Summary 

Ever wonder why, despite being so successful in other parts of your life, sustainable weight loss still feels out of reach? In this episode, I’m sharing a behind-the-scenes look at a recent coffee chat where I broke down exactly why so many high-achieving women struggle to lose weight—and keep it off—no matter how hard they work.

I’ve taken everything I know, from my own journey as a busy physician and mom who lost over 60 pounds to the science-backed strategies I use with my clients, and wrapped it into a five-part recipe that’s designed to help you stop winging it and start seeing real, lasting results.

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:

• Why winging it is keeping you stuck—and how to shift to a sustainable, actionable plan
• The most overlooked (but essential) ingredient for consistent success on the scale
• How guilt-free rest and play can actually fuel your progress (instead of sabotaging it)
• The importance of making key decisions in advance—even if it tickles the irritation centers of your brain
• Why mindset work is the secret sauce that helps you bring any plan to life and keep it going

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Featured on the Show:

• Get the Hormones Training by clicking here.
• Want to work with me? Learn about The Burn Stress, Lose Weight Group by clicking here. 

Download the full transcript here.

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   Hey friends. Welcome back to the Burn Stress, Lose Weight podcast. Today I am sharing one of my recent diagnostic calls or coffee chats as I've been calling them onto the podcast. Today, I have been doing a series of these calls where I really want to help all of you listen to this podcast, really help identify your very specific strategic gaps that have really been holding you back from not just losing weight because we've all lost weight before, but really keeping it off for a lifetime, hitting your goals, and then sustaining it through the realities of being a very busy professional with a very real life that has lots of obstacles and choppy waters. I have a whole host of replays waiting for you if you want them we have covered the thought it's not working and the impact that that thought is having for you. We have covered urges and cravings. We have covered how to evaluate your weight loss results, like a rockstar. And then today's coffee chat, which I decided to bring onto the podcast. I'm not bringing them all onto the podcast, but this one I really wanted to bring because it felt like one really comprehensive call that breaks down what I have seen in my personal experience and with my scientist hat on science informed strategy to help you hit your goal weight this year and keep it off in a way that feels sustainable. There are five parts to a winning strategy. I'm telling you, I've taken a fine-tooth comb over client results. I've taken a fine tooth comb over my own results as a busy professional, how I lost a little over 60 pounds as a physician with two young kids and a busy, hectic schedule, I promise you, you do not need more time to hit your goals, but you do have to know how to repurpose some of the time that you're wasting on the wrong solution. If this five part recipe resonates with you, if you know that this is. Literally the solution to the weight loss struggle that you have been having and the gateway to you really feeling your best inside out. I really want to encourage you to join me in the upcoming cohort of the Unstoppable Group. If you missed the early enrollment, it is not too late To grab a spot, you can head over to www.burnstressloseweight.com/group. There's a button that says Apply now, hit the button, answer a few questions. Give me as much detail as possible so I can get to know you, and I will reach out to you via email with next steps, we can talk about whether this group is really going to be a best fit for you. How I help my clients guarantee results on the scale while feeling their best and truly what is I think going to be the best decision for you this year. So without further ado, let's get into the five part success recipe. This was a recent coffee chat that I did, but I really wanted to bring this one to the podcast and I hope you love it as much as me. We are actually just gonna get started right away, right at the top of the hour because we have a lot to cover today. I've been thinking about this entire coffee chat series as a series of diagnostic calls where my intention is to help you identify specific strategic gaps that. You have had as a smart, busy, professional woman who self-identifies as an overachiever in why it is that your dream ideal weight, how you feel living your life, your very busy life sometimes feels just a little bit out of reach and over the last few weeks. I have been dropping in with all of you here in this entire series to really help you diagnose what your strategic gaps have been. There are a handful of strategic gaps. There's, they're not endless, but these strategic gaps, once you identify them, you know, part of the. Intention these calls is to give you the diagnostic tool so you can start building your toolbox to fill your strategic gaps. And today's call, I wanna think about this as the cherry on top of the cake call. This is the strategic gap and the diagnostic call that is, in my opinion, the most important because it's going to address a little bit of. Each of the strategic gaps that we have been talking about in the series. So I hope you are all ready to buckle up. Grab a pen, grab a paper. If you're listening to this as a replay, really be here actively with me. Pause your inbox, pause your lab sign-offs, pause your launch, and really be here with me present, because truly this hour together is. I think really going to hit home for you, especially if you know that this is the year you want to finally be done with the weight loss struggle. You want to get to your goal weight while feeling better as a busy professional. So if you're brand new to me, I'm just gonna take one moment to introduce myself. Hello, I am Dr. Priyanka Venugopal. I'm a board certified OBGYN physician, and I am now a stress and weight loss coach for professional women who self-identify as overachiever. I really love to bring to all of my calls to everything I teach, whether it's here on the podcast or on social media or if you're on my email list. I really love to bring my very personal experiences as a busy physician and when I was at my absolute heaviest, which was a little over 200 pounds and where my struggles actually were. I was a very smart person, literally an expert on women's health, and yet I struggled with this problem. And so a lot of what you hear, a lot of what influences everything I teach is real lived personal experiences, not something that has been plucked from the sky or something. That just sounds good. I have been right where you are, and I'm here now telling you that I have solved this problem, not just with random guesses and shots in the dark, but with real strategy. And that leads me to the second thing that informs a lot of my process. A lot of what I teach here and over on the podcast is science informed strategy. So I am a scientist at heart. Yes, personal experience is very important, but we have to have the science to back up what we are saying otherwise, it is just another fad, another gimmick that, you know, when you fast forward a year from now, it will not. Stand the test of time. So everything you're learning today, especially we are talking about a success recipe, the five part success recipe to guarantee success on the scale and off. And I want you to know that it is informed by my personal experience and now coaching women for many years, and it is also informed by science. If you are here, likely, you have experienced wild success. In some parts of your life, by the time you hit your mid to late thirties, your forties and your early fifties, you really have experiences if you take a fine tooth comb over your life, some real successes, professional wins, personal wins in your family, and I'm guessing that you did not get there by just having like a daily meditation practice. Right? Most professional women, and this was my experience as well, we have created massive wins in our professional and personal lives while juggling the responsibilities of being a badass in the workplace. By being, you know, especially male dominated fields, you've likely had to be above and beyond amazing to achieve a lot of your successes and you've also been balancing the responsibilities of your families with your children, with your partners, maybe with aging parents. And if I know you as well as I think I do, you did not get to those massive achievements. By chilling out and by relaxing, you got there because you got very, very good at hustling. You know how to push through the hard moments. You know how to pull the late nights, you know how to multitask like a ninja. You know how to prioritize. Everyone else, your kids, your family, your patients, your clients, your charts, the laundry, the vacation, all of these things in your life have taken priority and you're very good at it. And yes, you have probably a vault of a pluses and gold stars, but if you're here, it might be because you don't feel like you're living this a plus life. So this was me a few years ago, back in 2018, 2019. I had all of those things. I had literally put in blood, sweat, tears, a lot of financial investment into my education, into my training, through medical school and residency. I had the two kids. I became an OBGYN attending, and while I had a lot of those check marks on paper, like the, you're living a good life on paper life, I wasn't feeling my best. And I remember. This was like a while, quite a while ago. My husband, as sweet as he is, very well-meaning, he got me one of those monthly massage memberships thinking that, you know, this is going to help you relax, this is going to help you decompress. And while it was nice, if you're on the massage table and you're thinking about your to-do list and you're endless list of patients or labs or clients to take care of, and you're feeling uncomfortable in your body. Is the massage really doing anything right? That is a rhetorical question because you and I both know that the monthly massage is not actually helping you feel better deeply like I'm talking about in your body better, and a lot of times I think that this was me, and this is a lot of my clients before they come to work with me. You might have thought. I just don't have the time for me. I have to take care of my kids. I have to take care of my family. I have to take care of my, my responsibilities at work. I just don't have time for me. But I love to challenge this one. If we just take a look at your screen time over the last seven days, I'm guessing we might bust that bubble. A lot of times. If we take a fine tooth comb and we do a time inventory of where your time is actually going, where is your mental bandwidth actually going? Overachieving professional women, especially working moms, are spending hundreds of hours per year in indecision. When it comes to themselves. They're spending time in overthinking, in ruminating, in maybe making kind of a plan, but then second guessing the plan and what that starts to do. When you stay in these kind of open, looped stress cycles of indecision, it perpetuates a lot of self doubt.

  So, and this is so important for me to share with all of you is you were made for more than that. When I think about stress. Stress on its own is actually so important. It's a survival mechanism. It's a superhero in small doses. But when stress starts to overrun your life, when it starts to create an immense amount of fatigue, when it starts to tax your brain where your focus and your decision making abilities gets threatened, then it's really not helpful, especially if you want to feel your best. So sometimes I know, especially before clients come to work with me, maybe you all felt this way as well. We think that the solution to this. Must be really hard or really complicated, and it makes sense that you might have thought that, because if it was easy, you would've already done it. If it was simple, you would've already done it. But the reality is it is actually simple. What has been missing is putting certain very key decisions into the structure of your life. So I call this what we're talking about today. I call this magic action structure. Magic Action Structure is a framework that I teach my clients in the Unstoppable Group, and it is based on a few different pieces. It's based on making a series of very specific decisions in five areas we're going to talk about. Each one today that when you make these decisions, it won't just guarantee results on the scale and you losing the weight you want. Making these decisions in these five key areas is going to support your hormone health. It's going to support your metabolism and it's going to support that feeling for you on the inside where you feel better, where you feel like you're feeding your soul on the inside. Now, the caveat here, 'cause you know, it sounds like that's really like too good to be true. If that was just the case, like why aren't we all doing it? Lemme tell you why we're not doing it. The caveat here is making key decisions in advance is going to push your brain. So I'm just letting you know we're signing up to push your brain. You're going to feel a tickle of irritation when I ask you to make certain decisions in these five key areas. And there's a reason for this because as an overachieving professional woman, as a working mob, you have likely been decision making in every other part of your life with your work, with your children, with your family, with your time in other areas. But when it comes to just you, when it comes to your weight loss goal, your body goal, your wellness goal, your mind, body and spirit, you have likely been winging your decisions. So when you get really accustomed, when your brain gets very used to winging your weight loss strategy, when your brain gets very accustomed to winging you on. Schedule making decisions that kind of flip that over on its head will challenge your brain. It's going to feel irritating, but I want you to just stick with it. I want you to keep your foot on the gas, stick with it, and really go through each piece of this process so you feel clear on how you're going to support your goals. This is how we have to really think about this. You're here because you don't actually just want comfort. You're here because you want to feel better on the inside, on the outside, you wanna feel better in your body. You wanna feel more clear in your mind. You want to have more energy, more vitality. You want the next 10, 20, 30 years to be the best years of your life. If that's true, if that's why you're here, we have to remind our brain, why you putting in this effort now is worth your discomfort. Okay. Your results are worth your discomfort. Your results are worth making these decisions and pushing your brain to make decisions. Now, when you make decisions, one of the things that we think about with making magic action structure decisions is these are going to create. Magic action structure activities, so you won't just lose weight. You're gonna feel better while you do it. And the key pieces, these activities are not just declarations, okay? These aren't just decisions that we make once on this call. They're a commitment that goes into our calendar. They have to go into the math of our life. Otherwise, it's again, very easy to forget about it, to wing it, to let you know your kids, your time, your family, your work kind of bulldoze over your specific wellness goals, your weight loss goals. So we have to put them on the calendar and that's what creates the actual structure that we're talking about. So magic action structure is not just making key decisions in these five areas that we're going to talk about. It's making key decisions and building them and putting them into the structure of your life. They have to go on the calendar. So when we think about like structure I'm talking about even as a busy physician, this was at my personal heaviest as an ob, GYNI had a very unpredictable schedule, right? So if you're a physician or maybe you work, you know, in a, you have an unpredictable schedule. Even when you have an unpredictable schedule, there is predictability to your unpredictability. Do you know what I'm saying? So even for the person that has crazy hours, you're working nights, you're working long weekends, maybe you're on call for 72 hours. I remember, like I used to have Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I was on call 72 hours every four weeks. I was on call every Tuesday, every fourth Friday, every fourth weekend, and I lost a little over 60 pounds. Not because my time changed, my job changed, my kids magically changed, my husband magically changed. Nobody in my life, nothing in my life had to change. I had to have. Structure built into my life that took my real life and time into account. That is the beauty of magic action structure. So I'm gonna get into the five pieces we're going to address nutrition, guilt free. That's the key. Guilt free, rest play movement. Mindset. I'm gonna get into each one in as much detail as they can possibly get into in the span of this one hour. And then if you're watching this as a replay, you're listening to this as a replay, reach out to me. You can always message me on Instagram @burnstressloseweight, or just hit reply to the email that you got with this replay and ask me any questions that you have if they come up for you.

  So the very first piece of the process is nutrition. I cannot tell you how many times I see very smart women. This is on Facebook, so I've, I'm scrolling on the Facebook. I'm like scrolling late into the night, and I will see smart women have a post. It'll be something like this. They'll say, I have gained about 20 pounds in the last year, and I'm pretty good with my food. So that's kind of like the start of a lot of what people think. I'm doing pretty well with my food. I'm not eating that badly now. I do love all the carbs and I love to snack and scroll a little bit. And I do struggle with, like when I'm at the nurse's station and somebody's bringing, you know, some cookies by like, I can't say no to the cookies, but I'm pretty good with my food. Do we think that maybe it's my hormone? I'm like paraphrasing it. So it sounds a little bit silly the way that I'm posing this question, but I cannot tell you how often women in their late thirties, forties, and fifties are chasing the wrong solution when it comes to nutrition. When we think I'm eating pretty well, I want us to get so clear on what does that actually mean. There are hundreds of diet plans out there. You can talk about keto, low carb, no flour, no sugar, intermittent fasting. You, there's. A myriad of different nutrition strategies out there. But if your nutrition strategy is focused purely on counting calories or points, you are going to not be supporting your metabolism and your hormone health. So first and foremost, when I talk about nutrition with my clients, we have to make sure that you're getting enough of the right food to support your body's ability to burn fat. Let me just say that again in a different way. The fat that's stored on your body, while you might not love it, while you might feel uncomfortable in a body that doesn't feel good for you, the fat stored on your body is a precious resource. So for our body to feel safe and comfortable, to release fat and to burn fat, we have to actually give our body. Enough of the right nutrition. So if you're just eating less and moving more, or counting calories, we can see how this might be a really archaic way of thinking about weight loss. If you think about the science of fat loss, the science of weight loss, we have to optimize TEF, which is the thermic effect of food. So very briefly, what we want to make sure we're doing is getting enough high quality whole foods. So actual real foods with enough protein, with enough fiber and enough complex carbohydrates and fat. When we think about how are we actually eating, I remember there was a a while, this was back in 2018. I was like, I'm eating pretty well. I'm not eating that bad. I'm eating pretty well, but I'm like stuck on the scale. If you took a fine tooth comb and actually wrote down for the last seven days, every bite, lick and nibble, you actually ate. We'll start to see where you might have had selective amnesia around how you've actually been eating. So we have to get number one, really honest when we see we're eating pretty well. What does that mean? The way that you are eating in your twenties and maybe early thirties is not going to fly anymore. And the reason for that is not just perimenopause, though. Yes. That plays a role after they just 35. Your estrogen levels are declining. Estrogen is the master conductor touching every organ system. Your brain, your muscle, your body, your metabolism. Absolutely your ability to lose weight. And the other issue, the reason that this matters so much is because. You know, once you start to get into perimenopause and th over 35 and into your early forties, your capacity to handle the crap goes down. It's because we have been kind of pushing our bodies so hard with hustling and overworking, and we have had, like I. Incessant amounts of cortisol and stress wreaking havoc on our bodies that there comes a point that these small differences make all the difference. So it's true that maybe in your twenties you are able to just do whatever. You could kind of make the tiniest changes and you would just lose weight. That's not going to fly in your forties. In your forties. We have to be a lot more diligent about giving our body high quality food because your hormone health and your metabolism is. Actually being affected. So getting enough protein, getting enough fiber, getting enough. I can't tell you how many clients come to work with me and they're undereating because they have kind of been brainwashed into thinking they have to eat less to lose the weight they want. When we really do a deep dive into the science of fat loss, we have to make sure that we are optimizing our fat burning metabolism pathways. So in addition to the protein and the fiber and eating enough real foods. I really want to encourage you to look at where are you snacking and taking little bites and licks and nibbles of the artificial processed foods. When we like actually look at the science and the physiology of what? Flour and like the pro, just the processed food the sugar is doing in our body. It is spiking your insulin. It is creating leptin resistance. It is just wreaking havoc on your ability to actually burn fat. So nutrition, when we think about nutrition, a lot of times I used to think like, oh, that means I need to eat cottage cheese or canned green beans, and like I have to basically hate the way that I'm eating to lose the weight that I want. This is extremely all or nothing thinking. I was talking with one of my clients, I'm gonna be sharing her story in just a moment. She is a busy OBGYN, she has four kids. She was sharing with me that she has done all the diets in the past. She's done the Keto and the Jenny Craig and the Octavia and the Nutrisystem, and she'd lose 50. But because she hated her process, she hated her strategy, she just gain it back. So one of the key pieces of this nutrition strategy that we're talking about is you have to. Actually love the way you're eating. So I want everyone that is listening to this, you can pause the video. If you're listening to this as a replay. Actually, imagine investing a small amount of time to properly plan your nutrition for the week so that you love the food you're eating. That has to be the barrier. You have to love the food that you're eating, love the way that you're eating, love the types of foods that you're eating, and at the same time, two things can be true at the same time, and you have to to ensure that you're giving your body the right fuel to burn fat, to support your metabolism, to support your muscle health, that means enough protein, enough fiber, and taking a break from the artificial crap. When we start to do that, when we build nutrition into the structure of our week, you get out of the indecision fatigue like, am I eating this? Am I eating that? Am I eating at 12? Am I eating at six? Should I eat a little? Should I eat a lot? We actually have to make some of these decisions in advance. So that we get out of the decision fatigue. It is such a gift when we learn how to actually map out our way of eating. I show my clients when they first come to work with me. I have a video called How to Meal Plan like a Rockstar. I love rock stars because I feel like all the women that I ever work with are basically badass rock stars. So when you learn how to plan like a rockstar meal plan, like a rockstar, you end up having a plan in place that is just rinse and repeat. You put it into the structure of your week. You know how to make tweaks if you want. You don't have to think about it so much anymore, and not only do you create so much relief for your brain, your family gets to benefit from this. It is amazing. Okay, I wanna move on to the second thing. I wanna kind of put together guilt-free rest and play because there can be overlap when you don't have guilt free rest and play on your actual calendar built into the structure of your real life, your brain will steal it. So when you have that thought, you know, on a Friday night, maybe you've had a really busy week, you've been taking care of patients and clients and your kids, and you've been just going a hundred miles an hour, your brain will have a very, very normal thought, which is, I deserve it. It being a break, I deserve a break. And when we have not. Properly planned for guilt-free rest and play snacking. And scrolling is the natural source of low effort ways that your brain will will take that break physiologically. For the past many years, that's what you've used. You've used Snack Inc. And scrolling to take real life breaks. So all that's happened, the reason that you might have a habit, your brain has this urge to just snack and scroll is because your brain has learned every time I snack and scroll, your brain has a release of dopamine and endorphins. It is simply learned. This works. So if you don't have guilt-free rest and play built into the structure of your life, we have to validate and very much normalize. Your brain is 100% going to steal it. I'm not gonna be surprised. I don't want you to be surprised if on Friday night or Saturday afternoon or Tuesday at 2:00 PM your brain's like, oh, we deserve a break. Let's just grab a little bit of this, grab a little bit of that. The reality is overachieving, professional women especially, we're making tens of thousands of decisions per day. We're taxing our brains. All the time in the workplace with your families with complex problems in the workplace. So it makes a lot of sense when we don't build in actual, proper rest to give your brain a chance to really rest that your decision making skills go down. And a tired brain will always crave a cookie. That's the easiest way to put it. When your brain is tired, it's just going to crave a cookie. So one of the things that. I know to be true is, you probably already know this, I can't tell you how often I would tell myself like, I know I should probably just take a break, but let me just get this one more thing done. Lemme just get a little bit more done. So it's what our brains have done over time as we have done this. Lemme just get a little bit more, lemme just get a little bit more ahead maybe when this season is over, when this work week is over. When this one. Month is over. When I'm done with this one problem, then I will give myself a break. Then I will give myself rest. The trouble is there is literally no end to that. So you get to the end of that and your brain just learns that you could just maybe push a little bit harder or just do a little bit more. You stop trusting yourself and when your brain doesn't trust that you're going to give yourself actual rest and real play. It's going to steal it. So I teach my clients in The Unstoppable Group something, the three bucket system. So three bucket system, this is how you built in guilt free rest and play is based on the premise. There are three buckets. There is the negative bucket, the neutral bucket, and the positive bucket. And I put mindless snacking and scrolling where you're overeating over drinking, over watching tv. I put those actions into the negative bucket item, not because snacking and scrolling is. Inherently or morally bad, but because they create net negative outcomes. So one of the things that I can say, I think fairly confidently, and I'm curious kind of if you all feel the same way, is most of the time and may can, I can see even say a hundred percent of the time we feel regret 100% of the time when we are randomly snacking and scrolling when we stay up late watching reels on our on over, on Instagram or on Facebook and just grabbing the chips and the popcorn just to treat ourselves, we feel bad 100% of the time. So how can it possibly be a break you deserve? Right. We have to see the math of that. I cannot tell you, I talk with so many clients who will tell me in the moment, their brain just wants that break. They know that they just deserve, they just want a break from their stress. They wanna break from their life, and yet they know that the snacking and the scrolling doesn't actually feel good. We keep doing it because our brain does not have a better solution. This is where you have to develop a net neutral and a net positive bucket on how you are actually going to give yourself real rest and real play that does not rely on snacking and scrolling. I'm gonna be honest, this is going to push your brain. This is actually one of the very first things that we do in the group. We do it in our strategy mini class, in our strategy workshop, where I really want you to imagine that you had a plan in place built into your actual calendar. So on Tuesday at 2:00 PM or on Friday night at eight o'clock or Saturday afternoon, when your brain has that very normal urge, like, hey, we just want a break. I just want a break. Instead of pushing yourself or forcing yourself to just not eat or not scroll, I want you to imagine without FOMO or deprivation or like you're not allowed to snack or scroll, you actually could have a real answer. Which was, I know that you want a break. Don't worry. I have your back. We actually have a break planned for us. One of the things that I have seen, because now I've worked with overachieving women in literally every industry. I work with a lot of physicians and veterinarians and team leaders and professors. I cannot tell you how overlooked guilt-free rest and play is as a part of the strategy. And I think a lot of this is because most of your successes, one of the things I was talking about at the start of today's call, you have gotten a lot of gold stars and a pluses and successes because you did not do guilt-free rest and play. You were the person that was doubling down and overworking and hustling. So the idea that actually having. More fun actually building in real rest into your life. Would be a success strategy to help you lose weight. Feels like it is too good to be true. It's one of those things where I almost want you to just believe me because I've done the work and I've done the math on this. This is where my client, I was telling you about her earlier. This is Dr. Kara G. She's an OBGYN. She's actually going to be sharing her story on the podcast soon. She was sharing that she had the worst month in her 15 year career as an OBGYN a few months ago. Very complicated case, and she was sharing that 100% of the time prior to our work in Unstoppable. Prior to having a success strategy and magic action structure built into her life 100% of the time after a case in the month that she was having, she said, I would've 100% ended up in the Crumbl cookies. I love sweets. The Crumbl cookies were there and I just wanted to feel better. And she was sharing, as many of you have felt, I know that I have felt this as well, that we just want a moment's relief. We want a break from the stress. We want a break from that emotional experience that we're having. And it's again, very normal that your brain offers you snacking or scrolling, and she was sharing that, having this. Process, having magic action structure in place, understanding that her brain just wanted a break from the stress that she was experiencing is how she walked herself through it, giving herself real rest. She was able to say no to the crumble cookies without fomo, without deprivation, without feeling like, oh, great. This is another diet plan that I'm on. And she's, she's gonna be sharing on the podcast, she's lost 17 pounds in four months despite having the worst month. In OB in her career. She has been traveling, she had birthday celebrations, she's gone on marriage trips, family vacations to Disney, and she has been losing weight through the entire experience because she has had magic action structure built into her real life. And the key that I think is so important is we have to make some of these decisions around nutrition, guilt-free, rest, play without villainizing food. One of the most important, I think, toxic things that I have seen, especially as a stress and weight loss coach, is the impact that the diet industry has had on all of us. A lot of us have had this idea that we need to eat less and move more, and so it makes a lot of sense that you might have thought your weight loss plan or your weight loss strategy has to make you feel terrible, like somehow you have to feel terrible to achieve this goal. And again. I understand why you might have thought that way because you had to feel terrible to achieve a lot of things in your life to get through the residency or to get through your professional career. You might have had to really endure a lot of terribleness, but when you have a result, you want to sustain forever. This is not just four years of school or four years of graduate school or four years of residency. When you have a result, you want to hold and keep forever. You actually have to have a process that you can sustain forever, and this is where having magic action structure around really showing your brain how to have fun and relax without food, without alcohol, without scrolling, is not only possible, it will create relief. This takes me to the next piece of the five part success recipe. So now you have a plan that you are going to put onto your calendar where you think about how you want to eat for the week. There's going to be some planning, a little prep, a little bit of preparation. You're going to think about the kind of unpredictable parts of your week, the travel that you have coming up. You're going to make decisions in advance that support you for your week. You're also going to have guilt-free rest and play actually built into. Your life, you're going to decide when work is done. It's done. And listen, this is going to be uncomfortable because a lot of us are addicted to productivity. I get it. I was right there. I'm still there. But if we don't build in guilt free rest and play, just remember your brain will steal it. You're going to sabotage your goals. You're going to sabotage your wellness goals, your weight loss goals again and again until you learn that guilt free rest and play is necessary for you to lose the weight you want. This takes me to movement. So I remember this was, you know, before I got married I was. Working out six days a week. I was on the dreaded treadmill, which I absolutely hated because I just felt like I was supposed to sweat like a hamster on this hamster wheel and clock all these hours at the gym to lose the weight I wanted. That was kind of the the culture that I had grown up in. But maybe you don't love working out. Maybe you don't love hitting the treadmill, and if you don't have hours to clock at the gym, there are two ways to leverage movement as one of your success variables that I really do strongly recommend, especially after the age of 35. The very first one is for you if you are in more of a sedentary category, so maybe you're sitting at a desk all day, or you're seeing patients, you're not moving very much, simply adding a short daily walk. Into your day, ideally multiple times per day outside if possible. So you leverage the fresh air and being outside as a part of your success recipe is going to help you actually leverage fat burning potential. So we haven't really gotten into the science of this. This is like beyond the scope of this call. But when we really think about the actual thermodynamics of burning fat and. Upleveling your metabolism. NEAT is non-exercise activity thermogenesis. We can actually activate it simply by just moving a little bit more. So sure, eight to 10,000 steps is amazing, but if you can't do eight to 10,000 steps per day, or if you don't have an hour and a half to just sit and you know, walk around a cul-de-sac because you're a busy, professional working mom, I want you to just ask yourself. Where you could, looking at the structure of your real life and the structure of your week, where can you go on short, 10 to 15 minute walks multiple times per day. So I'm going to give myself as an example. I remember when this entire 10,000 steps per day movement started, I was like, if I really try to. Hit that it's really hard. I don't know about you, but it's very, very, very hard, near impossible for me to hit 10,000 steps per day unless I start at six in the morning or, you know, after my kids go to bed and I don't wanna go walking late at night. Like this is just not fun for me. So while I didn't have, I. 60 to 90 minutes to go for 10,000 steps of a walk. I did have lots of little 10 to 15 minute windows that instead of me scrolling my phone or me sitting in indecision or ruminating or overthinking or overworking on a problem or. Writing an email, rereading the email, I could take that 10 to 15 minutes and repurpose it. So what's amazing about learning how to repurpose your time is when you stop being an indecision and you stop wasting time on negative bucket tests like scrolling your phone or overthinking or ruminating, you get to leverage that same time into activities that will deeply, deeply heal your hormone health, your metabolism, and absolutely help you lose weight. So what I have started to do is. I don't have the 60 to 90 minutes, but I do have 15 minutes. So after I drop my kids off in the morning, I'll go for a really short walk. After I have breakfast, I'll go for a really short walk. After I have lunch, I'll go for a really short walk. Once I pick my kids up, I'll go for a really short walk. When I say short walk, I'm talking about minutes. Sometimes it'll just be minutes. And when you really add up this is like compounding effects. When you start adding up just those few minutes, a few times per day, you will actually leverage fat burning physiology to help you lose the weight you want to lose. That's the very first way that I recommend leveraging movement, putting it actually on your calendar, so don't wing it. I know that I'm talking about 10 minute windows and 15 minute windows, but don't wing it. You know what your schedule's going to be like. Put in those 10 to 15 minute walks a couple times per day into the structure of your life. Trust me, you will thank me later. The second element of movement is strength training. So I'm sure a lot of you know that after the age of 35, estrogen level goes down your muscle is something that we want to fiercely protect. Muscle mass is something that will decline as you get older, and I don't want us to just lose weight and become frail women, I want us to lose weight while feeling our best and really leveraging and being our strongest. So the way that I recommend doing this is by including strength training, short times per week, so you don't have to hit the gym six days per week, or strength train for one hour multiple times per week. Don't let perfection in any of these categories be. The enemy to progress. If you don't have five days per week or four days per week to strength train or go to the gym or go to a class, even doing 10 minutes, three times per week, just doing squats and lunges and that, that's resistance training is going to help you build and protect muscle. So my entire goal with. All of these pieces of the strategy so far with nutrition, guilt free, rest with play and movement is asking yourself the question, if this was simple, what would my simplest answer be? Don't make it complicated. Listen, I'm that person that loves color coded things. I love color coded schedules. I want like things to be pink and blue and highlighted. Don't waste time on the planning process. I want you to spend much more time on the execution. So set a time limit for yourself for how much time you're going to spend on creating this plan. Write it down, actually make it fun for yourself. Put some music on, make decisions, and then remember, the key thing with magic action structure is to take those decisions. Don't just make them open-ended and like you've made it here. Put them onto your calendar. When are you meal planning? When are you meal prepping? When are you going to have put the play and the rest? When are you doing your walks? When do you want to do strength training? If it's something you want to do, put it into the structure of your calendar. This is the one thing that, again, as I shared at the start of today's call, it is going to get to that irritation point. I'm asking you to make decisions and put them into the structure of your life. It is going to tickle the irritation parts of your brain. Let yourself be a little irritated and make the decisions anyway. When you have those decisions on your calendar and you start following through on them because you know this is going to create results for you on the scale and off, you will feel relief. That client I was telling you about, Dr. Kara, I still remember our consult call when we talked at the end of last year. She was feeling so overwhelmed. I mean, rightfully so, OBGYN, she's married to a physician with a very busy schedule. Four kids. She's all kinds of afterschool activities, and that was the one word that she was sharing. She's like, I just feel overwhelmed. I don't have time. And what she share, she's gonna be sharing her story on the podcast. She has shared with me that having this specific strategy and magic action structure has saved her 10 to 20 hours per week and has solved her overwhelm because she's not wondering, when am I going to have fun? What am I going to do to rest? When am I going to do my movement? All these questions get to get answered. So let yourself feel a little uncomfortable. Let yourself get to that moment of irritation. Keep your foot on the gas and make these decisions. I'm telling you, it is going to be a game changer. The fifth piece of the strategy, this is. You know, you can see if you're watching this as like a video, you can see I have some stars around this. The fifth piece is mindset, and I wanna tell you why this is the most important part of any strategy is because you have a human brain and human brains are messy. Human brains have negative. Biases. Human brains will offer very convenient, compelling, convincing low currency thoughts. Not because you're a negative person, but because this is normal human brain behavior. You're going to have thoughts like, Ugh, so hard. Oh, I don't know if I have time. I don't know if it's going to work. What if I fail? You're going to have lots of low currency thoughts like this. We talked about this in an earlier strategy call. We have to know that, that mindset of what if I fail? What if it doesn't work? What if it's too hard? These wiffy, these what if questions are simply normal human brain questions, and the reason that you will have perpetual fear or doubt or uncertainty with creating this process and putting it into execution is simply because you do not. Answer your rhetorical questions. That is what we do in coaching. One of the biggest things that I do with my clients in the Unstoppable Group is I don't let my clients sit with open-ended rhetorical questions. So when my client says, what if I fail? If you say right now, what if I fail? What if it doesn't work? I want you to answer the question, what is your plan? What if is one of those questions that needs to be answered? It's because we don't have a plan for not If it fails. We have to have a plan for when it fails. There's going to come a moment. You're going to have your Cadillac of plans. Once you create your five part success recipe and your strategy, because you're a human with a human brain, you're going to be imperfect in your execution. It's going to be messy. There are going to be moments that you don't do it perfectly, and when you don't do it perfectly because you're an overachiever, you have particularly strong low currency thoughts. Like, see, there you go again. See, it's never gonna work. You have to learn how to catch those thoughts in real time, which is mindset. Which is why mindset and coaching is an essential ingredient in your success. What is your plan? This is one of the things that we've been talking about. What is your plan for not if you fail, when you fail? If we have a lot of drama and a lot of dramatic stories and lots of very, very convenient stories of holding back of, there you go again seed's never going to work. I promise you it will never work. I have seen so many smart women. Talk themselves out of their dream life, out of their dream successes, just because they felt afraid of failure. And what I want for everyone in my orbit, what I want for all of my clients in the Unstoppable Group is to stop fearing failure. I want you to welcome it. I want you to embrace it. I want you to have the courage to learn how to navigate it while treating yourself like a badass rockstar, because when overachieving professional women stop fearing failure, when we stop holding back and hesitating and not putting in our full effort because we are worried about the possibility of failure. We start skyrocketing results, and I'm going to be honest with you, this will not always feel comfortable when I talk about skyrocketing results. I know all of us like, ooh, sign me up for that. But to skyrocket results, to embrace that, I call this the sticky, messy middle that no one talks about. We all come on, you know, webinars and masterclasses, and we are all talking about like the amazing plan, the five step solution like this is a five step solution to literally guarantee inevitable results for you on the scale this year. But what we don't talk about. It's the sticky, messy of when real life happens when you take your Cadillac of plans and put it into your real life as a busy professional. I still remember I had the Cadillac of plans. I was losing weight. My son was three and a half, and I got a call from preschool. You have to have a call about your son. I felt. Frustrated. Angry. Annoyed. Worried. Annoyed with my kid, annoyed at the school. And it is that moment, I call it this, the sticky messy of being a professional working mom that you actually have to know how to navigate this is emotional super skills, and we are not taught emotional super skills in school. We are not taught emotional super skills. What we are actually taught. At least what I was taught in training and in school residency and and in my career was being an emotional person. Having doubt and uncertainty and stress means you're weak. And so it's no surprise if you try to force yourself to not experience emotions if you feel kind of stuck from the neck up. You are just someone that wants to think your way out of every single solution. This is going to be incredibly hard for you. One of the skills that you learn inside the Unstoppable Group and why mindset coaching is to me the secret sauce ingredient that takes any plan and skyrockets it for you, is we start to identify your blind spots. If you knew what your blind spots were, you wouldn't have them. They're blind spots for a reason. We are having these very insidious, low currency thoughts like, Ooh, I might not, what if I don't? What if it, well, so many what ifs that are holding back dream results, which is why mindset is such an integral part of any success recipe. So when you kind of think about have, what is a, how do we take a five? Five piece recipe like this and actually folded into your real life I've been sharing with you on this call is that there are three elements to it. The first one is actually making key decisions. We talked about what those decisions are when you take those key decisions and now you put them onto your calendar. When do you plan on prepping? When do you plan on having fun? When do you plan on resting? When do you plan on sink and not? I'm done with work. This was my workday. It's enough. When you actually build that into your life, you start feeling better. I'm telling you. You're going to start skyrocketing how you feel on the scale and off. We have to have a piece for what happens when real life happens. We have to have that folded in. So one of the things that I really wanted to spend a little bit of time on in today's call is also tell you about how we take this success recipe and bring it into your real life inside the Unstoppable Group. So if you're not interested in the Unstoppable Group then you have gotten your five part success recipe. I want you to take it, make decisions, and start like running with it, going with it, start creating results. But if you want to learn about how we take this success recipe and guarantee results inside the group, I want you to stick around for a minute. The Unstoppable Group is opening for enrollment. If you're listening to this as a replay or if you're watching this live, it is opening for enrollment on Tuesday, June 3rd. When I tell you it is the most amazing, amazing group to be part of it is a small group coaching program that has equal parts curriculum where you have actual video teachings equal parts coaching and equal parts community. And what I love about the Unstoppable Group is you get personal attention. We take your five P success recipe, we customize it to you to fit your life and your goals, and you get to learn alongside. Other badass of really smart women, you get to learn from their coaching, from their obstacles, and having both parts of that process is truly how you start creating some amazing results. So if that is interesting for you, I want you to head over to www.burnstressloseweight.com/group. Enrollment is about to open for the summer cohort You can get. All of the details for exactly how to join. We're going to be going from July to December for six months, and it is one of the most amazing spaces to take your success recipe and actually put it into real life implementation. I know how normal it can feel to want to do this work yourself. I get it because we are a group of overachieving women. We're very used to doing things independently, and you might have thoughts about coaching and investing in yourself and having help. And what I have found is when you have accountability and structure and a coach who has done the work and can see your blind spots, truly this is where you will uplevel how you feel by having that support structure in place, coaching is not just something that you pluck out of the sky that you know will randomly help you here and there. Coaching is evidence-based modality to help you hit your goals, to help you feel better and. One of my favorite things about the group is how this group of women who are such amazing humans and rock stars in every part of their life get to come together in this one space and really dive into this work. And I'll be around to answer any questions you have 'em opening up my calendar this weekend next week to talk to you on a consult call if you think that this group is for you. One of my favorite things about this. Work that we're talking about, this five part success recipe is it changes you having this plan. This is not just, again, a plan that you have on a piece of paper or A PDF. It is something that will start to evolve your identity. The people in your life will start to tell that you look and feel different. They'll notice a change in you, and I think my favorite part about it is your kids. And your family will notice a change in you. There was a point a few years ago that I just started to feel so intolerant of my status quo, and it was the intolerance of where I was that let me overcome my fear. That let me overcome my nervousness. I realized this was the time of my life that I wanted to feel my best. I wanted to activate my best. I wanted to bring my best, and I didn't want my kids to see me at my worst. I didn't want them to see me constantly marinating in a soup of a frustration or worry or stress. I wanted them to see me. Navigate my real life, my very busy life, my very full life, very powerfully. And for me, coaching has unlocked that. I would love that for all of you. So if you know that that is something that you want, keep a lookout. The group is opening tomorrow. You can get all the details and get a headstart on joining the group. You can apply. It's a few questions that lets me get to know you a little bit better. Give me as much detail as you can. There is a button on the group page where you can apply, and I will reach out to you within 24 hours. And we can set up a time to talk via zoom over text. It is really going to be an experience that transforms you. That is what my clients tell me. My clients tell me that they thought that this group, I even Kara was sharing this on the podcast, like they thought this group was going to be. Maybe you get some tips on, you know, Trader Joe's recipes or like how to lose weight with like some recipe hacks. And what my clients learn when we actually work together is having a system in place, learning how to make magic action structural decisions, and understanding the role of your mindset and those low currency thoughts that we have to catch and uplevel will change how you feel on the inside out. It is the best thing of my life and I love sharing you with all of you. So I hope that you all enjoyed this call. I hope that you take this five part success recipe and really. Decide that this is your time, because if we don't make decisions and put them into the structure of our life now, I'm telling you, years will pass us by. Years will pass us by and we'll wonder why didn't we take this time to claim for ourself. If you have any questions, if you have any thoughts that you want to share with me, if you wanna fling them my way, I would absolutely love to hear from you. Send me DM over on Instagram. I am @burnstressloseweight. Or if you want to email me, you can email me at [email protected] and I look forward to hearing from you. I really hope you guys have an amazing, amazing day, and I will see you at the next one. This five part success recipe that we've been talking about where you really make certain key decisions. Remember, it's going to tickle the irritation centers of your brain because you have been deprioritizing your weight loss and jovana goals. You keep pushing them to the side. You have been winging it. I know how compelling it is to keep that, but if you make. Key decisions in advance, and you learn how to hold onto them through the real life messy moments that you have. I'm telling you, you'll feel so much relief and save hundreds of hours of time in wasted effort in rumination and overthinking. We have to have a plan in place for your nutrition where you're getting high quality food enough. Protein in a fiber. I promise you carbohydrates are not your enemy, but there are crap carbs that are, we have to have a plan in place for real nutrition where you feel satisfied, where you support your hormone health and your metabolism, but that cannot be the start and end of your success recipe. We have to have a plan for guilt-free rest and play. We have to give our brains real rest, you deserve it. I'm telling you, if you're not giving your brain a break, she will steal it and it will be very fair. If she does, of course I recommend movement. Movement is, you know, one of those variables that is maybe not for everyone. If you really hate exercise, you don't want to exercise, it's okay that you don't pull on that lever. But it is one of those success variables that we can really pull and optimize your fat burning potential. And there is so much evidence for how much better you feel on the inside when you move your body. And of course. The very, very last piece of the success recipe, which in my opinion is the Gold Star standard. It is the evidence-based foundational support tool that will take any plan and help you skyrocket results with it is mindset and coaching. We have to start catching your low currency, very normal human brain thoughts like it's not working. It's so hard. It's so slow. What if I fail? Your brain is going to have a million What if questions? Just because it's normal and designed to do that, and we have to start answering your rhetorical questions. I'm telling you, months and years can go by with you not answering these rhetorical questions, which is why you will stay in a state of doubt and uncertainty about your results. I don't want that for you. One of my favorite parts about the Unstoppable Group is it is not just six months of deeply high touch coaching inside a group setting. Your results are guaranteed. When you come in and you do the work, you show up to our live calls, you get coached every week. You audit your results on a weekly and monthly basis, and you get the support of this group. You will lose weight or your money back. I feel so strongly about the work that we are doing in this group together. It truly lights me up seeing my clients thrive, not just on the scale, but feeling better in their professional careers and as moms and their kids get to benefit from this, that I really want this work in your hands. So if you miss the early enrollment, don't worry. It is not too late. Our next cohort is starting in just a couple of weeks. You can grab access right now. Don't wait on yourself anymore. You can really hit your goals this year. Imagine going into next year already down on the scale just with this roadmap in place where you feel better inside out. So I really hope to see you in the group. Head over to burnstressloseweight.com/group to get all of the details. 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.