Summary 

In this episode, I’m diving into a challenge that most high-achieving women can relate to: indecision. I’m reflecting on my own struggles with making decisive decisions, especially during the hectic transition from summer to fall, when routines shift and overwhelm can skyrocket. I’m unpacking the toll that half-hearted decisions and endless rumination can take, and why making clear, committed choices might just be the key to achieving lasting weight loss and wellness—especially during the holiday season when it's easy to get sidetracked. If you’re ready to end the cycle of overwhelm and start the new year ahead of the game, tune in for actionable insights on turning small, purposeful decisions into big wins.

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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• The common pitfalls of “winging it” vs. making truly decisive decisions.
• Why the fall season often triggers weight gain—and how I planned to avoid it this year.
• How making the right 20% of decisions can yield 80% of your results.
• My three types of decision-making and why two often hold you back.
• A sneak peek at the five-step framework I teach inside the Unstoppable Group for stress-free, decisive action.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Featured on the Show:

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• Listen to last week's episode by clicking here. 

Download the full transcript here.

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  Hey Unstoppable Friend, you're listening to the Burn Stress, Lose Weight podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Priyanka Venugopal, a physician turned 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.

  Indecision has been killing me over this past month, I mean, a little dramatic, but not really indecision around key pieces around my personal time fitness schedule. My lengthy task list has been draining what feels like every ounce of extra energy from me. It has created a mound of what sometimes feels like insurmountable overwhelmed this past month and a lot more space for negotiation, rumination, and second guessing killing me. Simply put, and we're going to be getting into this in detail on today's podcast episode, not making key decisions around my time, my work, my task, my fitness has led me to have more overwhelmed this insurmountable mountain, especially over the last month. This is a trend actually that I've noticed that happens for me personally. And you might notice this You know, for you, different seasons of life or different seasons of the year, different times of the year, you might notice this more. I have noticed for myself, almost every fall, we have a pretty huge transition between the summer, our summer family schedule and our fall family schedule. Between the summer travel that we have been on and with all the activities and the new, you know, the kids activities for the fall. We have such a huge transition that I have noticed now year after year after year, this is typically when I used to gain the most amount of weight between Halloween, especially, and New Year's I would say anywhere between five to 15 pounds year after year. And then I would spend six months trying to work it off. But this year I was prepared and I was prepared because this is the tendency that I've had for many years. That is what we were talking about today on the podcast. And it's a little bit of a continuation of last week's episode.

  If you did not listen to last week's podcast episode, I talked about how to break bad habits to create new ones. This is really going to be a continuation of how to create the habits that are going to most move the needle for you on and off the scale. One of the things that I am really, and I'm going to share my personal story, even with this fall transition and my overwhelm is small key behavioral decisions can Overhaul your overwhelm and that is what I've experienced because I've again taken a fine tooth comb and I have done this work myself. The beauty of making small key behavioral decisions is not only will it overhaul your overwhelm, when you repeat these behaviors, repeat these actions again and again and again, because our brains have neuroplasticity, we will train our brains with new habits. Not only will this help you lose the weight you want to help you hit your body goal, you will. feel better mind, body, and soul. And that is what this podcast is all about. My rhythm and routine goes through a real overhaul between summer and fall. And it's something again, I've noticed for probably since having kids, so about a decade now that, every time we transition between August, like end of summer, where we're taking summer trips and family fun, squeezing in all kinds of fun over the summer. And we transitioned into the fall. I have noticed every September slash October, I find myself in the pits and no surprise. That's what happened this time. I just noticed myself in the pits this past October, feeling a lot of overwhelm, feeling excess stress. Feeling this indecision, rumination, second guessing, a lot of negotiating. And the difference this year compared to years past, which is when I've typically gained a lot of weight back is I expected it this year and I planned for it. So what's inspiring this entire podcast episode, because for me to do this, for me to have prepared for it and plan for it, I used my evaluation framework. It's something that I teach my clients in the unstoppable group to take a fine tooth comb around why I was in the overwhelm pits. I had to ask myself, what was it that proverbially led me off track? What was it that led me to fall off the, you know, the supposed bandwagon when, you know, after months and months of being committed, driven, motivated, really consistent with a lot of my routine, my schedule, my time and my fitness, what was it that led me to have this slump? Now, it's not surprising that That's really what's inspiring this podcast episode, because the answer that I came up with was decisive decisions 90 percent of the time, and I have now worked with high achieving women, overachievers, type A perfectionists in every single industry, and I have found this to be common amongst all of us. 90 percent of the time, the reason for the slump, if you find yourself in the overwhelmed pits, or you're just feeling this mountain that feels insurmountable, it's It is because there was a lack of clear decision making. And it's no surprise when I did my own evaluation, when I took a fine tooth comb over my September and October, that's exactly what I found. Making decisions from a decisive place, which is what we're talking about today is going to change the landscape of not only you hitting your weight loss goal.

  This year, even this year, it is going to help you feel better as you do it. Let me just say that again. We aren't talking about making loosey goosey decisions. Like I'll try and let's see how it goes. And maybe I'm talking about decisive decisions. And when you do these, which is what we're going to talk about today. When you start to implement decisive decisions in the right areas of your life and you build it into the structure of your day and your week, you can be 10 pounds down by new year's. Can you imagine starting 2025 out that way? We have a whole two months, my friends, before New Year's, before 2025. And there is so, so, so much that can happen for you, mind, body, and soul. So much that can happen for you in your body goal, pounds down on the scale, inches lost, percent body fat reduced, muscle strength gained, simply by starting to take action. Small, decisive action today. So don't write the last two months off of the year. I know that I have had a tendency of doing that. I see so many women thinking, Oh, there's so many holidays and there's so many events and there's so many special occasions. I'll start on New Year's. And when we come into the winter holidays with that lens, number one, you won't maintain where you're at. You will likely gain weight. So what we're talking about is making the right. Small, decisive decisions that creates the most results for you. And when you do this, when you start taking small, decisive action, after making decisions, you will start to create a foundation for 2025. That's going to help you have momentum, which I just think is so incredibly exciting. If you're an overachiever like me, if you're a type A high achiever, you love a good headstart. And I want you to imagine that you can have that this New Year's. So I can hear you asking, how do we do this? How do we take where we are now?

  Maybe this mountain of overwhelm. If you're like me, if you felt like you've been in the pits of overwhelm or stress or this mountain that feels insurmountable, maybe you've been negotiating with yourself or second guessing or any of that, right? If you're with me, cause I've, I've just been there. I get it. This is how we achieve it. We're going to go through the three. three types of decision making. I want you to start to, as I'm describing this, think about which one of these is you. You're absolutely going to fall into one of these three categories, most likely the first two, and just knowing what your decision making pattern has been up until now is going to shed a lot of awareness, a lot of light for you. And then we get to start talking How to make a pivot. There are three types of decision making that I see. These are trends that I see with overachieving women who have type a overachieving high achieving perfectionist tendencies. And I'm using a lot of words to describe who this might apply to. Even if you don't identify, you might not label yourself as a perfectionist. I know I didn't ever label myself as a perfectionist because I got a lot of b pluses and A minuses. I didn't always do things perfectly, but if you feel called out when I described types one and two in the decision making process that we're going to be getting into today, you likely have some perfectionist tendencies. I definitely have, and this is present tense, this is not just something that I have quote unquote recovered from something in my past. I still, Find myself in this even to this day. So if this is you, you're in good company, you're not alone. And it is all something that we can start to change a lot of what we're talking about, the perfectionist tendencies that we have, which holds us back from making small, decisive decisions was rewarded.

  I know this for me through my school years in medical school and residency, a lot of my perfectionist tendencies were rewarded, right? You don't want to be a physician that makes mistakes, right? So it makes a lot of sense in your training, whether it was in school or graduate school or higher education, or even in your profession, your perfectionist tendencies have been rewarded. So we want to just validate why are you a perfectionist? It was likely rewarded at some point in your past. It did get you far. It got you a lot of results. But what we want to talk about is how sometimes that perfectionist tendency can be holding back decisive decisions when it comes to losing the weight you want. You'll know that this is you if you spend a lot of time thinking about the best strategy. You spend more time thinking about the plan and staying in the planning phase than ever before. actually making the decision and taking action on it. It will feel so productive to think about your plan and to think about weight loss and to plan the planning than it will to actually just take the actual uncomfortable piece, but just taking action. You might even have told yourself that if you just found that right Perfect best plan that you'll get to your goal faster. Now, if you feel called out, it's because this is a common tendency amongst overachievers, and it's something that I see again across every industry. So let's get into the three decision types, the three different kind of pools of people that I have found. It's going to be one of the first two that keeps you feeling overwhelmed around hitting your goal. So decision type number one is that you make no decisions. Okay. So this is going to be a fairly short description because as the kind of the description implies, you're not making decisions. It is highly relevant to overachievers because I cannot tell you how often I see that this is your real problem.

  You aren't actually suffering from a lack of discipline or a lack of execution or a lack of your ability to follow through. You're suffering from missing the mark on making key decisions. Now, there are three reasons why you might. be in this category while you might be winging your decision making while you might be loosey goosey. The first one, and this is super common, is you might not know which decisions to even make. There's so much information now out on the internet, social media, there's so much information that you might be in information overload. You don't know, should I be doing low carb, keto, intermittent fasting, should I be lifting heavy weights? Maybe I should do more cardio. Maybe I should meditate for three hours a day and wake up really early and have like the perfect routine figured out. You feel so much confusion on the exact best strategy that it leads to decision paralysis and you just make no decisions. Reason number two that you might be in the no decisions category is because you think you can wing it. You have in your mind, I know what to do, and you think that you don't actually need to sit down and plan ahead. So you're winging your strategy. Reason number three, lastly, is that, and this is so common, this was part of it for me, is you feel so overwhelmed by your current lengthy task list. It feels like this huge insurmountable mountain, not just with weight loss, but if you're a professional working mom, you likely have a lot on your plate as a mom in the workplace professionally with your family and your community. And you've told yourself you just don't have time to plan proper decisions. And this will perpetuate your problem. So there's a reason if you find yourself in the no decisions category, if you have been loosey goosey and winging it, there's a reason that you're doing this. And also you're here because it is likely perpetuating the overwhelm.

  Decision type number two. And this was me. If I, when I took my fine tooth comb through September and October, why did I have my mountain of overwhelm? I fell into this category. You're making half assed decisions. This one is the worst. I'm going to see why it's the worst is because you fool yourself into thinking you've made decisions when you haven't really. So when I took a fine tooth comb and really thought about what was it that led me to experience the overwhelmed pits in September and October, this is exactly what I landed on. You have told yourself that you've made a decision, but really in your heart, you didn't actually commit to it. It's going to sound like, I think I'll go to the gym tomorrow morning, but we'll see if I get enough sleep. Or maybe I'll get groceries tomorrow afternoon if the kids are well behaved and I'm in the mood. Or it might sound like I'll follow my plan at that special event but let's just see how the dessert table looks. It is a way of decision making that fools us because you think you've made a decision but you didn't. Not really. You'll notice that you have a million qualifiers that are giving you an exit strategy to follow your plan. You will be doing this if you find yourself in the half assed decision making category. There are two reasons that you're going to be doing this. Number one, and this is so common, is you're worried you're not going to follow through anyway. Your brain is looking at all the past times you made a plan and didn't follow through, so your brain is offering to you, why bother? Why bother making a plan or really making a serious decision on this if we're not going to follow through anyway? So your brain very conveniently drives you to not put in your full effort at the start. We don't put in our full effort to making decisive decisions. or following through on the plan. The second reason that we will be making half assed decisions is because you're worried about experiencing discomfort or deprivation. And so you've preemptively built in an exit strategy. Here's the thing when it comes to half assed decisions and not putting forth your full effort, your brain is brilliant. When you make half assed decisions, you're going to notice so, so, so much more mental chatter and negotiating, second guessing, a lot of back and forth in your mind. And it's that. That is actually exhausting. Let me just say that again, your weight loss strategy when done properly, when you've really addressed all the pieces that need to go into a really solid weight loss plan is not exhausting. Following your plan, eating when your gut's hungry, stopping when you're not, eating high quality food, really building in guilt free rest and play and movement is not exhausting. It's the second guessing, and the ruminating, and the negotiating, and the back and forth in your mind that is everything actually exhausting. And what happens when you have a lot of this negotiating or second guessing in your mind, when you haven't landed on that best, perfect strategy or the decision for yourself, your brain is like, let's just take a break. This is what happened with me. Like, I don't feel like thinking about this anymore. How many of us have ever thought that about weight loss? Just don't want to think about this anymore. Let's just forget this one. Let's let it go. We'll start again tomorrow. We'll start again next time. So what I want to share with you, what the intention is podcast episode is all about is you never really had a follow through problem. You simply never made a decisive decision. To start, you didn't make decisive decisions in key areas that would help you move the needle forward. And so think about what happens, right? When you are making half assed decisions and you've basically built in and advance an exit strategy with blinking neon lights, so your brain, the moment that it feels a little bit of discomfort, challenging old habits, it's going to be like, this is no fun. Let's exit. Your primitive brain is going to offer you all the compelling and very convincing reasons to not take action. So as I've been sharing with you, I really love doing this, taking a fine tooth comb over the past years, over all of my failed attempts, over all the times that I've ever gained the weight back, which is generally every fall between Halloween and New Year's and gain 10 pounds. What led to me gaining those 10 pounds. And then I'm just going to go off on a side. Then we take the next six months to lose those 10 pounds, right? Talk about why we stay on the roller coaster. For me personally, it was this. I have never really been a complete wing it girl i generally love a good plan, but what I was doing without realizing it is I was making half assed decisions. This is why it's, it can be really hard to catch when you're winging it or being loosey goosey. It's a lot more obvious when you make half assed decisions, it's harder to catch because you told yourself you made a decision, but you just didn't follow through. This is where I was fooling myself. I thought I had a plan. But because I did not make decisive decisions, I didn't really have a plan. Half assed decisions will lead to thoughts like, it's just a little, it's just one bite, it's just a lick. I'll start again tomorrow. I've had a really tough day. It's a special event, but everyone else's can hear all of the very, very justified reasons, justifications, all of the excuses to take the exit strategy. There are a hundred flavors of ice cream for how convincing these stories will be. I call these the three C stories. All of us have three C stories that are convincing, compelling, and convenient for why you should not take action and follow through on your plan, why you should be taking the exit strategy instead of following the decisions you've made. And it is because of half assed decisions. I have to tell you, it is the reason that most women will gain the most amount of weight over this next two month period than any other time of the year. And every time you do this, every time that you allow rumination or second guessing or negotiating in your mind to continue, and you take that exit, You take the exit strategy, you take the exit plan, your brain learns something. It learns that your body goal isn't possible during special events and holidays. It learns that you have to bend the rules whenever you are slightly uncomfortable around food or alcohol. It learns that your body goal is not as important as that little bite, lick, or taste in front of you. And the worst part about this is that It's not just the challenging experience you have of weight loss and like the old feeling that you have around weight loss. It's not even staying on the weight loss rollercoaster. The worst thing about this is that over years you start to create distrust with yourself. And now I'm going to add a little masala to this chai. Not only do you learn all of this, your brain doesn't learn new skills. It doesn't learn the new skills it needs for lasting forever weight loss. You never learn how to have real pleasure filled fun without food. You don't learn the skill of feeling a moment's discomfort when you're faced with food or alcohol. You don't learn how to have guilt free rest and play without leaning on food or alcohol. You don't learn how to enjoy that occasional special treat without sabotaging your goal. Now here's the reality. There are actual circumstances over the fall and winter, like special holidays and events and cultural celebrations, times with friends and family, special foods this time of year more than any other time of year. And that makes this the best time of year to learn this skill. It's the best time to find and catch your 3C stories, to practice the skill of decisive decisions, and to show yourself that you can actually hit goals even through the season. Learning how to lose weight during the fall and winter season, which is typically when we gain the most amount of weight, is going to create so much self confidence that when you roll into January, it is going to feel like a piece of cake. When everyone else is thinking about their health New Year's resolutions, you will have already made progress. Just knowing this, that decisive decisions is going to be like lighter fluid on your goals is going to help you create a clear strategy that won't just save you from the 10 pound oops that happens every winter. It will get you 10 pounds down by New Year's. So for me, what I uncovered over September and October, why I was sitting in the pits of my overwhelm is because I was making half assed decisions. When my family transitioned our summer schedule into my fall schedule, I didn't go back and remake and recommit to certain small decisions that led to my growing pile of overwhelm. And here's what happens the longer that I didn't make specific. Decisive decisions. The longer that I negotiated in my mind, should I go 10, 10, 15? Maybe I'll just go tomorrow. You know, I don't know if I'm going to go in the afternoon. Maybe I'll just go tonight. The longer that I allowed myself to negotiate, the higher the chance was that I wouldn't follow through. The reason that you negotiate or second guess or go back and forth in your mind is not because you have a discipline problem. It was because I had a decision making problem. I made half assed decisions. Now, I'm not a special snowflake over here. And part of the purpose of this podcast is I share these kinds of stories with you in real time, because despite having lost over 60 pounds and being at my goal weight, I still struggle with this.

  But I have also gotten really, really good at catching myself in this phase, catching myself in overwhelm, catching myself making half assed decisions. early. I've planned for it. So I don't gain the 10 pounds back. I can actually have a strategy to address it so that I never get to the huge mountain of overwhelm that I used to feel every January. Now, without judgment, without any self criticism, I can have a practice to solve this problem. The solution is what I'm going to call the third type of decision making, which is decisive, Decisions. So the first one was no decisions at all. We're winging it being loosey goosey. The second one, which is the hardest to spot is if you're making half assed decisions. And the third one is what I'm going to call decisive decisions, committed decisions. Imagine making key decisions. That will create the most of your results. It's the 80, 20 rule. When you make 20 percent decisions, it's like a domino effect in how it will impact the rest of your experience of your whole entire day. You don't have to plan out every single minute of every single day and making decisive decisions shouldn't take hours and hours more of your time, but making the right 20 percent decisions will create 80 percent of your results. So let me use my fitness example that I have been feeling so much overwhelm around just making the committed decision that I was going to do a specific strength training session at a specific time had a trickle effect. It was my anchor. I knew it was happening. It was non negotiable and everything else in my life, including my responsibilities at home and with my kids fit around it. Instead of me spending hours of time back and forth in my head, should I, or shouldn't I, a little bit or a lot, 20 minutes or 30 minutes, I Strength training or cardio. The decision was made. I had a clear roadmap, frustration free, and now I could use the extra energy that my brain had to just take action. Now my brain is thinking, because I have that anchor, I'm thinking about all the other decisions around my day that are Being filled because of that one anchor, I'm thinking about how I'm going to fuel my workouts the best and how I'm going to fit in the time with my kids. Based on these anchors, I primed myself for success and I walked myself out of overwhelm simply by making certain decisive decisions. I teach my clients in the unstoppable group, which is my six month intimate small group coaching program, how to make key decisions around nutrition, guilt free rest, play and movement that actually fits into your life. You need more than a nutrition PDF to lose the weight you want and keep it off. And what we need to have is science informed strategy, but the right 20 percent decisions that will create 80 percent of your results. Which means you can lose weight while feeling better. I teach my clients a five step decision making framework that folds together, prioritizing and accountability to guide your decisions. So your decisions don't just feel good, but they're aligned with your values and your goals. So there's no more second, guessing rumination and negotiating, which we. Hours per week. I hope that today's episode helped you see that you don't actually have a follow through problem or a discipline problem. Think about all the areas as a professional working mom, you're literally an expert at this already. You pay your bills when you're supposed to, you pick your kids up almost always on time. You show up for work when you're supposed to. You get the job done in so many areas because you are actually already a disciplined person. The difference is you have made a decisive decisions in all of these areas. Without even realizing it, you pay the bills when you're supposed to pick your kids up and you get to work, no negotiating, no prebuilt exit strategy, and you are not winging it. Imagine that we brought that level of decision making to this goal. Most often decisive decisions will solve this problem. Nutrition decisions, but also guilt free rest play into movement. I really have seen in my experience now over so many years and in my own journey, what I see with my clients that lasting weight loss is not. Just about the food. It is about true wellness, mind, body, and soul. And if you want my help with this and you want to get into the next cohort of the Unstoppable Group early, I want you to head over to theunstoppablemombrain.com/group and apply for a spot early. You can answer just a few questions. We will get back to you with next steps. I'll invite you to a call with me where we can talk about working together and see if it is a best fit. I know when my clients take decisive action, and even this decision, prioritizing it now, getting started early, deciding to lose weight even before New Year's, it will feel so good. Anchoring to certain key decisions is the roadmap to overhauling your overwhelm. And I know, I know that it is going to feel so good.

  I hope you guys have an amazing, amazing week and I will see you next time. 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 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 Unstable, Stoppable 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.