Episode #21: The 12 Phases of Weight Loss (Part 1)

Hey, I'm Dr. Priyanka Venugopal and you're listening to Weight Loss for Unstoppable Moms Episode 21: The 12 Phases of Weight Loss, part one.

I've been thinking about this topic for quite a while, and it's hefty enough that I've decided to split it up into two parts. We're talking about the 12 phases to lose weight permanently and today we're getting into the first seven phase. 

I'm sharing this concept really, because I was thinking about what it was that changed for me. How is it that I went from decades of struggling on the scale to finally losing over 60 pounds and then now maintaining it with joyful ease. I think it is exactly the concepts you're going to learn about in this week and next week's episode. 

Understanding that there are normal phases of weight and there is a tipping point that kept me looping back again and again. I'm about to break it all down for you here. Let's go. 

[00:01:00] 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 weight loss 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 in 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. 

I cannot wait to share this two part series, The 12 Phases to Weight Loss. I think that one of the very first things that I wanna share right off the bat is all phases, all of these 12 phases that we are about to get into this week and next week, they're all normal. I think one of the biggest thought errors that I find that I used to bump up against, and that I see some of my clients bumping up against is we have these thoughts like: 

[00:02:00] I should be further along, 

or I should have figured it out, 

or I can't believe I haven't yet. 

And what I realized, because this was me for a really long time, is that the reason that we ever think that we should be further than we are, is because we haven't identified with real specificity exactly phase of the process we're in. It feels sometimes like this jumbled mess with no beginning and no end and I wanna share that this episode and next week's episode is going to be the solution to that. 

To bring some order back. I touched on this topic a little bit in episode 18, where I described what it takes to create forever weight loss and I really described what it takes to live in the land of forever results. But even as I was creating that episode, I was already brainstorming this one because I realized that, of course there are actual strategies and steps to live in the land of forever weight loss, which I described in that episode, there [00:03:00] are actually also important phases that we go through just as humans as we grow, as we evolve, as we reach big goals that I think was also separately important to address. 

And that's what we're doing today. 

I will just start by saying that I think that you are getting the benefit of learning from my personal experiences. I would say that I initially stumbled through the first few phases and I anticipate many of you are stumbling through some of these first few phases that we're going to get into for a long, long, long time.

Until I discovered coaching. 

Now that I've gone through the stumbling and the struggling, and then the figuring it out, I can now put my journey into tangible phases that I think that you can benefit from. 

Because I think that knowing is everything. 

Identifying what phase you're actually in is invaluable, because then you can see it and really understand why you're [00:04:00] there and then most importantly, you can start to understand how to navigate to the next phase. 

I'll also just share that these 12 phases are also deeply inspired by my journey in becoming an entrepreneur. I have joked with some of my peers and some of my friends and some of my coaching colleagues that becoming an entrepreneur, which I have never been my whole life up until the past few years is actually really, really similar to losing weight permanently. 

I have really discovered that to be a successful entrepreneur, which maybe I'll do an episode on one day in the future.... I've had to infuse simplicity and joy into what I do to allow it to thrive. And that's what we're doing even in weight loss, right? 

One of my core principles is to reach your ideal weight requires an infusion of simplicity and joy. And for me, I know that my work over many, many [00:05:00] years is that I want to bring more magic to the universe. I want to bring more lightness for more women and I would say that the past few years it has been through the lens of really creativity and my Unstoppable process, but it was just a few years ago that I was incredibly new to entrepreneurship, which I'll just describe was a totally different playground than what I was used to.

I have my whole life been very used to linear or what I call a treadmill approach. Honestly, and if you're anything like me, because I anticipate many of you are, we are very used to having a clear, defined, linear road ahead. When you're used to following the path perfectly, you hit a milestone and then you're guaranteed to be making certain progress.

And you know this because you have a clearly defined linear path. The other thing with these linear paths, which for me was high school and college and medical school and residency, it was like one step [00:06:00] after the next, where the path was just previously paved.... thousands and thousands of people have gone through the linear path.

So I was able to look left and right, and in front of me and behind me and just see how everyone else was doing. And I could use them as a barometer to measure how I was doing. I mean, come on, this has literally at least 30 something years of my life, where I was on a linear and fairly rigid path, one rung after the next.

And you can imagine to my surprise, when I became an entrepreneur, I was in for a topsy turvy roller coaster... where the road was, anything but linear, there were no real rigid rules and no solid mile markers that I could use to decide and measure my success. I mean, I still remember there was a point a couple of years ago where I was driving home. I think it was probably like three or four in the morning after a delivery.... and if you're new to my podcast, I'm a [00:07:00] board certified OB GYN-- and so this is the time that I was going in, in the middle of the night and delivering my patients... and I remember I was driving home in the middle of the night and I was having this existential conversation with myself. 

And the conversation was something along the lines of really asking myself, 

what is it that I want my life to be and 

who do I want to become? 

And what do I wanna teach my children and why? 

And I was having all of these really big questions and I didn't exactly have the answers at this time. But I remember driving home in the middle of the night and I stumbled upon a podcast onto an episode just like this one that you're listening to right now.

And that podcast had a message that just normalized the non-linear path of entrepreneurship. And somehow that message just gave me this incredibly deep sense of relief. It's like, I could actually just take a breath and really relax my [00:08:00] body. I realized how important it was for me, it was like the universe knew it was a message I just needed to hear at that moment in time that I finally got to see, I was playing on a new playground.

I wasn't necessarily only on this linear, rigid path anymore. 

I was in the land of topsy turvy. 

If you are here listening to this podcast and following along the Unstoppable way, then let me tell you, when it comes to weight loss, you are also on a new playground. I mean, we're talking about losing weight with more simplicity and joy.

This is absolutely a new playground, especially if you are used to old diet brain, the counting and the calculating and the measuring and the weighing... old diet brain will not go far here. 

So really the intention of this episode is to share with you the 12 phases of weight loss to reach your ideal weight permanently, to just start to see them as normal, bring them into the [00:09:00] daylight with your eyes wide open so that you can honestly assess where you are.

See what phases you are teetering in, what phases are you lingering in and know why you're there. Also remembering that every single one of these phases that I'm about to describe to you are normal. I see all too often, when you find yourself teetering or circling in a few phases for a while, that your human brain, just because she's being normal and fairly brilliant is scanning for danger.

She thinks something's going wrong. 

Something is wrong with you. 

And that could not be further from the truth. What I want to share with you, if you are circling or teetering in a few phases for a while that nothing, nothing, nothing is going wrong. You're circling or teetering in a phase or in a few phases, just because you haven't yet learned how to move to the next phase. Yet. 

And that's all.... and so wherever you are in your weight loss journey, you're going to get [00:10:00] these 12 phases, so you can start to identify where you are. I want you to really allow yourself permission to note that it's normal, whether you have five pounds to lose or 50, you will find yourself in all of these phases.

I love to paint a visual, and so for your convenience, I have linked and created a PDF for you in the show notes page so you can see the visual that I want you to imagine in your mind's eye. 

The old way, or what I would call diet brain, or maybe the old way of thinking around weight loss has had you on a linear trajectory.

You maybe map out you wanna lose 50 pounds, You imagine losing one pound a week for 50 weeks. And so you'll lose 50 pounds in about a year. Instead of thinking about weight loss as a linear line that is rigid with mile markers, I want you to think about weight loss and the phases of weight loss as a cycle that swirls and the cycle that swirls is going to take you closer and closer to [00:11:00] your dream ideal weight. 

Okay, I'm going to start by listing the 12 phases and then in this episode, we are really going to dig into the first seven phases. And I would say that these are the first seven phases that we probably have found ourselves in time and time again, circling and teetering, and maybe living in this is like what I call Wobble Land.

And what we want to understand is how to get to the tipping point to help you move on to phase eight. And that's what we're going to be talking about next week. 

Phase one is the excitement and motivation phase. 

Phase two is the consumption phase. 

Phase three is planning.

Phase four is implementation with success.

Phase five is dwindling motivation.

Phase six is implementation with failure. 

Phase seven is the hide, quit, screw it. 

Phase eight is allowing yourself [00:12:00] to feel terrible. 

Phase nine is honest evaluation. 

Phase 10 is curating commitment. 

Phase 11 is Goldilocks planning and 

Phase 12 is committed implementation until mastery.

Most of us who have struggled to lose weight are experts at phases one through seven and remember that they're all normal. It's up to you really, how long you spend in each phase and how often you find yourself circling back. 

I'm going to get into each phase and then finally the tipping point that really makes all the difference.

It's fairly normal and common, which is why we are all here to get stuck in a specific phase and maybe even to live there for a while. What we are doing is we're bringing awareness to the different phases, and then we want to give you the tools to start unsticking yourself. 

Let's talk about phase one, [00:13:00] motivation and excitement.

This is that phase where you get the burst of motivation or excitement on Monday morning, or it's a brand new month, or it's your birthday or new year's day. Somehow the natural change of the date, the natural rotation of the earth and the natural orbit of the earth around the sun or the date on the calendar makes us feel like we're getting a fresh start or a blank slate. I think that somehow, maybe a night's sleep and the fresh start really does give us this natural burst of activation energy. I totally get it and I think it's completely normal. But what I would also say is that it's not a very useful type of fuel to use beyond the initial momentary start.

You can't really use Monday motivation very effectively when you're in the grind on a Wednesday night, after a long day at work, when the kids are grumbling and your partner is being annoying... monday, motivation is gone. 

Am I right? 

I tell my clients inside Unstoppable [00:14:00] that motivation is a poor quality fuel.

It's great for Monday morning for your birthday and for new year's day. But as you're going to see as we move down, the next few phases, motivation does eventually dwindle. It has a shelf life just like willpower. I think about phase one, the emotion of motivation, and even excitement as like starter wood for your fire.

It's the kindling, it's the activation energy. 

Maybe you feel that kindling of motivation when you hit a low and you're finally fed up and you want the kick in the butt to, yes, it's time-- let's go do this. 

Now, why is it that motivation dwindles? If we remember the think-feel-act cycle first, let's just remember where the feeling or the emotion of motivation comes from.

It's that feeling you have in your body that lights you up that really drives you to take the action of like taking some big action, doing something huge and making progress forward. But where does motivation actually come from and why is it that it dwindles?. [00:15:00] 

The emotional motivation comes from a thought you're having about yourself, about the calendar and about the work ahead.

So you can imagine on Monday morning or on your birthday or on New Year's Day, you have a lot of new thoughts, thoughts like:

This is it! This is gonna be the week. This is going to be the year! 

And when you think that thought this is going to be the week, or this is going to be the year finally reach my dream ideal weight-- you feel lit up with that burst of motivation, but what happens on February 11th at 5:00 PM on a Wednesday evening?

It's not there anymore because that thought is not as available to you. 

So in the middle of the week on a typical weekday, when you get home after a long day of work and you have a whole list of things to do, and your kids are grumbling and your partner's being annoying, what is it that makes motivation dwindle?

It's that the thought this is the year is just not available. And yet what we've been doing in our weight loss journey is we've been [00:16:00] leaning on motivation to fuel us-- and so just know if you're in this phase, it's because you've been leaning on kindling and activation energy and like starter fluid to fuel the consistent work of what weight loss requires.

And it's okay that you have, but just start to pay attention if this is where you are. 

This leads me to phase two: consumption. 

Now, listen, I am a consumption feed. I'm like actually like smiling ear to ear because I love thinking about all of the rabbit holes that I love to dive down. I get deeply passionate about things that I love and I am just the first one to say, I like to jump down the rabbit hole. 

Especially when it comes to women, our brains mindset, brain biology, like , I just love it.

And truly, I really do love going down rabbit holes because it's so fun. At some level consumption and research is useful. It makes a lot of sense that maybe we start there because it's a normal step, it's a normal [00:17:00] phase of really deciding what is our strategy going to be to go get the goal. 

While it's fun to jump down rabbit holes and gather data and consume and do research or Google searches on how to lose weight-- it can also become a serious form of procrastination and distraction. So I want you to think about phase two of consumption as being a phase of researching and Googling and consuming without constraint.

That's the key piece of consumption in phase two that it's happening without constraint. 

Now we do this for a few reasons. First, as I've already shared, it's super fun to learn and I would say if you're on here and you're a working mom, like me, we are a group of learners, especially when it's on a topic we actually love or want to learn about, it's fun to learn! 

The second reason is because we are perfectionists, like I talked about in episode 19. Now, even if you don't identify with the traditional sense of the word, we [00:18:00] often do want to know and choose the best, most right or perfect strategy because we want to avoid taking messy or imperfect action.

The third reason that we consume and research without constraint is because it is an avoidance tactic to avoid doing the real work. 

You know what I'm saying? I see you. It's like we wanna go down the rabbit hole, which is classic and brilliant as a strategy to avoid doing the actual real work. Now I wanted to share phase two is a normal phase of weight loss because remember consumption and research and choosing your best strategy is important.

There is some basic threshold of information that's super valuable in gathering. I want you to imagine that there is a line, a tipping point for you where your information gathering and making an informed decision turns into a procrastination technique. 

Let's move on to phase three, the planning.

Okay, I'm laughing at this one too, because [00:19:00] I would say phases two and three has where I've really lived for many, many years when, especially when it comes to weight loss. If you've been following me for a while, you know that I am a planner lover. 

I love all the apps and all the planners and all the color coded things.

If it's out there, I have likely tried it. And I would say similar to phase two, it is obviously something I've shared on here before is extremely useful. It's very, very useful to plan because our brains are a craving direction. 

So we use our starter fuel of motivation, we take all of the research and all the consumption we've done from phase two... and now we put it into a plan and just like phase two, there is a nuanced line from giving our brain clear, focused direction and instruction from our most brilliant brain to achieve goals-- to over planning, which is just planning without constraint. 

So both phase two and phase three, have a constraint component.

Now listen, really pause and whatever you're doing-- just come [00:20:00] back to me for a moment. The plan and the consumption of information is not what creates your weight loss results. 

Let me just say that again, your consumption of information and your plan never, ever creates your results.

It is always what you are thinking and feeling in creating and implementing your plan that's going to create your results. Because at the end of the day, your plan is really just a piece of paper. It only has meaning and significance, if we give it meaning and significance with what you think and feel about it. 

So if you hear yourself ever thinking, Ugh, I overate all weekend because I didn't plan well enough-- I want you to pause and ask yourself the more valuable question. 

Sure, a plan would've given your brain some direction, but more importantly, why didn't you create a plan worth honoring? 

Answering that why that is the real reason that you overate over the weekend. 

Now we give so much [00:21:00] agency and power away to phases one, two, and three. 

We think if I was more motivated, I would lose weight. 

If I had the best, most perfect strategy, then I would lose weight. 

If I had just planned better, then I would lose weight. 

And this is the mistruth that I help you see as your Coach. 

It is never, ever, ever the motivation, the strategy or the planning that is creating your weight loss. Ever. There are absolutely pieces of a larger puzzle, but it always, always, always comes back to you... and what you were thinking and feeling. 

What were you thinking and feeling that got in the way? 

What were you thinking that led you to feel unmotivated? 

What were you thinking that led you to be confused about strategy?

What were you thinking that held you back from planning clearly? 

Seriously, this is really where the rubber hits the road. Let me just pause. Is that an actual saying? Okay. [00:22:00] I have to go on a quick tangent... I had this thing with idioms where I will often say them all wrong. If you remember back some episodes ago, I was talking about a golden goose egg, but it was really an Easter egg that's one example.

But I remember I have to just share this and we're gonna come back to phase four. I remember I was describing a story to my husband about like a disagreement.... It was more like a fight that I had with a colleague and like in my heated explanation of the whole story I said to him, "and can you believe this? I even gave her a fig leaf and I totally went outta my way to make amends and she was still pissed." 

And he was like, "what are you talking about? What is a fig leaf have anything to do with it?" 

And so then I was like, "what do you mean? Like, I went out of my way to try to make amends and like, she's still pissed."

And he was like, "do you mean that you extended her an olive branch?" 

Guys, I don't know why just this came to me and I had to share the story with you because if you speak American English and know these phrases, then I hope it gave you a little bit of a [00:23:00] chuckle. 

Anyways, back to phases one, two, and three.

If you were ever believing your motivation, your strategy or your planning is the reason you aren't losing weight, then let's get you back on track-- right now to the real problem. 

It is always, always something you are thinking and feeling, and here's the crux of it because we honestly, haven't really learned how to do this, how to uncover and evaluate what we are thinking and feeling.

And this is exactly what I do with my amazing clients inside The Unstoppable Group. The thing is my clients come in motivated on day one. It's the fire, the fuel, the kindling that gets them into this group because they know that they're just so ready to finally reach their ideal weight. 

My clients learn a strategy on day one because they get access to the materials the moment they join, even before our first coaching call. The moment that you joined The [00:24:00] Unstoppable Group, you get access to the Unstoppable Library, which literally teaches you my exact formula and strategy for a success. 

My clients learn on day one, exactly how to plan. So you can imagine these phases-- phases one, two, and three happen together on day one, seriously.

And then what we do together is we implement and evaluate real life implementation and mastery of taking these first three phases and moving them into real life so that we can finally start living in phases four through twelve. And we do this with a lot more detail and focus on our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings that have held us back from really living in those later phases.

It's never the plan and it's never just the strategy, which is so good to know. 

And we are literally opening for enrollment the very first week of September. But if you want early access to claim your spot in this intimate [00:25:00] group, you can also have your day one be now. If you wanna get more information on this and join this early access list, you can go to my [email protected] /group and click the button that will get you right onto this list.

Okay, so let's keep going. 

We have now phase four implementation, honestly, think about phase four as this very first part of implementation when you're high on motivation and you've gathered all your information and you have your new planner with your color coded schedule as like the most fun part, because that initial burst those first three phases when you're in them for the very first time are fun.

And it's fun because you actually follow through on the plans and you start to see it work. 

Am I right? 

You follow your plan and you start to see the weight drop off and that initial success feels so good, but let's be honest. 

How often... let's be honest.... I'm just like, I know this because I have felt it and I have [00:26:00] literally coached my clients on this.

How often do you also feel a little nervous? 

Like, is this gonna last? 

Is that you??

Are you thinking you see the success in the scale, you're like implementing you're high on the motivation of the excitement and you have this little niggling thought in the background. 

What if it doesn't last? 

Seriously. My friend, I am seeing you because I have coached my clients on this for hundreds of hours. And I know because it is also what I have personally been through myself. Here's what I'll say about phase four. We lean on phase four, way too much. We lean on success on the scale way too much. What ends up happening is we implement initially, we see success in the scale, and then we start relying on the scale and the number to feel confident. 

But when you have that little niggling thought in the background of it might not last, or what if it doesn't last, I want to share with you relying on the number and feeling confident is not real deep in your bones [00:27:00] self-confidence. 

Because in the background, there is always a little worry coming along for the ride.

Like the number might get taken away. 

Now, the reason that this is coming up for you is because you haven't truly deep in your bones, owned how your brain created the result-- because of phases one, two, and three. 

You've been thinking, it's your motivation, creating your success or your strategy created your success, or your plan created your success.

You've abdicated ownership over the massive success that you're seeing when you implement and you see the scale go down. So the moment that your motivation wanes or you don't plan for the week, your results start to slip through your fingers. 

This is what I like to think about as fragile results. 

And it's why phase four can often be temporary.

You will see success, but it will feel fragile or slippery, or really just on the surface because you haven't really learned how to internalize and acknowledge how your [00:28:00] brain is creating it. 

And again, remember this phase is completely normal and it's because we've been programmed to believe this, to think that the, a plus and the gold stars and the results are where we get to have confidence.

Right? 

But again, this is where the rubber hits the road, because very soon you're going to be entering phases five, six, and seven. So phase four is normal to see success on the scale and start to feel a surge of confidence. But what we want to just pay attention to is whether you're abdicating your success to your motivation, your strategy, or your planning. 

Because let me tell you, when you get to phases five, six, and seven, this is going to matter.

Being in these first four phases of motivation and consumption and planning and implementation with success-- these first four phases can last for a variable amount of time. I would say that anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, and at some [00:29:00] point, inevitably, you are going to get to phases, five, six, and seven.

Phase five dwindling motivation. 

I've already touched on this a little bit in phase one, but what I want to highlight for phase five is that it's very normal for your motivation to dwindle because not every day and not most days of the year are Monday morning or your birthday or New Year's Day. 

It makes a lot of sense that it's not believable for your brain to think:

"this is the week, this is the year!" 

Motivation is just kindling and so what we haven't done most of us is we haven't learned what to do when motivation dwindles... and it is also a completely normal phase to be in. 

Because up until now, you've believed that you needed motivation to lose weight. 

And what we're uncovering here together is that dwindling motivation is just a normal phase of weight loss, and this is really one of the things that I love to teach my clients how to do when it comes to planning for their weeks. [00:30:00] 

I'd like to think about plans as more than just food protocols and what you're planning to eat. I really take my clients and show them how to plan for dwindling motivation. 

How do you plan to implement strategically and eventually with mastery when you're not feeling motivated? And I offer this and really share this on here, because phase five is real. 

I'm telling you on that Wednesday evening, after a long day of work, when your kids and your partner are just driving you nuts, you're going to have dwindling motivation.

And so what we have to learn how to cultivate and really grow for ourselves is a deeper, better quality fuel that really drives us to take action anyways. Now there will come a time at some point or another that you will implement or maybe not implement and have a fall or fail. 

This is phase six. 

Now, if you've been in phase four [00:31:00] where you've been relying and leaning on the results to see the scale, go down to feel confident-- phase six is going to feel terrible. 

And you might have many, many, many reflexive thoughts like: 

I'm doing it all wrong or 

I've lost my motivation or 

I've lost momentum, or 

I'm going backwards, 

I've fallen off the wagon. 

I mean, some flavor of this-- and this is the phase that is going to be the tipping point.

I share this because I think we are under this really false belief because we have been programmed to think that progress and results happen or should happen linearly, just because of how we've been programmed, we think that weight loss should be linear. 

Now there's some part of me that was like, yeah, sure-- okay, there's some ups and downs, but like overall it should really be linear. Right? 

I think that this is not just you, this is me too. 

And what happens when we deeply believe that weight loss should have some like [00:32:00] linear trajectory is we aren't able to have a fall or fail and learn from it.

Usually what happens when we have an implementation or a fall or fail in phase six is we go to phase seven: we hide, we quit, or we think, screw it. 

This is the one phase that I really want to bring your attention to-- because it is this phase, the more time that you spend in phase seven of hiding quitting or thinking, screw it... the longer time you spend here is actually directly correlated with the results you're going to see on the scale. 

Let me just say that again, the amount of time that you spend in phase seven is directly correlated with the results you're going to see on the scale.

And so part of my intention with this episode this week, and the episode you're going to be hearing next week is to shorten the amount of time that you spend [00:33:00] in phase seven.

Now remember phase seven is normal. 

It's normal to like step on the scale after maybe overeating over the weekend and to see the number go up and have some feelings about that. 

To maybe physically feel terrible... to maybe mentally or emotionally feel disappointed. 

And what I want to share with you here is that there is a way to be with yourself when you experience a fall or a fail like you will because you're human, there's a way to catch yourself in that moment and then not linger in the act of quitting or screwing your goals. 

When I really reflect back on the last many, many years of wanting to reach my ideal weight and the struggle, literally the times that I felt the most struggle was while I was living in phase seven.

I didn't like the number on the scale, or I didn't [00:34:00] like the way that I was making decision.... and I made it mean that there was something wrong with me, with the process, with weight loss. 

And while I lingered in phase seven, while I teetered here and cycled back here and circled here longer and longer, that was when my personal creep up happened-- like month after month. 

It was when, like a couple of pounds became 10 and then the 10 became 20. 

This is how the creep up happens, it's just living in phase seven longer. 

And again, when I zoom out and really reflect on this, I would say that these first seven phases that we have gone through is probably something that we are all very, very familiar with.

We are very familiar with that brand new excitement and motivation that you feel on New Year's Day or Monday morning. 

We're very familiar with researching on the internet and Googling and gathering information, learning about something brand new. 

We are all [00:35:00] so used to getting the new planner or downloading that new app and color coding your week.

We are all so used to implementing for a few days or for a few weeks and seeing the number on the scale go down. 

We are all so incredibly used to feeling our motivation dwindle, because we are working hard and motivation is not always available in the middle of the work week at the end of the day. And if we've been relying on it, it makes so much sense that we stop showing up.

And of course we are all, all too familiar with phases six and seven-- where we have had a fall or fail we've overeaten on the weekend, we've gone past satiety, we've started to just ignore what our bodies are telling us. We're eating foods that we know feel terrible in our bodies. 

We've all done this. 

And then of course what we do, because we don't know how to pivot out and really shorten this phase, we live in phase seven... until the next new year's rolls [00:36:00] around or the next birthday or the next Monday and we feel that light of motivation again.

I really wanted to set the stage for where we are all very familiar with living if you have been struggling to lose weight or to maintain it with ease. 

These seven phases are normal.

And what I want you to do just for now is just start to identify what phase do you teeter in? 

What phase do you cycle in longer and longer? 

And just start to become aware of what your patterns are that keep you there. 

Next week, we are going to be talking about the rest of the phases. 

We're going to talk about phase eight, allowing yourself to feel terrible without judging yourself. Phase nine, honest evaluation, phase 10 is going to be talking about curating commitment. Phase 11 is gold deluxe planning and phase 12 is committed, implementation until mastery. 

[00:37:00] I really think when you bring in this episode and next week's episode, it will just start to help you be so much more aware of why weight loss takes as long as it does.

I think that this is one of those things when you imagine that linear path, that linear road, and you're looking at the thousands and thousands of people that are traveling this journey and you look left and right, you assume that your journey should be similar to the other people around you. 

And this is just not true.

It takes some people a very short amount of time to lose a lot of weight and it takes some people a lot of time to lose a lot of weight. And what I wanna share here is that you are a unique human who has a unique set of thoughts and beliefs and feelings, and it's those thoughts, beliefs, and feelings that are keeping you in a specific phase.

So for now, just get familiar which phase you're in. 

And then next week, when you come back, we are going to talk about really how to shorten being in phase seven [00:38:00] and then moving on to where the magic is actually happening. 

The next Unstoppable Group is opening for enrollment on September 5th. 

Spots are limited as my intention in creating this intimate coaching experience is to have all of us see each other on one zoom screen. This room is for ambitious working moms who are committed to this work and finally, ready to grow past phase seven. 

The group is going to be starting with an orientation coaching call on September 18th, and then we coach together for six months. I've created this coaching experience that leaves no stone unturned. Every obstacle has been thought of. 

The moment that you join this group, you get immediate access to The Unstoppable Library, which houses the video modules to teach you my simple and proven formula on day one. 

Yes, you get to start losing weight just by getting access to this group early and even before our very first coaching call. We are going to meet live on [00:39:00] zoom every single week, where you're going to get your brilliant mom brain coached and even more amazing is you get to learn from the coaching of other women, just like you. 

I've also created a beautiful written coaching cafe. It's a private space for our amazing group to connect where you're going to get unlimited written coaching.

And this is one of the spaces that we get to share our daily and weekly work that customizes this process to your life. 

Seriously, this group is the room to put yourself in if you want to reach your ideal weight and get to the land of forever result with more simplicity and more joy. 

And here's what is so amazing, you'll get to get early access to this group before September 5th, by going to theunstoppablemombrain.com/access.

I hope to see you there and I hope that you get to claim your spot. 

I cannot wait to see you love you guys so much. Have an amazing week. Bye! 

[00:40:00] Thanks for listening to Weight Loss for Unstoppable Moms. It's been an honor spending this time with you and your brilliant brain. If you want more information or resources from the show, visit theunstoppablemombrain.com.