Summary 

In this episode I’m taking you through the highs and lows of stress, the impact of cortisol on our bodies, and the powerful, often-overlooked role of oxytocin in weight loss and overall well-being. Drawing from my own experience as a busy physician and mom, I’m unpacking the ways high-achieving women fall into the fight-or-flight cycle—pushing through exhaustion, relying on caffeine, and ignoring the body's true needs. But what if there was another way?

We’ll explore how oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone,” is much more than a feel-good chemical—it’s a physiological game changer that can help regulate stress, improve metabolism, and create sustainable weight loss. I’ll break down the science behind it, debunk common misconceptions about self-compassion, and offer practical, step-by-step ways to implement the oxytocin effect into daily life. If you’ve ever felt stuck in a cycle of overworking, stress-eating, or self-criticism, this conversation is for you.

Learn more: https://www.burnstressloseweight.com/ 

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

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• The surprising connection between stress, cortisol, and stubborn weight gain
• How oxytocin counteracts cortisol and helps create a sense of safety in your body
• Why self-compassion isn’t just a mindset shift—it’s a physiological reset
• Three simple, science-backed ways to activate oxytocin daily
• The biggest mistake overachievers make when trying to “push through” stress

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Download the full transcript here.

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  There was once a time where my life ran almost entirely on cortisol and caffeine. Back when I was in practice as a busy OBGYN, my days would start before sunrise really often, and it would end long after sunset. I was constantly bouncing between delivering babies, seeing patients in my office, rounding at the hospital, and trying to keep up with some of my own life outside of work. Especially with my two young kids and my family, I barely had time to think about having structure when it came to my nutrition and how I ate, let alone how I felt. I remember one particular experience when I had been up for probably around 24 to 36 hours or so. I've been surviving on multiple cups of coffee at this point and whatever snacks I could grab at the nurse's station, usually it would be some form of graham crackers with peanut butter was my favorite go to snack. And I caught my reflection in one of those hallways that has a lot of windows, but it was nighttime. So you could really see your reflection in one of those hallways. And I just caught a glimpse of myself. And I didn't even recognize myself, my shoulders were hunched and I just looked like not my best self. And it was in this moment, like many other moments up until this point, that instead of pausing and checking in with what was going on for me. I would push harder. That was my default. If I felt exhausted, I would just push through. If I felt a little stress, I would just work more. If I felt tired or fatigued, I would just grab another cup of coffee. I had no idea at this point in my life, at least, that I had been trapped in this cycle, more like a roller coaster of highs and lows with cortisol, feeling completely disconnected with what my body was actually needing. I didn't realize this at the time, but I was really stuck in this fight flight freeze mode, ping ponging between self criticism when I would tell myself, why can't I get this together? And why can't I just solve this weight loss struggle once and for all. And ping pong to the other side to avoidance, which is I would kind of cover my eyes, monkey emoji over the problem. I would stop weighing myself. I wouldn't want to look at the scale. And I would tell myself, we'll just figure this out later. And let me tell you ping ponging back and forth between fight and flight never. ever led to results that lasted. The reason I wanted to record this specific podcast episode today is because I wanted to share with you that this is actually solvable. One of the things that I love doing on the Burn Stress Lose Weight podcast is really talking about stress from a different angle than maybe you have ever heard from before. We really like to de- villainize stress, which means stress is normal. It is a healthy response in so many scenarios, but oftentimes overachievers, especially professional women are over relying on stress. We're over relying on the push that we get from cortisol and it's leading us to not feel our best on the inside. And it's absolutely getting in the way of you hitting your personal body goals. You don't actually have to stay stuck in the cycle of stress and overworking and then survival mode that so many of us end up in because there's a different way. And it's one of those things where I think it's so important that I just share that it's not something that you get taught in school. It's not something that you get taught by the big people in your life when you're growing up, but it is a way of feeling better inside out that doesn't rely on willpower. It doesn't require self criticism or self judgment or forcing yourself to push through when you're feeling your worst. It has nothing to do with being tougher or more disciplined, which I know so many professional women just believe we just need to be more disciplined to solve the weight loss struggle once and for all. But instead what we want to do on today's podcast episode is really understand your brain and body chemistry so that you can create more ease and more consistency. On the scale and off today's episode is called the oxytocin effect, because it turns out when we can leverage the power of oxytocin, which is going to be touching on self compassion and self love, which we're getting into today, and step by step, we're going to make this non woo and not vague with really practical way to implement some of these strategies. You are going to see a direct result in you hitting your goals. This week, this month, and this year, as you know, we have been diving into the world of hormones over on this podcast. I've really been emphasizing the impact that hormones are having on your mental health, on your physical health, how you're feeling, and it's absolutely going to impact how you hit your goals this year. One of the things that I really love talking about is science informed data and research, which is what we're getting into today and how you can take some of the data or the research that you might read about online or what you hear about on this podcast and put it into practical step by step actionable steps that you can actually start hitting your goals. There are thousands of hormones that are impacting how you feel inside out, that are impacting your energy, your vitality, your muscle mass, your ability to lose weight. How you feel on the inside. And I have been trying to bring different lenses around this hormones conversation because I see so much misinformation online. I don't want you getting your information from TikTok or from a random Google search. I really want to bring science informed information here so that you can feel most the most so you can feel informed in how you take this information and put it into real life application. The three main hormone pathways I want you to First and foremost, be aware of are the ones that I cover in my free hormone training. You can go and grab that over at burnstressloseweight.com/hormones, where I get into cortisol, insulin, leptin, and estrogen and those hormone pathways and how they're impacting your ability to lose weight and feel your best. So if you have not yet grabbed that training, pause this episode right now, go and grab it is really a comprehensive guide that is not just plucked out of the sky with random information. It is OBGYN approved. It is informed by science. And my favorite part about it is it has some really actionable steps on how you can really heal a lot of your hormone health. So you're hitting your goals and you're feeling your best, especially as you enter perimenopause and menopause. This entire podcast episode is about creating more freedom, freedom for professional women on and off the scale, without the guilt, without the shame, without the endless frustration and the cycles of perfectionism that so many women find themselves in. So you start feeling your absolute best because it turns out you have worked decades hard to be living this life, and if you're not feeling your best right now, then why are we waiting? Today's podcast episode is going to get into the oxytocin effect, because it turns out that self compassion is not just a mindset hack. Or something that sounds good or is jumping on the self love woowoo train. It is a physiological shift that your brain and body can experience that will actually impact your body physiology. Let's get into this episode all about oxytocin. Hey, unstoppable friend. You're listening to the Burn Stress, Lose Weight podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Priyanka Venugopal, a physician turned stress and weight loss coach for professional working moms and the founder of the Burn Stress, Lose Weight, Feel Unstoppable small group coaching program. This podcast is going to inspire change at the root for you on and off the scale. I've lost a little over 60 pounds while being a busy physician mom with two young kids and an unpredictable schedule. And along my journey, which was full of many, many imperfect moments, I have learned how to skip past the fads and the gimmicks. I am on this mission now to share with you how you can have a real strategy and mindset skills to really have more of the life you want that you have worked so hard for. Let's get into it. So I want to start off with a quick science moment. What exactly is oxytocin? Why am I even talking about it? Why is it on the podcast? And how can you start to leverage what you're learning today into practical steps? Oxytocin is often called the love hormone. It is a name that I think kind of undersells what it does and what it is because oxytocin is not really just about love. Oxytocin is about trust, connection, and safety. It's released when you hug someone, when you bond with a friend, when you pet an animal like a cute furry dog even released when you simply take some slow deep breaths. Oxytocin can actually counteract the effects of cortisol, which is the stress hormone that we talk about on this podcast a lot. And it literally is signaling to your nervous system that you are safe and you can relax. So where does oxytocin come from? How do we leverage it? How can we start to incorporate it into our life? Oxytocin is produced in the hypothalamus and then it is stored and later released. in the posterior pituitary gland. We've talked about the hypothalamus before when we talked about your leptin levels. This is the podcast episode we did a few weeks ago where we talked about your body weight set point and why it is that our body weight starts to creep up slowly over time and how our brain, the hypothalamus, does not actually have a regulatory mechanism when it comes to your body weight set point, the way that your brain regulates your body temperature or your pulse or your blood pressure, it's not able to regulate your weight. So the hypothalamus is an incredibly important part of your brain's control center. When oxytocin is released, it is signaling to your body. it can shift into a restorative state. It is signaling your body that you can digest. You can focus on your metabolism. You can actually burn fat with more ease. You can rest and relax. We've talked before on the podcast, and I talk about this in detail on the hormones training that cortisol is kind of like a superhero. It is coming to your rescue in really stressful situations. It drives a lot of your fight flight responses, and it will give you a quick burst of energy, even sharpening your focus so that you can handle immediate danger. But like any superhero, if cortisol is on duty for too long, it can start to cause a lot of damage. Having low buzzing chronic stress that infiltrates every corner of your life, not only feels terrible, and it takes you out of being your most present with your work and with your family, increases your urges and cravings for highly processed foods for sugar. It will absolutely impact how your body stores fat. It will add to belly fat. It makes it really, really hard for your body to feel safe, to release any fat stores that you have. If you're on a weight loss journey, it will disrupt your sleep and your ability to have deeply restful rest at nighttime. and it is absolutely going to make a difference with your metabolism. This is where oxytocin can step in. If cortisol is a superhero, then I'm going to call oxytocin kind of like a wise mentor, like the Yoda for your nervous system. It simply reminds your body that it is safe to calm down when oxytocin is released. you will have lower cortisol levels, which is absolutely going to impact your urges and cravings and your ability to burn fat. It is going to enhance insulin sensitivity, so it's much easier for your body to leverage energy rather than constantly storing energy as fat. It's going to help lower your blood pressure and your heart rate. And most importantly, it is going to help you feel better as you're navigating your very busy life.

  So how do we access oxytocin? How do we leverage it? How do we utilize it in our lives as busy professional women? How is it that we can start to feel better and actually have this reversal of cortisol by leveraging oxytocin? One of the absolute easiest ways of boosting your oxytocin is through self compassion. Now let's be honest, how often are you actually kind to yourself? If you had asked me this question a few years ago, because I'm a glass half full, fairly optimistic kind of person, I would have said I'm pretty kind to myself. I'm not really very critical of myself. I'm not very mean to myself. But if we really took a fine tooth comb over the monologue that I had in my mind, it turns out that I actually wasn't spending very much time being kind to myself at all. If you're like most professional women that I coach, self compassion might feel like this fluffy, indulgent concept that maybe has no time or space in your very busy, goal oriented life. I know that for many years I kind of thought the same way. I used to think that if I wasn't pushing myself really hard, if I wasn't doubling down on the plan, then I would likely just not get anywhere. I might just become complacent and I might not hit my goals. What I didn't realize was that the constant self criticism Even though it was really subtle, it was actually keeping me stuck in stress cycles. It's what kept me stuck ping ponging back and forth between fight and flight. It kept my cortisol levels super high. It made my urges and cravings feel really intense, and it made my ability to lose weight feel extremely challenging. Research actually shows that self compassion activates oxytocin and it will improve your emotional resilience to handle anything. In other words, when you are kind to yourself, and I don't just mean being nice with like lip service and just saying words that you don't actually believe, but really being kind to yourself as you're navigating your very busy life, you will physiologically shift your body from being in constant stress cycles to actually being in a state where it can function better. I think about the oxytocin effect as though it's a third road that overachievers never knew about and have never been taught. Most overachievers know one of two ways of responding to stress. Both of them are fueled by cortisol. The first one is fight mode and the second one is flight. So in fight mode, this looks like having a lot of self blame, criticism, judgment, shame, the inner voice that is either whispering or yelling at you that you should do better. You should be farther along. You shouldn't have messed up. You should have already figured this out. You're falling behind. What's wrong with you? Other people can do it so much easier. How come you can't? Why is it so hard? I mean, I can, as you can tell, go on and on around these little Critical sentences that we tell ourself that are sounding seemingly practical, but are having a deeply, deeply strong effect on your body state. We might think as overachievers that this voice that is telling us that we're not doing enough all the time is going to keep us motivated. But if you really check in with what this fight response is having for you, Most of the time you're likely feeling disappointed and discouraged. The other side of the spectrum is when we go into flight or freeze mode. So this is when something feels really overwhelming and you don't have the absolute best, perfect strategy on how to handle it. You might go into hiding. This is like you cover your eyes, you stick your head in the sand. You might find yourself procrastinating with a lot of small tasks or procrastinate working. You find yourself making plans again and again. Or you find yourself consuming a lot of information where you are Finding yourself wanting to learn more before you take action. And this is going to be a voice that says something like, I'll start tomorrow. I'll start fresh on Monday. I'll start fresh next week. We've talked about these different responses, these fight, flight, freeze, and phone responses on the podcast in so much detail. And I just want to first say that these responses, the fight response, or the flight slash freeze response, are very normal survival mechanisms. You're used to having these mechanisms run your life, they have likely been rewarded. It's likely that you have gotten an A or a gold star, or accolades from a friend, or a colleague, or a boss, because of how you showed up. But if you are waking up and you're like, wait a second, I'm not feeling my best. I have this huge list of massive accomplishments, but I'm not feeling my absolute best inside out. It is because there was this third road before I get into how to access this third road with a practical guide and a practical step by step strategy on how to incorporate it. I want to first be super transparent. This third road is likely going to feel really uncomfortable. If you have been someone that is really used to operating with cortisol, you're used to having the fight flight response, the idea of accessing a different way, which is self compassion and a gentleness in how you approach your journey and hitting your goals might feel very disconcerting, but I want you to try it anyway. The important thing to note here is that. This oxytocin effect or accessing self compassion is not the same as complacency. It's not just giving yourself a free pass, a quote unquote, free pass. Whenever you go off track or you have a off plan moment, or you see that the scale is up a pound, the oxytocin effect is not just a warm, fuzzy indulgence, but I want oxytocin effect as a strategic shift. Think about this strategic shift as how you can forevermore approach your stress, approach your decisions and approach that discomfort of consistency. Instead of going to fight, which is where you try to double down or flight, which is where you hide and procrastinate. Imagine moving into a really firm and grounded way of engaging stickiest obstacles. I know that sometimes the idea of being compassionate and accessing self love feels indulgent and kind of woo. It might even feel like this pathway to you losing your edge. But what I have found after coaching professional women in every industry is that self compassion is not about letting yourself off the hook. It is about keeping yourself in the game. When you start practicing the oxytocin effect and you fold it into your life in little moments throughout your day. And you start practicing it day to day, week to week. You will start to notice that your body no longer needs to run on cortisol and caffeine fueled stress. You can start to shift into safety and connection and resilience. And this is going to make your journey to hit your body goal this year feel so much better. I'm going to share three steps on how you can start to incorporate this, and I invite you to make this your own. Feel free to add to this practice or take away from this practice in a way that feels like it resonates with you and aligns with your values and how you might want to incorporate this into your life.

  First and foremost, Accessing self compassion and being really kind to yourself does not take more time. So if you hear yourself thinking, I don't have time for self compassion. I don't have time to be kind to myself or incorporate this practice. I really want you to check in with yourself because This will save you hours and hours of time per week. Step one is to start talking to yourself like you are your own best friend. Imagine that your friend came to you and she had a massive fail or she hit a really sticky patch at work or with her children or in hitting her personal body goals and hitting her weight loss goals. Would you ever say to her? Yeah, you suck. You're the worst. Why are you even bothering trying? You should have totally solved this by now. You should be further along by now. No, we would never talk like this to one of our friends, right? So one of the ways that we can start to access self compassion is actually imagine how you would talk to your dearest, bestest friend who you love so much, so much. And imagine talking to yourself through that lens. So simply catching your self judgment or your self criticism, even if it is subtle, start to notice it in real time, start to become really aware of that inner monologue and flip the script around. Ask yourself, how would I say this to a friend?

  Step two is really simple, but very effective. It's actually physical connection, physical touch, simply placing a hand on your heart or giving your. own hand, a gentle squeeze or rubbing your arms or your legs in a soothing way can actually access oxytocin. It might feel really strange at first, but it can actually be really reassuring. And the last point, the third point that I like to fold in for myself, and it might be really valuable for you is to help my brain get out of all or nothing thinking this is just a sign of perfectionism, which might show up for us. Like if I can't do it perfectly, or if I can't do it all, then let me not bother starting. Let me not bother trying or the other end of the spectrum where we think we have to do all of the actions to see results on the scale or towards any goal. The third element is actually stepping back, kind of zooming out. And showing our brain that sometimes not doing it perfectly is perfectly enough. I like to remind myself and actually have a script that I don't actually have to do this absolutely perfectly to feel better. I don't have to do this perfectly to see results. I simply have to do it well enough to create forward progress today. One of the things that I really love about the work that I do with my clients in the Unstoppable group. is not just talk about food and weight loss, food and movement, nutrition, and all the things that we might traditionally think about as most affecting your weight loss journey. One of the biggest things that I have found for my clients is incorporating guilt free rest and play and this very specific mindset shift, which is how you treat yourself on the journey to lose the weight you want. Is actually what determines your ability to sustain your results. So if you notice yourself in that fight flight response, just remember it's so normal that you end up there. You're very human brain is very used to being in survival mode. And also there's a third option on feeling better on lowering your cortisol levels. on really optimizing your health, your hormone health, and your ability to lose weight. And you can actually start feeling better on the journey. So just starting today, take a moment, put a hand on your heart and really catch with some self compassion, how much you're already doing. It might feel really small, but I promise you these small micro moments folded in throughout the day can have a massive result for you on and off the scale. If you found this episode helpful, I would love for you to share it with a friend and make sure that you go and grab the hormones training over at burnstressloseweight.com/hormones. I don't get into oxytocin specifically on that training, but I do get into the three hormone pathways that are most impacting your weight loss journey this year. We talk about cortisol, insulin, and leptin and estrogen, because these three pathways are going to make a massive difference in you hitting your goals this year.

  I hope you guys all have an amazing week and. I will see you at the next one. Bye. Thanks for spending this time with me on the Burn Stress, Lose Weight podcast today. I hope that you are leaving today's podcast episode feeling a little lighter and more inspired than when we started. It turns out that you don't need to have a stress free life to hit your goals on and off the scale, but when you feel more empowered to respond to your real life stresses with true strategy, We will game change how we show up and how we hit our goals. If you want to take what you're learning here on the podcast and put it into real life implementation, it might be time for us to work together in the Burn Stress, Lose Weight, Feel 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.