In this week’s episode, Dr. Priyanka Venugopal shares how she went from being stressed out and overweight to getting her health back. She shares some actionable tips anyone can use to learn to trust themselves again and why this is so important in your health journey.

For the resources from Dr. Venugopal mentioned in the episode, please visit her website.

Watch the episode on YouTube

Automated Transcript, please forgive errors.

Cheryl McColgan:
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Heal Nourish Grow podcast. Today I am joined by Dr. Priyanka. We had this little discussion before we started today. I could pronounce her last name, but I didn’t want to risk messing it up. And she is a board-certified OB-GYN turned health wellness coach. I’m excited for her to share her background with you because a lot of people that listen to this podcast are interested in. Obviously health and wellness, but sometimes specifically weight loss. And she definitely has a great short story to share with us about that. So Dr. Priyanka welcome. And I’m excited for people to hear about your background.

Priyanka Venugopal:
I’m so excited to be here, Cheryl. Thank you so much for having me. And yeah, you can call me Priyanka. Priyanka just on its own is just fine. Dr. Priyanka or Dr. Priyanka Venugopal. Either way, I will respond to all of those names.

Cheryl McColgan:
Great. So, if you could just tell people about how you had some struggles, I think even going back to when you were a child with your weight, and I’m guessing that, you know, maybe family background had some things to do with this. So if you could just share with people all about that and then kind of how you, how that followed you into adulthood.

Priyanka Venugopal:
Yeah, absolutely. So my story, I kind of want to almost start backwards. Right now I am a mind and body health coach for high achieving professional working moms who want to hit their dream body goals while living their real life in a way that feels simple and sustainable. And the reason I’m so incredibly passionate about that for high achieving women is because of my own story. I have been that high achiever again as a physician and as a working mom, really that human that wanted just to do more, be more, like create like. basically want more achievements in my life. And I would say that probably from a really, really young age, that was a lot of my story. I was just the high achiever, the girl in the front of the classroom, like raised her hand and won every single eight plus in gold star. And it really served me well for many years of my life. Obviously it got me into medical school and through residency. But also what happened along the way is a lot of my own. self-concept, the way that I thought about myself, my worth and value was really attached to accomplishment. And, you know, where this over many, many years led to was having a very good on paper life as a physician. I had a very supportive partner and two like very cute and loving kids who drive me crazy half the time. And I also weighed a little over 200 pounds. And this was as this was back in 2018, 2019. And, you know, between you and me, if you have tried to lose weight, you have probably a long history of trying to lose weight, and that was me as well. I have been on that roller coaster for many, many years where I tried every single thing. If you name it, I have probably tried it in some capacity, and it would work until it stopped working. Calorie counting and points and macros and exercising at the gym, I did it all. I would lose a lot of weight, and then I would always somehow gain it back, and then some. And that was kind of where I was a few years ago, where I was feeling like I had this good on paper life, but I just felt really heavy in my body. And ultimately I felt really frustrated because I was like, I’m a smart person. And yet this is one area of my life that I just can’t seem to figure out. And that was when I discovered a podcast like this one, and I discovered coaching and the real massive benefit of understanding our mindset, our perspectives of our life and how that was influencing and informing the way that I was losing weight. So over about a year and a half or two, I lost a little over 60 pounds without counting points and calories. I’ve now kept it off with ease for many years. Now I teach other high achieving working moms to do the same.

Cheryl McColgan:
Yeah, that’s one of the things I loved about reading your story in your background is that You know, you’re speaking the language of almost probably every woman that’s out there listening to this is that they’ve tried so many things and that it has been a challenge to usually keep the weight off. Usually many people are like you, they can lose it, but then it tends to come back on. So I’m really curious. I am guessing that the mindset piece was a big part of this, because when I work with people, I find that there’s, well, I guess it’s really three things. The two things are more physical, but the mindset is huge. and that’s sleep and stress and you going through medical school and living that life of a perfectionist. I’m just curious to hear how that works into your

Priyanka Venugopal:
Yeah.

Cheryl McColgan:
paradigm now of how you like to work with people.

Priyanka Venugopal:
Yeah, you know, I think that what I didn’t know many years ago that I now know is that there are some really specific reasons that we’re able to lose weight and not keep it off. And I think what I remember, I mean, like one of my most vivid memories is right before I got married, I wanted to lose some weight and I was like willing to do anything because I wanted to lose weight quickly. So I was eating like those hundred calorie oatmeal packets and going to the gym six days a week because I was like my wedding day. I want those photos. I want like every angle to look to look reasonable. And so I was willing to, I call it like grit and grind. I was willing to muscle through for the short term, like kind of a strategy that I was willing to put up with simply because I wanted to hit my goal weight so fast. But then what happened the day after my wedding was, I’m like, I’m not gonna eat those 100 calorie oatmeal packets anymore. I don’t wanna go to the gym six days a week. And so not surprisingly, when you have a strategy to lose weight that you don’t love, you’re going to eventually abandon it. So. I feel like that was actually one of the biggest lessons that I had to learn and this is so crazy, but I used to think I have to hate my weight loss process. It has to be so hard because weight loss is so hard. I had been taught weight loss is so hard and I didn’t realize that I had been implementing strategies that I hated and so no wonder I didn’t stick with them. And so that’s really one of the core fundamental things that. I had to learn and it was really beneficial that, you know, with medical school and residency, I understood the science of fat loss, that actually counting calories and points and macros is not the most effective way to burn fat. And I had just been kind of on this diet train for so long that I didn’t, I didn’t realize that. So I think that was actually kind of the perfect time for me to… bring in like my medical background to understand the science of fat loss, but then also married to a strategy that I love, which is now what I do. I, I really think that when you know why you aren’t able to keep it off, you’re able to better solve the problem. So the very first thing for me was I never had a strategy that I loved. I was willing to do it until I lost the weight, but I wasn’t willing to do it forever. So that’s the very first thing. And then the second thing that I, have uncovered for myself that I think maybe, some of your listeners will maybe resonate with is, you might even like the way you’re losing weight, but there are going to be moments that come that you don’t feel like following through. It’s like, you know, it’s like, I don’t want us. I don’t feel like it, right? And so really understanding that we can kind of grow the muscle of following through when we don’t feel like it without deprivation. was another key element for me. I used to really mix that up. I used to think that forcing myself to follow through on something meant I was restricting myself or depriving myself when in fact, it was just me practicing the muscle of discipline. So it’s so crazy how we can sometimes mix those two, discipline and deprivation, because again, diet brain and diet, the diet industry has forced women to lose weight with deprivation. So we had to unravel that for… you know, to solve that and then understand that discipline is totally different. And then the last piece, and this is one that was really hard for me to fold in, was having a routine auditing process. I mean, again, I’ve lost weight all the ways, but I never had folded in an evaluation process that really looked at what’s working well, what’s not working well, what do I want to do differently for next time? And I think that again, High Achievers, shy away from evaluating their weight loss results or really their goals and how they’re hitting their goals because of how they’re going to talk to themselves when they mess up. And that is really where I think coaching can be so deeply impactful.

Cheryl McColgan:
Yeah, that’s really interesting because I feel like, you know, high achieving people do that in all other areas of their life, right? That’s how they’re usually high achievers is they are evaluating like how they got to this goal, how can they do it better, what’s working for them, what’s not. And yet that’s the one area that they want to avoid probably because you said body image or just the way that you’re going to talk to yourself if you’re not doing it quote unquote, perfect or well, right?

Priyanka Venugopal:
Absolutely. And I think also like one of the differences is, you know, I at least remember for me evaluation or like auditing how I was doing was kind of built into the way I went to school and the way that, you know, we’re kind of raised at your work. You have evaluations and in the, we’re in at school, like exams and final exams and board exams for me was a natural way to evaluate. But I think because I hated exams, I hated tests. I hated having to prove myself with a grade. I kind of developed a contentious relationship with evaluation. I didn’t know they could actually be the most loving act for me hitting my goals. And so it’s not surprising. I think high achievers, they do it because they have to do it in certain areas of their life. And when it comes to personal body goals, it just doesn’t feel fun. They don’t know a fun way to evaluate their work. And so not surprisingly, we don’t even think to do it when it comes to hitting body goals, but it’s such a necessary step to, I think pushing you to figure out what’s not working well.

Cheryl McColgan:
Yeah, that makes total sense. And before we talk about, you know, kind of what you use to evaluate, because I’m really curious to hear about that. I kind of want to go back really quick to one of the things you said that you had been implementing so many strategies that you actually hated. So I’m curious to find out, you know, when you’re working with people, do you find some common ground where certain techniques seem to work? pretty much across the board, or do you have to work with people more individually to help them find those things that they love to use? Because what you love to do for your weight loss, somebody else might hate that paradigm. So how do you work that out with coaching? Is it very individual, or did you find some commonalities there?

Priyanka Venugopal:
You know, it’s I love that question. It’s actually a little bit of both. So I think it’s important to know and understand again, the science of fat loss is fairly universal for most human bodies. The way that our body burns energy for fuel is across the board, unless you have a metabolic disorder, it’s generally across the board the same for humans. So we’re either going to get energy from a sugar source, a protein source, or a fat source. And One of the things that most humans have done, particularly because of the modern industrialized food industry and the kinds of like fun packaging and all the snacks that are available is most of us that struggle with our weight and struggle to burn fat are sugar burners. We’re used to eating a lot of flour and sugar and processed foods. And so our body has simply just because of the kinds of foods we’ve been giving it has forgotten is the kind of like the nice way of putting it. We’ve forgotten how to burn our fat for fuel. And so that’s one, I like to think of it as like one universal tool that we can all have in our back pocket literally all the time is when you take a break from flour and sugar, you’re forcing your body to learn or learn again, how do you burn your fat for fuel? And this is actually a very, very effective measure that anybody can incorporate. I like to call it like a tool you can have in your back pocket. You could be traveling around the world, be however busy you want to be. And simply taking a break from highly processed foods is going to make you a fat burner, which is amazing. That being said, I wanna say this with a caveat, that sometimes you can hear this quote unquote no flour, no sugar craze that has taken kind of the weight loss industry by storm. You can turn that into just another diet, like keto, no carb, juice cleanse. Like you can turn. I would say you can turn any tool into a weapon and no flour, no sugar, unfortunately, I think can be very easily turned into a weapon. Like I’m not allowed to eat flour and sugar. And so I think that that’s where the individualized piece is so important and what I really love working on with my clients. I actually work in an intimate small group with my clients. So what’s so amazing about having kind of intimate small group settings is you can kind of. learn a little bit from different people’s approach. It’s not a one size fits all. There are some core foundational skills that I think everybody can benefit from, but at the same time, we can play with what would it look like to have sunflower and sugar, or maybe somebody wants to be 100% really strict with it, or somebody wants to have it all the time. You’re going to start to pick up on trends when you. kind of give yourself the freedom to, I really think about it as like playing and experimenting and also know that there’s a science to fat loss that is fairly universal. I like to say, that’s my long way of saying both. You know, I think that there are certain skills that are important across the board, but we have to individualize it for what’s going to work for us in our life that really fits in with our family for it to be sustainable forever. Otherwise, you’re going to have the situation that I had, which is like, the day you hit your goal weight, it’s like, I’m gonna go back and I’m gonna eat all the things again. Like, you’re just gonna gain it all back.

Cheryl McColgan:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And that’s the same way I like to think of it. I mean, I personally tend to do keto low carb and that’s been the case for the last seven years. But I think that’s because it works for me and I don’t I don’t miss those things as much. But there are other people I think across the board what I think is like you hit it off the nail on the head with the processed foods like eliminating processed foods as much as possible eating a whole foods diet, whether that includes potatoes and rice or It doesn’t, I don’t really care. As long as it doesn’t include the things in the grocery store that are in a box that are highly processed, you know, all that stuff. So anyway, I completely agree with that. And people lose sight of that sometimes because they’ll be like, Oh, but you’re keto, you, you know, you do this or you do that. And it’s like, no, I choose to do that way because it kind of works for me. But I totally understand that there are obviously just to

Priyanka Venugopal:
pray.

Cheryl McColgan:
your point, the science shows people can lose weight any number of ways. processed

Priyanka Venugopal:
Yeah.

Cheryl McColgan:
food makes it a lot easier for people because it balances their blood sugar and their hormones

Priyanka Venugopal:
Yeah.

Cheryl McColgan:
and that kind of thing. But you could go and eat McDonald’s every day and lose weight. It’s possible. It doesn’t mean it’s good for you. But anyway, all that said, now

Priyanka Venugopal:
You

Cheryl McColgan:
I

Priyanka Venugopal:
could,

Cheryl McColgan:
would.

Priyanka Venugopal:
listen, it’s possible. I mean, you could also eat like, you could eat 500 calories a day and lose a lot of weight. And I think that, you know, this is where it’s so important. This is why I often think about the nuanced in between. I think high achievers are very all or nothing. I mean, ask me how I know because I am one of them. But it’s like very, you know, historically like, you know, no carb or like I’m going to eat all the carbs. So it’s like, I think sometimes we have this tendency of thinking we have to go very all or nothing. And a lot of my practice with my group and what I really teach my clients how to do is, how do you navigate the in-between? How can, and I like to think about these as win-wins, like how can you have your cake and eat it too, right? It’s a little bit of understanding, what if our life was not on living on either end of the spectrum of all or nothing, and what would it look like? And again, this is why it’s an experiment, because most of us have been living on the outskirts of all or nothing. What would it look like to navigate the in-between while hitting body goals, while hitting your personal goal for what you want to feel like in this one vessel you have for the rest of your life? What would it look like? And that might mean challenging your old stories around food. It might mean challenging where you get all of your rest, relaxation, and pleasure from. That might be, there might be a challenge there, but imagine if you solve that problem. What would we get to unlock? And imagine the results you’d create in in the body that you want to be living in.

Cheryl McColgan:
Yeah, and I think that people get away from experimentation because they kind of start to identify with a certain type of eating or certain what they do, whether it’s running or anything in life. You start to identify so much with that you often forget, hey, what would it, like you said, like an experiment, what would it be like if we tried this, for example? And you know, I’ve also seen though that some people really… like in your groups, do you notice there’s like these people that are abstainers and moderators? So moderators can kind of play more in that experimental space. I feel like we’re sometimes abstainers. If they do, if they kind of go off their track or what they kind of abstain from, then it’s like they can’t even it’s then it’s all like you said, then it’s all the carbs. But if they’re just kind of staying on that track, they can do it. Do you see that difference in people in your group?

Priyanka Venugopal:
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So there’s two things to that. One is, I think, again, especially high achievers and a lot of my clients, all of my clients are women, there’s this very strong desire to have rules. And that’s only because, again, like high achievers are like avid students. We love learning. We love it. Like, give me the PDF, give me the download. Like, I’m just going to follow the rules. And we’ve just kind of been trained from like the age of three to love rules and follow rules. And if we just, this is why we do this. High achievers think, if I just follow the rules perfectly, then I’m going to get the result I want. And we all really want this body goal so much, we’re willing to just give me the rules, I’m gonna follow the rules. So there’s one piece of it, which is the rules that we think we need to follow to hit goals. The part that I think is hard for the high achiever, which is why I think working with a coach is so valuable, is how can you design rules within a framework that makes sense? How can you customize those rules to actually fit your life? Now this goes to the second piece, which is what you’re asking about, which is very true. There are clients that will say, you know what, I want to be really strict with taking a break from flour and sugar. And notice I’m using the word strict and not restrictive. It’s like we can be strict and disciplined without it feeling restrictive. And I do have the clients that are like, you know what, I want to be able to enjoy taco night. I want to be able to have whatever their favorite foods of choice are. What I have found from my clients is the clients that are like, I absolutely want to abstain because, and their reason for abstaining is because if I just have one, I can’t just have one, I want to have all of it, or then I go off the deep end. What I find is that is happening because clients don’t trust themselves before they come to work with me. So my question to them always is, you can always choose to do that if you want to, but is that something you imagine doing for the rest of your life? Do you imagine abstaining from the cookies and the chips and whatever your favorite food is forever? Or, I mean, that’s one kind of flavor of work you’re choosing. Or we could choose the flavor of work, which is like, what if you learned how to trust yourself so that if you wanted to enjoy that piece of cake at your best friend’s wedding, you could. And not ever worry that you don’t know how to honor your body and your body goals going off the deep end. And to me, again, this is just my opinion, but I feel like that work is so much more rewarding because when you discover that, wait a second, I can in fact trust myself, I’ve just been telling myself I can’t trust myself, but wait a second, I totally can. I mean, that to me is just like a priceless gift for I think any high achieving woman to discover. And that, a lot of that work actually kind of unfolds over time, it happens with coaching, it happens with really understanding, like you have a history of… not trusting yourself, which is what’s created a lot of your results. What would it look like to challenge that?

Cheryl McColgan:
Yeah, I think that’s awesome. And I think a lot of people that are in. these different kind of diet tribes could really use that sort of help in their life. And, you know, obviously there are reasons where people might need to abstain for certain things for health purposes. For example, if you have celiac, you’re not going to be eating the bread or you’re really going to have issues. So there are certainly, but we’re talking about people that, you know, they’re generally healthy, but they just have some weight to lose. I think that is a really valuable lesson there and learning to trust yourself again, because that can spill over into so many other areas of your life as well. So I love all that. Now that we kind of got that part, I’d love to go back to how you actually evaluate results, because I think that is a really valuable tool for people and something that’s actionable that they could take away from this conversation. So could you just share a little bit how you kind of use

Priyanka Venugopal:
Yeah.

Cheryl McColgan:
that in your coaching?

Priyanka Venugopal:
Oh yeah. So my clients will tell you my auditing process is a little tedious. I’m going to be totally honest. It’s actually a tedious process. And I kind of like to say, sorry, and you’re welcome. When I ask my, when I tell my clients to do this auditing process, because it is tedious and also it will literally guarantee your results. If you, if you commit to doing them. So the way that I really like to think about an auditing process is it helps to narrow down. very, very specifically. Like I imagine like an arrow to a bullseye, narrowing down that specifically on why your results are what they are. I think, and like kind of let me backtrack. So before I had an auditing process, when I was just trying to quote unquote lose weight, I was like, I just wanna lose 50 pounds. Or when I just wanna lose 10 pounds, I would just throw everything at the wall, spaghetti at the wall. I’m gonna eat a thousand calories a day. I’m just gonna go to the gym six days a week. And then that would work for a few minutes. And then eventually I would just like lose all my gusto and be like, see, it didn’t work again. But I did not actually understand why it didn’t work. So the auditing process that I take my clients through is it helps them narrow down why, why their results are exactly what they are. So for, for a very, very specific example, it’s pretty surprising how often our like. we won’t have a very specific and tangible goal. So I might have said, like, I wanna lose weight. It’s like kind of like painting with like a broad stroke. I wanna lose weight, but I never had a specific goal. So one of the questions that I ask in my auditing process is did you have a very clear and specific goal? It’s so crazy, but like sometimes we won’t have a goal. We just wanna lose weight. And it’s so vague that when it comes to taking action and following through, we feel very confused and overwhelmed. And again, it creates very vague results. The second piece that I really talk through with my clients in our auditing process is really understanding, did you prioritize your body goal this week and did you love your strategy? So again, this kind of speaks back to my oatmeal story. Like I had a goal, I wanted to lose about 20 pounds before my wedding and I had a strategy, but I didn’t love it. So that… kind of helps me narrow in, okay, I had a goal, but I didn’t have a strategy I loved. So no surprise, it stopped working. The third piece of my auditing process is really looking at follow through. So I really like to ask my clients, if you had a goal that felt simple and sustainable, if you had a strategy you loved, what emotion got in the way of you following through consistently? Was it a life stress? Was it just boredom? Was it your desire for relaxation? Usually there will be a specific emotion that we have as humans that will ever drive us to not follow through on what we said we’re going to do. So understanding what that emotion is, helps us then fine tune and gear and get coached on that kind of emotional experience. And then the last piece of the auditing process on its own is evaluating your auditing. So have you been auditing your results routinely and regularly, and have you been implementing what you’ve learned? So I would say that my auditing process really looks into these four categories. And what’s fascinating is when someone fills this out, usually what we do when we don’t have results we want, we throw away, we throw away the holes, we scrap everything, we start from scratch. We want fresh starts. Listen, I mean, I know Monday morning, fresh start, New Year’s day, birthday, fresh start, and that wastes a lot of time. So what this auditing process does is it helps us narrow in, like you actually don’t have to scrap your plan. Let’s just make a small tweak to the actual reason that you didn’t follow through, that you didn’t hit the goal. And then when you do that week after week after week, what’s the crazy part about this is you start to kind of retrain your brain to think in kind of auditing language in your mind as you’re kind of going throughout your week in your work life as a mom, of course with weight loss, like your brain is going to constantly in the background just be thinking like What’s working well? What’s not working well? What’s getting in the way? How can we solve this problem? Like your brain, the quality of your thinking just gets so leveled up simply because you start doing this every week, you train your brain to think in this way, which to me is just amazing.

Cheryl McColgan:
Now that’s a wonderful process and hearing about that, what’s coming to mind is the people that I know and have worked with, what I’m seeing is maybe the most common failure to in that process is the need for relaxation. Because it’s I’m stressed out, I’m gonna eat this whatever it is that’s not really in the line with your plan or your goal, or it’s I’m stressed out, I’m gonna have an extra cocktail, which, you know, extra calories makes you make poor decisions, that kind of thing. When you’ve been working with people, have you been able to identify either a process or… a substitute behavior that you find really works well for that relaxation response. I mean, I always try to get people like if they’re sleeping better and they’re doing some meditation, I think that helps a lot. But I’d love to hear if you have any other tips for people that’s like in that moment when you’re having that stress response, you’re like, I just need to relax. I need this cookie or whatever it is. Do you have like a magic wand that you can kind of put in there?

Priyanka Venugopal:
Yeah. So I would say yes, yes and no. So the yes is that I think the one of the most common thought patterns that I have found for high achievers and again, this was me too, is I deserve a break. So I remember for me, I’m an OBGYN by training. So I would come home after either like a really busy call. I might’ve had a 72 hour shift at the hospital and just like I get home very little sleep and delivering babies and all kinds of things. I’m like, I just deserve a break. And if a high chief are thinking this, the answer to that is yeah, we do. We just don’t know how to give ourselves breaks. And so we’ve basically given food and alcohol this job that it was never meant to have to kind of fill the need of relaxation and rest and even pleasure. So the first thing is actually to me recognizing that we have given food a job it was never meant to have. That’s okay. It’s literally modeled to us in every corner of society and as we’ve been raised. So let’s just normalize that, that that’s normal. The second step is acknowledging that we have not learned the skill of resting and relaxing without those coping mechanisms, those maladaptive coping mechanisms. And then the third thing is actually understanding that before you take an action, like, you know, taking a hot shower or meditating or going for a walk or like calling your best friend. Like these are just some actions we can take to actually feel relaxed and rested first starts in your brain. It starts in your mind. And so this is the magic wand piece is when you get home in the evening and you do what I like to call your evening plop down where you finally, the kids are in bed, the kitchen’s clean, you plop on the couch and you’re like, I just deserve a break. To really take 60 seconds in that moment and acknowledge that you do. It might sound really small, but acknowledging yourself in that moment, like you have been working, you have been working so hard today. This week, look at you go. You have worked so hard. You absolutely deserve a break. I know that we’re so used to going to food and alcohol for that. I promise I’m going to take care of you because you really do deserve a break. This might sound again, really small, but it is the most impactful thing. that I think the high achiever can do for herself is to slow down for 60 seconds and actually say that to herself. And what that does is it kind of introduces a natural pause before you walk to the pantry or to your, you know, your liquor cabinet. It introduces a natural pause. You’re basically reinforcing to your brain, listen, I know you want a break and I promise I’m going to take care of that. And the other thing that natural pause does is it takes us out of our most reflexive, primitive thinking. And it brings us to a more evolved place. We get to start operating from our prefrontal cortex, which is like, I wonder how I might want to solve that. I wonder how I might want to introduce some rest and relaxation and pleasure in a way that really helps you feel taken care of. And all of a sudden, if we really give ourselves some time to decide what would that actually be? Well, if I really wanted to think about feeling rested right now. while taking care of my future self, the body goal that I want for tomorrow, what would that even look like? It’s like the in-between, right? So it’s not either or, it’s the in-between again. You will find that there are so many ways that you can create that. And again, that’s like something that I think is important to customize for you in terms of how you want to introduce that for yourself. But breathing exercises, meditation, tapping is another amazing. amazing thing that I think some people really love. It’s really introducing another action that you can take instead of your usual walk to the pantry or the liquor cabinet.

Cheryl McColgan:
I think that’s going to be like the number one thing that people should take away from this conversation because I think that is so true. Like if you can just pause in the moment. And I think I love what you said about really acknowledging yourself and giving yourself kind of that self love in the moment. Like yeah, you do deserve a break, but it doesn’t need to be something that’s going to conflict with your goals tomorrow morning when you wake up and you’ve had that extra glass of wine and you’re like, Oh, why did I do that? Or whatever it is for anyone. ice cream or, you know, other, as you said, maladaptive behaviors. So, and all that being said, I think this

Priyanka Venugopal:
Yeah.

Cheryl McColgan:
is so wonderful the way that you have this laid out and you’re coaching. And I know that you have an upcoming program for people to kind of get on a wait list for, can you share a little bit more about that and how you’d like to work with people?

Priyanka Venugopal:
Absolutely. Yeah. So I have an intimate small group. You can learn all about it over at the unstoppable mom brain.com forward slash group. That’s the name of my business, the unstoppable mom brain. I’m mentioning it now at the end of our podcast conversation and really a lot of, you know, my intention is for high achievement working moms to feel unstoppable and to know that your busy working mom life does not ever have to slow you down. You don’t have to do everything perfectly to feel better in your life. Really, that’s my intention with what I do in my work with my clients and on my podcast, the Unstoppable Mumbrain podcast where I share a lot of tips and strategies. So if this is, I think, interesting for any high achievers listening to this, you want to feel better in your body, lose weight without a calculator and you’re done with all the counting and the calculating, then absolutely come to the Unstoppable Mumbrain and check it out. And I have a free resource. I recently created a mini course for high achievers who want to just start doing this work right now. If you don’t want to wait for my next group to start, which is going to be opening for enrollment soon, you can go grab that mini course at theunstoppablemombraining.com forward slash email and I’ll meet you in your inbox and we get started right away.

Cheryl McColgan:
That’s awesome. And if you don’t mind, I would just, um, just so people, you know, obviously you’re working with high, high achievers primarily, but when, if they decide to sign up for the group, what does, what does that look like for them? Is that weekly meetings or is it a Facebook group or all the above? How do you handle that part of it?

Priyanka Venugopal:
Yeah. I really think about this group. It’s a six month coaching group experience and longer if you want to continue working with me. We meet weekly. We have live weekly coaching calls once a week, every Wednesday. And I have what I like to call the 24 seven coaching cafe because we have a written coaching cafe experience for my clients. So my clients like 24 seven can come to the cafe, they can share in writing what’s happening in their life. And it will be me coaching them through whatever’s coming up. So we have the 24 seven coaching cafe. We also sell, that’s where my clients will share their weekly audits, the audit process that I was sharing with you. And I really think about this group as an experience where you’re going to have a coach who gets in the weeds with you. You’re not one of many in any of my coaching groups. Everybody, you know, we all know each other. in our work together, which I think is important because it’s intimate work. We’re talking about our bodies, we’re talking about our life, especially as working moms. So that was really important for me to maintain the intimate nature of it. So it’s a very small group. And then of course, because I know high achievers love learning, we also have our video library. So it’s like a curriculum with really short videos that teach you my very specific process, each of my frameworks that… The moment you join, you get access to it and you just can binge watch it like Netflix and start losing weight before our first coaching call, which is always fun.

Cheryl McColgan:
it. Well, thank you so much again for joining us today. I think that everybody got some awesome actionable tips they can take away here and all of Dr. Priyanka’s links will be in the show notes, so if you need to get in touch or want to access those free resources that’ll all be there for you to click on. So again, thank you so much for joining us today and I really appreciate you taking the time to do this.

Priyanka Venugopal:
Oh, thank you Cheryl so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

Cheryl McColgan:
Okay, so I think we hit on everything. I’m just checking the uploads. It looks like mine is still uploading. Yours says 99% and also.