Summary 

Today, I’m delving into the crucial mindset shift that propelled my own weight loss journey and transformed my life in profound ways. I’m sharing personal stories and insights that reveal the often-overlooked secret to achieving lasting success, not just in weight loss but in all areas of life.

This episode is packed with wisdom for high-achieving working moms who are ready to break free from autopilot mode and truly show up for themselves. If you're tired of the constant weight loss rollercoaster and want to understand the deep, mindset-driven changes necessary to reach your goals, this conversation is for you.

Enrollment for July 2024 in the Unstoppable Group is now open!  You can get all the details over at https://www.theunstoppablemombrain.com/group.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Learn about the one critical factor that can change your weight loss journey and overall life experience.
• How shifting my mindset helped me lose over 60 pounds and revolutionized my own approach to challenges.
• Identify and understand the subconscious thoughts that keep you stuck and how to shift them.
• How your thoughts and feelings drive your actions and how to harness this for your benefit.
• Actionable strategies to cultivate a success mindset and consistently hit your goals.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Featured on the Show:

• Want to work with me?  Enrollment for July 2024 is now open! Learn about The Unstoppable Group by clicking here.

Download the full transcript here.

• Hey, this is Dr. Priyanka Venugopal and you're listening to the Unstoppable Mom Brain Podcast, the weight loss success mindset. I have not done a conversation on this podcast in quite a while talking about really what I think is the number one success variable that we actually have the most control over that I know that a lot of high achieving working moms like you may not be utilizing, and you're not not utilizing it because of any other reason than you just didn't really know about it.

  I know for me, many years ago, back in 2017, 2018, when I was at my personal heaviest, a little over 200 pounds, I just thought I needed to double down on my weight loss plan. I just thought I needed to be more disciplined. I needed to have an accountability buddy. I just needed to find the right structure, the right course, the right person to help me lose the weight. But what I didn't know is that there is this one variable that I had been overlooking for so much of my life. And when I learned about Really having the success mindset. I really skyrocketed a lot of my results. That's how I lost a little over 60 pounds. It is what led me to change my life, not just with how I feel in my body, but it's how I changed my life as a mom, with my kids, with my partner, with my work. And the reason that I'm so passionate about this one topic is because it can change. In my opinion, it can change generations. It can change how you show up or your children navigating this life that we have, which is going to be full of ups and downs and life challenges. When we can come into life challenges with a success mindset, we're going to change our whole lived experience.

  And I think that all of you are here because that is what we want. Before we get into today's podcast episode, I want to make sure you know that the Unstoppable Group’s July cohort is officially open for enrollment. Spots are already filling, they are limited. And if you know that you are ready to take what you have been learning on the podcast, you want to get out of just passively consuming content and you want to actively get in there and start making decisions or moving the needle and you want my help.

  I strongly invite you to go to theunstoppablemombrain.com/group. There's a button there where you can book your consult call with me and let's talk and see whether we are a good fit. This is a six month intimate small group coaching program. specifically designed for working moms who identify as high achievers, overachievers, perfectionists, someone that really does hit goals in other areas of your life. You are someone that really knows how to work hard. This is one area of really burning fat, burning stress, losing the weight you want has somehow eluded you. You're someone that wants to work hard. to do the work. You are someone that really wants to hit your goal this year. You just didn't know exactly how to do it. There's so many ways out there that you read to lose the weight you want to burn fat, but you also know that you want science on your side and you want to get off the gimmick and fat rollercoaster. I am committed to my clients. The part of the reason that the spots were limited is because it is a small, intimate group where my eyes are on your work. You're not one of many. I really do get into the weeds. My clients, you are going to have such an amazing experience where you get to learn from the wisdom of other women who are also high achievers like you, you learn from the obstacles and the challenges of other women, the coaching of other women. And also it's the best marriage because you also get so much personal and custom feedback and coaching and mentorship from me. I have so many clients that have told me, you know, on the side, they'll send me a DM. They'll share it even in the group when we're having our live coaching call, when one person is getting coached, because it's really different to experience coaching when you're the one getting coached versus when you're hearing the coaching of someone else. I did not even know that I needed to hear that. And that is so amazing. so relevant for me. So if this is you, I want you to get all of the nuts and bolts over at theunstoppablemomrbrain.com/group. And I want to help you stop waiting. One of my biggest missions is to help high achieving working moms get off of the sidelines of your life. I know, and I'm kind of going off on a rant before we get into today's episode. I really still remember that day that I woke up. It was like, late 2018, early 2019. I woke up one day just feeling like, where has my life gone? I'm in my mid to late thirties. I'm going to be turning 40 soon. I mean, now I'm 41, but you know, this was, I'm telling you from a few years ago where I felt like my life is passing me by. I have worked so incredibly hard in my childhood thinking that, you know, when I'm an adult, when I'm a grown up, when I have achieved fill in the blank with whatever achievement it was for me, it was medical. And it turns out, I got there, and I didn't feel the way that I had wanted to feel. This is a rival fallacy at its finest. And for us to interrupt that pattern, we have to stop waiting to feel satisfied. We have to take it on purpose and really show up for ourselves. So if that is you, if you're feeling that readiness to lose the weight you want, to burn fat, to burn your stress as a working mom, you will literally change every corner of your life as you lose weight. If we work together, I don't want you waiting. Even one more day. And also for those of you that book your consult and join the group by Wednesday, the 26th at 8 PM Eastern, I have a really special bonus for you. That is really, really going to be quite amazing. It's a one on one strategy call where we are going to really audit what's been happening for you with weight loss. And we're going to create a custom plan for you to hit your goal. And the last thing I want to say on this topic is that really, I want you to imagine what decision will you be the most grateful for six months from now. I want you to imagine that it's New Year's Eve of this year and tomorrow is January 1st of 2025 and you are just so grateful for a decision that you made today.

  One of the things that we're going to talk about in today's episode is how your results today on the scale, in your relationships, at work, in your life, in every corner is. The product of what happened in this past six months, this past one year, I want you to think about really utilizing that to your advantage. Where do you want to be six months from now? And if you feel the call to work with me, to have a coach in your corner, so you're not guessing blindly on solving this problem, I invite you to join me. So head over to theunstoppablemombrain.com/group, click the button to book your consult right now. Do not wait until tomorrow, set aside the time, block your calendar, move your meetings. Make this happen. And it's that decision where you start to shift other parts of your life to move your meetings, move your calendar, move things to make space for this, that is going to be the secret ingredient for you to hit your goals this year I really hope to see you on a consult call and absolutely the July group. I cannot wait to work with you. Okay. So without further ado, let's get into today's episode, the weight loss success mindset. I recently stumbled across a reel on Instagram. And by the way, if you're not on Instagram, get on there and say hi to me. I'm @theunstoppablemombrain on Instagram. I do a lot in my stories and my posts. And I shared this reel that I came across by Brene Brown, and I'm going to kind of read to you. I wrote it down exactly what she said in the reel. And it really struck me. She said, Don't walk through the world looking for evidence that you're not enough because you will always find it. And I want to take this a step further this message that she shared on instagram in this video reel What you think about yourself what you believe about yourself the evidence that you look for with weight loss with burning fat With feeling better as a working mom your successes and fails is exactly what you will find. What you think about yourself is what you're going to create. And this is our human brain's nature of having confirmation bias. Now, nothing is wrong if you notice yourself having a natural negative bias. All humans, you and me both have a natural negative bias, and that's because it's how we evolved to survive. We're looking very carefully. We're looking kind of like, think about like you're looking for all of the ways of what could be missing, what could be wrong, what needs to be improved? What could be more efficient? What are all of the negatives in your work life, in your personal life, with your weight loss goal, with any goal that you have, I want you to really take inventory for a moment and think about all of the negative biases that you have. Now, if you have been like you and I both in normal human brain mode, you have been in survival mode, which means you're been steeping your brain. You definitely think like you're marinating in the soup of negative bias to look for what's missing, what's not there, what's lacking, what could be better. And when we are not aware of it, when we're not aware of our negative biases on purpose, they can really drive us to feel a lot of discouragement, a lot of disbelief, a lot of perpetual disappointment, which is the real reason that we end up micro quitting, not following through, having a whole ton of screw it moments. It keeps us perpetually on the weight loss rollercoaster. It keeps us recreating yesterday's mistakes and really creates less of the life we want. So this episode is really to bring our attention. Because listen, I talk a lot about success strategies, science backed strategies, nutrition, science, strategy, science, how to really build out a structure for your day to day routine to lose the weight you want, but without having the success mindset on board, you're going to have this amazing This whole quote by Brene Brown really got me thinking, how often smart, high achieving, resourceful, confident women go throughout their days in autopilot mode. I know I've done this. I'm sure you have too. It's almost like, you know, when you get in the car and you're driving and you don't even know how you showed up at work. It's one of those things, right? And it makes a lot of sense because especially busy professional working moms have. Thousands of things happening in their day, thousands of decisions. We have millions of thoughts in our day to day. So it makes a lot of sense that our brain has created a lot of shortcuts. I want you to think about all of the little shortcuts that our brain has created. It is intended to save time, to save some effort, to save energy. And it has put a lot of our brain in autopilot in ways that we don't even realize. So there might be more than one area where you will basically just find yourself at your destination and you won't know exactly how you got there if that's the case, maybe you got to work. You don't know how you got there You ended up in the pantry. You don't know how you got there you ended up in a pint of ice cream or in a sleeve of thin mint cookies or Snacking on the chips endlessly or pouring the second or third glass of wine Or scrolling your social media for hours on end If you don't even know how you got there, you just kind of like oh my god Opened your eyes and whoa, what just happened? How did I get here? How did I end up in the pantry and the sleeve of cookies and the bag of chips? It is because that part of your brain that got you there has been on autopilot. 

  Now before we get into how to shift out of this because the success mindset is going to really help you do this. It's really important to understand that autopilot is important while autopilot has a lot of useful function in some areas of our life It is not going to be an effective way to get to your dream goal Being on autopilot is not going to help you burn fat burn stress drop drama It's not going to help you lose the weight you want to this year It's not going to help you change your relationships to feel better in your lived experience as a working mom in fact If you let yourself stay in autopilot as it pertains to your personal goals with your autopilot thoughts. You're going to likely keep recreating the results that you had yesterday. Now, just in brief, I want to give a little bit of background before we get into the success mindset. All of the results that you have in your life today, the result on the scale, your percent body fat, the relationship you have with your partner and your kids, how you are experiencing your time, your productivity, your profession, how, you know, where you are in your profession is the product of the think feel act cycle. This means that you don't just show up in your life with weight loss or in the workplace or in your relationships randomly. That's not just you being disciplined or you being lazy. There's a reason that you show up the way that you show up as it pertains to weight loss in the workplace and in your relationships, the way that you show up, the way that you act and the way that you don't act is happening because of how you feel and emotion that you're experiencing. So for example, when you feel determined, motivated, committed, excited, curious, loving, you show up one way, you take uncomfortable action when you don't feel like it, you follow through, you lean into the hard work as opposed to just think about all the times that you have felt disappointed, discouraged, lacking disbelief. How did you show up then? Most of the time, if we're not aware of it, you're going to show up with micro quits. You're going to be half in half out. You're going to make all kinds of excuses, let justifications get in your way. You're not going to follow through consistently. This just goes to show that the way that we show up, the actions that you're taking or not taking is a product of how you feel, but. How you feel, motivated or unmotivated, committed or not, in belief or not, is also not just random. That feeling of motivation, excitement, committed, belief in yourself versus not, is not just dropping into your body because the universe dropped it into you. The way that you feel about hitting your goal is because of what you are thinking. This is two neurons in your fired because of a sentence. You tell yourself thoughts like, I've got this versus I don't. I'm learning versus I should be further along. I'm so ready, versus I should wait. These sentences, these thoughts that we have are living in our subconscious, and again, this is because working moms, thousands of thoughts per day. So it makes a lot of sense that your brain has created shortcuts. So the thoughts that you're telling yourself in your subconscious is creating a chemical cascade of a feeling, and that is driving you to show up the way that you are. Now, if you have been living in autopilot, as it pertains to weight loss, to burning the fat you want, to hitting your weight loss goal consistently, it makes a lot of sense that you might have been recreating yesterday's results again and again and again. But I don't want you to worry about this because It is possible to get out of autopilot. I have shared this sentence before. I'm going to share it here again because I think it really fits this episode. A diet, a plan on paper might put you into a smaller body. You might be able to muscle through that spreadsheet, that PDF that you've downloaded for a short period of time, and you might start to see weight loss wins for a little bit.

  But if you don't have the mindset, the success mindset to match, The size of body that you want to be living in. If you don't have the success mindset to hit your goals consistently, that weight loss result is not going to last. We need a success mindset to be able to take your success plan and put it into consistent execution to be able to navigate when life gets hard is lifing to be able to overcome yesterday's challenges, to drop drama from the random pound up, to stay motivated and take action. Even when you don't feel like it to evaluate yesterday's mistakes and make a change, to do the work that it takes, the small, consistent work to lose the weight you want this year. I call this the success mindset and for the success mindset to make sense. I think it's really important that we really discern where we have been And where we want to go to really understand this. I want to just do a quick refresher that our brain is comprised of two parts, our primitive brain. That's the part that's keeping us in autopilot. It is the one that is conserving energy. It wants the lowest effort options. It wants to seek pleasure to avoid discomfort, and it will come up with all kinds of convenient. Convincing and very compelling reasons to keep your status quo. If you notice yourself having a lot of convenient justifications to not put in any effort, nothing has gone wrong. You just have a primitive part of your brain that is in the driver's seat, that's keeping you in autopilot. That's all. But you also have this other part of your brain, the more evolved prefrontal cortex. This is the part of you that is really good at problem solving. When you decide to activate that part of you, you overcome challenges. You navigate solutions. You figure out what obstacles you had yesterday and you solve them. And if we don't, on purpose, move our brain shift out of autopilot mode, we're going to keep recreating our same weight loss results again and again and again. Which creates a lot of frustration. So how do we start to shift out of autopilot to activate our prefrontal cortex, to put our car into drive so that we can actually navigate really overcoming this problem once and for all, we have to just decide that we're willing to put in the active intentional effort to prioritize this goal and to actually get out of autopilot.

  Let me tell you what I mean. We have to first start to identify. I want all of you to do this. You can pause the episode here and actually take inventory. What have been your autopilot thoughts the past three months, the past six months, the past one year that has created your results on the scale today. You might've had thoughts. If you don't love your results on the scale thoughts, like it probably won't work. I'm not getting there fast enough. I couldn't do it last time. What if I can't do it? What if I gain it back? I call these thoughts that are keeping you in autopilot, that are driving you to micro quit, keep your justifications and keep you delaying results. I call these lowest common denominator thoughts. Now, remember whether you believe in yourself or not, you're going to be right. I have not met one person who did not believe in themselves, who was successful in hitting their weight loss goals. Not one. But you're here because you've decided that you don't want to just be in autopilot mode anymore. You don't want to just be in survival mode anymore. You have worked really hard for this life. You've gotten the degrees. You've worked hard in school. You've gotten the job and the family and now you're here. You're listening to this episode because you can feel this desire. That it is now your turn. I have seen so much evidence when women make that decision. It's like, it's like this belief switch in a dark closet gets flipped on. You've turned the lights on in your life. And what I have noticed when we take active intentional action. effort to believe in ourselves, to step into a success mindset, you will start hitting goals both on the scale and in your life. You might find yourself protesting. I'm going to talk through really how to create the success mindset. And I want to let you know, it's okay. Basically what we are doing in this episode is we're taking your brain. to the gym. We're going to be talking about, you know, getting out of autopilot to expend that effort. Because remember your primitive brain does not want to change anything. It wants to keep your status quo, but to change anything to hit your goal this year requires making a change. So just now we're taking your brain to the gym. She's going to protest. She's going to say, no, I don't want to do this. I want you to commit to doing it anyway, because it is going to be a game changer in you hitting your goal this year. The success mindset in my experience comes in two parts. The first part is creating a success mindset as we look at the past. And the second part is having a success mindset as we look to our current and future self. So let's just talk about the past. The very first piece is really finding success already. Now this might be really hard. You might find your brain protesting. If you're saying I have all these fails, Priyanka, I have gained weight. What do you mean? Look for my success mindset. What I want you to do is to allow this to be an exercise where you shift your out of blame, criticism, judgment, and shame to stop telling yourself that you should have solved something by now, that you should be further along, that you shouldn't have gained the weight you should have because you did. So what we actually get to utilize this first step for is actually recognizing that you are here and the effort that you are putting in. I want you to look for evidence and flip the script from shame, blame, judgment, criticism, embarrassment, and guilt. To a new thought that's going to help you lean into creating success. This looks like thoughts, like as you look at your past, maybe you're looking at a three digit number you don't love. And instead of going down the lane, down the line of blame and criticism and a lot of embarrassment or shame to actually remind yourself. Thoughts like, I am showing up for myself. I am so committed to figuring this out. I do hard things all the time. These were lessons that I had to learn. These mistakes, these off plan moments are a part of my future success. The thing is when you don't love yesterday's results, it makes a lot of sense that your brain goes into that autopilot mode of shame, blame, and judgment because that's what's been practiced. However, when we can see stop and drop that part of the story, we can start to actually free ourselves from recreating those results. Instead, I want you to ask yourself, if you did not love that number on the scale, what was my lesson here? If you don't have the results you wanted today, I want you to remember that today's results on the scale are a compilation of the last six months.

  I want you to ask yourself from a place of curiosity and compassion, maybe a little bit of tenderness, What was I telling myself these last six months? Why did I show up the way that I did? What was I feeling about myself in this goal? Remember the think, feel, act cycle. Take inventory. What were my autopilot thoughts that I stayed in? And when you get to start taking inventory of what were the thoughts That led me to show up the way that I did over the last six months and drove me to not show up, you know, the way that I had wanted to these last six months, we get to start identifying our autopilot thoughts. The first step before you can even step out of autopilot, you have to know what you're thinking. That's keeping you in autopilot. When you've uncovered what have been your autopilot thoughts that have driven you to not show up the way you wanted to, or to show up in a way that really wasn't a full effort, I want you to write it down and just know for yourself that that's one of your convincing, convenient, and compelling stories that's taking you out of action. This is learning from the past, and I want you to see how a success mindset is going to help you glean wisdom from yesterday's mistakes, from yesterday's off plan moments. The next step is looking at the past. Current time and the future. So in the Unstoppable group, I have my clients share weekly retrospectives where we look at the past week and we dive into this in detail. If you hit your goal or surpassed it, we uncover what were your success variables, and I show you how to dial those up. If you didn't hit your goal over this week, then it's still a win win because if you didn't hit your goal, we figure out what the learning is. I think about really understanding either you're losing weight on the scale or you are gaining your weight in wisdom, right? Pun intended. This is win wins. Whether you are losing weight or learning in wisdom, you are going to be moving the needle as a part of your success strategy. This will change the whole landscape for how you lose weight. And honestly, this is the thing that I actually want to pass to my kids.

  When we can understand how we can look at our past and our current present, how we are creating results, whether we like them or we don't, we will change generations for how we really are living our life. And it doesn't have to just be lip service. You letting go of shame, judgment, embarrassment, blame about your results is going to model to your children how they get to let go of their shame, judgment, embarrassment, and blame. I've shared this on the podcast before, but truly for me and for my clients, this is one of the most Intangible priceless wins that you get when we work together for me, yes, losing 60 pounds and hitting my goal weight was amazing without the fads and the gimmicks, but the shift that I had to experience in the success mindset really changed my personal identity, how I saw myself, how I navigated challenges and fails and mistakes. It fundamentally changed who I was. And because of that, the way that I show up as a mom with my kids who are 8 and 5 is coming from that place, when, not if, my kid has a fail, I get to meet them without an ounce of judgment, shame, and embarrassment. And they can feel that, and I hope over time my voice to them, which is free of judgment and shame and blame, starts to become their inner voice. This is so essential as we start to practice taking our brain to the gym and really identifying what have been my autopilot thoughts that have been steeped in disbelief, all of these rhetorical, but I haven't done it before, what if I can't do it again, all these whiffies, what if thoughts. Just know that keeping your rhetorical. You know, the rhetorical questions that you have in disbelief is driving inaction, is driving you not moving the needle. Just becoming aware of that in itself is going to be huge. And then we get to practice what we're talking about here. Step two, once you've taken inventory on purpose, start to practice thoughts where you can find success right now. Having a success mindset  isn't about platitudes. It's anchoring to reality, recognizing yourself for right now, for this effort that you're putting in for believing in yourself fiercely. I know that it's new and it might not, you know, land right away. You might not be perfect at it right away, but allow yourself to simply practice. I want you to start taking your brain to the gym and doing reps on this on a daily basis. And honestly, this is a Hard to do on your own. I know for a lot of us, for you and for me alike, when you're thinking certain thoughts, you think that you're just keeping it real. I see this happen with my clients all the time, which is why I really recommend working with a coach. You cannot see your own thoughts. You cannot see your most limiting beliefs, your lowest common denominator thoughts to you, which is what's keeping you in autopilot, just feel real. And this is where working with a coach, where someone can show you your lowest common denominator thoughts. is so essential to moving the needle with you losing the weight you want to this year. This will not just create weight loss results on the scale and help you burn fat. It is going to change every corner of your life at home and at work. I don't want you on the sidelines of your life anymore. I want you to get out of autopilot as it pertains to your personal body goals. And if you feel that readiness and you know that you want my help, I want you to not wait another moment.

  Head over to theunstoppablemombrain.com/group. The Unstoppable group July cohort is currently open for enrollment. It is six months of intimate, small group coaching that is really going to help you move the needle, help you really practice taking the success mindset we talked about today and really putting it into action. Active implementation, letting it be messy, learning from all of those moments as growth opportunities and actually moving the needle on the scale and in your life. I hope you guys all have an amazing rest of the day. If you have any questions for me about this podcast episode or about the Unstoppable group, feel free to send me an email at  [email protected] and I will see you on a consult call in the July group or on the podcast next week. Bye. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast episode and really took away the nugget that your mindset is essential in moving the needle forward on you losing the weight you want to this year or keeping you stuck and recreating yesterday's results. Just remember that there is literally no reason to hold the past back. against your future self. Yesterday's best is betterable when you have science on your side, when you have a coach to guide you and truly a strategy and structure in place to help you move the needle. I am not one to say that it's always going to be easy. There will be challenging and tricky moments. Life is going to life. You're going to have obstacles come your way, which is why working with me is going to really help you move the needle to navigating life obstacles. I know that when I work with my clients, you are not one of your work. Is deeply important to me. And I would love to be your coach on the journey, head over to theunstoppablemombrain.com/group, click the button to book your consult call and let's talk and decide whether we are a good fit to work together, have an amazing week, my friends. Bye.