Summary 

In this episode, we’re diving into the fight response—what I call The Advocate. If you’re the woman who pushes harder when life gets messy, who double-downs and powers through even when you’re exhausted, this one’s for you. We’ll unpack how the same drive that fuels our success at work and home can quietly sabotage our consistency and keep us stuck in the stress-weight cycle.

Instead of trying to be “more disciplined,” we’ll explore what’s really going on under the surface—how stress, cortisol, and unchecked emotions drive urges, cravings, and burnout. You’ll learn how to regulate our stress, reclaim our energy, and stay consistent without needing more willpower.

Learn more about The Unstoppable Group: https://www.burnstressloseweight.com/

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Why your inconsistency isn’t a discipline issue—it’s a stress dysregulation issue
• The two sides of The Advocate: The Scarce Advocate and The Righteous Advocate
• How your think-feel-act cycles explain snacking, grazing, and “I deserve it” moments
• Six hidden ways stress keeps you stuck in the weight-loss loop
• A 4-step framework (A-B-C-D) to help you walk yourself out of fight mode

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Featured on the Show:

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Download the full transcript here.

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  Hey friend, welcome back to Burn Stress, Lose Weight, where I am bringing back a miniseries that ties together stress and you achieving your body goals. Starting this quarter, I've been sharing on the podcast that Q4 or this last quarter of the year, especially through the holidays, is the time that most of us forget our body goals. We want to enjoy social gatherings. We have a lot of stress around family events, and you might have a lot on your calendar over the seasons, and so it's no surprise that you might experience more stress in this last quarter of the year. But my mission for all of you listening to the podcast is actually learning how to leverage Q4 this last quarter of the year, where most people forget their goals and create a runway where you can amplify your results starting right now so you get a head start on next year to be able to take that plan that you know is going to work on paper and really put it into real life execution consistently, I promise you, you have never had a discipline problem. You have had a stress and dysregulation problem. The entire intention of this four part miniseries is to help you identify which of the four stress archetypes. You are, you're likely a mix of all four of these. I know that I absolutely am. And for you to use your awareness around your patterns and start paving a roadmap to getting unstuck this holiday season. Last week, I kicked off the series by talking about the flight response or what I call the escapist. So if you're brand new to the series or you're brand new to me, then hello and welcome back. I encourage that you pause this episode right here. Go back and listen to that very first stress response episode, and if you're brand new to me, hello and welcome. I am Dr. Priyanka Venugopal. I'm an OBGYN physician, turned stress and weight loss coach for professional women who want to feel unstoppable inside out. You are someone that wants to stop letting your stress in your career or maybe at home slow you down in you feeling your best and you achieving your body goals. If that sounds like you, you are in the perfect place. Today we are talking about the fight response or what I am calling the advocate. You know the advocate really well. She's the one that pushes harder when life gets really messy. She's the one that doubles down, works really hard, someone that's maybe addicted a little bit to productivity and deficiency, and she's the one that pushes for you at the end of a hard week when you have been working so hard for. Everyone and everything else, she's the one that is advocating for you to take a break. Here's the thing, when it comes to stress, your body does not know the difference between a work deadline and that social gathering that you're nervous about or feeling awkward in, and a real life threat. That's the entire premise of this entire series, and when your body isn't constant fight mode, which we're going to get into in today's episode, your cortisol levels are going to stay elevated. Cortisol is that stress hormone that doesn't just lower because you tell yourself to stress less. It's not a very effective strategy, but cortisol in high doses chronically all the time, either through the holiday season in your careers or at home, is going to ramp up and drive up. Urges and cravings to go off track. This is not a discipline problem. This is a stress dysregulation problem. This is why I love using this last season of the year where likely your stress levels are higher than usual, where you have more on your calendar to teach your brain and your body new habits. If you are loving this series and you're finding it valuable, I would absolutely love it if you would take this episode and share it with a friend or in your local community together. Let's make this last quarter of the year, the one where you really start feeling your best. Let's get into the fight response, or what I'm calling the advocate. I have found, not just in my personal journey, but by the way, all four in my personal journey to lose 60 pounds, but really what I see with smart, resourceful professional moms to really lose the weight that you want to lose. If you have been wanting to lose weight and you find that you are able to gain traction for maybe a few days or a few weeks, but something inevitably gets in your way, it's going to be one of these four stress types. I have talked with so many of you over the years, and I have asked you one very important question, which is, what do you think is the number one barrier to you hitting your dream body goal? What has it been in your experience? And not only to lose the weight you want, but to maintain your results for a lifetime. And after talking with so many of you, there is one word that I have heard you all say back to me time and time again, and that is consistency. I tell my clients in the Unstoppable group this all the time, but to dial up the volume on weight loss, consistency, to see your results on the scale really be what you want them to be week after week after week. You have to become first deeply aware of what has gotten in the wave, your consistency. I want this podcast series to be where we get to open our eyes, eyes wide open, and I want you to be able to wrap your arms around exactly what has created. Inconsistency. There has to be a reason. It's not at all because you're just not disciplined. That's not a reason. It is going to be one of these four stress types. The four stress types that I'm focusing on are centered on fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, or the way that I'm describing them on this miniseries, the escapist, the advocate, the procrastinator, and the people pleaser, understanding your stress type, whether it is one or a little bit of all of these, if you're anything like me, is going to be one of the three essential steps that you need to not just hit your body goal, but for really for it to last a lifetime. And on this podcast, one of my missions for all of you is that you are able to lose the weight you want and maintain it without the fads, the gimmicks, and the quick fixes.

  Two weeks ago I started this miniseries where we are diving into the four stress types. Why is it that smart, resourceful, really brilliant women? Ever, ever, ever sabotage their weight loss strategies? Why do we ever get inconsistent? And we have been really diving into the pieces that are really essential to understand why unmanaged or unchecked stress is getting in the way of you hitting your goal. I also did share this last week, so if you have not yet heard those, I recommend pausing here and starting there so you have a good foundation. But stress on its own is not a bad thing. Actually, some amounts of stress are very appropriate and actually really healthy to have for living your normal life as a very busy human. It gets you out of bed in the morning. It gets you paying your bills on time. It keeps you quick on your feet when you are really encountering a real danger. You need to run or you need to fight, right? That's where fight, flight, freeze, and fawn actually come from. So I wanna just plant that here. That stress on its own is not actually a bad thing. It's when we have unchecked and unmanaged stress. The way that we react to uncomfortable emotions or uncomfortable life scenarios, that is actually wreaking havoc on hitting our body goals. And what I have found now with working with my clients for hundreds of hours, this is women in every industry. It is one of the most overlooked variables in your weight loss strategy. Last week I covered the flight response or what I call the escapist. Today we're getting into the fight response or what I like to call the advocate. I'm going to be breaking down a couple of different, very common scenarios that I have noticed that have come up for me, that I see coming up with my clients that I'm guessing comes up with you, and I'm going to break down these scenarios using the think, feel, act cycle. So just remember that the think, feel, act cycle really just describes that none of our actions or inactions ever happen in a vacuum. Whenever you go to snack, nibble, graze, ever go off plan, it doesn't just happen on its own. The universe did not just put the food in your mouth. The reason that you ever go off plan or snack or graze or nibble or ever really go off plan is because you felt an emotion. And also that emotion doesn't just happen out of the blue. It happens because you have a thought. You think something about your life circumstances, you think something about the way that you're experiencing a challenge in your life. And that is subconsciously drives our action. There are two scenarios that I have seen the Advocate really come into play that I'm going to use as examples for this specific podcast episode. The first one is called The Scarce Advocate, and the second one is the Righteous Advocate. So let's start with the Scarce advocate. This is a scenario where you have been working hard all week. You have been clocking in the hours at work, taking care of all of your roles and responsibilities that you have with your clients, with your patients, with your projects, maybe with colleagues and bosses and team members. And because you're an overachiever, you are likely expecting very high quality work from yourself and you push yourself to put out A+ results all the time. Then maybe you come home at the end of a very long day and you find yourself playing chauffeur to your kids. You might be nagging one of them to finish their homework, the other one to stop picking on the first one. Maybe you're reminding them to clean up their room and, oh yeah, we have to get them to soccer practice and swim team all on time. You might even find yourself if you do have the time that you can squeeze in with your partner, that you're just passing each other in the hallway, mostly talking about to-dos and who's doing what without actually spending the time on connecting with them or with yourself. So what's left for you? Likely some scraps at the end of your day, when it comes to you feeling taken care of, you find yourself lowest on the totem pole. Somehow your need for rest and relaxation. Always seems to take a backseat to your work, your patients, your clients, your colleague requests, your partner, your kids, even your aging parents. And this is not just something that happens every now and then. You notice that this has become the rhythm of your life. If this is you, you might find yourself thinking a very, very, very common and reasonable thought, which is, 'I deserve a break', and when you have that thought, I deserve a break. I deserve real rest and relaxation. I've been working so hard. You'll find that the Cadillac of nutrition strategy, that weight loss plan that you crafted on Sunday night that you felt so good about will be forgotten because the scarcity that you feel around your personal rest and relaxation will drive your most primitive, primitive brain to make very compelling, convincing reasons to enter off plan, snacking, nibbling, and grazing. This is the think, feel, act cycle as it applies to the scarce advocate. Let's take another example. The righteous advocate. This is a scenario where maybe you have been working so hard with weight loss. Or what seems like you've been working so hard with weight loss. You find yourself thinking about it all the time. You find yourself ruminating about meal plans and exercise, and you're lacking results. When you step on the scale and you don't love that number, you find your brain focusing on how unfair it is that it's not easier for you. You'll find yourself in blame energy, and this is when you will very subconsciously and very conveniently forget all of the tiny little licks bites, nibbles and off plan moments that you actually have been experiencing over the last week, it should be easier creates that feeling of righteousness. And when you feel righteous, the action that you take is to go into blame energy and staying in this blame energy totally takes you out of wrapping your arms around 100% responsibility. When we are in righteousness, it's really hard to look objectively at the way that we executed on our plan without the blame. The mistake that high achieving women make here is that when they're in this type of stress, this advocacy type of stress, where we are in fight mode, we end up often going into double down energy. We think we just need to double down harder on the plan. We have to just be more disciplined, or you may find yourself going right back to the planning drawing board. The real solution here is to deeply assess objectively what got in the way of consistent execution. When we really take a fine tooth comb through the actions that you took that took you to snacking and nibbling from that blame energy, we will find that it was a thought you had about your life or your food plan that was laced in scarcity or righteousness. Here's what happens when we stay in the, 'I deserve it' or 'it should be easier', think, feel, act, cycle. We know the actions you're going to take, right? The actions are you snack and graze and nibble and you go off plan in little or big ways. Sabotaging consistent weight loss results, but also there are six more things that are happening here. Things that you are not doing that's contributing to you staying in the stress cycle. Now, if you identify with any of these, you're not alone. I have literally done all six of these. The very first one, if you feel scarcity, like I deserve it, I'm not having enough rest and relaxation, I deserve a break. If you're noticing a lot of scarcity around your life and around your rest and relaxation, most of the time you'll find yourself not addressing the root of your scarcity. Are you actually eating enough nutrition? Very often, very surprisingly, the answer will actually be no. But instead of solving this more deeply and really looking at the structure of your days and your weeks and really assessing whether you are getting enough nutrition, you'll find yourself doing the random grabs, snacks, and nibbles. I cannot tell you how often my clients start losing weight more consistently when they eat more of the right nutrition. Number two, when we are in the scarcity or righteous advocacy model, every time you hit a an obstacle or a roadblock or the scale is up a pound, because of that, it should be easier mentality. You will throw in the towel. You'll make putting in your full effort a problem because you feel like it should be easier. Number three, you'll not normalize that sometimes it is very normal and necessary to do the tedious work. This is not all the time. It's not that weight loss has to be tedious all the time, but there are going to be certain seasons, depending on where you are at, that there is some tedious work. There is some tedious weeds that you have to pull to gain momentum on the scale. And when we are in scarcity or righteousness, we are going to be completely blocked from being really committed to doing the tedious work. The fourth one, weight loss feels consistently hard and full of deprivation, this speaks more to the scarcity model.

  So the first piece is whether or not you're eating enough. But the other piece that we were learning when we were in that think, feel, act cycle focused on scarcity is your brain has learned that food and alcohol and snacks, nibbles and grazing is the only way for you to feel satisfied, for you to get pleasure, for you to get joy. And when we have attached all of that to food. We've given food this role that it was never meant to have. The idea of saying no to snacking and grazing and nibbling, even when your body's not hungry, is going to create so much deprivation for you. So if you think about weight loss and immediately you're filled with dread, we know that this is a part of your work. Number five, one of the things that we don't do when we stay in the scarcity model and the righteous model is we don't develop. Clear boundaries and structure that prioritizes ourself. Our rest, our pleasure, our relaxation, our proper nutrition at the very top of the totem pole. This is where you're going to find yourself continuously chasing and running after your rest and relaxation and food and alcohol is just going to be a really quick way to get there. And the last one, this is one that I just see coming up time and time again. If you've been the advocate, whether it's with scarcity or righteousness, you might even notice that this transcends weight loss. You might be feeling these emotions in the workplace with your kids, with your partner, and the reality is when you go into fight mode, we are just acting from our most primitive basic desire to be safe and taken care of. This is a normal stress cycle response. Going into fight or freeze or flight or fawn is a normal stress cycle response, but the reason that we are ever experiencing any of these stress cycle responses is because a part of our brain. Believes that our safety is being threatened. So the pathway out of all four of these trust cycle responses is to create a feeling of safety. I can tell you because I have tried it this way, there is no way to reliably create lasting weight loss results while you feel scarcity, and I don't want you to waste any more of your time grabbing another plan from the nutritionist. So instead of just focusing on doubling down and making a new plan, let's talk about how to walk out of any stress cycle response using what I discussed last week, the ABCD bridge, a I want you to practice becoming aware of your thoughts that you're having about your life. About your real life circumstances with the workplace, at home, with your kids, with your roles and responsibilities that is driving you to deprioritize your rest, your relaxation, your body goal. When we can start to become aware of those thoughts that are creating your scarcity, your going to start to activate a different part of your brain. B is to breathe. I like to think about breathing, and you can really do any type of grounding exercise, but it creates a natural pause. So when you're feeling that scarcity or that righteousness, instead of going right into your autopilot mode, which is just to, you know, screw the plan, have lots of effort moments, just throw in the towel, not put in your full effort, I want you to just catch it with awareness, start to pause and really activate your most adult evolved thinking, breathing, and pausing. Getting outside really grounding to nature. Again, just introducing one to two minutes where you create a space between the thoughts you're having and the actions that you're taking is really going to help you mindfully consider what you want to do next. C is Courage. I want you to imagine that it was possible for you to feel any uncomfortable emotion. So even if you feel scarcity or righteousness or any uncomfortable emotion that drives you to go into a fight response practice, allowing the emotion without reacting to it, this is going to take courage because for those of us who are not used to allowing uncomfortable emotions, we're used to numbing, distracting, really just trying to take a break from all of those uncomfortable emotions. This is going to be the hardest step, but just practicing with some awareness, taking a breath, taking a pause, and really practicing courage. Allow yourself to practice this skill and talk yourself through it. You know when you're feeling uncomfortable, when you're feeling an uncomfortable emotion, you don't have to grit your teeth with willpower to get through that uncomfortable emotion. Talk yourself through it the way that you would talk through a really young child. Have your own back. Be gentle with yourself as you feel uncomfortable. And step four, do it anyway. This is where you are going to create massive results for you on and off the scale. When you feel uncomfortable, practice the awareness. Take a breath, allow the emotion, and just follow through. Anyway, one of my clients was just sharing, just following through on the plan, the way that you said you would is actually very not dramatic. It's actually quite simple. And the more that we practice following through even when we feel uncomfortable, teaches our brains new skills and those skills turn into lasting habits. I've noticed that the four stress types that we are covering in the series is literally the four most common barriers. To consistent actions for the professional working mom who identifies as an overachiever. I cannot tell you how often I have heard from someone that they just need to double down on their plan. They just need to be more consistent or be more disciplined, or maybe introduce a really extra long intermittent fasting window or cut out the carbs most often. If you're one of my clients, you'll hear me say that yes, you need a nutrition plan in place that will make you a fat burner, but what you really need more than that is. How to follow through on that plan consistently and the way that we do that is what we are doing in this series. We are catching the real reason that we ever go off plan one of these stress cycle responses. Everything that I'm sharing in this mini series and on this podcast is truly something that I have personally experienced myself. It's not theory that sounds good on paper. It is really something that I have personally experienced in my journey of losing a little over 60 pounds, and it's what I see coming up specifically with women who identify as overachievers, right? We're overachievers that have really started to deprioritize our goals, and it's no wonder that our brain is fighting back. Right? That's why I call this the advocate. I really hope that you enjoyed and learned a lot about the fight response and how being the advocate, whether it's in a feeling of scarcity or righteousness, is creating an obstacle for you between where you are now and your goal weight on scale. Next week, we are going to be diving into the third stress type, the procrastinator. This is truly one of my most favorite stress types to unpack because I still find myself very often experiencing this. Stress cycle response in my real life as as a professional working mom. The procrastinator stress type, which we're getting into next week, is not just something you're going to notice with your results on the scale, but it is going to be what will also get you back bucket loads of time, hours back per week simply by identifying this stress type. Thanks for spending this time with me on Burn Stress, Lose Weight. This podcast has seriously been one of my most favorite parts of sharing story, strategy, and science. With professional women who self-identify as overachievers. I hope that you're walking away from today's podcast episode feeling a little more full of possibility. I promise that you don't need perfect circumstances in your life to feel unstoppable inside out for you to achieve that body goal that would help you feel your best. And with the right strategy and support getting there is inevitable. This four part series really touches the heart of what gets in the way for overachieving women to achieve their weight loss goals. And I'm so glad to be sharing it with you. I have also been teasing a project that I have been working on now for many, many months. I'm going to be sharing some behind the scenes of this project over on Instagram. So if you are not yet following me, head over to @BurnStressLoseWeight over on Instagram so you can get a hint of exactly what's coming, Burn Stress, Lose Weight has a new chapter on the horizon over the next few days or few weeks, depending on when you're listening to this episode, and I cannot wait to share this bold vision that we have for our mission moving forward. If you enjoyed this episode and you're loving this series, share this episode with a friend, and if you can take a moment to leave our rating and review, I would be so grateful. Come meet me over on Instagram, take a look at the sneak peek so you get a little idea of exactly what's coming, and I will see you in next week's episode. Bye my unstoppable friend.