Episode 149- Question Your Limiting Beliefs About Weight Loss and Marriage with Dr. Priyanka Venugopal

For this amazing conversation, I got to sit down with a very special guest. She’s my friend, coaching colleague, and an amazing leader in modern weight loss and modern ways of relating to your body.

Her name is Priyanka Venugopal, board-certified OBGYN physician and mind and body health coach for high-achieving, working moms. You can visit her website here.

Priyanka is the host of The Unstoppable Mom Brain podcast (you can listen here), where she shares tangible skills and real-life experiences about how high achievers can overcome perfectionist tendencies to lose the weight they want while living the life they want.

We dove into a major theme we see in our work: the crappy limiting beliefs that hold you back from getting what you actually want, whether it’s in your life, in your body, or your marriage.

And what we know about these beliefs is that if you leave them unquestioned, they just get in the way of your goals.

The More Work, Less Work Paradox

I coined the More Work, Less Work Paradox during this episode to give a name to the concern that changing things in our relationship (or body, or life) will take more work.

But in reality, dealing with how things are takes more work, and changing things takes less work.

Priyanka said, “This is especially true for women who are already doing so much. Because we’re fearing how much more it’s going to take, we keep the status quo. But… if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’re going to have the same results.

Imagine you’re going into the forest and you made a 1% course correction. Imagine now you’ve shifted directions… you will end up at a totally different location at the other side of the forest.

It has to be the right tweak. It has to be a powerful tweak, but it didn’t have to take a lot; just the smallest shift to reorient you.”

Because of our limiting beliefs, we get so afraid and overwhelmed at the thought of change that we miss the opportunity to make a 1% adjustment and reap the benefits of what that would do for us.

Question the fear of failing and the resistance it creates

I was once so afraid of having a goal that I wanted to call it a milestone and skip the word ‘goal’ entirely. I was that afraid of what I would make it mean about me if I failed and didn’t reach the goal.

What Priyanka had to say about where that starts for us made so much sense.

“Most of us have been programmed to define failure on a really linear scale. Why? Because we’ve gone to school where they give you A, B, C, D, and F. And so we’ve just defined, ‘If I don’t get an A plus or a B plus, then it means something about me.’

The trouble is when we try to take that linear scale and the definition of success and failure from an A, B, C, D, and F, and we try to transpose it onto being a lived human having a human experience. We’re going to create a lot of unnecessary suffering because we’re using a lens that was never meant to be used.”

I can totally see how we’re set up to believe this linear thinking. And as a relationship coach, I know we often have the same thoughts about our marriages.

It wasn’t until I allowed myself to have a goal and fail, and have the experience in the cells of my body of not dying, that I was able to renegotiate my relationship with failure. Then I could allow myself to experiment – to give myself permission to do new things and try.

The emotions that get in the way of our goals

Two of the biggest emotions that get in the way are a familiar pair: embarrassment and shame.

They come up in thoughts like, I should know better. I should be able to do it by myself. I should have been able to solve the problem already.

And Priyanka pointed out, “Some of that desire to not make a mistake or to not mess up – it created super skills in us.” All to avoid making a mistake and suffering the embarrassment.

It can be so sneaky, because as overachievers it can be unconscious in us. I used to think I was doing great. I just thought I was very efficient, and only in hindsight after reflection did I realize I was afraid – constantly afraid of making a mistake, of being embarrassed, and I overcompensated to create a sense of psychological safety for myself.

Priyanka also added, “You might feel more powerful when you’re feeling anger, as opposed to acceptance or peace where you might feel a little vulnerable.

And I think that when we’re not aware of it, our brain might naturally gravitate towards a more powerful feeling, even if it’s not creating a powerful result.”

Can we say ah-ha moment? What a powerful thing to bring awareness to. And as always, awareness is the key in all of this; just the act of noticing what’s happening is half the battle. And when you have awareness, you have authority. Which means you can decide on purpose where to go next whether it’s with your body, your relationship to food or your marriage.

Lean into the support of a compassionate relationship coach

If you want to stop being frustrated with your partner’s behavior and how you respond to it, and start showing up as the person you want to be, I want to invite you to enroll in The Marriage MBA.

The Marriage MBA — the Mindset Breakthrough Activator — is the 6-month group coaching and mentoring program that teaches you the relationship skills you weren’t taught in school. And helps you reimagine marriage so you can have a relationship that works for you.

What you’ll learn inside draws upon cognitive behavioral psychology — how your thoughts and feelings impact your actions and outcomes — to equip you with the kind of mindset that activates breakthroughs in ANY area of your marriage that feels less than 5-star.

You have so much more power and influence in your marriage than you realize. In The Marriage MBA, you’ll build the skills and tools to and deepen the level of connection in your marriage, then use them over and over for the years to come.

If there is a foundation of love in your marriage and you are ready to figure out how to have a stronger relationship for yourself and your honey, this program will help you. Use the link above to apply today. The application itself is quick and simple but also deep and powerful – and designed to help give you even more clarity about how you can move your relationship forward.

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: