Summary

Are you ready to inject a dose of fun into your weight loss journey? Join me on the Unstoppable Mom Brain Podcast as I welcome my vibrant and inspiring friend, Laura Conley. Laura, a fellow weight loss coach and the founder of the Yummy Mummy, is here to shatter the myth that weight loss has to be a struggle. Instead, she advocates for a joyful approach to achieving your goals, making the process not only bearable but downright enjoyable. Tune in to discover how Laura's infectious enthusiasm and practical strategies can transform your perspective on weight loss.

Laura Conley is a weight loss coach and founder of the Yummy Mummy method and Yummy Mummy podcast. She helps moms lose weight for the last time and be an example to their kids while getting food freedom.

Laura’s Links:

Website: https://www.lauraconley.com/ 

Podcast: Yummy Mummy Podcast

IG: https://www.instagram.com/lauraconleycoaching/  

Be sure to check out my new private podcast and discover the steps to burn stress + fat for lasting weight loss here: https://www.theunstoppablemombrain.com/bodyreset 

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Laura Conley's unique journey to becoming a weight loss coach and how her experiences shaped her philosophy.
• The concept of "glimmer hunting" and how small moments of joy can help fill your pleasure cup, reducing the need to turn to food for comfort.
• The power of over-celebration and how acknowledging even the smallest victories can rewire your brain for positivity.
• Practical tips for making weight loss a fun and sustainable process, including how to have a playful mindset even when stepping on the scale.
• The importance of focusing on the effort rather than just the results, and how this approach can increase your dopamine levels and keep you motivated.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Featured on the Show:

• Want to work with me?  Learn about The Unstoppable Group by clicking here.
• Get access to my new private podcast by clicking here. 
• Laura’s Podcast: https://www.lauraconley.com/podcast 
• Laura’s IG: https://www.lauraconley.com/podcast 
• Laura’s website: https://www.lauraconley.com/

Download the full transcript here.

• Priyanka Venugopal: Hey, this is Dr. Priyanka Venugopal. And you're listening to the Unstoppable Mom Brain Podcast. How to have fun while losing weight with my good friend, Laura Conley. Today on the podcast, I am bringing on a fellow weight loss coach. She's a good friend. She's another coach and she is sharing a lot of her perspectives on how she has been bringing the fun, not just to her life, but how she talks about fun with weight loss. One of the reasons that I wanted to actually have Laura come on and talk about this is because truly when I first met Laura. Many years ago now, I remember that that was the first thing that I thought about when I met her. She was so incredibly fun and she was just such a bright light, a breath of fresh air. And I remember thinking, wow, this girl is so fun. So we were talking about how to collaborate on our podcast. And we were talking about what conversation we would love to have with her as a guest here. And the first thing that I thought about was, Absolutely. How to bring the fun, because I know that at least in my many years and what I see with so many of you and my clients, we have really gotten into this story that weight loss has to be hard, that it has to feel terrible, that it has to be full of deprivation and just all around. And if we think that way about our weight loss strategy, it is no surprise that we need constant breaks from it, that we don't actually have consistent results. And then we're not able to maintain our results for a lifetime. Today on the podcast, we're going to talk about all of that and how you can start to have more fun along the way.

  Before we get into today's episode, I want you to know that I have a secret podcast that is out and released. It is six episodes that are tiny, but mighty concepts that really cover from A to Z exactly what you need, the nuts and bolts that you need to burn stress, burn fat, and drop the drama from your weight loss strategy. After having the Unstoppable Mom Brain podcast now for a couple of years, there's so many podcasts to choose from. I have gotten so many messages from you all that has asked me, where do I start? Do I start on episode one? Do I, what do I do? Work backwards, work forwards. Is there a roadmap? And I decided instead of creating a PDF roadmap for the Unstoppable Mom Brain podcast, that I would create brand new content in the form of these six episodes that really cover the necessary nuts and bolts that I think every single high achieving working mom needs to lose the weight she wants in the most sustainable and simple way. So, you can go and grab your access to the secret podcast. It is a private URL, so it's not searchable. You have to actually go to this page, enter your information, and I will email you the private podcast URL to get access to it. Head over to theunstoppablemombrain.com/bodyreset. The name of the private podcast is the Body Reset Podcast. So you're going to learn how to burn stress and burn fat so you can lose weight and keep it off in six episodes. I hope you enjoy today's conversation with Laura. Let's get into it. If you want to reach your ideal weight and create lightness for your body, you need to have simplicity, joy, and strategic decisions infused into your life. I'm a physician turned life and weightless coach for ambitious working moms. I've lost over 60 pounds without counting points, calories, or crazy exercise plans. Most importantly, I feel calm and light on the scale and did my life. There's some delicious magic when you learn this work and the skills I'm going to be teaching you. Ready? Let's get to it. Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Unstoppable Mom Brain podcast. I am so excited to bring my good friend and fellow coach. Laura Conley. She is the founder of the Yummy Mummy. She is going to introduce herself, I've already told you a little bit about her in the intro of this episode, but I am so excited to have her on this podcast because me and her, I feel like you and me are like, I don't know if you would agree we're like two kind of opposite ends of the spectrum in a way. Like I remember we first met each other back in what, like maybe 2020. And I remember thinking, I don't know if I've ever told you this. Who is this girl with the sparkly rainbow outfit? And I really did think of you as this like bright light in the room. You were in a coaching mastermind together. And I had come in, you know, kind of very serious and very quiet, which is very much my kind of my personality. And I remember thinking like, who is this girl? I was so drawn to you. And then we became friends over the last few years. And now we're going on like quarterly trips together. So tell us all about you. How did you get to what you're doing now? And we're going to jump into weight loss and weight gain. 

  Laura Conley: I love that little intro because it's kind of what we're talking about today, which is like sparkles and rainbows and fun and how we can integrate that into weight loss and why it's actually a strategy and not something that's like frivolous or silly. So my name is Laura Conley. I live right outside of Boulder. I have a daughter who is six who is really kind of my muse for this coaching business. I have a son who's four and then I have a husband who's 42 and I've been a coach for almost 13 years now, but niche down to weight loss. right after I had my daughter because that was the thing that I had always struggled with was yo yo dieting and not loving my body but feeling like I should love my body and what's wrong with me for not being able to love my body at any size. And I had this moment right out of the shower I was six weeks postpartum. My daughter, of course, was in the bathroom with me because she, you know, didn't leave my side, and she's like staring up at me, cooing, and I'm sitting there not being present and beating the crap out of myself for not bouncing back into my pre baby jeans, and I had this kind of like, wake up call, which was, you know, This stops here. Like we are going to solve this. We are not going to pass this down to her. We had just been in the ICU for three weeks. And you know, any of you have had health scares with your kids, it shows you how precious life is. And so I'm like, I'm not going to waste another moment hating on my body or counting a calorie. I'm going to figure this out. I had previously accepted defeat. I thought this is just going to be the thing that I struggle with. This is just going to. Be it and like, Oh, well, it's not the worst of problems. Right? So I'm like, Oh, I just kind of like accepted. I'll just always be in a green juice cleanse and then throwing in the towel and over eating pizza and creme brulee and drinking wine. And then in that moment, I was like, no, no, this stops here. I don't, I don't want her to be sitting at the lunch table trying to eat like just a Granny Smith apple competing with her friends is like. Who can be the skinniest, you know, in 11th grade, because at that moment, I kind of knew, I knew I could say all the right things to her. Cause I was so like studied and nutrition and body image, but I knew I wouldn't be acting in a way that was in alignment with what I would be wanting to teach her. And I knew she would see right through that. Like, you know, there's that saying, they're so smart. 

  Priyanka Venugopal: They're so smart. Right. They can read right through it.

  Laura Conley: Right. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So like, it's like, people say all the time our kids inner voices are the way that we talk to them, and I'm like, I think it goes a step farther. I think the way we talk to ourselves becomes their inner voice. And I knew that she would catch me changing my outfit 12 times, or, like, shying away from my husband if he tried to, like, Grab my ass in the kitchen. Like I knew she would pick up on my disgust and disdain for my body. And I knew she would pick up on my tumultuous relationship with food. So from that point, I really went on a mission to heal my relationship with my body and food, but like also weigh what I want. I was like, no, this is possible. I can weigh what I want and heal my relationship with food and my body and it doesn't mean that I don't love myself and I don't love my body by wanting to change it, which I think is a huge myth that, that gets thrown around out there. So anyways, that's kind of the beginning, but she really was, You know, my inspiration for finally solving it. And I still kind of can't believe that I solved it. And, you know, we've been lucky to be in this space with some coaches that are similar, right? Like I use a lot of what Brooke Castillo teaches and got certified with her, but I also use my yoga and meditation and mindfulness background in my practice as well, which I think is like kind of a, a perfect marriage in terms of teaching weight loss. So yeah, so that's like, you know, the short ish version.

   

  Priyanka Venugopal: I just think it's so important. I think like understanding kind of the backstory of why we came to the missions we came to is so important, which is why I wanted you to share, you know, like your version of how you got to where you are. And I think, you know, Lori, I mean, I feel like we've talked about this, but the sense I get from knowing you, is you've always been fun. You've always brought fun to where you go. Like at least this is the impression that I have. Maybe I'm mistaken, but tell me, have you always had that personality where you find the fun? And if you don't find the fun, you make the fun for yourself in every room you go into for like, as long as you can remember.

  Laura Conley: I mean, yeah, that's the short answer. But what I think is interesting is like, I think everybody's actually fun. Like think about when you were four or think about when you were three or five, you were probably fun and silly and lighthearted. It's not something that I've really cultivated. I sort of just kept it alive. And it really wasn't, even on purpose. Now it's an active strategy in my business and when I teach weight loss, and I think everybody has access to it. I do think for a lot of type A people or high achieving people, it can feel like almost unsafe to lose weight in a way that's fun because it feels like, Oh, that's not going to work.

  Priyanka Venugopal: Right. I think that that's the biggest piece it's like very disconcerting. I think at the idea. It feels almost like you're letting go of this idea that it has to be hard because we haven't solved it yet. At least I remember for me, I used to think like, well, if I haven't solved it yet, and I'm a smart person, if I haven't solved it yet, and I've done all of these things, these crazy things that, you know, we've talked about, I've done all these things, if it hasn't worked yet, it must be really hard and take a lot of serious effort. And so the idea that it's not that, I think number one, it feels kind of like, Too good to be true? And number two, I think it feels disconcerting and like, well then what is it? If if it was easy or fun, then I would've done it already. That's, I think, the part that's a lie. Mm-Hmm, . So before we get into like finding the fun and how do you even let go of that, what do you think is in the way for most women who have wanted to lose, I don't care whether it's five pounds or over 50, what has made weight loss feel like such a drag in your experience?

  Laura Conley: I feel like there's always an end date, so like think of just a lot of the programs that are out there. So like 21 day fix or whole 30 or 75 hard, right? All these things have an end date attached to them. Of course, they like give you the lip service of like, Oh, there's a maintenance plan. No, there's not like in our heads. We're like, Ooh, we're going to do it for 75 days. And then we're done. That's really on fun to me because to me, that's Very white knuckle y, and it's very, I call it the when then game, or it's like more commonly known as the arrival fallacy, like when I get to day 75, then I'll feel confident, then I'll feel good in my body, then I'll feel self assured, then I'll feel light and alive, like then my life Perfect, right? And it's just not true. And so, I mean, I've tested it. We've all tested it. We've all done it the hard way. And it's like, it doesn't work. We have enough data at this point. So it's like, why not let it be fun? And I mean, this gets a little meta, but If you think about like the point of life, like what is the point of life? For me, it's like enjoying my life and actually having fun. Again, I know that can seem kind of like superficial, but I really believe that the point of life is to enjoy it, to hang out with our people, to be present with them, to connect with our friends. Like this right now is the point of life. So it's a strategy in weight loss and in every other area, because if it's not fun, I'm not doing it because I know on my deathbed, I'm not going to be proud of it. And again, it doesn't mean that every single moment during weight loss is fun and easy, right? There's obviously discomfort, but I think that we've gotten attached to this idea that it has to be hard, especially coming up in this culture or our culture, similar cultures where it's like achievement equals worth achievement equals value. So I don't know if that's kind of a long winded answer, but yeah. 

   

  Priyanka Venugopal: I’m so glad you're saying that. I still remember, I was talking to a group of entrepreneurs, and these are like high achieving ladies, and we were just doing this exercise on, do they feel the way that they wished they did? That like they had hoped that they would feel when they were like 12 years old. You know when you're 12 or maybe like, you know, whatever elementary, middle school, you have this idea of what it's going to be like to be a grownup. Like what's going to be like to be like a mom, maybe like, like an adult. And I think everyone was like, they had this image in their mind that they're going to be confident and they're going to be happy. And they're going to be having, you know, the two and a half kids with the house and the dog, like they had a vision. And I'm like, are you feeling the way you want it to feel? And across the board, literally every single one, I, I dropped a poll in the zoom and it was no, a hundred percent of people said no. And I was so fascinated by this because this was me too. I was like, when I lose the weight, then I'll be happy. When I get married, then I'll be happy. When I get the job, then I'll be happy. And we get there. And I think, I don't know about you, but I feel happy for maybe one minute or two minutes. I'm like, Oh, we hit the goal. And then my brain immediately leaps onto the next thing. So it's like we keep pride and satisfaction hostage for our whole entire life. So I think that I'm, I'm curious about you, what you just said, because you just shared, it's true that it's not always fun. It does get hard. And also like, we want to be dripping in fun along the way and satisfaction and pride along the way. So how do we do that? How do we actually start to do that? And like, how do we then navigate the hard moments? Because there's definitely going to be those two. 

  Laura Conley: Yeah, I love that. I just want to echo what you were saying. I just interviewed a client and she was talking about, she's like, I had the life that I always dreamed of, but I wasn't actually living it. Like I had this life, but I wasn't living it. And I wasn't feeling to your point that the way I thought I was going to feel, I was just so exhausted and using sugar to, Basically fuel the next hour and the next hour and the next hour. So ways that we make it fun is number one. I mean, to our previous conversation, we take away the arrival fallacy. We literally learn so if you can learn how to enjoy the process, when you're losing weight, then you can enjoy it. any process because this is the one process we have been taught is not supposed to be fun. Fun and weight loss do not go together in a sentence. So I think I just want to offer that little carrot. So for us inside the Yummy Mummy, and I'm sure you do this too, we do over celebration. So that's number one. So what is over celebration? And my clients actually don't love over celebrating at first because they're not used to it because right there, lower brain is biased to the negative, right? We all have this negativity bias in it. So over a celebration actually helps you to reprogram your brain. So it looks for the positive. So we celebrate on every single call and then we celebrate almost every day inside slack and that can look like literally anything. It's kind of like finding the ordinary in the day to day. So we go glimmer hunting every day, which is like super cheesy, I know. But if your audience or the listeners haven't heard of glimmers, people define it as like the opposite of a trigger, which I don't actually love that definition. The definition that I like is just like shit in your day that lights you up. So like the other day, I'll give you an example. And so we have a channel and everybody every day is reporting on their glimmers. And I'll tell you more about like the strategy behind the glimmer hunting. So like an example was this past weekend. My son wants to go on a date. I'm like, let's do it. She only always ever wants to go to whole foods because I think because he's a covid baby He's obsessed with whole foods. I don't know or maybe you think you can get a treat So we go to whole foods And we're like he wants to hold hands and skip through the parking lot and like only put our feet on the pedestrian paint, you know, like we can't touch the asphalt. And so I catch out of the corner of my eye, like this little old lady, just like laughing at us, like she got almost a glimmer. And so then it was like, so it's just like hunting for those little things. Or like, I just saw a duck the other day, like taking a bath. I don't know why that's a glimmer, but for me, it's a glimmer. So it's like training your brain to look for things that are very pleasurable or somewhat pleasurable. And the strategy behind this is that. When your pleasure cup, I call it your pleasure cup, when your pleasure cup is full of like little old lady smiles and holding hands and skipping and snuggling and whatever fills your, you know, this is individual, obviously, then we aren't as tempted, or it's a little bit easier to say no thank you to the cupcake because we've actually gotten some really good ones. Real pleasure or some pleasure that gives us a net neutral or net positive. So that's one thing that we, well, those are two things. So over celebrating and then glimmer hunting. I would also say every day I have my clients like ask themselves, like, why is this working? Like what, what is going well, again, I'm sure you do the same thing, but that gets to be really, really fun. I have my clients like get a little cheesy. So they're, they're. journaling every day or writing down every day. Some of my clients are like, I don't, I am not a journaler. I don't identify with that. So I'm like, okay, call yourself a writer downer. So like some of them will like get into it. They will like put stickers in their journal. They are really like, I highly encourage a lots of emojis. Again, these are like simple, stupid little things, but it makes you look forward. to the work. I also think I've named a bunch of different things, but focusing on the effort versus the result is really fun and focusing on how you want to feel right is like really fun compared to focusing on the scale. Last thing, I'll let you talk in a second. I'm just like talking, but the other thing I like to do is have a, like a silly debate with the scale. So like Bringing humor to the scale and I think this is really fun So I have my clients and I do this myself too. Like before I step on the scale every morning. I ask myself first of all, how do I, how do I feel? Like sometimes I wake up most of the time actually, cause I'm, you know, wild and crazy. Most of the time I wake up very energetic and very happy and very grateful. So I ask myself, how do I feel? And if it's something really positive that I want to continue to ride on, I commit to that. I also ask myself, how do I want to feel today? And that might be calm, peaceful, excited, elated, happy, chill, whatever. Whatever. And it's like a commitment in that moment. So I decide before I step on that scale. So then let's say I step on the scale and it says something I don't like. I like literally, and I say out loud, I'm like, Oh, Oh, you thought you were going to get me? Oh, watch me go have a good day. Thought you were cause like, I mean, that was so unfun, right? 

  Priyanka Venugopal: If you're watching the video and you just watch Laura dance, that was lovely. 

  Laura Conley: I like, I'm like, Oh, you little metal box. Oh, you really thought you were going to take away my emotional power or you really thought you were going to take away my ability to have a great day. Watch me, watch me. I freaking dare you. And so that just adds a little bit of. levity because I remember my dieting days. It'd be like 2 p. m. and I'd be like, why do I feel like there's a black cloud? Like, why is my day kind of meh? And I'm like, Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I weighed myself this morning. It wasn't good. That's why I feel like shit. Right. So anyways, those are lots of ideas I could, you know, go on and on.

  Priyanka Venugopal: I just love, I love, no, I really love it. Actually, one of my clients also really loves the word we call them glimmer moments, but like, I really love the word glimmer because it really does allow the tiniest little thing to create real pleasure. And one of the things that I have, at least for my clients, and I think a lot of my audience is like high achieving working moms, you're professionals, you're busy, you're running around from work to home. Sometimes you almost have this habit of leaping forward to tomorrow's task list. You're leaping forward to tomorrow, to next week. You're thinking about your schedule for tomorrow, your email inbox for tomorrow. You're pending labs that you have to call your patients back on. Like you're leaping forward because your brain, I think, is trying to like, like Tetris You know, like shenanigans, your, your calendar together, but it's taking us out of being present right now. And I think what I loved about what you shared is what actually working moms. I think one across the board is to feel present in the lives that they have worked so hard to create. I remember. I, like, woke up, this is 2018, 2019, I'm 200 pounds, I'm driving to work, I'm pumping while driving and I'm thinking, I've worked hella hard, I've worked hella hard for the last 20 years with medical school and residency, spending my, like, hours into, in a book when my friends were out having fun. And I'm looking around, I'm like, this is not the life I had worked so hard for and I think, Yeah. Yeah. And, and I want to, anyone that's listening to this conversation, just to know if it feels out like, like you're the only unique unicorn that cannot do this, that's just not true. It's just a practice. And I think that it's important to know. I think this conversation, the goal is that we're planting a seed of possibility that what if it was possible to let go of the dread, to let go of the hard, to let go of the ug. And like, maybe it was possible to actually have fun. I think that's the whole point. And I really loved what you were sharing with glimmer hunting. I want everyone to start glimmer hunting now every single day, but what it would be the impact of being mindful in this moment and having true pleasure. And, and there's actually a lot of studies on this, how our dopamine levels actually rise in our brain when we are focusing on the effort. It's a work of Carol Dweck. She's a growth mindset expert. She talks a lot about Not just the growth mindset, but when you love the process, you are actually increasing dopamine levels in your brain. So it's like actual science that I think everyone needs to have on their side. So I'm curious what you think now, like when you think about this, like somebody's listening to me like, yeah, yeah, that sounds good.

  Laura Conley: Yeah. I have so many things. Okay. So exactly, exactly. That's exactly what I was going to say. Just freaking try it. You can go back to the other way in a month or a year or a, or two weeks or three months, whatever timeframe, like just try. Loosening the grip like I You know people have a word of the year, which of course I have a word of the year But I also have a pose of the year and it's just like my fists have been balled up It's like I just released them and I literally look like a psycho walking around my neighborhood and I will walk With my palms open and up to the sky because it's like let's just loosen the grip on all of it, right like If it's not diet culture, it's hustle culture. If it's not hustle culture, it's like my check. Like you mentioned, like my to do list. It's like, let's just loosen the grip. So that's the carrot I would give to you guys is just try it. You can always, always go back and you probably already have enough data that making it so hard doesn't work. And that's, and that's, that's why you haven't got, that's one of the reasons why you haven't gotten to where you're at. You want to get to, if you need another carrot, think about your kids. Like, again, I use my kids, right. As inspiration all the time. It's like, do we really want to pass this down to our children? This idea that we can't be happy until we fill in the blank, lose the weight, check the box, whatever, get the promotion, whatever. No, we don't. I mean, I don't, I don't know for you, but like. I want to pass down to my kids, like the ability to be present, the ability to love their lives, like if they want to love their lives, which I'm assuming they do, like, it's all about kind of preserving what's already there. Like they already do love their lives. Can we just help them to keep it? And I think, again, going back to the beginning of this conversation, it's like, we can say all the right things, but unless we are embodying it and being the role model, it's not going to work. So it's like, unless you want your kids to be running around like we are we're all working on it. It's a practice. It's a practice. But I think that that can help that that kind of care like, Oh, let's do it for our kids. Cause we don't want our kids to grow up and feel like so attached to the to do list or to making it hard or whatever to the when then game or the arrival fallacy. So, so yeah, the last thing I would say there too, is like you were talking about your moms and, you know, going from one thing to the next and being in tomorrow's to do list. And it's like, I always love to tell my clients, like, if you can't get out of it, get into it. Of course you can get out of it. You can get out of anything that you're in, but if you've decided like, I'm not going to leave this job or I'm not going to, Stop parenting my kids or like the body that you're in like that. You actually can't get out of, I mean, you could, but we're not going to get morbid here. So my point here is like, that can make it a little bit fun. Okay. So if I am choosing this, if I actually can't get out of this, how can I get to get out of this? 

  Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. I'm choosing not to get out of this. Exactly. 

   

  Laura Conley: How can I get into it? How can I make it fun? How can I be present? And it just, for me, that has. Brought so much fun because you should see me doing the dishes. I'm genuinely having fun doing the dishes Most of the time, not all the time, but, or like driving my kids around. I'm actually having fun doing it because of this mantra. Take any like mundane task. And again, it's, I'm not perfect. If you saw me and you were a fly on the wall, you know, I still yell at my kids. I still get frustrated. I still like do all the human things. It's just a practice that I like to practice because then I feel better. 

  Priyanka Venugopal: I love it. Number one, love that. I'm going to start doing that. I'm going to lean into the dishes and like, love, love undoing the dishes because I hate that. I also hate when my, like, when things are not going my way. I'm like, I hate this. And you're, and I think that this is a big one. And it actually touches on a point that you made earlier, which is, This episode is all about how to find the fun with hitting your, your body goals with losing the weight you want to lose, right? Like that is the intention of today's episode, but you also touched on something, which is it's not always fun. It doesn't have to always be fun. And I think this comes back to this very all or nothing, at least high achievers with perfectionist tendencies have this very all or nothing. way of thinking. I think I also want to say one more thing. You know, when we were talking about if I am like, if I let go of this, like grip, like if I let go, let it go. I think high achievers think I'm, then I'm going to become lazy and complacent. If I don't like beat myself to submission and like force myself to be a hundred percent perfect, then I'm going to be this lazy, like this like lazy couch potato. And this all or nothing thinking is coming. into every part of our decision making process. So tell us, like, what do you think about this idea where it can be a lot more fun, but it doesn't have to always be fun. Like, tell us about that part. What do you think? 

  Laura Conley: I think, yeah, it doesn't always have to be fun. And I love what you're talking about, about the lower brain too. So you guys, if you like, if we've sold you on this idea that it could be fun and maybe a little bit easy, remember that you're going to have resistance to it. Most likely your brain's going to be like, Nope, we got to stay in the familiar, especially if you're high achieving. Your brain's gonna like keep you in the familiar, even if it doesn't serve you. So just remember when you, when you hit that resistance, that that means you're doing it right. And you just need to talk to your brain and be like, we're just trying this for a month. We're just going to try to have a little bit more fun, a little bit more ease. So I just wanted to like say that. And then for me, I like to remember that the discomfort that I have to feel in order to achieve any goal or intention is. Like 10 seconds worth of discomfort. So like I teach a concept, I'm sure you teach it too. I call it allow power. So it's like kind of the opposite of willpower. It's when you want the cupcake right, and we're taught, you either say no, what's wrong with my husband for bringing home this cupcake? Oh, I shouldn't want it. Why do I want it? What's wrong with me for wanting it? Right? That's totally willpower. That's option one that we've been taught. Then option two is like just eating the cupcake. Option three is what I call is like allow power. It's like, oh, yeah, of course I want the cupcake. The cupcake would taste good. Like, It's designed for me to want it. And that takes 10 to 15 seconds. That moment of discomfort is just 10 to 15 seconds. So I like to remind myself like, yes, in order for me to weigh what I want, I do need to experience some discomfort, but it's not that long. And so in that moment, I will say to myself. Like, Oh, I bet you this is only going to be like 5, 10, 15 seconds max. And then I'll say like, Oh, and this is the part. This is the part. This is what I have to do. This is me paying for the next pound of weight loss. Like this is me paying for it. This is so awesome. Like, I bet you I get to wake up tomorrow or the next day and be down .25, 5 or a whole pound, right? So, that actually is a little bit fun for me, cause I can kind of like, get a mini dopamine hit. I call it like, almost immediate gratification, right, immediate gratification is eating the cupcake. But if you can just hang in there for 15 seconds you get the almost immediate gratification of the feeling of pride and then you get the delayed gratification the next morning. So the discomfort, yeah, that's, that's how I would explain the discomfort or, you know, you can take any example, the chips and the guac at the, you know, maybe you're not having chips, maybe you're having chips. I don't know what your plans are, you know. audience members. But that's kind of how I am in relationship with discomfort. And it's just also not that big of a deal. And if it feels like a big deal in the moment, that's also okay. 

  Priyanka Venugopal: What I like to share at least with my clients is it's okay if it's boring sometimes. Welcome to just the reality of our life. It's like, you know, because Again, because my, I feel like we are working so hard as women, we have, we do wear so many hats. We have so many responsibilities. It makes a lot of sense that, and we have deprioritized ourself in our own lives on our own calendars. It makes a lot of sense that we looked for the easy, quick ways of treating ourselves like food and alcohol. It makes so much sense that we've done that. And also. If we want the things that we want, right, which is to lose the fat, to live in a body that we really are feeling at home in, that will require that we say no sometimes. And it's okay. It's okay for it to feel hard. It doesn't have to feel so terrible and so dreadful and so horrible. But like, so what it's like, I kind of think about this idea. I talk about this concept with my clients where, you know, if your kid was waiting for you at the bus stop, this is the delayed gratification. Your kid's waiting for you at the bus stop. And you're like in the middle of maybe, you know, scrolling your phone. You're at home. You're about to go pick them up. And you're like, Oh, it's four o'clock. I'm supposed to go pick them up. I don't feel like going to pick them up right now. I'm doing something that's kind of fun. Immediate gratification. I'm like watching my Netflix show where I'm like scrolling or doing whatever. I don't feel like leaving this right now. But we all would never, ever, ever, ever leave our child waiting at the bus stop. Yet, we do this with our body goals all the time. And I think coming to this whole idea of like, who cares if it feels a little hard every now and then to like, put the shoes on, put the scroll down.

  Laura Conley: Anything you've achieved, you've had to have a little bit of discomfort. I love that example. I'm totally borrowing that. I call it like healthy restriction. Like we've as dieters or like, this was me. I was always either in the land of under restriction and like, eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, or over restriction, and like, just drinking, like, green juice, or whatever, or trying to go for, like, a thousand calories, or you name it. And like, this middle ground of healthy restriction, it's like, I feel like some of us feel like we're entitled in this area around, like, well, I shouldn't have to, and I think, I don't know, it comes from, you know, I don't know if it's like the intuitive eating movement or the body positivity movement. I don't know what movement, but there's people out there that really promote like we shouldn't have to be restricted in this area and restriction is bad and wrong and diety. And I'm like, no, you have like, think of your marriage. Are you restricting in your marriage? Like probably like because of a certain result you want in your marriage, obviously the parenting example is perfect. You're restricting in your parenting because you want a certain result. with your parenting. You're restricting in your job. You're not sending that email that you really actually want to send to your boss. You're restricting so that you have the results you want in your life. Why is this area any different? And I'm not here to be like, we should over restrict. No, it's just like a little bit of healthy restriction will get us very far. 

  Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. And, and I think it kind of comes down to thinking about priorities. And, and I think you, you hit the nail on the head with the word entitlement. So it's like, we, we, it's again, it's so all or nothing. We go to one end of the spectrum, which is we need to double down. We have to do every single thing. We have to count every calorie in point. I'm never allowed to eat a piece, like a cupcake. I'm never allowed to eat a cookie. And then we swing to the other direction, which is like, I don't want to be restricted. I don't want to feel deprived. And we have this entitlement with how we think it should be. And I would say that. Both ends of the spectrum are just like delusional thinking and not reality, but the unfortunate truth is it's been peddled to us by the diet industry. And so I just kind of wanted to offer if you find yourself on either end of the spectrum, if you're like, you know, you feel this entitlement. I know I used to feel like I remember when I was doing that pumping while driving scenario, I had so much entitlement. I was like, I'm pumping while driving. I'm not even eating that bad. I am working so hard. I should not be weighing 200 pounds. I had a lot of that in my mind. 

  Laura Conley: Yeah, like the, also like the breastfeeding, I'm like, where? Yeah. Yes. I was so pissed. It wasn't until I stopped breastfeeding that I like, you know, there was a little bit of relief and that was my son. I stopped breastfeeding and there was no windfall at all. 

  Priyanka Venugopal: So it was one of those things. I think I just, I had so much and I, it was a lot of resistance to the fact that I had told myself a story and it was the most painful version of the story I could have said, which is like, I've been working so hard and how dare I not already be there? Like, I know I've worked so hard. How could I, why is it so hard? And it's such a painful story that kept me out of actually figuring out why I wasn't there. Little bites and nibbles, my friends, it adds up. If you're eating crap food, it adds up, but my brain wasn't seeing that. I was like, I'm working so hard. So yeah. 

  Laura Conley: Oh, I know. My brain too. It's like, oh, I can't believe this. And then it's like, well, if we did have to believe this, if there was actually an answer as to why we weigh this, my brain's like, oh yeah, actually we haven't eaten on plan for two weeks. So yeah, there you go. Yeah. Our brains want to, our brains want to like, at least my brain wants to like, Roll its eyes all the time, right? 

  Priyanka Venugopal: The other piece of this I do weekly retrospectives with my clients, like our version of kind of like looking at why does the number what it is. And I really push my clients to be like, Like, let's say the scale is up a half pound and you wanted it to be net neutral over, like, like a holiday weekend, your goal is you don't want to gain weight, lose weight, but you come back and it's half a pound up. And, you know, in our mind we're like, but I feel like I did all the things, I don't know why. I'm like, but how does this number make 100 percent sense? Take your brain to that place and actually answer. And the trouble, at least in my experience, what I find, the reason we don't do it is because we go to blame. We go to self blame. So then we're not able to be objective, like, Oh, it's because of, like, we start criticizing. And that prevents us from getting curious, which is way more fun than blaming ourselves. 

  Laura Conley: Yeah. There's so much shame attached to like the why, but it's like, I like to approach weight loss and I'm sure you do too, like a skill. It's like, think of, I don't know, like for you with your medical boards or, or whatever, or like with me, like I'm learning pickleball right now. Yeah. Yeah. Or whatever. Any other skill that you've ever learned, maybe you played a sport in high school, maybe you played an instrument, maybe you went up for a promotion, whatever. Any other skill that you developed, you didn't just do it perfectly and then like get the result, right? Like I'm not just beating everybody on the pickleball court. No, and I'm not just making every shot. And in fact, we did a clinic like last week and she's like, Oh, the reason why You know, you hit the shot like that is because you were way too far back. And I'm like, Oh, great. So good to know. I'll like step up. I wasn't like, God, Laura, what's wrong with you? You idiot. Like you're never going to be able to play pickleball. Like obviously something is you're a total failure, but for some reason we attach. I mean, I know the reason, but we attach our more morality with our food choices. And it's like, what if it was just you learning skiing or pickleball? Or what if this was just you learning a skill and you're supposed to be a beginner and you're supposed to suck at the beginning and you're supposed to find the buried treasure. In those little quote unquote mistakes or whatever you want to call them opportunities, 

   

  Priyanka Venugopal: I think, I mean, and I think that this is the thing that's the thing that in my experience, that's the sucking the fun out of hitting any goal. And I, and I've seen this happen with, you know, clients that are going for promotion that want to achieve more in their business or to lose the weight they want. The thing that is sucking the fun out is what we make off. Like little, I call these plot twists, what we make a plot twist mean about our capability of actually hitting the goal. So it's like, I kind of think about like, you know, when you're walking down the road as an adult woman, you feel fairly confident that you are able to walk from point A to point B. And if you did stumble and fall, you would never tell yourself, see, there you go again. You're probably never going to make it. You're probably never going to get to point B. You might as well go back to point A because you're not even going to bother getting to, we would never do that because we have such a confidence in the fact that it is easy to go from A to B. If we fell, we would look and be like, I wonder why I fell. Was there something on the road? Was there like rocks there that I wasn't paying attention to? We like have such a different lens and it's just taking the fun out of, I think, hitting goals that we haven't yet achieved. And that's the part I think that I want to infuse for my audience is you don't have to be a hundred percent confident. You haven't done it yet. You're not going to be a hundred percent confident, but. What if it didn't have to be so terrible? And what if it didn't have to be so devoid of fun? Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about, like, when somebody does make a mistake? They go on a trip, come back, they're three pounds up on the scale, how do we find the fun in that?

  Laura Conley: Hmm. 

  Priyanka Venugopal: Or do we, maybe we just don't even find the fun. I'm like, listen, you're going to be disappointed. Welcome to the land of disappointment. 

  Laura Conley: That's kind of what I would say. It's like, yeah, like maybe you're disappointed and it's like, I think this takes practice for sure. But it's like, can you have a little bit of fun or, okay. So. Speaking of dopamine and dopamine hits, like one way you can get a dopamine hit is by learning something new. And so if you can take that vacation or that three day trip away and you're like, Ooh, I bet you I could learn something from my weekend. You know, again, I fun might be a stretch there, but you will get a little bit of hit if you find like, Our friend Sarah Henderson, she talks about it like as the buried treasure. I call it look back with love. Like I really encourage my clients, and again, it's not gonna be so fun because, because we're so trained to blame and shame, right? But it's a practice and it's like I literally say like, okay, we're gonna look back with love. But the step first step is you literally have to, like la you have to like make a deal with yourself that like you were gonna love yourself as you're being curious and as you're finding the buried treasure, which just means like what happened when you ate the thing that you said you weren't going to eat. Literally what just happened there. No judgment. It's like, what if you were doing it with your best friend? Like if you were like, Hey, best friend, why did you eat that? Like you wouldn't be like, Oh God, she's a failure. She's never going to get there. Right. And so it's like, really drowning yourself in love and be like, okay, I'm going to love myself. And if I'm going to pretend this is me, like  looking at me falling down on a mobile as I'm learning skiing, that's how much weight I'm going to put on it. There's like basically no weight, no pun intended. And then looking back and being like, okay, I'm bathing myself in love. I'm also holding space in case any shame does come up and be like, of course they feel a little shame. Of course they feel a little disappointment. That's normal. That's so practiced. And then just finding like, like what happened there? Like, what did I think? How was I feeling? And then what do I want to do next time? And what do I want to think instead? So we miss the opportunities unless we go back. And when you find that buried treasure, you will get a little dopamine hit. It's not going to be huge, but at least there.

  Priyanka Venugopal: You know, but there's like something to be said though. And what you're describing in my, in my books is like having your own back in a way that you probably have not. And there's an incredible amount of fun when you discover that skill. I kind of think about my daughter, she's five and a half and she's like, all into soccer. And I think about her, she's going to try out for soccer team and all these things. Right. So I think about her, like, what if she doesn't make the soccer team? I  know how she's going to, like, I know exactly what she's going to say. She's going to have tears in her eyes. Right. Like as our kids do. And imagine if I told her in that moment, like, see, like, why'd you even bother trying? Like, can you even imagine us talking to our children like that? No. Because we would never, ever, ever talk to young children like that. But we talk to ourselves like that all the time. Rather than like that moment where your kid doesn't make the team and it's like, Oh my gosh, I totally get how upsetting that must be for you. And I can see that you're so disappointed. It makes so much sense to me. 

  Laura Conley: Yeah. 

  Priyanka Venugopal: And like zip the lip after that. Like, imagine that we just sat there. You know how, um, How much love our children would experience like, Oh, my mommy can see me like in my disappointment and she has my back and she's holding and hugging me. We are not doing that with our own, like, this again is maybe going to sound like, you know, cheesy, but like our own inner children, like, yeah, we just layer on a lot of blame and that is not. 

  Laura Conley: It's so good. It's so true. It's like when you are being the parent, like if you do have kids and you're listening, like if you're being the parent that you want to be to your kids, how can you apply that to yourself? Like there are so many studies. I mean, it's so well documented. If you want to change behavior, you can't shame, right? So it's like to use the kid example, it's like, You know, my kids are four and six and my son is very physical. And so say Luna takes his toy, he'll like whack her upside the head, right? And she'll be freaking out. He'll be like screaming and I'll go over to him. Well, once he's calmed down, I can actually talk to him and then I can say to him like Phoenix, like, I'm so sorry. I see that you were really mad and really frustrated that Luna took your toy. Like I get it, been there a hundred times. Like I so have felt frustrated before. That's okay. But it's not okay to hit. Like what, what are some strategies that we can use for next time? And it's like, yeah, I mean, it is proven, we just listened to Dr. Becky talk, right? It is proven that if we want to change behavior over time, that we have to greet it with love and some strategies for next time we could do the same exact thing with ourselves. Hey, Laura, I noticed you ate seven cookies, right? It's okay to feel like you need a reward at the end of a hard day. It's not okay to eat cookies if we want to. And there's no shame or blame with there either. Like I'm saying that to myself, like if we want to hit the goal we want to hit, like it's probably not going to work out well for us. So like, what do we want to do next time? And that really will change behavior over time, but shame doesn't, it just, just doesn't work. Like if beating ourselves up, really hard worked to change behavior and to get us to where we wanted to get. Like we would be there by now. 

  Priyanka Venugopal: We would have lost the way. And I think that the trouble, at least with my audience, maybe my clients is it has worked in the workplace. It has worked in school like a lot. And I'm, I'm a generally optimistic kind of person, but I had a lot of, I didn't realize until post coaching, I have a lot of self critical thoughts and like push myself harder and it worked in school. And so I think what has happened for a lot of women is We have hardwired our brain to be self critical because it got you the A in school. It got you to get grad school. It got you to the next promotion. But what we're kind of talking about is we don't even actually know what would have happened if you hadn't done that. We've assumed I got the A because I was hard on myself. You don't know what you would have gotten had you not been hard on yourself. Had you been compassionate and patient and like curious, you don't actually even know. So I think that this is one of those things where it might've been rewarded, And also, if it would have worked with weight loss, it wouldn't have already worked. 

  Laura Conley: Yeah. Yeah. And that like, I feel like that's very full circle. Cause like, is the point of life, I know I get like so meta, but like seriously, like this is one precious life and is the point to get an A? Maybe it is for you. But what if the point is like to be present with our kids and our family? And for me, it's like, yeah. My weight actually was in the way because of all the thoughts. And so I think like, if we can really discover for ourselves what the point of life is and like why we are here, it really helps to take the pressure off and to loosen the grip. Cause the point is not to get an A, the point is to feel freaking fantastic in our bodies to weigh what we want so that we can go bike riding with our kids, or so we can go down the water slide with our kids, or so we can like, whatever, go ski with our best friend, whatever the thing is. 

  Priyanka Venugopal: And this is pun intended, but I, at least what I have seen when we do that, you can actually have your cake and eat it too. You end up getting more A's when you are doing what we're talking about, because every time you hit a plot twist, you don't throw in the towel. You don't go into disbelief and like, see what's behind it. The point of even trying if I'm probably going to fail anyway, like you just never have that. So you end up getting more of the A's of the gold stars. You end up just basically succeeding.

  Laura Conley: I think it's a win win. People think it's like a win lose. I'm like, no, this is a win win. This is why I wouldn't want to give anybody a magic pill because you learn the pro you, you learn how to enjoy the process, like in your whole life.

  Priyanka Venugopal: Absolutely. Absolutely. And to anyone that's listening to this and they're like, Oh, this sounds too good to be true. It's not because you have to work for it. You have to invest in yourself. You have to decide you're going to do the uncomfortable work of prioritizing yourself in a way you've not before. Put your time, your money, put yourself on your own calendar. Like maybe that's the part that people go, Oh, that's too good to be true. I'm like, Oh no. Oh, no, no, no. You have to actually put some effort and intention into it. But what we're talking about is like, how priceless is that I think for anyone that does that?

  Laura Conley: Yeah. That's so good. I love that so much. Oh, yeah. So good. 

  Priyanka Venugopal: Laura, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. How can people find you if they want to hear more from you? 

  Laura Conley: Well, I have a podcast as well, which Priyanka has been on a couple of times actually. And now I'm like, God, this episode was so good. I should totally air it on my podcast too. So now you're going to be on my podcast like three times. So my podcast is called the Yummy Mummy podcast with Laura Conley. The name is about to change. So just search my name. Is it really? Yeah. We're going to change it to. Oh, I know. I know. What's it going to be? It's going to be. I'll tell you because it is. It is. I just, well, cause maybe you'll, you search for it. So we're changing it in July. So either search for the yummy, the yummy mommy should still come up, but it's going to be called lose weight for the last time with Laura Conley and there's a tagline, but now I'm forgetting the tagline. It'll come in July. It'll come. Okay. Yeah. So you can find me there. You can find me at lauraconley.com. My name is L A U R A C O N L E Y and I'm on Instagram @lauraconleycoaching. That's pretty much it. The gist. 

  Priyanka Venugopal: I love it, Laura. And I, I really love bringing guest experts onto the podcast that either are experts in totally different areas. Like I've had people talk about time and productivity and different things, but even talking about weight loss and body, just from the voice of a different brain, like a different lens and a different experience. I just think it is such a fun. fun conversation. I'm giving everyone homework because you know, we are, we are, this is still the Unstoppable Mom Brain podcast. We are still, I want everyone to go glimmer hunting, go glimmer hunting. And if you do glimmer hunting today or this week, I want you to tag Laura and me on Instagram. So Laura Conley on Instagram and the Unstoppable Mombrain on Instagram and share with us, what are your glimmer hunting moments? Share them with us and we will celebrate you. In the DMs on Instagram, connect with us and tell us what you took away from today's episode. And I hope you guys have an amazing, amazing week. This was such a fun conversation. I adore Laura and I'm so grateful that she came onto this podcast. We had been thinking about for a while, how we could collaborate together and really share our different perspectives in how we talk about weight loss, how we talk about hitting goals, how to have more fun, how to really bring in my experience, science backed strategies to burn fat. That's so incredibly important to me so that you're not overworking in strategies that don't work. And I really loved Laura's perspectives on how to bring more fun to the process, because it is very easy to get into the land of heaviness to make it feel really hard and we want to help you break out of that. So I hope you enjoyed today's podcast episode. And make sure that you don't wait. If you are enjoying this podcast, if you are loving the stuff you hear on the Unstoppable Mom Brain podcast make sure you grab your access to my private podcast. It is six episodes, tiny, but mighty concepts that are necessary to burn stress and burn fat. It is called the body reset. You can get it over at theunstoppablemombrain.com/bodyreset. And I will email you with the secret private URL so you can get access to it. It is amazing and I want you to start it today. I hope you guys all have an amazing week and I will see you at the next one. Bye. Thanks for listening to the Unstoppable Mom Brain Podcast. It's been an honor spending this time with you and your brilliant brain. If you want more resources or information from the show, head on over to theunstoppablemombrain.com.