Summary 

What happens when a seasoned OBGYN reclaims her time, her health, and her joy, without giving up her purpose? In this raw and energizing conversation, I have my dear friend and powerhouse physician, Dr. Shieva Ghofrany, to talk about the courage it takes to pivot professionally, the nuance behind boundaries, and the real, messy truth about loving your body in a world full of noise.

Dr. Ghofrany brings deep honesty, hilarious realness, and a refreshing take on self-worth, success, and navigating a medical career while putting herself last for too long. This episode is a must-listen for every professional woman who’s ever felt like she has to do it all, and do it perfectly.

Connect with Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: https://www.instagram.com/drshievag/

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

Get the Hormones Training: https://www.burnstressloseweight.com/hormones

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• The moment that changed everything for Dr. Ghofrany—and what she did the very next day
• A refreshingly honest take on what “boundaries” really mean (spoiler: not isolation)
• How she navigated medical crises, motherhood, and professional expectations with grace—and a wound vac strapped to her body
• What she wishes more women knew about GLP-1s, gastric bypass, and using tools without shame
• Why loving your body doesn't mean you love every inch, and why that’s more than okay

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Featured on the Show:

• Follow Dr. Shieva Ghofrany on Instagram by clicking here. 
• Get the Hormones Training by clicking here.
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Download the full transcript here.

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  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Hey friends welcome back to the podcast. Today I am joined by a very special guest and a dear friend. This is Dr. Shieva Ghofrany, who I met just a few months ago prior to which I did not know her. Apart from her very massive social media presence. Shiva is a board certified OBGYN physician, and she is a women's health advocate. The reason that I gravitated towards her so much a few months ago and why I really wanted to bring her onto this podcast is not just because she is another OBGYN physician, but because of her story. In today's episode, she's going to share with us her professional journey and how she made some very powerful pivots in the last few years, why she made them, how she overcame some of the fears she had around what people might think about her making a change, and also some of her personal journey with health and weight loss and prioritizing herself after decades of putting everyone else first. I am so grateful that she agreed to come on the podcast, that she's so transparent and forthcoming and deeply honest in the show, and I think that everyone listening is really going to take something away. So if you enjoy the episode, make sure you share this with a friend. Tag us on Instagram so that we know that you are listening, and I cannot wait for you to dive in. Before we get into today's podcast episode, I want to make sure you know that the enrollment for the summer cohort of the Unstoppable Group is opening for enrollment next week so you can learn all of the details, the nuts, the bolts, the bells, and the whistles over at www.burnstressloseweight.com/group. You can learn all about the group over on that page and there's a button that says, apply now where you can answer a few questions. It lets me get to know you and then we can set up a time to talk to decide if this group is really for you. You know, after now running this group for a few years, what I have discovered is that. Truly for the professional woman who self-identifies as an overachiever who wants to have a plan, but more important than just the plan. She wants to have the mindset and the emotional super skills to execute on that plan even when life is feeling challenging. This is going to be the group for you. It is six months of deeply transformative coaching. We have live coaching calls, daily written mentorship. An amazing community of women in every industry who also self-identifies overachievers. So you're never alone in it, and you get mentorship and coaching with me. I am not someone that ever just talks the talk. Everything that I coach on, everything that you hear about on this podcast and inside the Unstoppable Group is truly a journey that I have taken myself. So if you're interested, if you know that this is the year you want to claim you want to walk into next year feeling your absolute best, being down on the scale, feeling confident in your mind, feeling the best in your body, I really want to encourage you to apply. Head over to burnstressloseweight.com/group and I'd love to see your application so you are ready when enrollment opens Next week. Without further ado, let's get into my conversation with Dr. Shieva Ghofrany. Hey unstoppable friend. You're listening to the Burn Stress, Lose Weight podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Priyanka Venugopal. A physician turned a stress and weight loss coach for professional working moms and the founder of the Burn Stress, Lose Weight, Feel Unstoppable Small Group coaching program. This podcast is going to inspire change at the root for you on and off the scale. I've lost a little over 60 pounds while being a busy physician mom with two young kids and an unpredictable schedule. And along my journey, which was full of many, many imperfect moments, I have learned how to skip past the fads and the gimmicks. I am on this mission now to share with you how you can have a real strategy and mindset skills to really have more of the life you want that you have worked so hard for. Let's get into it. Hey friends. Welcome back to the Burn Stress, Lose Weight podcast. I am joined by. How do I say it? How do I even tell the universe how I feel about the person that is here? Shieva Ghofrany is a physician. She's an OBGYN. She's a women's health advocate. She is the fiercest human I have met in the last few months and we're gonna talk about how we met and your story. But it's a rare thing for me to say that I fall in love with people very, I don't, 'cause it takes me time to fall in love with people, but I feel like we just like fell in love when we met, and we have become really good friends. And after hearing your story and following you on the socials, I knew that I wanted to have you on the podcast to share not just your journey, but also how you've overcome so many things to become this powerhouse and inspire people that are listening to this podcast. So, Shiva, take it away. Tell us about you, your story, and then we're gonna get into it.

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Okay. Well first of all, I have so many little things to say just about your intro. I love you for so many reasons, not the least of which is, I love that you said I'm a women's health advocate as opposed to an expert. 'cause I don't remember if you and I talked about this, but when people say like, are you a menopause expert? Are you a women's health expert? I bristle at that because that somehow sounds like you have capitalized all the knowledge in the market and no one has capitalized all the knowledge in any market. We're constantly learning. So I will never call myself an expert, but I do feel like I'm an advocate. Also I unlike you, as you know now from many experiences together, like I go wide with a lot of people, like I like meeting a lot of people and I'm like intrigued by so many people. But then I tend to call and there's very few people that I then am like, oh, they're like the real deal. I will love a lot of them, like, because it's fun and nice and I, I find texture in every experience, but I won't necessarily be like, these are my people. And in your case, I told you, I think yesterday I was telling my husband. Priyanka is amazing because she's not only smart and kind, but also very willing to go deep, which is to me magical, but also super fun to dance with, which is like, oh my gosh, takes a stratosphere. Because there's a lot of really interesting people that I love going deep with, but they're not necessarily fun to hang and party with, and there's a lot of fun to party with who aren't necessarily deep. You do both. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Which we went dancing. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Yeah. I don't, I dunno if your audience realizes how fun. I don't think that they do. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Friends, I went dancing and we, there was some Bollywood playing at that at one point. I broke out some Bollywood moves. It was, I love it. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: I love it. It was a scene. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Okay, so tell everyone, there's a couple of different intros here. One is how we met and how we came to even knowing each other. And two, for the listeners that might be new to you. About your professional and personal background as an OBGYN, who has now become a real leading voice in the women's health industry and how that happened. So there's kind of two different, two different questions here.

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Okay. Well, I'll give you my, my, like my nugget, which is always hard. Yeah. Because it's long. But I am an OBGYN and like you, I'm the daughter of iranian immigrants, and I was born in America, and so that comes with it. A lot of texture that we'll, again, talk about, I've used the word texture twice now in five minutes, but I became an OBGYN a little bit later than most people. I didn't do pre-med undergrad. I did it after I graduated, so I was a little bit wayward, and I think that's important because people who know me now assume. I've always wanted to be a women's health advocate, and I've always loved OBGYN, and the honest answer is I literally had no idea what I wanted to do when I was nearing the end of college and I had switched majors so many times, and if you're the child of immigrants, you'll know that that's not acceptable. You need to like have a career. So I decided I would become a doctor because that seemed like the safe path. I knew it would not be easy, and it has not been easy, but I knew it was safe. Like if you actually are a hard worker, you can become a doctor and you have to work your butt off and you have to persevere. So I don't wanna make it sound easy. But again, it was steady, so I did that not knowing I wanted to be a gynecologist, even I thought I would. I thought gynecology was gross and I thought that I would be a pediatrician or maybe a surgeon like my parents. Mm-hmm. I now reflect, like with distaste for myself, that I thought it was gross because there's nothing gross about being a gynecologist. Lo and behold, I now love what I do, but also not because, oh my gosh, the advocacy part, or oh my gosh, the surgery part, all of which I love. I love it most because on a daily basis, you and I get to connect and engage with people. I do it now still with my patients and you do it through your podcast and your clients, but that's the part I love. And so I say this a lot. Medicine is merely the medium with which I engage. So there are a lot of other things I could have done and I think that's valuable to know. 'cause younger people probably have no idea what they wanna do and I'd rather them not figure out like. What is your passion like women's health as much as like what is the thing that you happen to be good at in that more existential way maybe, and then figure out all the myriad jobs that you could do within that. Like I think I could have done a lot of different things with the desire to engage with people. And then I worked for, now I've been a doctor for 26 years. 23 outta my 26 has been full-time OBGYN. But the last three years I stopped my office gynecology practice. I do only obstetrics for my private practice, which is very strange and unusual because most people give up the OB because it's the middle of the night. And then I separately have a telehealth practice for perimenopause and menopause. And then I get to do fun things like this, like be on podcasts and educate and, and. I have an online platform that helps teach people about pregnancy and things like that. So I, I'm lucky that I get to do a lot of different things, but it's also, you know, exhausting and grueling, miserable and magical as all the things are. So that's like my occupational journey in a nugget. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. You know, I feel like, so we met back in February and I feel like that was the, those were probably the two things that made me want to, 'cause I didn't know you before February. Yeah. I just knew maybe you on social media, but. I had never spoken with you. We'd never exchanged dms or anything like that, but I remember after you gave your talk, we both spoke at a conference, and I remember you gave your talk, you shared a lot of your background, and there were two things for me that really stood out, that made me want to basically become best friends with you.

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Mm-hmm. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: One was your journey around having immigrant parents. And how that really influenced and informed you as a young person, as a little person. I like, we talked about this a lot, right? Yeah. We have this messaging from our immigrant parents and a lot of it drives us. And yet you and I both were, we didn't wanna be doctors initially. That was never the plan. But there was some messaging there. And then the other part that really. Pulled me towards you was you did not have a traditional physician's journey. You were at some point a few years ago, you made the decision to pivot, to do something different that is different than the status quo. And that takes a lot of courage. And I think that that story also really led me to you. So what was it for you that. Made you decide three years ago to go from being a more traditional full scope OBGYN, who's actually in a practice that you've always told me, it's like you really enjoy. Oh, I love that. To making this pivot, to do this advocacy online, to open up this virtual practice, like what even decide made you decide to do that? 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: I mean, I love my practice, like my partners and I, for anyone who knows us, we've been together in Connecticut for it's coastal OBGYN. We've been together for 26 years. My, one of my partners was my chief president, so I, I'm not someone who was like, I'm burnt out. I hate it. And I was working for a company or anything like that. I love my private practice. I still love my private practice. I still feel sad a little bit that I had to kind of extricate myself from them all men, wonderful people, but in my case. When we talk about weight, I had had a long health and weight journey that we'll touch upon after, but that led me to a lot of health issues that I continued to work through as women do, especially as professional women. Like my miscarriages. You know, my big surgery when I had a gastric bypass, I was back at work within a week. I had a ovarian cancer. I like took six weeks off to convalescent surgery, but then I worked during chemo like so I always did that and loved my patients and derived so much. Pleasure and benefit myself from my patients. Right? Like I think I really help my patients, but I really get help from them. I learn from them. I feel good about the work I do, but it was becoming more and more impossible for me to try to be a healthy, physically healthy mm-hmm. And emotionally healthy person while seeing 30 patients a day and delving deep with each one. And so I can't really like be a doctor and just dial it in and just show up and just do the OB part, or just do the gynecology part. I really felt like I needed to be part of their lives and I'm glad I was. Again, that meant I was never exercising. My nutrition was deranged despite having done surgery, despite having been on ozempic, all the things. And I think that coupled with the realization through a little bit of luck, that there were other things I could do. Like I was starting to get a little more publicity and a little more awareness about my speaking and things like that. Mm-hmm. So I, I kind of saw the light and thought, oh my gosh. I could actually do some other things and still enjoy it, and still get to engage with people and maybe even, oh my gosh, have time. You know? And I think women often get messaged that like, it's selfish or you're taking time for yourself. And I really try to reframe that and not say I'm being selfish or take time for myself, but literally take time to honor myself. Like for the first time in my life, at age 55, I have. A trainer, two trainers, in fact, that I go to Monday and Friday, not every week 'cause I'm on call sometimes and I travel. But the weeks I can, I pay because I have to make sure that I exercise and I'm not naturally inclined to do it on my own. Yeah. And for the first time, I'm paying more attention to my actual nutrition. And so it's really been great, but the impetus was not. I hate medicine. Let me get out of it. It was, I love it so much that I'm doing it in a way that is actually gonna harm me, which is, yeah. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Okay. This is, this is so good because, so you have had a very, I don't know if colorful is the right word, but a really Yeah. Colorful health experience. You've had probably like multiple patients worth of diagnoses and problems and complications. In one lifetime, and I'm kind of curious about that piece. I remember you were sharing with me, maybe you can tell the story around how you went through surgery and you showed up to round on patients with like your wound vac or like, like, like can we just, because I just maybe tell us a little bit about the health journey and then I really would love to dive into what is it? Because so many women are doing this where they are not taking care of their mental health, spiritual health, their physical health because they feel somehow like. They feel somehow guilty about it. Yeah. Or they feel, they feel something that makes them continue to do that and they, and people tell ourselves like, oh, because I love my patients. Right. So tell us a little bit about the health journey then. What was it that was making you do make decisions like that? 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: What you're alluding to and I only, I can only look back and laugh because I joke like, if I didn't laugh, I would cry because the, the health issues I've been through have actually been all jokes aside, like really dire. That in particular was that I had ovarian cancer nine years ago. At age 46, I had. My big surgery to remove my ovaries, my uterus, my tubes, all the staging we call it to remove all our lymph nodes. That procedure, unfortunately, even though my surgeon was amazing, led to a complication where my bladder was perforated, so there's a hole in my bladder. I had a second surgery to fix the hole in my bladder, which was a bigger incision. That incision opened up during chemo, so I had this vacuum called a wound vac. That helps. Basically suction the incision closed. It sounds so barbaric, but it's an amazing apparatus. Yeah. And so it helps it heal more quickly, but it still takes weeks because you're, just for the listeners, you can't sew up a wound that has been opened on its own because then it can get infected and it's not as healthy tissue, so it has to close kind of passively. But this device helps it stay together. Mm-hmm. So it literally looks like a little cross body. It's a motor, and it makes this noise every couple seconds like a horse. So it almost sounds like you're farting. It's like. It's this funny noise, so it's six weeks later. I've convalescent home from my surgery, but I'm like, I can go back to work. I'm doing chemo. I'm gonna do like a light chemo schedule of 15, oh my gosh. 15 patients a day, nine to three, which is easy for a doctor who's used to what I did, and my partners were wonderful. They were like, don't be back on call. Of course I said, no, no, no. I can be on call. I'm okay. It's Labor Day weekend. You guys have been working your butt off for the last six weeks that I've been off. I felt bad. I really felt bad for 'em. 'cause I know what that's like. The rare times in my career where one of them has had to go out. I've had to work and that was hard. And I had already done three maternity leaves, not that long, but I did them and for them it was hard. They're men. Okay. So I go back on call and I'm taking care of a patient who's not a close friend, but a neighbor who I'm friendly with. There's an emergency C-section and I literally have to do what we call a crash C-section that you remember where you're rushing into the operating room, a true emergency. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: With you are a vacuum party center. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: With my with my wound back cross body. And I'm literally like in the middle of doing a crash section on someone who I know very well and I'm thinking this cannot be good for my cortisol levels. Like so. Then later that the day after I called my partners and I was like, yeah, I don't, I think you're right. I should probably. Still work during chemo. I needed to work. I needed to work financially. I needed to work for their sake. I needed to work for my own psychological sake, but I worked less. I mean, I joke, it was actually glorious. Like there's nothing like a chemo vacation for someone who's used to working so much. So I continued to work in the office, but I didn't take call for six months, which was mm-hmm. I mean, I, that was my only time in my career where I've slept for six straight months in my own bed for 26 years. I have not had that, which again sounds fucked up when you hear that. Right? I know, I know. But I ride this fine line between. Wanting people to recognize what we go through as doctors. I really feel like we should highlight that just like we should. Like what do police officers, teachers like? We should all try to gear the people's experience to be empathetic. But I also don't want it to be like it's the worst because I still feel lucky that I loved it and I still to this moment feel like I wouldn't trade my career for anything despite the fact that I think it's actually taken years off my life. And I don't say that jokingly like I legitimately think. My, my brain and body have suffered. But my view is everyone's gonna have a hard time with something, and my version of hard is so rewarding that I actually wish it for other people despite the immense anxiety, stress, fear that you live with as a doctor every day, especially as an OBGYN, you know?

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. What you're talking about kind of reminds me about this idea that two things can be true at the same time. So, one is we can love what we do as physicians and the parts of, you know, being an OBGYN, but you and I both, we have connected over how much we love taking care of women at every stage of life. There's something very beautiful about that journey. We can love that. And also there can be parts of that experience that we want to reject, that we want to transform, that we want to advocate, right? Like for politically and and AP politically. How can we start to change the experience of a physician? I think both things can be true at the same time, but again, a lot of all or nothing thinking. People I think paint, I've been using this phrase a lot. We use a broad brush to paint a fine painting. When it comes to a career. And I think it can be like, oh, being a physician is the hardest thing ever. It is. And also, right. It's like, oh yeah. Be true at the same time. 

   

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Well, and, and what career is not hard. Meaning it's either hard because the work is grueling or it's hard because you don't love it. Or it's hard because you don't love it and you don't get paid. Like there's gonna be hard somewhere. I mean, I always say, yeah, we do. We have to pick our, pick our easy, pick our hard, and figure out which one's gonna work best for us. And maybe that changes over time. I never thought I would. Give up the full-time doctor. I just didn't. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. Coming back to that moment, because you were saying that you are someone that was feeling bad, the, you have taken maternity leave before, now you're out like, yeah. These people have been covering for you people that you love and respect. How did you get to that? Decision after that crash section, you realize this is, this is not going to be good for you. How did you actually make that decision? Because I'm guessing that that might have been challenging. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Well, I tend to often make decisions very quick. When I make a decision, I make it quickly, and yet I also vacillate for a while, if that makes sense. Yeah. But, but once I've made it, I'm like, I've made it and I move on. Okay. And I don't tend to look back and regret because there's no point. So honestly, like it was the next morning and I thought that was so silly and unhealthy of me. And there's no way I would tell anyone, any woman or patient, male or female to do this. So glad I tried it. Moving on and, and the honest answer is, I think the flip side is that we are taught. You are the most important thing. No is a complete answer. You don't owe anyone an explanation. You need to take care of yourself, and I fully reject that thinking. Mm-hmm. I think that thinking is actually what's led to the demise of our country and world, right? Yeah, both. And you have to honor yourself. You have to lead with some level of self-preservation, or you will be no good to anyone else or yourself. But also listen, we live in an ecosystem where my, my three partners at the time were working their ass off. Yeah. Now listen, when I was on maternity leave, was I sitting around eating bon bonds? No. I was caring for 1, 2, 3 children, but at the same time, they were in the office doing double work. So I think that there is room for empathy while also preserving ourselves and, and that's a hard balance. And sometimes we missed the mark. I missed the Mark A. Little bit by going in and doing that C-section, but in the end, then I made the right decision. I think the problem in medicine that's happening now, I see it with the younger generation, is there are a lot of doctors who are kind of being told, like to reject yours and my way and mine even more. 'cause I'm 26 years into this, right? Mm-hmm. Like, not to work that hard. Don't be that invested. Like just show up for your job, show up and you know, essentially like clock in and clock out.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Clock and clock out. Yeah. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: It's like you cannot be a good doctor. You cannot be a good teacher. You can't, you can't really be good at anything. But there's certain jobs that don't. Need that, that touch as much right though they make it nicer. Like I love when I go to a checkout at the grocery store and that checkout lady loves what she does. I love it. It makes my experience better and her experience better. But you can't be a good doctor if you're checking in and checking out. Like you have to accept that there will be some level of sacrifice. But if you do it well and correctly, the sacrifice will not feel so much like a sacrifice because like we talked about, you'll be getting so much out of it. So it's much more of a quid pro quo. I don't look at my job at all as this like lofty, like, look at me. I'm so selfless. Listen, I get paid. I don't get paid as much as I should. I should get paid a lot more. And I will say that very openly and very frankly. 'cause I think people don't realize what doctors, how much work we do and that we don't get paid for. But I'm not selfless in doing this. I get paid, it's a job. I should get paid more, I should work a little bit less. But I also get so much out of it emotionally that I think like, yeah. I think most people don't. Like I kind of walk around feeling sad for other people. I'm like, you don't know the joy that we get to experience by what we do.

   

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: You know, whenever I've thought about this clock in, clock out, like, and, and this is kind of one flavor of having a really firm boundary. So I think boundaries has become kind of a, like a TikTok trend or social media, you know, buzz buzzword concept around how to have a boundary. And I think that what ends up happening. People can kind of twist it into something that may not be very useful. So the way that I think about this is what you were talking about, how can we preserve our mental wellness, our physical wellness, our emotional wellness? That's having a boundary, knowing when to say yes to things, when to say no to things, when to delegate things right? Like, I'm not gonna come in after my surgery and round on patients or do C-sections, like having boundaries around that, right? But a boundary is not. To create disconnect and discord between our ecosystem. And I think that that's what people sometimes Yeah, mistakenly make it. It's not on purpose, but I think we, because again, our society is so all or nothing. Yeah. We assume it's to build a wall rather than my experience of boundaries, which was hard for me because I'm a people pleaser and I have always wanted to say yes to everyone, and the idea of saying no, or the idea of having a boundary felt very uncomfortable because. I didn't want people to be like, Ooh, she's being mean, or she's being right.

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: She's selfish. Or she's, yeah, she's selfish. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: So I think what, what we're kind of touching on is how can we actually hold a boundary that is preserving our mental and physical wellness? And also at the same time, how can we honor the people that we are interacting with? How can we honor the people in our orbit so that it's not an abandonment of them? Right. So how did you, were you worried about what they would think when you made the decision? 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Yeah. Well, and, and hearing you say this, like the, the hard part about what you're saying, 'cause you and I think so clearly about this is that it requires, and I find myself using this word a lot lately, a lot of nimbleness. Like there's not a soundbite here where we're like, you just say no. Like no is a complete sentence. Great soundbite. Terrible sentiment, right? Yeah. So what you and I are requiring is that we are. Constantly modulating that. How can I all at once honor myself to a degree? Of course I'm gonna have to get, like, it doesn't mean like every time I wanna do something, I just get to do it myself. I, I don't have to think about anyone else. That doesn't make sense. You don't live in that world. So how do I self preserve, honor myself while also being kind and gracious, but not being so overly kind and gracious that I'm only giving up of myself for someone else? Because honestly, the best way to learn that is. It's actually not kind and gracious to other people. The best example I can give is your kids. If you are only living to be kind and gracious to your kids, inevitably that means you are overdoing it for them and you are really disempowering them and that's bad for them. Ultimately it's not, there's nothing healthy about that. That means they're not gonna grow up to be independent. And it reminds me a lot when, when my business partner started Tribe called VR Online platform. She would use the word empower a lot. She comes from the nutrition coaching space, and I would joke with her that like I actually learned to dislike the word. In fact, I hate the word empower because I've found that in the medical space, at least, and actually in education, think about it, we use that word a lot for patients and for parents. We are teaching you how to empower yourself in the system, which implies. The doctors and the teachers are somehow disempowering you, and it creates an antagonism, which, listen, we both know that there's a lot of, like, you know, there's so much patriarchy in medicine, but it, it, it implies that from the very beginning there's gonna be this disconnect. My patient has come in and power herself against me because I must be somehow trying to like. Harm her. And again, that is separating us. It's the same thing with what now has happened with boundaries, and I think it's why I've learned to detest the word boundaries, which is it's created an inherent, like someone is trying to suck your energy and you have to push them away as opposed to remember what Joyful derm talked about at her lecture when you and I were together. There was that beautiful part about boundaries, which to me really looked at it differently. It's not that someone is trying to suck you of what they need. Everyone's out here, we're all kind of trying to like live our lives and figure out how to do things. And unwittingly we might be asking for things that we're gonna get told no to, but it's okay. I can say no to someone while also respecting that like they gave it their shot, they tried. I don't have to say no and be like, absolutely not. You are trying to, you know, get something for free. And I think that sentiment really is such a different one. So that's what I think we need to be kind of teaching. But get back to your concrete question. Absolutely. Like I did this because I felt bad for them. They were working so hard. I felt bad for my patients, all of it. And also, oh my God, the people pleaser me was like, I don't want them to think I'm lazy. I don't want them to think I'm selfish. I don't want them to think I'm not as good as they are. I can't work as hard. I can't handle it. That would be like the death of me if someone thought I can't. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: How did you get over that? How did you get over that? 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: I mean, literally no joke feeling. It's actually I, I could tell you exactly where I was standing in the operating room that day. That surge of adrenaline, that was that cortisol adrenaline surge that would, I knew, felt bad. It wasn't a healthy adrenaline. It was a like, oh God, I can feel my cells being bathed in some kind of like toxic something. So again, in that moment it was very easy. I was like. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: It's almost like you had to go through feeling really crappy. Yeah. To realize that. I don't want to feel this crappy anymore. Yeah. I'm willing to feel like experience the judgment Yeah. Of these other people because this is toxic for me. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Yeah, yeah. Well, and here's the hard and sad part about that. It's not only that, what you said, and it's also maybe that like, well, I already proved that I could do it to a degree. Mm-hmm. And then, so the question is, for the next generation or for other people, like is there a way to all at once say, Hey, I'm going through chemo and I've just had two major surgeries with ovarian cancer, so i'm preemptively going to recognize that that's gonna be hard and I'm not gonna come back. But now we're talking about systems issues right there. I have to figure out my people pleasing. But also the system. Like we run a private practice, no one is in there trying to help support us. There's like no doctor who can pinch hit. There's no banking system that's gonna make up for the loss of revenue. Like we have such a systemic issue. We don't have good disability as doctors, we have terrible disability as doctors. Right? Right. Like I was getting paid by disability, a pit. Actually I don't even think I got paid 'cause I was still working. Like I would've had to quit full-time and I would've gotten a pittance compared. So there's all of that leads into it, which is why saying things like boundaries. Period. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. This doesn't even, I think that sometimes, and this actually came up even over the weekend. I've been thinking about this a lot. We have a lot of these, I get really rubbed the wrong way when I think about this, but platitudes. So to me, when we say things like boundaries or just say no, and we're not giving the context around what we mean and how to do it in a way that is actually cohesive and comprehensive, it does feel like a platitude to me. Yeah. When someone says, know your worth, that's another one. Know your worth. I, I believe in the sentiment, right? I think that especially for women, we sometimes forget what our work is, should be valued at. But when someone says, like, know your worth, it's like, but how do you know your worth? Yes. What's in the way of me knowing it? Why am I not advocating for it? What's holding me back? Like, let's get, and I think that again, it is hard to do because everything isn't sound bites nowadays. And so it's really hard to have that comprehensive conversation. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Yeah. And it makes people feel bad because then I think everyone else is like, oh God, well she must no her worth, she literally figured out in a second, and they don't know the context with which we've each come to these things. Right. And how long it's taken or how much we're still insecure. I mean, that's why at the conference the other day, one of the things I opened with you might remember is. Like, yes, I'm 55. I've accomplished a lot, like in a career, in my life, everything, and I feel really deeply proud of it. But, and also like I was standing up there in front of 250 women. With like very jiggly arms that like now that people keep sending me pictures and videos, I'm all at once, like, oh my God, I loved my dress. I love this. And I'm also like, oh God, there's some pictures out. There are pictures out there that like fill me with like, ugh. But then again, I know that like this is the truth for everyone. One of the best gifts I think we get as doctors if we pay attention to it, is the gift of knowledge that not one person thinks that they are perfect and is not struggling. Not one person lives their life without insecurity, and that is actually a gift, not because I want everyone to be filled with insecurity, but the recognition that we all have it. That even the most beautiful, wealthy, as smartest, kindest patient that walks into my room who's like tall and skinny, all the things I'm not. She's got insecurities too. Yeah. And so like that was, so that always helps me to just feel even less insecure because I know we all have it. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Well, you know what you're talking about reminds me a little bit about this. It's another platitude, which is like, love your body. I. Yeah, it can, it can land. Like, oh, that means it's the person that's delivering that message must love their body all the time and easily and again, and, and as though that, you know, and so I'm so glad we're talking about this and I'd love to kind of get a little bit into your thoughts and health journey as well, because you know, you can be at your goal weight and after you've lost all the weight your brain will go to, but like, oh, look at those stretch marks. Yeah. Or your brain will go to like, oh, look at that jiggle here, or like that. And I think that it can feel very powerless to believe that if I don't love my body all the time, I something must be wrong and I need to go do the work of loving my body all the time. I think a much more powerful question is what am I not loving and why? Am I, am I holding myself to a standard that maybe I grew up with? I saw some movies and some magazines and some, you know, airbrushed images that made me think that this is what the perfect woman is supposed to look like. I think that that is probably part of it, of course. And do I wanna challenge that standard? Yeah. I think that that feels so much more real to me, because I've always been someone, I've always had big legs. I've always had stretch marks like. When I go to yoga class now, I haven't talked about this in the podcast, but. The yoga class is like a hot yoga class. Yeah. So I'm just wearing my leggings and a sports bra because you get so hot. And this is at my goal weight, I feel like, Ooh, look at that roll going over my pants. And I remember from in the beginning, I was like, oh, that's kind of uncomfortable. And I had to ask myself, Priyanka, why? Why this is your one body, I wonder what's uncomfortable about it And like doing that work is deeper. I think it's a little bit, it requires some more compassion, it requires some more vulnerability. But then you come out the other side being like, it's actually pretty good. I'm sitting here doing my yoga class. Right. Like, I can actually love this experience. So tell me a little bit about your. Journey with your weight and like, what has it been like for you? Because I know it's, it's probably been a rollercoaster as it is for many of us. Yeah. But tell us, tell us what it has been in your ways. Always. 

   

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Well, and by the way, just to touch on like, how do we love our body, like I say all the time, I actually really do love my body ish because I look at everything as kind of fuzzy, right? Like I'm a very concrete person in certain ways, and yet I, I'm happy to blur the lines like I love my body in its. Totality. That doesn't mean I love all of it all the time, or even any of it all the time, right? Mm-hmm. So when I say totality, like the end result is I love my body. I love my life, I love, but there's a lot of shit within it. Just like I always joke, miserable and magical, miserable and magical, right? Mm-hmm. So like, there's certain parts I love, like I love my upper body because it's mm-hmm. It's like. A little more, I hate the word feminine in this way, but more feminine and Right. Like I like that I'm smaller framed on top. Mm-hmm. And I don't love my big butt, my bigger thighs. I have a lot of cellulite. I, you know, I don't love that part, but I like that I have a small waist. And so in totality, I enjoy my body, but, and there's specific things about it I hate. So it's got, I don't think anyone can love every single part. And by the way, you, and I know the women who too do truly have like the best like objectively perfect figures with no cellular, no flaws. They're very symmetric from all of like the scientific and artistic views. They have other insecurities about like their brain or mind. So that's what's important to remember. Okay. So my journey, I would say because of our immigrant status, which I don't know that I should always blame this, but this is the truth. This is my version of it anyway. Yeah, I know. It's all a story. This is my story. Yeah. My parents are wonderful human beings. And I mean that genuinely. I don't just say that to be like, they're great. They genuinely are wonderful. Everyone who knows them, they also have flaws as all of us do. And one flaw was that my father, who is, who was a very aggressive type A, he loved to exercise, he loved to eat healthily in the seventies and eighties before anyone did it. But that materialized because he was a general surgeon. I joke, he's the trifecta, he's a surgeon, he's a man, and he's a Persian. Mm. So that perfectionism materialized as. Why would you be eating another piece of pizza when I was like 6, 7, 8, probably even earlier. But this is my memory. Not like, oh, we, we should try to be healthy. We want, it was like, why would you want that? For a young girl who like literally just wanted the second piece of pizza, that felt very much like, oh, I don't know why. I think at the time I didn't realize, but I must have been thinking shamefully, like there's something wrong with me for wanting it, but like the fact is I want it and I wanted it a lot and because I was told not to want it, I wanted it even more, I think. So it definitely became very much like when I talk about my disordered eating, I wasn't classically anorectic, I wasn't vomiting, I wasn't bulimic, but I was very much. All or nothing. Like when I wanted to eat, I would eat, so I would closet eat and I would definitely binge and I would go through these cycles of yo-yo dieting. Like when I dieted, I mean, my college friends can tell you I dieted hard and I was good. Like if you told me to diet, I would not have eaten, like I wouldn't have chewed a piece of gum off of my plan. Right? Yeah. I would eat and I would exercise, but then when I was done. I was done big, like then I would right be all the crap. And I would never exercise. It was very much a roller coaster. It was very seventies and eighties like you had to be all or nothing. So when I was younger and in my mind I was heavy, but I really was like slightly heavier than everyone else, right? Mm-hmm. Like I was in a very Judeo Christian town where everyone was Jewish or Christian. I was like, you know, slightly brown and a little bit heavier and I had more of a mustache and we weren't any particular religion 'cause we're Iranian and we're not, you know, we don't practice Islam. So we were always a little bit different, but similar enough that we assimilated. But you know, all my friends were like that American variety of like long, skinny legs. So I really equated like thin is pretty thin, is beautiful. Mm. Did not matter what someone's face looked like to me. If you are thin, you are pretty. And I still have that messaging in my mind. It's actually still flawed, but that long journey of like, you know, I wanted to eat so I remember I would like buy things if we were at the store, like on the sly and like when I was old enough to have some of my own money or, and I would like hide it in my closet and eat and I would love eating it and I would felt so much comfort from it. And then of course feel bad 'cause in front of everyone. 

   

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: You had the shame as well, right? 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Yeah. Well because in front of everyone I was not allowed to be eating. Right. And back then, I'm only five three, I would say I teetered between like one thirties to one fifties up until my late twenties, which is not thin by any chance, but it's certainly not super heavy. But in my mind, I had this weird juxtaposition of like, I was confident enough. I always like, I always had really lovely boyfriends. I always like my friends, and I always had fun. I always hung out with people who were actually very lean. No one had weight issues like I did. But in my mind I was confident, but I was also like, I'm really fat. In my mind, I was really, really overweight. Mm-hmm. Which I think led to me then going down the slippery slope. The minute I became 29, I'm married, I start residency. By the first three months of residency, I had already gained 20 pounds. That's no joke. Like my wedding dress that I had to wear two different times between May and September, right when I became a resident, became very tight within that three months. And then from age 30 to 40, I had. Eight pregnancies. So I had six miscarriages, two babies at that point, and literally went from starting residency at one 70 and I ended at two 50. Mm-hmm. And it was a rollercoaster of Comforted by food. Yeah. Really not sleeping, never exercising. And in my mind, it's funny because when I look back on being 250 I think I always felt like I was two 50 anyway. In other words, like it was a, it was a quick slippery slope because Oh yeah. Like of course I looked.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: So that was your internal image of yourself the entire time. Yeah. Like my right. Yeah. Totally. Totally. Yep. Yeah, it's crazy. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: I mean, and even now that I've, I was only two to two 50 for that decade, but even now that I'm, like, I teeter in the like 1 45 to one 50, depending on like the week and how much I've like had to eat or drink. In my mind, I still like, when I catch a video or a picture of myself, I'm like, oh my God, I'm not two 50. Which is so weird. I don't know if you can help explain that. 'cause I only spent relative to my life a short decade. But again, my image of myself was that I was much heavier than I was. So what led me to finally lose more weight And I, and I hate to actually, I really have been reflecting lately. I hate to even talk about the numbers because I never want anyone else who's two 50 to feel bad about being two 50. If they're comfortable physically and emotionally, and if they're healthy. That's fine. I was not comfortable physically and emotionally. I was not healthy and I was two 50 because I had let myself get there. Not for good reasons. It wasn't like I was indulging in beautiful, healthy food and yummy. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: And loving your experience with that. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: I wasn't loving my experience at all. Yeah. This is, this is the, yeah, absolutely. So I really wanna be clear to anyone who's listening, and I also wanna be clear that my weight journey. It's not necessarily the best weight journey because I wish I had preemptively figured it out before I became that heavy, or I had to do gastric bypass and now use GLP ones. I don't think it's bad to use those. I'm thrilled that I'm on them. I'm thrilled I did my surgery. I will advocate for anyone who wants to do it, but in an ideal world, I kind of look at weight in these buckets. Like I think we have the people who right now are living with weight, were to just ask them to diet and exercise to lose weight is. A losing battle and really, really mean, right? Yeah. Then we have like the last generation who's probably hopefully a little bit better than we are. They have more body positivity that I didn't have growing up in the seventies and eighties because there was not a heavy model. Like there was no plus size clothes. The plus size clothes were terrible, right? Mm-hmm. And then we have the younger children who if we could do it right. We will preemptively stop them from this disordered eating self-flagellation. Like I always joke that I don't think it was the food that made me fat. I think it was the self-flagellation over the food that made me fat. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Because then it's also the messaging that you know, as big people. So we got this messaging when we were little people from the big people in our life, and we got the messaging in a couple of different ways. One was the way that you described with your, with your father, but the other one is when you see. Big adults, like the women in your life counting every calorie and oh, villainizing food. Like when you see, you know, maybe your mom or your aunt or absolutely a neighbor, teacher, grandmother saying, oh, pizza's bad. You shouldn't be eating that, or you're not allowed to have that food. That also in is sending an internal message to the little people in our life that, oh, this food is bad and I'm bad for wanting it. So I think that there's messaging there. Yeah. But what we get to do, and this is again, a lot of the work that I do, is for us to change the next generation's relationship with. Themself with their body, with food, we have to go first. Otherwise, honestly. Absolutely. It is lip service. Absolutely. It's lip service. Like, oh, you should love your body. It's again, it's a platitude. Yeah. It's like, have you done that work? Right. It's like you haven't, how can you actually model it a thousand percent? No, I mean, I, I can go on that. I can go on that topic mean. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: I, and, and as you know, I have a 14-year-old daughter and I am mm-hmm. And this is not like, I don't even fake it. I let her see me like walking around my underwear with like my cell and everything. Mm-hmm. And I also absolutely not let her, but I am happy with how I look. I talk about like the things I love when she was little. I would say, Hey, let's talk about the things we love about her body. And then we can also talk about the things we don't like. And I would say like, I love my small waist and I love like my, my shoulders. I don't really like that my bottom is bigger and she's a totally different figure. Yeah. And she would, I would say to her, like, for me, when I look at you, your legs are so amazing and strong. Like my legs don't feel as strong. So I think that we need to model that. We need to really suppress that desire to say the negative things. And the good news is I don't feel the need to say like that really mean negative things to myself anymore. The other part of this, I think, which is very cultural, that my kids don't see as much that you and I saw is in the Indian and Persian culture. Food is such a big part of it, but it's this weird juxtaposition and I'm sure every culture can, who's listing, every immigrant can relate. It's like you're supposed to be eating. But somehow you're supposed to not absorb a calorie from that food because you're also supposed to be lean enough. Right. But you're not supposed to be too skinny 'cause if you're too skinny, you look sick. Like, and lemme tell you to eat. 'cause if you don't eat my food, I'm gonna be offended. But also. I don't really care that you're on a diet, but also you should be thin, right? Like it's so fucking crazy. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. Yeah. It's a wild, it's a wild journey and I think that, you know, when you were, 'cause I know we've talked about this off offline and before this podcast interview, but we've talked about all the tools that are now available to us if we go through this journey. You get this messaging, whether it's through your cultural background that you grew up, or even just the messaging you saw with the big people in your life. Whatever the story is, when we have an uncomfortable relationship with how we are treating ourself. Our relationship with our body, our relationship with our food. We are going to come to a place, I can't give a percentage, but very often where you're uncomfortable at the weight that you're living in.

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Mm-hmm. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: And now we have to decide what do I want to do about this? Mm-hmm. Do I want to pick up a tool like a GLP1 agonist? Do I wanna have gastric bypass? Do I want to explore nutrition and exercise? How do I want to now embark on this journey? What was it that made you decide to go the route that you went? And do you have thoughts about it? Like, oh, I. Wish I hadn't done that, or, oh, I wish I could've figured it out this way. Like, 'cause I know that a lot of us judge ourselves in how we make decisions and I want to really de-stigmatize that entire process because I feel like that's the only way. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Yeah. Well, first of all, let me be really clear that I absolutely think that while we say like, gosh, your bypass or GLP-1 or nutrition and exercise, I think you and I both know, and I hope everyone listening knows this. You can't do any of these without nutrition and exercise. You just can't. Right. Because you won't do it well and it won't be healthy. Period. End of sentence. And I've done that, right? 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. So, and it'll last. It won't last. It won't last. You can do a GLP1 or gastric bypass Eight will not last. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Yeah, it will not last. You will be unhealthy. I see it all the time. So when people say, like, I, I laughed growing up, people would always be like, you know, okay, you're the doctor. You've done a lot of diets, like does the HCG diet work? And my answer is always the same. Any diet's gonna work for the short period of time until it doesn't work and it won't work if you don't do the work. And the work is obviously nutrition and some form of moving your body, but also the mental work. So I would say I didn't do a ton of the mental work before the gastric bypass, but what I had done was. I had really gotten to that point where I had yo-yo dieted so much. I was so physically exhausted. Care five, put three, carrying around 250 pounds. Having at that 0.2 kids and working like a hundred hours a week without exaggeration was exhausting. And so the like light bulb moment was a patient of mine was in the office. She had just done the band, the lap. The lap band, right? Mm-hmm. That little plastic device. In my mind, I knew I was heavy. Like I was never in denial about it. I was never like bigger than I'm, I knew what I was, but somehow I also like, while I pictured myself two 50, I guess I also pictured myself back when I was one 50 because I didn't think of myself as someone who could have done the surgery. So she comes in, she looks amazing. I always joked like I was out for the next big thing. Like, you tell me there's a diet pill, I will take it because I've tried everything and I want something that's gonna work. Mm-hmm. So she said, I said, oh my God, that's so amazing. I wish I could do it. And she goes. Why don't you do it? It was literally that I remember the room I'm in. Yeah. I remember my patient, why don't you do it? And I all of a sudden thought, oh my God, I am the weight that could actually do the surgery. Right. So there's a longer story behind like then how I decided to do gastric bypass versus band, but I did the bypass. I would say I did very little other than. They require you do a therapy visit beforehand. Yeah. Which is really just to like insurance, check off the box. And I'll never forget, the therapist was so just sweet, sweet. Not very skilled, but very sweet. Yeah. And she said, what are you going to do? Because people often have cross addictions, like, if you no longer addicted to food, are you sure you're not going to be addicted to other things? And I was like, listen lady. I mean I have had enough like. Cigarettes in my life, alcohol in my life. Like I'm not gonna get addicted to those things. I know that like it's just, it's zero addiction for me. I'm not addicted to those. I can give them up easily, but I said, and I joked. I'm gonna be addicted to shopping 'cause I already loved to shop. And I really think that actually my creativity with fashion was very much born from my weight and my figure. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I said, if things fit, I'm gonna shop all the time. And she was like, ha ha ha. No, I'm serious. And I said, no, no, no. I am serious. I am serious too. I'm a bargain shopper. So the good news is I unfortunately make up in volume what I like, don't buy in price, but I, yeah, I, I have shopped that I probably have to curtail that. So that was the only work  I did. And so that was, that was a problem because then I lost. 80 pounds quickly. I then got pregnant with my now 14-year-old by surprise. Four months later. That was not the plan. Don't do that, although it worked out okay. And then once the pandemic came, even though I was mostly eating healthily, mostly eating protein, mostly giving up my processed food, trying to move my body more, I really didn't do it with any great psychological work or even plan. Mm-hmm. And so during the pandemic, my weight went up about 30 pounds, which is why I was like, Ugh. And then I did, the GLP ones also did not do those well at the beginning. I urge anyone doing GLP ones, please, please, please, please eat protein, please. Weightlift. I know it's what all the perimenopausal women are hearing. I lost so much muscle mass that I cannot make that for now. There's thing. So, but yeah, I think that, I think that coupling, oh my gosh. If people, if I could have had access to something like you, like your program and your mindset. When I, maybe I still would've needed gastro bypass. Maybe I still would've needed the ozempic. So I don't look back and think, oh, I wish I could have done it on my own. Like when my patients to this day are like, well, don't you wish you did it on your own? I'm like, listen, if you could do it on your own, God bless you. I am fully willing to admit what I cannot do on her.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: I just want the problem solved. Like, do we wanna have the badge of honor that I did, did it on my own? Do we want this done? I think that that's a bit of a question. And you know, speaking to your point, I've, 'cause I've taught a, some of my clients are on GLP one agonists, and, and I can see that there can be this internal judgment and shame around it like ooh, I wanna be able to lose weight on my own, or I want to be able to lose the weight without this medication or without this additional support. And the way that I talk about it, this is including gastric bypass. This is including any procedure, any medication. These are all tools in our toolbox. Yeah. And for some people it is a necessary tool to use based on your background, based on your mental health, and even based on your physical metabolism. So, but I think what ends up happening. Is with something like a GLP one, people end up thinking it's the only tool in the toolbox. And I'm like, if you wanna build a house, do we wanna just build it with a hammer? Or do we actually want to bring in the power tools? And to me, that is where the coaching and the mindset work of how do we fall in love with our nutrition strategy? How do we take care of ourselves without food and alcohol? How do we play and rest? How do we evaluate and assess our results routinely? All of a sudden, if you are on a GLP one, you're going to skyrocket results. Like that's what I see. Yeah. Or like you can even get off of it. For some people it's right, but I think that people don't realize that there are these additional support structures Yeah. That will help them. And so then they end up overutilizing some of these tools that I think it, it can kind of create a problem down the road.

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: It's, it's funny, even when I hear you talk about it, I think like, why do any of us have this fallacy about doing it on our own with anything? Right? Like same thing when I talk to my patients about antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication, like it's not a failure. You still have to do the work, by the way, you still have to do the mental health and figure out your anxiety or depression when you go on GLP ones or surgery, you still have to do the work. It's ne you're still doing it. Same thing with like, yeah. Parenting, being in a village, like going through medical school, like we're never doing anything on our own. So why do we even Yeah, create that fall. I think it gets celebrated. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: It gets celebrated. So when you do something on your own, I'm just thinking about like residency when I would do something on my own, the positive accolades and the Priyanka. You're such a badass rock star, right? Felt good. Like it was, the external felt good. It was an external validation of like, you did that on your own, like. You're something special, right? You go that you start to train your brain to believe that, oh, the reason I'm feeling so special is because I did it on my own. Yes. Not that I created this accomplishment. It doesn't matter how I got there. So think that that there's a lot of messaging from when we're really little people. I know that it's like you celebrate that and like. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: But when you think about even that, that's the fallacy. That's what I mean. Oh yeah. In other words. Oh, totally. Even the things where people are like, I did it on my own. That's actually never true. We're literally never doing, never doing things on the, yeah, there's always adjacent things around us that have led us to be able to do it on our own, right? Mm-hmm. And so that's where I think, like, God, if we actually started to crack that code, that would be so helpful, you know?

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. I love it. Okay, so I actually think we need to have you back on the podcast because we didn't even get into perimenopause and menopause, like your entire area of expertise. So friends, I'm going to like cap Shiva, come back. Also, I am curious if you just want to share with us what is one thing you wish that more women knew and more women stopped apologizing for that you want to leave our audience with and then share with us how can people find you. They're gonna of course bring you back to talk about perimenopause and menopause, which is your like dream area of, of not, we don't wanna say expertise on advocacy of advocacy. Yeah. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Okay. So after you and I departed, sadly last weekend, I got to have dinner that evening with some wonderful, wonderful women who, you know, also physicians. And one of them said to me, I dunno if I told you this, but she said it was so interesting 'cause it really highlighted I think, how I feel. And I didn't, I hadn't put it into words yet. She said, I love that you're so confident and because you're so confident, you're so open. Which my whole life, people have always said, you're so open. And I think after this conference, which Priyanka and I were just at this conference where I got to mc and speak very openly and transparently in my like little sound bites in between the real speakers and, and many women came up to me and said, oh my God, thank you for being so open and transparent, which people have always said, but what she said in particular was you're so confident that it allows you to be so open. And I said, wow, it's so interesting that you say that because actually when I think about it, I don't think my confidence allows me to be open. I actually think my openness is what allows me to be confident. Mm-hmm. And so tying it back to what I wish women would know, I don't know if you remember, but during my intro or my outro at the event, I said like, I don't care if people are public. I think people conflate being open with being public, like you and I are willing to be public 'cause we're online and we're on Instagram. I love that. Not everyone has to do that, but what I urged every woman in that room, what do I say to my daughter is be more open. Maybe it's just with like your own best friends or your family, but be more open. The worst thing we've done as women is close ourselves off. Not only does it feel lonely, but it actually magnifies our insecurities because we're in our own head thinking, I have this insecurity. She doesn't. When in reality she does. But since you're both pretending you don't, you're magnifying your own and you're magnifying each other's insecurities in such a profound way, and if only you admitted these things mm-hmm. Then everyone else around you was gonna be like, oh my God, I feel the same way. Yeah. So I wish that every woman did not get the messaging, frankly, often from their mother. I love our mothers, but I'm gonna blame them a little bit. Mm-hmm. Oh, don't tell everyone your business, don't tell everyone like they're gonna, you know, and especially as women, right? Like, don't offer too much. If you offer too much, they're gonna take you down. And they have examples of that, right? Right, right. But that's actually not true. That's, I agree. Nine times outta 10, the end result is you've opened up and if someone took you down, those are not your people. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: A hundred percent, right? Yeah. You're gonna find, it's almost like what we, and we talked about this, I think, I can't remember if it was after this event or after the previous event, but I think especially professional women, we want to feel confident first. And I love that you're highlighting, it's actually feeling courageous first to open up, to allow it to be a little vulnerable, to allow it to feel uncomfortable, to say the things that maybe you might never have said before and for women that are used to being confident all the time, it can be particularly. Hard, right. But also the roadmap to more confidence is I think this courage, which, well, I think because love highlighting those women. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: Yeah. Those women think that their confidence is because of a veneer of perfection, but the minute they accept and realize that actually some of the people they love the most and feel that are most confident are not perfect. Then they'll recognize the power of like, oh, if I'm open, it's better. 

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: I love it. Shiva, how can everyone find you and learn from you and follow your journey. 

  Dr. Shieva Ghofrany: In the social media world I'm mostly on the gram, so at Dr. Shieva G, so it's D-R-S-H-I-E-V-A-G. So the word VG happens to be in my tag, and then my website, which is also Dr. Shieva G. And yeah, and if there's anyone in Connecticut or Florida who needs perimenopause or menopause, when I say help, meaning they'd have their gynecologist, but I would be their telehealth doctor who would really help 'em through the transition. Because often their doctors, even if they have knowledge, they don't have the time. And as a telehealth doctor, I would have the time because we strategize through an entire year of getting them through a lot of these things so they can find me.

  Dr. Priyanka Venugopal: Love it. Yeah, people find her. If you listen to this podcast and you love something about it, tag us on Instagram. Share this with a friend, and after me and Shieva hang up, I'm gonna have to schedule her again to come back and talk about perimenopause and menopause, because truly, there's the, there's so much there that I think deserves some attention. So thank you everyone for listening. And Shieva, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Love you. Bye friends. I hope you'll enjoy today's conversation with Dr. Shieva Ghofrany I'm so grateful. Thank you to Shieva for coming on the podcast and sharing her professional journey. And her health journey, her personal journey. I feel like we could have talked for so many more hours because it feels like she has lived 10 lives, and I know that she has so much value to offer to her patients and to her audience. And I'm so glad that she agreed to come on the podcast so she could share some of her wisdom with all of us. If you are loving the things you're learning about on this podcast, and if you know that having a plan is essential, but also having the mindset skills to take that plan and put it into consistent execution is where your gap is I strongly want to encourage you to apply to the Unstoppable group. Our enrollment for the summer cohort is opening next week, and you can start applying. Now head over to burnstressloseweight.com/group. You can learn all about the group, all the bells, the whistles, the nuts and the bolts, all the details about how the group works. And then there's a button that says, apply now. Answer a few questions and I will get back to you within 24 hours. And really we can start to have a conversation about whether this group is meant for you. We can talk over a Zoom consult, call over text, over email, and make a decision whether it's going to be the best fit. I hope you'll have an amazing day. And I will see you next week on the podcast or on a consult call. 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.