actually, to be honest, this is, you know, we can go either direction. They were actually fairly well behaved, so it wasn't them, but I was noticing I was getting a little snippier with them. I was getting a little short, a little annoyed, and it was because I wasn't feeling my best. I wasn't feeling my best inside out. I was not feeling my best in my body. I was feeling like something I haven't pooped in days. This is not a good feeling. And that was when the siren song finally kicked in. Like, Priyanka, we should do something about this. Like you're being snippy with your family. You're not feeling like this is not feeling so great. Your belly is like, really? This is just not good. Let's do something about this. That was when I didn't do this in writing, but I did a little. Inventory, like what's been going on for the last seven days. We're following the plan, eating when we're hungry, stopping when we're not choosing the highest quality foods. And that was where I started to catch exactly where my strategic gaps were. I was eating very high fat fried foods and my body has not been used to eating foods like that, and I had completely stopped exercising and working out. So I did this retrospective kind of in my brain and I said, if I want to change my results. I have to change my actions. That's the key thing is I can't just learn and then not change anything, right? I have to learn what were my strategic gaps. I have to do something with that information. So the very first thing that I did, if I have a clip, I will insert it here I shared with my husband, I was like, so talk about like, just being open and honest in this relationship. I was like, this is a problem. We need to solve this. And my husband said to me, why did you wait so long to tell me? So speaking to the point of, I don't wanna burden him, he just wants to help me. He was like, why did you wait so long to tell me? So again, lesson learned for next time. We're not gonna wait so long. We found an Ayurvedic, uh, my goodness, an Ayurvedic center for Wellness, because I was trying all of the things that I could think of, it was not working. So I went to this Ayurvedic place. I have some questionable thoughts about it, but I was just willing, this goes to the second point of the tweet. I was willing to try something new because what I was doing wasn't working. So here were the strategic changes I made starting on day seven. If I wanted different results, if I wanted to turn my trip around, which I did or would've just gotten worse, if I wanted to turn my trip around, I'm seven to eight pounds up. I have to do something differently. So the very first thing that I did was I went, I started prioritizing my gut health.

  I went to an Ayurvedic center they gave me things. I just didn't question it. I just trusted that this was going to help me, help my gut. It did. It took a full 24 hours for that to be effective, but that in itself was really helpful. I started prioritizing hot water with lemon. That became a huge way for me to start my mornings and have it throughout the day. Even though it was inconvenient to get it, it just was helping my gut. It was helping my digestion. So I started to prioritize that. And then the last thing that I did was I started to, this was harder to do because again, we were in India, in the villages and in the towns. I started to say a hard no to anything that was fried. Now this might feel like, oh, that's impossible. But it turns out, if you come in as like a, you know the quality of search you do based on the thoughts you have. I went into our food decision making with I am not eating fried foods. So if that's the decision, like it's the level four or level five decision, I'm not eating fried foods, guess what happened? We started to make decisions around where we were eating to make sure that we went to places that did that had options that weren't just fried. So this is, you know, one of the learnings here is I came into my trip. Thinking I had a little slightly loosey goosey plan, right? I'm just gonna eat high quality foods. But we would just end up at places that didn't have the highest quality things. So the tweak that I made was, I am not eating fried foods. That's it. That's my only one tweak. It's a tiny, it's a very simple tweak, but just that one tweak, it started to, like, my brain started seeing, oh, I could have this and I could have this, and I could have this, and I could have this. I could have all these other things because I have made, I have anchored to the decision that these fried foods are really getting in the way of my gut health, just doing this retrospective. Again, I did this in my brain and I did this in my brain because. I've gotten very practiced at thinking in this way. Now you might have to write yours down. You have to, you might have to share it with me and get coached and help somebody, have somebody help you do it. But just that retrospective and making that change, which is I'm gonna have a lot of hot water. A lot of times during the day, I'm going to do this, Ayurvedic powders and potions that they give me, and I'm not eating any more fried food. I'm still eating when I'm hungry, stopping when I'm not. Just that. I came down on the scale probably three to four pounds by the end of our trip. So I really wanna share the impact I. About one very specific thing in years past at that moment when you are experiencing the epic fail, when you've gone off plan, when you think the scale's up and your belly or body feels like, Ooh, what I used to do, the thoughts I used to have would be F it. Why bother? Who cares now? Like these are three C stories. Convenient, convincing, and very, very, very compelling to [00:34:00] just throw it all away. It's so all or nothing. But a lot of overachievers, especially professional women, do this. Like, I couldn't do it perfectly. I've already gone off track, so like, blah, why bother? That is the one thing that I have permanently stopped doing. I want you to just imagine the impact of just that when you catch yourself, either in the epic fail or right after the epic fail, if you stopped the, that, that thought process, all the thoughts of like, why bother, screw it, f it. Just imagine like you'll just keep going. You're just gonna keep gaining, you're just gonna keep undoing your wins. You're gonna get more bloated, you're gonna get more constipated belly, you know, your belly's gonna feel worse. So the first thing is, I, I never tell myself it's not working. So day seven of the trip, I'm up seven or eight pounds. I never had the thought, it's not working. Why bother? The thought I had is I wonder why this isn't working. What have I been doing? What have I not been doing? That's it. No more, why bother? It's not working dead end, which is like, so, you know, it's such a block for us, and I've just toggled over to the mindset shift that I had to get back on track was, this isn't working. I wonder why. What have I been doing? What have I ended not been doing? At the hat of a playful scientist, I was so compassionate with myself. I was so kind to myself. And again, that is how I got to glean wisdom on exactly what it was I got to own. I took radical responsibility. Priyanka, you've been eating a lot of fried foods for like a lot of days that's gonna have an impact. You've been eating no protein, you have been not working out or walking at all. Like I could own that. That was the reason. Those were the actions and inactions that I had that led to this result without a lick of judgment or criticism. And I could say, okay, let's make a change right now. So the second half of the trip was so much better. Number one, not only did I was actually able to go to the bathroom, but my, I started feeling better. I started feeling better mentally because I was prioritizing myself. I was more present with my kids 'cause I wasn't thinking about my gut and not having poop for multiple days and worried that my colon is going to explode. I was able to be more present for the second half of the trip for sure. And what's amazing is I got to find foods that I was still getting to enjoy. So I just really loved that I was able to do this retrospective in real time. And I wanna share with you the, the next piece of this process. I came back and I weighed myself right when I got back. I don't hide from the scale. If you have scaled drama, we have a whole separate training and video on how to drop drama from the data. The number on the scale is just a three digit number. It has no meaning. It doesn't mean anything about anything until we assign it a value with our brain. So again, the thoughts I used to have was, I can't believe myself. I can't believe I'm up. I've undone my wins. I have to undo the damage. All these kinds of thoughts. It feels very practical. It's really unhelpful. Instead, the pivot that I made, I stepped on the scale and I told myself, this makes a lot of sense. We just went on a very long trip where we're eating all the foods, and also let's just get back like we never left off. You know, one of the things that I think is so important, and I've seen this come up in the group a lot, is when you gain weight. I came back up, you know, after my entire trip, so it was up probably seven or eight, I came down about three-ish. I weighed in 3.2 pounds. Above where I was when I left, to me after the trip that I had and the massive fails that I was experiencing, that was such a win. I'm calling the scale, being up from the time I left a win. Because of of this process that I'm sharing with you, I learned something really valuable. So the next time that I go to India, or the next time that I have a travel experience, I'm going to really pay attention to not waiting for pain, to catching the discomfort and making tweaks in the moment. I learned a lesson. The other thing that I think was really valuable, so I came back 3.2 pounds up and today it's one week later, it's seven days later, and I am about 0.6 pounds up from where I was when I left off. I want you just think about the massive impact of that. In the last seven days, I have been able to release the three pounds that I gained over the trip. Now, a lot of overachievers and a lot of women have coached a lot of you. You have this idea that this doesn't count. It's almost like you, you have this idea that you're just undoing the gains that you made. And while this might be true objectively, I want you to see what a disservice it is for you to think about anytime you've gained weight and you lose it as though you're just undoing yesterday's damage. I never think about the numbers like that ever. I think about the fact that I gained 3.2 pounds. Makes a lot of sense. I had a lot of learning in that moment, and then from that moment forward, it's fresh. It's brand new. I'm getting back into my routine. I've lost this weight. I'm exactly where I want to be. It is a very different experience when we think about the data and the numbers in that way, and it takes purposeful effort. So if you've ever been someone that has the thought, I'm just undoing last week's damage. I know you think you're being practical and you're just keeping it real, but I want you to think about how it feels to tell yourself that, you know, losing the three pounds that I gained doesn't count. Think about what you're signaling to your brain. When we do that, when we discount our wins as either a fluke or as like we're undoing last week, last month, last year's damage, you're depriving yourself of a key process, a key physiological process that will help you lean into the effort. For tomorrow and next week, you're depriving yourself of dopamine. You're depriving yourself of pride. You're depriving yourself of satisfaction, of feeling good in showing up for yourself after the fact. So we've talked a lot about in the group, I share about this in the podcast and inside our coaching calls, that there are two chemical processes that we can leverage two actual hormone pathways that we can leverage to feel better. As we hit our goals, the first one is oxytocin, right? So I talked, I shared a little bit about that on this trip to India. When I finally, on day seven when I, you know, opened up my eyes and I took my, the hands off of my face, I basically had a hand in my heart where I shared with myself, Priyanka, we are up on scale. Our gut feels terrible. Okay? There was some compassion, the tone and tenor that I had to have in that moment released. Oxytocin and oxytocin will counteract cortisol. It will help regulate your nervous system. And then the second piece is dopamine, which is being proud of yourself the work, being proud of yourself in the process. If you're telling yourself that your weight loss win this week, or you hitting your goal this week, or you doing what you said you were going to do is either just a fluke or it doesn't matter or who cares, you're depriving yourself of dopamine and it is releasing dopamine that teaches your brain new habits. It teaches and rewires your brain to keep going. It teaches and rewires your brain to do this work that does sometimes feel challenging. So what that looked like for me, you know, in this last week, every single time I went to the gym and I got back into my routine, even if it felt sticky or a little uncomfortable every time I just made my plan and followed through, I was like, Priyanka, I'm so proud of you. Look at you doing all the things. Look at you following through on yourself. Releasing dopamine is this little super skill that we under utilize because we think that it doesn't matter, but it is the skillset that matters the most. It's how we get to learn. And when we do that piece of it, our brain gets hardwired to like, let's learn again and again, and again and again.

  So I hope that this, a little bit of a ramble, chit chatty style video is helpful in how I do a retrospective. I always look at what were the measurable results that I created. We wanna be as specific as possible. That could be a number on the scale. It could be on a scale of one to 10, how you feel in your gut. It could be what percent of the time have I been following through on my actions? Like, let's be specific, not, you know, if we're vague on the result line, we're going to be vague in our game plan. Where was I on the belief scale? How much was I believing in myself this week? Where and how was my commitment and my conviction to my plan? Was I feeling committed to this, to my magic action decisions? Did an emotion get in the way of me executing on that plan? What was the emotion? What came up? Why? What was my learning? What was the tweak? I think that there's one gap that I want to really mention before I wrap up this video, and that is we can learn a lot. You can do a retrospective and learn, but the additional step you have to take is you have to take what you learn and to go and implement on it. That's the effort. So it's one of those things where we can stay in learning mode. You can actually do a lot of retrospectives and just learn and learn and learn. It's like you're learning from a book. You know how to ride a bike from a book, or how to swim, or how to perform a complex procedure. You learn about it in a book, but unless you take it and you take action on what you learn. Your body doesn't actually learn the skill. You'll keep staying in learning mode rather than an execution mode. And I wanted to highlight that piece because your results on the scale and in your life and in your relationships and with your time cannot happen as a learning exercise. It has to happen with you executing on what you're learning. And that's the part that, that's, that's the discomfort. So this is the work that I strongly encourage. I'm telling you, it can be the most fun exercise. It can be fun. It can be both effortful and fun at the same time, and it's really a journey that has been wild. I think it's wild to know that you can feel better and lose weight at the same time that you can actually enjoy your journey to get to your next goal without stick in hand. You know? I think that it's just, it's, it's a wild ride to see that part, and what I love about it is as I do this work. I get to, not to share it with all of you and share my real life learnings with you, but I get to model this to my kids. I promise you. You know, our kids are going to have times where they don't make the team, where they don't have results. They love where they get rejected, where they experience something that they don't love. And imagine that our brains are so practiced at doing playful, scientist, compassionate, objective retrospectives. Imagine the impact of our children. Learning the skill. And again, the only way they can learn it in my opinion, is if we go first. So I hope that this was a helpful retrospective video diary on how I handled, I wanna call this one of my biggest epic fails in recent years. It was wild. It was, it was bad at some point. I hope that this was helpful for you. I really love to be as transparent and forthcoming in real life fails, how you're going to have them. I mean, even at goal weight, even at your goal weight, and the reason that I'm able to maintain it is this one skill, right? So a pound up or two or five 10 is never the reason that I gain all of the weight back. Right? The way that we do that is we have to have compassion and patience and curiosity, and we have to take radical ownership over how we are showing up and be willing to make a change. So I hope this was helpful. If you want to give me any thoughts, any takeaways, I would love, love, love to hear them from you. You can share them with me. And drop them in Slack below this video or respond to me in the email that I send this out in. And I hope you guys really loved it as much as I love recording it. And I hope you guys have an amazing day, and I would love to see you doing your retrospectives. Think about this as my invitation to you, where only you can do this piece of the process and I will move at your pace. So the more that you show up, the more that I can meet you where you are and help you do this, this becomes a skill for you too.

  Have an amazing day, my friends. Bye. I hope you all enjoyed this video letter I did for my clients in the Unstoppable Group. One of the things that I love doing so much is being deeply transparent and forthcoming with my real life obstacles. Even at my goal. I think anyone that claims that once you've, hit that magic number or you lost the weight, you wanted to lose it somehow. That's it. It's smooth sailing from there. I think it creates very wonky, crazy expectations when you do hit real life obstacles. And for me, that's what used to really flip me over on my head. I used to think that something's wrong with me that. I've hit a challenge, I would lose weight, and then I would hit a challenge and not [00:46:00] know how to handle the challenge, and so I would just take my foot off the gas. This comes back actually to the series that we had on the podcast episode a couple of weeks ago. The 10 Phases of Weight Loss and Wellness. I strongly encourage if you did not listen to those episodes, phases six and seven, which is letting yourself feel uncomfortable in keeping your foot on the gas anyway, is the magic sauce. It is the magic sauce to unlocking you feeling your best inside out and being able to do the work that I just shared on today's episode. So if you have not listened to that series, go back. It's a couple of episodes ago. We get into the different phases of weight loss and we get to identify what your strategic gaps are. I hope you loved today's episode, and if you did share this show with a friend, let me know that you love this type of episode. You can message me on Instagram at Burn stress, lose Weight, or send me an email [email protected]. I hope you guys all have an amazing week. If you celebrate Mother's Day, I hope you had an amazing, amazing Mother's Day. This has truly been one of the best years, I will say, and a lot of it is because of the one skill we talked about in today's episode, taking the pressure off of needing to be perfect all the time and letting myself lean into me, getting really good at being imperfect, has it's lifted a hundred pound weight that I did not know that I was carrying. It has let me be more focused. It's let me be more clear. It's let me be more decisive. It's let me be more present with my kids and with my family. And honestly, it's what has helped me. Hit bigger and better goals than I ever imagined was possible for me. I hope you love this. If this work speaks to you, if you know that you want to be a part of the next enrollment of the Unstoppable Group, I want you to stop waiting on yourself.

  Head over to burnstressloseweight.com/group where you can get all the nuts, the bolts, the details when the next group is starting and how you can. Get access to it. So I hope you'll have an amazing week, and I will see you at the next one. Bye. 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 wanna take what you are 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.