Summary 

Ever felt like you're muscling through workouts, nutrition plans, or weight loss strategies—only to find yourself exhausted and frustrated? In this episode, I share a real-time story from my Saturday gym session that completely shifted how I approach endurance (and why it’s not just about pushing harder). If you’re tired of feeling like weight loss is a battle, this episode is for you.

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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• The unexpected lesson I learned from watching a fellow gym-goer on the Stairmaster
• How “drag thoughts” sneak in and make your weight loss journey harder than it needs to be
• Why willpower alone isn't enough for lasting success—and what to do instead
• A simple, game-changing tool that can help make workouts (and weight loss) feel easier
• How to train your brain to focus on something else, so you stop feeling stuck and start making progress effortlessly

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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 termed a stress and weight loss coach for professional working moms and the founder of the Burn Stress, Lose Weight, Feel Unstoppable small group coaching program. This podcast is going to inspire change at the root for you on and off the scale. I've lost a little over 60 pounds while being a busy physician mom with two young kids and an unpredictable schedule. And along my journey, which was full of many, many imperfect moments, I have learned how to skip past the fads and the gimmicks. I am on this mission now to share with you how you can have a real strategy and mindset skills to really have more of the life you want that you have worked so hard for. Let's get into it. I am literally hiding in my office. It is a Saturday afternoon and I'm recording this podcast, something that I don't think I have ever done, but I really, really wanted to share something that happened at the gym today. This is a story in real time while it is fresh in my mind. So I have no notes if today's a little rambly as I tell the story. And as I share the concept that I think will be Hopefully very, very impactful for you. I cannot wait to share it with you. So if it's a little rambly today, then apologies in advance, I am hiding from my kids in my office. They are basically feral downstairs. So if you hear any background yelling, then that is why. So a little bit of background before I jump into the story around what even prompted this entire story to begin with, I was on a Stairmaster. Which, if you have followed me for any length of time, you know, you've maybe heard me say how much I absolutely hate the treadmill. I hate things like Stairmasters, where you're basically doing some movement on a very static seeming machine. It's like the most boring thing in the world. In my opinion, I know some people probably love it. I'm sorry. I absolutely hate it. And also I realized mid last year that I really wanted to uplevel my endurance where I live. I live in the Washington DC area and it is freezing cold in the winter. This season, at least, winter has been really quite cold, so I haven't been able to go for walks or even jogs outside. I mean, maybe I could if I had the right gear, but it's just not my vibe. And so instead of just not doing anything at all, I have been trying to embrace the most boring, tedious, This is for a whole different podcast episode around something that I noticed for me last year, despite strength training and building muscle and really changing a lot of my fitness regimen over the last one or two years. I noticed in the middle of last year, despite having more muscle, my endurance was complete crap. I went on a hike in Big Sur with two of my friends and these two were just, they were just going at it like it was so easy. There was steep cliffs. And meanwhile, I was just left in the dust. It felt like I was going to lose a lung because I could not do this very steep hike. And that was when I. realized that yes, strength training is so important. It's of course a big part of my personal fitness journey now, but this year, this new year, I really also wanted to up level my ability to go on long hikes, to be able to do a really long run. If I wanted to, and I knew I had to start, I'm basically starting from, it feels like ground zero. And I wanted to build my endurance. So as many of us do on January 1st, one of the goals that I set for myself was by the end of this year. So by December 31st of this year, I want to be able to do an hour on the stair master at level eight or nine without feeling like I'm losing a lung. That was the goal that I set for myself. And in full disclosure, again, I started out being able to just do a few minutes on the treadmill, which feels really quite sorry. But that was, that's where I started. I started just being able to do a few minutes. And after a few minutes, I would have to stop the machine and catch my breath. for two to three minutes before I could even consider starting again. So my game plan for this year was to see where my starting point was, which was basically five minutes on the Stairmaster at level eight or nine. And my plan is every single week I would add one minute on the Stairmaster. And this also, by the way, built in weeks off plan. Sometimes I'm going on vacation maybe I want to give myself two weeks at the new time allotment that I'm doing on the Stairmaster. So the way that I mapped. out this entire year was I built in plenty of blank space. I built in plenty of weeks that I might go off plan that I might have a regression. And my intention is by the end of the year, I would be able to do 60 minutes without feeling like I'm losing along at eight or nine, but here's one massive obstacle that I was noticing, particularly at the start of this year. And what I noticed somebody doing today at the gym that it literally blew my mind over the last six to eight weeks. I have now amped up from where I started at, which was five minutes on the treadmill, and I can now do all about 20 it is by no means easy. I still get really out of breath. I have to take lots of breaks and lots of pauses. Yeah over the past two months, I have slowly been adding to my initial starting point, but here's something that I have noticed that has been really frustrating for me. It has created a lot of mental chatter. It has made the entire process feel like, well, feel so boring, feels terrible. I'm committed to it because this endurance school really matters to me, but I really also know that I was making this much harder for myself. The thing that I would do is I would step on the stair master and I would start um, going up the steps at my level eight or nine, and I would notice my brain, my eyeballs looking at the clock. So if you've ever been on any of these machines, whether it's a treadmill or a stairmaster, you know that there's a clock that's right in front of you that can show you the amount of minutes that you have done or the amount of minutes that you have left. If you've set a timer on your machine. And I noticed. After the first minute of doing the Stairmaster, my brain would have thoughts like, oh my gosh, you have 19 whole minutes to go. This is so hard. We're already out of breath at the two minute mark. I can't believe I have 20 more minutes. Will I last 20 minutes? What if I don't last 20 minutes? And to add insults to injury, not only would I be looking at the clock and how much farther I had to go and how terrible it was, My brain would create more reinforcing thoughts around how much I hate this exercise and how boring it is. Now, again, this is something that my motivation is still really high. It's at the very start of the year I'm still telling myself, you've got this, you can do it. This matters to us. But one of the things that I have noticed is when I have thoughts like this, and you might experience the same, you might experience a drag. I call these drag thoughts. Thoughts. This is a thought that you have about a task in front of you that creates drag.

  It's like adding a hundred pound backpack onto a journey that you're about to take. If you sail, if you're on a ship, it's like the wind is moving in the opposite direction than the direction you want to go. Now for a lot of overachievers and perfectionists, especially professional women, you might be able to muscle through drag thoughts in short bursts of time. This has probably been one of your super skills. I know for me, it did. definitely helped me get through medical school and residency because I was able to muscle through and willpower through and even cheerleader myself through drag thoughts. So when I was in residency or an early attending life or in medical school, I would tell myself, this is so hard. I can't believe I have to do this. Like, when is this going to end? But because The process that I was in was short term. It was only for four years at a time. I was able to muscle through. I was able to hold on with all my might and grit my teeth and get through four years. One of the biggest mistakes that so many overachievers and perfectionists make is we try to use that super skill, the ability to willpower through drag thoughts in short periods of time into weight loss and into our fitness journey. And the reason that this is not a good idea is because your weight loss and wellness journey is for your whole life. So if you have ever been someone that can muscle through a strategy for short periods of time, and maybe you're able to lose some weight because you were able to grit your teeth and grind your teeth and muscle through, but then you eventually gain it back. This is one of the reasons you've heard me say on this podcast before that while willpower is a valuable skill, it's a valuable tool to pick up on. It cannot be the only source of fuel that you use to put forth an effort to take your action and put it really into a. consistent execution because it will not last a lifetime. Willpower has a shelf life. It starts to deplete. And that is when so often we fall off the bandwagon. Okay. So coming back to my story, Saturday morning, it's a Stairmaster day. I've already told myself, we are going to get to go to the sauna afterwards. We're going to give ourselves a solid pat on the back for doing this terrible, most boring thing that I absolutely hate doing. But I noticed this woman who I have noticed at the gym before, she's an older lady who is super fit, super in shape, get on the Stairmaster with four towels. And there's these like little towels that's designed for you to wipe the sweat off of your face when you're working out. So she took his four towels and she very deliberately covered the entire screen of her Stairmaster. And then I proceeded to watch her. Start her Stairmaster. I think she was probably doing level 12 or 13 and just going, not paying attention to the clock. I don't even know when she ended because she started before me and she ended after me. Here's why this struck a chord. I realized that one of the tools that she was using By covering the clock with this towel was she was giving her brain a break from focusing on the thing that was creating a lot of drag and watch her pull out a magazine and just start reading the magazine as she was doing her Stairmaster. This is what I realized as I was huffing and puffing and focusing on how much longer I had to do and how this sucks, and how terrible it is, and how boring the Stairmaster is while I was doing all of that, and I was feeling the drag of the 19 more minutes that I had left to do, I realized that this woman, who was doing way more than me, she was at a much higher level than me was probably not having any thoughts that were creating drag. And the reason is not because she is more disciplined or because she has any special superpower that I don't have. It's because her brain was not creating drag thoughts. Her brain was refocused on something else. Her magazine, as I was watching her, it made me reflect back on some of my most busiest days at the office. When I was seeing patients back to back and I had to do callbacks on labs and sign off on pending things in my inbox, how the day would sometimes fly by. And I wouldn't even think about food. I would inadvertently by mistake, skip lunch. I wouldn't be overrun by hunger or urges and cravings because my brain had been so busy with other tasks, but then come Friday evening or Saturday afternoon, when all of a sudden I might have less on my plate, less back to back tasks, less responsibilities. And that would be when my brain would offer me a lot of food, loving thoughts. Ooh, I want it. Well, we deserve a break. That would be so good. Right? All these kinds of thoughts that I would have when my brain wasn't occupied with work or other tasks, all of a sudden weight loss would feel harder. So I realized as I was watching this woman with her Stairmaster covered with a towel, and as I was reflecting on the easiest times that I found my ability to lose weight was when I had some of my busiest days in the workplace, I saw a common trend. This might feel really simple. But I'm telling you, it can be a game changer redirecting your brain away from the proverbial clock on the stairmaster and allowing your brain to focus on something else is going to create relief on any journey that you go on, whether it is to lose weight, to get stronger, Take care to hit any personal or professional goal is going to create so much more ease. I have talked with so many women and this is professional women in every industry. And whenever we talk about weight loss, a lot of times I will hear someone say, I'm so exhausted by it. It's so fatiguing. It's so tiring. I'm so tired of dealing with the weight loss journey. And the reality is it's not actually weight loss that is exhausting or fatiguing. It's not actually taking your plan and putting it into consistent execution that creates your fatigue. It is the drag thoughts, the negotiating, the second guessing, the ruminating on the food. And should I eat this? And should I not eat this? And should I follow the plan? And should I not follow the plan? That actually creates the fatigue. Imagine that there was a way to solve for this. I recently did a mini class for my clients in the Unstoppable group, and the class was focused on how to feel better. Right now, this week, no matter what the circumstances are, if you are on a Stairmaster and you have 20 minutes to go or if you couldn't choose who was elected into political office and you have thoughts about it, or if you have 10, 20, or 50 pounds to lose and it feels so far away, how can you feel better given the circumstances that are in front of you? It comes from identifying the drag thoughts that you have. and teaching your brain to stop thinking them. For example, if I am on this Stare Master and I have done one or two minutes and I have 18 more minutes to go and I'm having thoughts like, this is so annoying. This is so boring. I have so far to go. It's going to take forever. I don't even know if I'm going to be able to do it. I'm already huffing and puffing. I'm having thoughts like this, creating a feeling of impatience and frustration. Right? Creating a lot of drag. And then I try to cheerleader myself or muscle through the entire experience. It might last for a little bit, but the reason that it will feel like cheerleadering myself will feel like oil on water is because I'm still thinking the thoughts that are creating drag. Let me give you another example. If you have a thought like, it's not working or I'll never figure this out. That's the thought you have. The feeling that that might create is frustration or discouragement or disappointment. And then from there you try to cheerleader yourself with you've got this and maybe you can do it and let's just try again. The reason that that cheerleadering won't actually land in your body, the reason that it will again be like oil and water, is because you're still subconsciously thinking, It's not going to work. So the intention of today's episode is for us to start to see what are our drag thoughts that are usually living in our subconscious. They're not thoughts that you're thinking on purpose. Nobody wants to think drag thoughts on purpose, but starting to identify your drag thoughts that are creating your feelings of frustration or impatience or discouragement is so essential to make the entire journey feel better. Now we talk about. So many different kinds of skills and tools for how you can do this. But today's podcast episode is specifically designed to touch on what this woman was doing at the gym, which is she simply moved her brain to thinking about something else rather than focusing on the clock on the stairmaster. Her brain was focused on reading her magazine. I am not someone if you pick this up on the podcast, I am not someone who loves to work out at all. I'm not someone that naturally wakes up early in the morning with this readiness to go get them. I am not someone that will ever volunteer going on a hike over watching a cozy movie in bed. So it's for real when I tell you that there have been so many parts of my fitness journey that have felt boring and mundane and irksome. Now, if it was possible to have excitement and motivation all the time with your weight loss or your fitness journey, then listen, go for it. But what I have found is that is. Just not reality. The reality of hitting any body goal, any fitness goal, any weight loss goal is there are going to be certain elements that are boring. There are going to be certain elements that are mundane, that are routine, that are not fun. So rather than resisting that part of the entire experience, imagine that we accepted that there are parts that are boring. There are parts that suck. There are parts that feel hard, and also we can practice redirecting our brain away from the boring. It's like if you're watching a pot of water boil. The longer you watch the pot of water boil, the more impatient you get, the more your brain will offer you lots of sentences like, this is taking forever, when is the water going to boil, it's taking so long, I can't believe it's taking so long, we have so many thoughts creating drag on the entire experience rather than redirecting our brain to something else. And before we know it, the water is boiling. You get to decide how you want to teach your brain to focus on something else, to move on to something else. I want you to practice making this your own, making this tool your own.

  But what I have found is It is deeply impactful and it will create so much relief for you on your weight loss and fitness journey. I was thinking a lot about how I used to be someone who loves after the kids would go to bed, after a day at the hospital, my evening plopped down with Netflix and my Cool Ranch Doritos. But what was it that helped me let go of the urges and cravings to randomly snack and nibble after a full dinner was I actually stopped thinking about the food. Instead of focusing on the chips that are sitting in my pantry and I shouldn't have them and should I have them and maybe I should just have two or maybe I should just have one or I've been really good today so maybe I deserve some, I would refocus my brain on something else. I found other activities that I really enjoy. I started to occupy my brain and have different thoughts so I wasn't feeling the urge or the craving to go grab the Cool Ranch Doritos. Similarly with this, after I watched this woman cover up her seer master with the towel, I decided to try the same. So I covered up my stair master today, this morning with this towel. I put on my headphones, a audio book that I have been wanting to listen to, and I just started going. I started going at my same pace. Stopped looking at the clock. And before I knew it, this is the part, this is what was so crazy about this entire experience, which is why I decided to come on and record this podcast episode. After three or maybe four chapters of my audio book, I didn't even realize how much time had passed on the Stairmaster, even though I was huffing and puffing the level that I was on hadn't changed. My body clearly did not change from four days ago. Nothing in my circumstances had changed except my thoughts were different. My thoughts were so focused in the book that I was listening to my brain was fully occupied by a whole different world that I didn't even feel time passing. I picked up the towel off of my Stairmaster and I had done 24. And a half minutes. We talk a lot on this podcast about the impact of your thoughts and the think feel act cycle and how it deeply impacts your weight loss and wellness and your fitness journey.

   

  But today's episode is designed to be a small tool that you can start to pick up to help make your journey feel a little bit more palatable. Because the reality is there are going to be many, many moments that you are doing the boring thing. The Stairmaster is so boring. And also it is a necessary piece of me hating one of my endurance goals. The endurance goal really matters to me. And because I know it matters. And because I know that the Stare Master is a part of me getting there, me hating the Stare Master, me complaining about it, me telling myself how terrible it is and having all kinds of drag thoughts is simply unhelpful. So one way that we can really allow ourselves. To help ourselves on the journey, to take off the a hundred pound backpack to maybe even give ourselves the gust of wind that pushes us forward is when you are doing the uncomfortable thing, when you are doing the boring or more mundane activities as it pertains to your weight loss or your fitness journey, give your brain the practice of focusing on something else. And every single time that you actually do this, that you put this one tool into practice. Where you redirect your brain, you give your brain permission to stop perseverating and negotiating. You simply move on, take a minute to recognize yourself and feel proud of yourself for doing it. This is how we rewire our brain. I am actually excited. This sounds crazy. I can't even believe I'm saying this, but I'm actually excited to do the Stairmaster again while listening to this audio book with the towel covering the clock. And it really makes me wonder where else we can start to incorporate this. This one skill. I hope that you enjoyed today's impromptu podcast episode. This one was a story time style, no notes and no step by step process, but it is one that I just felt was so important for me. It was such an eye opener for me when I watched this woman. Do this one tiny thing that made such a huge difference for me. So I love sharing my real stories in real time. I hope you do not hear my kids yelling in the background of me recording this random Saturday podcast, but I really wanted to share this story with you. There is seriously massive impact when we stop thinking the drag thoughts. And we refocus our brains somewhere new. If you are loving this podcast, the skills and tools and the strategy that we talk about, you should really be on my email list where I teach a lot of concepts and I share a lot of value. You can get onto my email list over at www.burnstressloseweight.com/magic. email is one of my love languages. So I sent a lot of emails because it is my way of sharing real stories, real insights and value with you so that you can make your wellness and your weight loss journey. Feel your absolute best. I hope you guys have an amazing, amazing week, and I will see you at the next one. Thanks for spending this time with me on the burn stress, lose weight podcast today. I hope that you are leaving today's podcast episode, feeling a little lighter and more inspired than when we started, it turns out. That you don't need to have a stress free life to hit your goals on and off the scale. But when you feel more empowered to respond to your real life stresses with true strategy, we will game change how we show up and how we hit our goals. If you want to take what you're learning here on the podcast and put it into real life implementation, it might be time for us to work together in the Burn Stress, Lose Weight, Feel Unstoppable group coaching program. Head over to burnstressloseweight.com and you can learn all of the details, the nuts, the bolts, when the next group is starting and exactly how you can join. Okay, friend, I'll see you next time.