Episode #56: Losing Weight on a Family Trip

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Summary

Summer is coming up, so I’m sure you’re currently thinking about and planning family trips. How do you lose or maintain your weight, no matter where you’re traveling in the world? High-achievers like us want solid plans, but aside from the plan, it takes a solid mindset to maintain and lose weight with ease on a family trip.

I recently traveled to India with my husband and my two kids. We were there for two-and-a-half weeks, which is no small feat. It was a long trip, so I’m taking this episode to reflect upon what I was thinking and feeling that resulted in me losing one pound on this trip, which wasn’t even a specific goal I had going into it.

Tune in this week to discover the mindset that is required for high-achievers to lose and maintain their weight on a family trip, even when they’re surrounded by an abundance of food. I’m sharing why food was never supposed to have the job of bringing us comfort and relaxation, and how to develop the mindset that allows you to create comfort and satisfaction without looking to food as the solution. 

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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Why food and food culture is a big part of any trip, anywhere in the world.
• How to understand what you really want when you overconsume food while you’re on vacation.
• Why, especially on vacation, we can go into overdrive around food.
• How societies all around the world overemphasize the role food plays in our ability to feel calm, comfortable, connected, and satisfied.
• The impact of trying to use food to create satisfaction, comfort, and relaxation when you’re on a family trip.
• How to catch the thoughts that are causing you to lose control of your eating.
• What you can do to rewire your brain and take back control of your eating, wherever you are in the world.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Featured on the Show:

• Want to work with me? Let's talk on a consult call: click here to book your call
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• Episode #13: The Vacation Weight Gain
• Episode #41: Habits and the Motivational Triad
• Episode #50: The Scale and Gathering Data

Full Episode Transcript:

Click here to download the full transcript

• Hey, this is Dr. Priyanka Venugopal, and you're listening to The Unstoppable Mom Brain Podcast, Episode 56, Losing Weight on a Family Trip. 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.

  So this episode, today's episode is going to be a short and sweet episode. While I am reflecting on my recent trip to India that I went on with my family. So my family with my husband, my two kids who are seven and four, we were traveling abroad. We went to India for about two and a half weeks, which is no small feat.

  It was a fairly long trip and I wanted to share with you, while it is fresh in my mind, we just got back last week. Really what I was thinking and feeling to lose a pound, which was not my goal on this trip, but to lose a pound on this trip. And it really made me think about all of you that are going to be going on vacations this summer that are thinking and planning about family trips coming up, how to lose or maintain your weight no matter where you are traveling in the world.

  I think that sometimes high achievers are so used to wanting really solid plans, which is an important piece of what we're going to talk about today. But more than having a solid plan is really the mindset for what it takes to actually maintain and lose with ease. And I think that really reflecting on this trip is going to be a fun exercise for me to kind of reflect on what I did to create this result. And I want you all to try to.

  So I also want you to know to make sure that you listen all the way through until the end of today's episode, because I'm going to be sharing with you some free trainings that I have coming up. I'm going to tell you exactly how to get to them. And also I'm going to be announcing the winner of the podcast giveaway.

  The one year anniversary was just last week, and I thank all of you for participating, for leaving a rating and review of this podcast is incredibly meaningful to me that you participated, and I'm announcing the winner. And the winner will have an email in their inbox. So make sure you listen to the end of the episode to make sure you know who that is.

  So I wanna tell you that we're going to get into a lot of things today and really the biggest piece, more than a specific plan or strategy, today's episode is going to be highlighting the mindset that is required for high achievers to loosen, maintain their weight on any trip that they're ever on. So I just came back from this trip two and a half weeks, and I wanna tell you that the last time that I have been to India was maybe 11, 11 or 12 years ago.

  So it's been a really, really, really long time since I have been back. And what that also means is it was the very first time that I took my kids. They're only seven and four, so it's the very first time that they have ever been to India to visit and meet family, to, you know, really experience the culture and the country.

  And I wanna tell you that it was a really important trip for all of those reasons. You know, to make our trip as smooth as possible because we were staying in different cities, we were going to different locations. We were meeting family in different parts of India. We made the decision to stay at hotels mostly to allow us to see as much family as possible with ease, because there's so much traffic, there's long distances between families that we were going to meet.

  So we decided to stay at hotels that were located in places where we could get to see as many people as possible. Now, let me tell you, this was a brand new experience for me because growing up as a child, I used to go to India fairly often with my parents, and we always stayed with family. So I was never really exposed to what I'm gonna call, kind of moving forward, the luxury experience that is available in India.

  I didn't even know it was possible, but it was some beautiful, amazing luxury experiences where we were staying and it was brand new to me, which was incredibly fun as an adult to experience. But I wanna tell you why this really played a significant role and why this matters, because this episode today is really to talk to you about the food, food culture, and how to experience a lightness and feeling really good in your body no matter where you are in the world.

  One of the biggest things that I realized very quickly on this trip was we are going to be visiting family. We're going to be staying at these beautiful resorts, and one of the biggest things that comes with is food. And food culture is not just unique to the United States, but food culture, and what I mean by food, food culture is this emphasis that we place on food and our desire to eat and have pleasure through food and comfort and relaxation is really coming because we overemphasize food's role in that.

  So let me just say that again. Our culture, both in the United States and abroad, cultures all around the world, and really how our society thinks about food over emphasizes the role that food plays in us feeling calm, comfort, secure, satisfied, relaxed. And what happens when this happens again, this is cultures all around the world, is that there is a strong emphasis on food to feel good.

  We decide that, you know, it's through eating shared meals or through specifically trying new items, new foods, new delicacies, that this is where our feeling of connection and joy and feeling of satisfaction is going to come from. This is where so many of us think that this is how I get to take care of myself is by eating these foods, by relaxing through food, by connecting through food. And so it's no wonder that we go on these trips, we go on these vacations. And when you don't have your typical workday, your typical task list in the way that that strong emphasis on food drives you to go overboard. Right. How many of you are familiar with this?

  Because we have this over-emphasis on food being where we get that feeling of being taken care of and comfort when work is not in the way we go into overdrive. And what I want you to know first and foremost is that it's not your fault that this is happening. This is just simply because we've been trained from a very young age, again, cultures all around the world and families all around the world, we place a really strong over-emphasis on food.

  And what I want you to know and what I want us to really start today's episode and the very first step in really understanding this is we want to very first just understand what is it that we are really wanting. I want all of you to think about when you go on a family trip, when you're going to go on that next vacation, when you're going to go to Disneyland, or you're going to travel to Europe, or you're going to go to Asia, you're going to Florida.

  When you're going to the next family trip or vacation, what is it that you're actually wanting? I would say for the most part, most of us want to feel good. We want to feel relaxed. We wanna break from our real life, right? We want to feel satisfied and taken care of, and we wanna feel some pleasure. And what that is really going to show us is that is actually what we are wanting.

  It's not actually the food. Even though that seems often, like that's where a lot of our emphasis has come from, what we are really wanting is we are wanting an emotional experience. We're wanting to feel good, relaxed, satisfied, comfortable, taken care of. Now, I wanna tell you how I created this for myself on this two and a half week trip to India where I was with my kids.

  I mean, I love them, but I mean, being with them 24/7 can sometimes be a lot. So I wanna tell you how I created a feeling of satisfaction and comfort despite being with them 24/7 and even in the midst of being in these luxury experiences, these five star hotels, and surrounded by food all the time. I'm going to tell you how I created it and I wanna teach you how to do it too.

  But before we get to that, I want you to take honest and solid inventory. First, I want you to really think about the impact and then really answer. You can actually even pause today's episode and actually answer this question. What is the real impact of keeping your strong emphasis on food to create your satisfaction and comfort.

  If you really pause and sat with that and asked yourself that question, what would your answer be? I would say, for most of us, and this is because I have also been on this journey with you this whole entire time, most of us want to feel good in the moment. So for most of us, when I use food, when I'm relying on food and emphasizing food, I do feel good in the moment when I'm enjoying that amazing food.

  The snack or the meal, whatever it is, is awesome for the 10 minutes that it lasts. But then afterwards you feel that ugh, in your body. Anytime you eat past comfort, when your body's not hungry, your body naturally gets that place of, ugh. It doesn't feel good. The scale is up the next day, your pants feel tighter, they feel more snug.

  Maybe you feel more bloated. And worse yet, in addition to physically just feeling discomfort in your body, having less energy, more fatigue, you think, Ugh, I'm undoing all my hard work. Right? You find yourself undoing your belief and your trust in yourself after having worked so hard right before you went onto this trip.

  So really the question that I'm asking you is, is overeating on trips and vacations ever really worth it? I would say that the resounding answer is no. Now simply put, I wanna make a compelling case for you. Before I get into the compelling case. I want to first really just define, and I have done this on the podcast before, but if you're new, I wanna define how I talk about overeating.

  I think about overeating very simply as eating food when your body is not hungry. Eating past the point of your personal comfort. So we're not using the portion sizes, we're not weighing food, we're not talking about calorie counts and macros and points to define how much quantity of food you should be eating on a daily basis.

  I think that one of the biggest problems we have is high achievers are running their life with calculators, and I want to help you throw away the calculators to lose weight with more ease. So I wanna really have you think about overeating from now moving forward is simply you eating when your body's not hungry.

  Eating past the point of your personal comfort and honestly speaking, if you took inventory honest inventory like I asked you to just take, I would say for the most part, 99% of the time, it is almost never worth it. But I also want you to know that on this podcast and what I'm sharing with you is I want you to learn how to have your cake and eat it too, for lack of a better phrase.

  I want you to know that you can have a Goldilocks strategy when you're going on trips, going on vacations where you can create comfort and relaxation and pleasure. And also at the same time, not sabotage your weight loss goals. It's possible to have both at the same time, and the intention of this episode is to help plant a seed to help you start doing this.

  I also wanna say before I get ahead of myself on this episode, that I have two other episodes that I think will marry really well with what we're talking about today. I have done an episode in the past on. Losing Weight on Vacation or Maintaining your Weight on Vacation. That's episode number 13, so make sure you go back and listen to that one.

  And also data gathering episode number 50 where I talk about the scale and bringing neutrality to numbers and the scale, I think is also an important piece of what we're talking about today. Okay, so now moving forward, I want you to really think about what it might be like. Let's just go to the land of make believe, or we're just imagining for a second what it might be like for you to feel satisfied and taken care of and relaxed.

  Without overeating, really plant that seed in your mind that it's possible to feel satisfied, taken care of, relaxed without overeating. Without undoing your goals. Without undoing the hard work that you have been doing before your trip. What would it be like to feel satisfied, relaxed, and taking care of without overeating?

  I'm gonna tell you that the very first thing we've already done, which is we've become aware that our over-emphasis on food is going to be a barrier to this. Using food to create your satisfaction, your relaxation and comfort is going to be a barrier to this because all humans on their trips and on their vacations, just want to feel satisfied, relaxed, and comforted.

  So now we know that we have been, up until this point, giving food a job it was never meant to have. Let me just say that again. Up until this point, if you have been going on trips, going on vacations and gaining weight, it is simply because we have been giving food a job that it was never meant to have. And so now we get to just ask ourselves, the very first thing we're seeing with eyes clear, wide open is giving the food the job of comforting you or giving it satisfaction, giving it that job will naturally drive you to overeat it.

  So what we wanna know is that that's been a natural baseline, particularly if you have been really surrounded by food culture, which most of us have from a really young age. It's normal that this is you. You're not alone and it's socially acceptable, right? So because we have been raised in a society that really emphasizes food, that drives this message a lot, and also it's socially acceptable to overeat literally in any and every facet of your life.

  It's not surprising that we are living with this conundrum right now. So now we know that when we go on these vacations or trips, we want to ask ourselves and really answer what it is that we're actually wanting. What we're actually wanting is to feel satisfied and relaxed, right? So if it wasn't food's job, So now we're starting to take the rollback, right?

  It's like up until now we've given food this job to help us feel satisfied and relaxed to relieve our boredom, right? We've been giving food a job that it was never meant to have. So I want you to imagine if you're watching me on video, you can see me with my hand gestures, but I was just taking the job back, okay?

  I want you to imagine we've been giving food this job, it was never meant to happen, and we're taking it back and we're like, okay, if it wasn't food's job for me to create satisfied, comfort, relaxed on my trips, how might I get there. How might we get there together? So let me get back into my story. So we are in Delhi.

  We're staying at some of the most beautiful hotels that I have ever stayed at in my adult life, and they have the most intense, I mean, crazy intense breakfasts. Like nothing that I've ever really seen in the past, ever really compared to this. They had every cuisine imaginable from around the world. Like, so it wasn't just Indian food, they had food from around the world.

  They had every dessert available. I mean, it's breakfast time, and they had every dessert available. They had freshly made breads, freshly made Naans and Puris, and Dosa, which is Indian food. They also had gourmet chefs standing behind like waffle stations and pancake stations and like they had somebody making these beautiful poached eggs. If you know me, you know I love a good poached egg. I mean, you name it, they had it. It was that type of a breakfast experience. It was just, I mean, amazing to see freshly squeezed juices, coffees, and smoothies. Like again, I could go on and on on what was available, like the better question is what was not available.

  I don't even know. It was, everything was available at this breakfast buffet. And they literally had chefs lined up. Gourmet chefs lined up, making this food fresh for you. Now, if I'm not making a compelling case, this was special, right? So again, I'm sharing with you, this is the first time I'm going back to India, after 11 years.

  I'm not even sure when I'm going to be going back again. And staying at these luxury beautiful hotels was a rare experience for me. It was very, very special. And I wanna tell you, this is what most of us do. I know it cuz I have done this too in the past. I'm very familiar with this, but this is what most people will do.

  They will start thinking through the lens that food is supposed to be providing my satisfaction, my comfort, my pleasure, right? That's the lens with which we're going into this experience and we start thinking these types of thoughts. When am I ever gonna get this again? This is a rare opportunity I should fill up on this while I can.

  I've paid for it, so I don't want to waste it. If I don't eat this, it's wasting money. It's such a waste if I don't eat this. Eat up now or you're going to be hungry later. Might as well get it while you can. So you can hear these are just a few of the common thoughts and probably there's many more that fit into this type of category where we think like this about rare and special foods that are sitting in front of us, especially when you're on a trip or a vacation.

  Now, no matter how rare or special a food is, and might, I dare say this is going to happen about a hundred percent of the time, you will almost always overeat the food when you're thinking in this way. So let me kind of explain what I mean by this. When you're thinking, when am I ever gonna get this again?

  I might not get it again. This is a rare opportunity. Let me fill up on it while I can. If you really check in with yourself and what emotion you're feeling in your body, when you think this way, you're likely feeling some flavor of lack, scarcity, maybe like needy or desperate. And your brilliant brain in her effort to solve this emotional experience for you will drive you to over consume the food in front of you.

  Like you're actually going to just start over consuming the food simply to solve the feeling. What I want you to know is that this is why a lot of what I emphasize on this podcast and what I'm even sharing on this episode is that no paper plan is going to solve this for you. No paper plan can solve this.

  What we really want to uncover is the thoughts you're having about the food in front of you that's creating that lack, that scarcity, that desperation to begin with. Because once we can uncover what that thought is, we can start to actually create solves for it. I wanna tell you what my solve is. It's actually very, very simple.

  I really decided this was now a few years ago, and I'm inviting all of you to join me on this ride to stop relying on food to create your satisfaction and comfort. Let me say that again. My solve for this is always very simple. I want to help you see that when we stop relying on food to create satisfaction and comfort, you will stop over consuming it.

  You'll stop overeating it, which means now all of a sudden weight loss becomes so much simpler. Now I want you to know that there's going to be lots of things that come up for you that really might get in the way. Like this example, I'm at this gourmet restaurant, this beautiful five star restaurant, a five star buffet at this hotel, and it's rare that I'm in Delhi.

  It's been, uh, over a decade. It is incredibly rare. So we don't want to argue with the fact that it is special, and maybe it is rare, right? I'm not trying to argue with myself or talk myself out of it. Instead, I wanna tell you how I respond to myself in those moments, and that is the key of what we're doing in this episode.

  What I want to have you start doing is instead of reacting to the thoughts you have, like your most primitive, reflexive thoughts, remember the episode we talked about in the motivational triad is to seek pleasure and avoid discomfort. When you have a primitive thought, like, I better get it while I can, your most reflexive ways of thinking about food.

  Which are just decades old. We can stop reacting to those thoughts. We can stop giving those thoughts power simply by responding. And so the way that I've responded to these thoughts, because I had them too when I was watching this buffet happening, is yes, it's rare and it's not that rare that I won't ever get it again.

  Right. So like I wanna just be serious, and I know I'm making a joke of this, but it's also kind of true that yes, the gourmet food and the chefs and the whole experience was just kind of out of this world. But at the end of the day, waffles, pancakes, cakes, cookies, and delicious eggs are not that uncommon.

  I mean, we will eat deliciously again. I think that this is something that happens so commonly because we are so used to using food as our gateway to feel comfort and pleasure and relaxation and satisfaction that we forget that actually there's nothing, all that special about food, even if it's rare, even if you're visiting someplace once in a decade, if you really break it.

  What the food in front of you actually is, even if it's a special gourmet chef cooking you an amazing meal, is it really so special that you would be willing to overeat and undo the hard work, the goals, and all of what you've been wanting to experience for your body? Is it really worth that? And I would say most of us, 99% of the time, the answer is actually no.

  So I want you to just really take a moment to see that, to sit with that. That is not all riding on this one breakfast. It's not all riding on this one meal, on this one trip. All of your satisfaction and pleasure is not riding on this food in front of you, and we have to really see the truth of that.

  That's why I'm starting with this piece of really how to really lose weight or maintain on trips and vacations is we have to see the truth of that. If you've ever had thoughts, Special foods and special events, I see this really coming up around the holidays, especially around the holidays where families make special cookies or special traditional meals.

  Don't ever tell yourself that this is so rare that I'm never going to get it. Just like really check in right when you think this is so rare, I'm never going to get it. Let me eat it all up right now while I can. How do you feel? It feels fairly terrible. Like it might sound super true in your mind because you're so used to thinking this way, but it is going to create lack and scarcity and that desperate feeling in your body, which will almost always drive you to overeat.

  And worse yet, it's not even true. I want you to start taking a small pivot and telling yourself something that is more true, which is, it may be rare, and also I'm totally okay. It may be rare, but it's not that rare, right? Like I want you to really start telling yourself things that are more true then what your primitive brain offers you on her first go, right?

  So the very first thought you might have, this is a thought that I still have even at my already ideal weight is ooh, better get it while I can. It's such a rare event. Okay, and how do we want to respond to that? Is it tell ourselves something that's more true? Yeah, it's rare, but it's not that rare. The waffles are not that rare.

  Yeah, it's rare. And also, I'm totally okay. I'm totally okay without this. I'm totally taken care of. You know, I think that all of these kinds of thoughts that I'm offering to all of you, the way that we respond to our most reflexive thoughts that we have is where we get control back. The one theme that I see time and time again for high-achieving working moms, what high achieving working moms really want in addition to losing weight, is they want to feel in control.

  Right. Does that sound like you? Like you want to just feel in control again, and I want you to know that no planner, no spreadsheet, and no app is going to create that control for you. It will sit there beautiful on your desk, collecting dust until you create control in your mind. And that is really what the purpose of this episode is all about, is for you to know when you first start catching those thoughts that you're having about food in front of you. The most reflexive thoughts that are perfectly normal, they're like practiced for years and years and years, and instead of reacting to them, you start catching them and responding. You will get control back. This is how you rewire your brain.

  This is how you start creating new habits. You have to catch them. Catch them gently. Don't judge them. Don't judge your desire for the waffle and the pancakes and the eggs, and like, you know, the naans and the breads. Like don't judge it, just catch it and respond to it. Yeah, it might be rare. It's okay. I'm totally taken care of and I want you to know that what I did on this trip, so like going back to the story, I would see these gourmet chefs, I'm walking around smelling these amazing foods and let me just add like a little bit of extra like spice to the story is my husband.

  I'm gonna share, uh, picture this on Instagram, when on Instagram stories. If you're not following me. Head over to Instagram, @theunstoppablemombrain. I'm gonna share a picture in Instagram, stories of my husband and how he was eating at these gourmet breakfast. He had like multiple plates in front of him.

  He had a coffee, he had a fresh juice. He had  the fruit, the bread, like he would try multiple cuisines. That's just how my husband would eat. So I would be walking around watching my husband eat. My kids are piling on the waffles and the pancakes, and I wanna tell you, I had just one, just one agreement with myself.

  I only ever eat when I'm actually hungry. Now I wanna tell you, because of the jet lag and the random timing of the day, you know, kind of recovering from our trip and where we were staying, and the biggest thing was the time of the day. I would say I was only actually hungry during these gourmet breakfast brunches maybe about 10% of the time, 10% of the time, which means 90% of the time. Most days I just had coffee during this Epic five star hotel experience.

  Now I can hear so many of you, and I know this because I have been in your shoes before. I have experiences before where I have had a whole set of thoughts. Number one is, seriously, you stayed at a five star hotel and you didn't even like have their food. Like what a waste.

  How many of you're thinking that? Listen, be honest. I know. Cause I have thought that. It's totally possible if you emphasize the food as a part of your luxury experience, it absolutely might feel like a waste. I just don't do that. I don't emphasize the food for my experience, and so for me, it did not feel like a waste at all because I got to still enjoy the experience of being in this hotel.

  I still got to enjoy the food at the hotel. I just didn't enjoy it when I was not hungry. The second thing, and I think this is a more common one, is I wish I could do that too. If you're thinking that, I want you to really keep listening to this episode. I want you to take in every single thing I'm saying, because I want you to know that this is not just for me.

  This is for anyone that decides to change their mindset around food and really decides to create satisfaction and comfort without relying on food to do it for you. So I wanna tell you how I did this in the moment. This is the point that I wanna emphasize. I said this already once the episode, but I wanted to say it one more time.

  No paper and pencil plan will do this for you. No, like spreadsheet, no app can do this for you. It is 100%. The piece of what I'm talking about today is 100% mindset. 100% mindset to help you navigate any and every trip anywhere in the world with ease. You have to feel good about yourself. You have to feel good in your body, and you have to best yet remember how deeply grateful you'll feel to yourself at the end of your trip.

  So let me just go into, I'm walking around the buffet smelling of delicious food, watching my husband and my kids eat their food, and I would just ask myself one question and tell myself one thought. The question I would ask myself is, am I actually hungry right now? Am I actually hungry right now? And in that moment I would just check in with my gut and actually do a quick check.

  30 seconds. Am I actually hungry right now? And if I was honest, about 90% of the time the answer was no. Now I wanna tell you that I have to follow this up with what I would tell myself in that moment because this is that moment, right? If I'm like, seriously, I'm not even hungry right now. This is my like rare unique experience.

  Like I wanna just get it while I can. This is where our primitive brain will come up with all of her thoughts, right? And so I had to have a thought that I could respond to myself with that would help me navigate this with ease. The thought that I had was, I'm totally okay right now. I'm really taken care of, and when I get hungry later, don't worry, we're going to eat deliciously.

  Let me tell you, this sounds like such a simple. But to really remind your most primitive brain, the part of you that's like, Hey, I wanna have fun too. I wanna like have the delicious food too. We have to remind her. We have to respond to her like, I hear you. Don't worry. We are okay right now, and I promise when we're hungry, we're going to eat deliciously.

  Don't worry, you're taken care of. I wanna tell you what this practice has done for me, what this does for my clients, what this can do for you when you start responding to your primitive brain in this way, when you respond to your over desire, that urgency in this way. You start to take the intense charge out of the desperate feeling, you take the intense charge out of the urge out of that over desire.

  And what this does and why this is even possible is because at the very start, I have untethered food from me feeling comfort. Let me just say that again. For me to really go through this process, for me to really respond to myself in this way, for me to believe it, I've had to really untether from food to feel satisfied and comfort.

  The way that you think about food and your comfort is going to drive how tethered you are to it. So I want you to really think about when you remind yourself you're actually okay. You have nothing to worry about, you'll eat when you're hungry. Don't worry you're gonna eat so well. How do you feel? If you really think about that, how do you feel?

  For me, honestly, I feel relieved. I feel relaxed, calm, I feel secure, satisfied, and honestly, I even feel like importantly, taken care of. I feel significant, like I'm actually paying attention to myself in a real way. And the best news is I've created this experience for myself without eating. It has nothing to do with food.

  And so I wanna share a small caveat that this is what was driving me on this trip. This is when I would go to the Gourmet Five Star Hotel. This is when I would go to my family members' house for lunch and for dinner. If I wasn't hungry, I wouldn't eat, or I would if I was not very hungry, if I was just a little hungry, I would just eat a small amount.

  And I'm gonna give you the caveat that every once in a while, my husband would be having some like amazing gourmet creation. And if I really wanted [ to, I did on occasion have a bite of it. It's not a problem. My past self from a few years ago would not have believed that this was possible because there's no such thing as one small bite.

  Like there's just no thing like that. That doesn't even make sense. But what I want you to know that. Those were the years, the years that I couldn't have just one bite of something, were the years that I was relying on food. I had given food a job that it was never meant to have. I had given food, the job of creating satisfaction, comfort, relaxation, and pleasure for me.

  So this is the question I want all of you to think about. How is it possible to go to a gourmet breakfast and just have coffee or to simply have a bite of something just to taste it just because. You have to feel satisfy and secure and comfort going into your experience. Let me just say that again. To create this for yourself, to have just coffee when you're not hungry, or to just have a bite of something simply to taste it.

  You have to feel satisfied and comfortable and secure going into your experience. The other thing that I think is super important to recognize is that on trips like this, you can actually control how hungry you want to be when you want to be hungry. So for example, if it was really important to me and it's just not anymore, but if it was really important to me to be hungry during the breakfast part of my day, the gourmet breakfast experience, I want to actually feel hungry.

  It's not a problem. I would just have really made sure that I had a super light and early dinner, or if I knew that I really wanted to be hungry because we're going to this awesome dinner and I know that I only eat when I'm hungry and I wanna be hungry for dinner. I would just have a really light lunch.

  I think that sometimes we forget about these kinds of creative solutions only because we have tethered so much to food that we don't see any other pathway forward to create satisfaction and comfort. But I want you to know that we can start creating solutions like this. Like maybe I could just have a really light and early dinner so that I'm hungry for this five star breakfast.

  We can create this only when we are untethered from food as our main way of creating satisfaction and comfort. Now I wanna tell you what's going to get in the way because this is not a perfect process. I don't want you to expect that this is going to be challenge free because it's not going to be, especially if you have years and decades of programming that has been relying on food to create your satisfaction and comfort that you don't have the habits that I'm talking about today.

  There's two things that really are going to get in the way. Number one, it's not gonna go perfectly, so I want you to really plant that seed that it might not go perfectly. Now listen. It might, but it might not. You might have a dinner that you overeat. You get to like, ugh, like you overate your pants feel tight, and you're like really like annoyed with yourself.

  Like you might have a dinner like that. You might overeat the dessert, or like you might go down on the desserts like three days in a row. I want you to really catch it when you notice this is happening and remind yourself it's okay. It is not all lost. The whole trip is not over just because of this. I see this happen time and time again on day one or day two, you're like doing great and then maybe on day three you overdo the dessert or you overeat the dinner and you're like, see, that's it.

  The whole trip. And then you just like screw the whole rest of the trip. Don't do that. The whole trip is not over. The whole trip is not sunk. Get right back on it the next morning or right back on it with the next meal. I want you to catch it when this happens, when you overeat at, at a meal, when it goes imperfectly, when you, when you're not hungry, you just have to catch in the moment and let yourself get to light again.

  Just make the agreement with yourself that all you have to do is just wait until your body gets too hungry to eat again. That means you're gonna challenge the clock. You know, you might not eat when everybody else is eating because you overate at the last meal and it's not a problem. I want you to not expect perfection.

  I want you to be on your own side. Okay? That's really like the intention of what we're talking about today. And this leads me to the second biggest obstacle. I'm telling you cuz I felt like this during my trip to India as well. And I think that this is super common for so many of us. The second thing is we are living in a food focused culture.

  This is, again, not just in one country, it is countries all around the world, cultures all around the world. We are living in a food focused culture. And what I want you to know is, You saying no to eating food, you saying no to the all you can eat breakfast buffet or saying no to eating when you're at someone's home and they're offering you food, might offend people. Seriously.

  They might be offended. They might not like that you're not eating when they are, or they might not like that you're not eating when they're serving their food. And I want you to know that I totally get it if this is going to be an obstacle for you. And I also want you to know that there is a strategy that can help you with this moving forward.

  Now, personally, when I'm with my family, like with my husband and my kids, this is just not even a problem anymore. It's just a part of our nuclear family's culture. We just eat when we're hungry and there's no drama around it. There's no, like, my husband's not pushing food on me. My like, kids are not asking me, mommy, are you eating?

  Mommy, are you not eating? It's just like not a thing In our family, part of the culture we just eat when we're hungry and we don't make a fuss about it. But that being said, when you're around new people, when I'm around other family members that are not a part of this family culture that I have with my immediate family, it might feel awkward and uncomfortable because people might get offended, and I want you to know that it's totally normal.

  I wanna invite you to have your own back anyway. This is the part where I want you to practice like feeling courageous and brave. I want you to decide right now, and this is part of the beauty of what we get to do, because we can anticipate that this is going to be a thing in a future trips or future vacations.

  Decide right now what you might want to think and feel and say when this happens. What might you want to think, feel, and say about yourself, about the person in front of you when you are in this scenario. Now, for me, I wanna tell you what I think and feel and what I say. I completely accept I'm not gonna fight the reality of this.

  I'm going to accept that some people might be very perplexed that I would not eat at a five star breakfast buffet. Some people might be offended if I don't eat their whole entire lunch that they offer. I totally get it. No problems. I can totally accept that that might happen. And what I say like a broken record is, you know, I really only eat when I'm hungry.

  My body just doesn't feel good when I overeat. Like my body really doesn't feel good. Now, if you really think about the other person, like listening to this, if you had told somebody, my stomach really hurts when I overeat. And then they say to you, no, eat anyway. Like we are already going down the line.

  You know, like I want you to have your own back if somebody wants you to eat right after you have said, listen, my body's going to hurt if I eat this. Like, how would you respond if you said, like, for example, I just wanna kind of go to an extreme. If you said, you know what, I'm actually allergic to that food.

  Like I have a reaction, I'm allergic. If the other person said, eat it anyway, what would you think about that? Like, no, that's silly. That's like ludicrous, right? If you're like, I have an allergic reaction to food, and they're like, listen, eat it anyway. No, you would not like just eat the food because they said so, right?

  You wouldn't actually like put your body through that kind of torture just because it might please somebody else. So I'm using this extreme example to know that you don't need to have an allergy to food or an allergy to a specific type of food to say no to eating when you're not hungry, you can just have your own back.

  And also, lemme tell you the second piece of what's really helped me navigate this when you're on family trips, when you're with people you love, is I also am thinking at the same time, they must love me so much that they want me to eat this food. They've cooked this food because they love me. They want me to enjoy this food simply because they love me.

  And honestly, I feel love for them simply because of that so I want you to know you don't have to feel awkward or weird. You can just simply feel love for the other people that want you to eat because they just love you, right? I just choose that thought. It feels so much better, and I always, always come back to honoring my one agreement.

  I only eat when I'm actually hungry. I decided a long time ago, I will not treat my body like a trashcan. It's just not happening. I won't do it because there's a gourmet chef making some beautiful waffles or some gorgeous poached eggs, and I will absolutely not do it for somebody else's convenience. I think that if we just hold to this one agreement that I will only eat when I'm hungry, I'm not gonna treat my body like a trash can.

  We will create so much freedom no matter where we are in the world, no matter where you're traveling, no matter whether you're with your kids, whether you're without, like wherever you are, you have this in your back pocket, wherever you go. But it's contingent on one thing that you have to do the work of creating satisfaction and comfort for yourself at the same time.

  They go hand in hand, right? We can't decide to say no to food when we're not hungry and not do the work of creating satisfaction and comfort for yourself in your mind. So I want you to know that high achievers really are often used to relying on the strict plans, but spreadsheets and apps and paper and pencil plans are not going to solve this.

  I want high achievers to know. You have to know how to feel satisfied, secure, significant, without relying on external sources of input to really solidly do this work, and I want you to know that it's literally the roadmap to losing weight without a calculator. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you take this episode with you on your next trip, on your next vacation, and know that you can lose weight if you want.

  You can simply maintain, and it all starts with you really treating yourself and responding to any thoughts and practice thoughts you have around the food in front of you. The specialness of the experience with real calm and ease, knowing that you have your own back. If you're enjoying my podcast, I want to make sure that you are on my email list.

  This is a place that is share even more strategies, mindset, and skills that I think are incredibly valuable to helping you lose weight, feel better and more powerful in your working mom life. You can join my email list over at theunstoppablemombrain.com/magic, and also when you're on my email list, you are the first to know about my next live free trainings that are coming incredibly soon.

  So make sure you join my email so you are the first to know when these next trainings are happening. And also I want to share the winner of the podcast giveaway. Thank you so much for all of those that entered. You left a rating and review. I'm deeply grateful to all of you if you are enjoying this podcast.

  It is seriously one of the best ways of making this podcast more discoverable for other high achievers, and I'm incredibly grateful that you partook in this giveaway with me, so the winner without further ado of a pair of Apple AirPods is Umaymah Shahid. You have an email coming to you in your email inbox today, and we are going to set up sending you a pair of Apple AirPods and my gratitude for you following along this journey and for you sharing your review and rating.

  Thank you all so much for listening in today, and I will see you all next week. Bye. If you're loving this podcast, I want to make sure that you're also on my email list. I share even more strategies and discuss specific mindset tools only with my email list. You can get onto my email list over at theunstoppablemombrain.com/magic.

  And if you want to work with me, listen up. The Unstoppable Group is my intimate six month coaching experience for high achieving working moms who want to lose weight without a calculator. My next group is starting in July of 2023. And enrollment is opening on Sunday, May 21st. You heard that right? It is coming soon.

  Sunday, May 21st is when enrollment is opening. So if you have wanted to work with me, I want you to start preparing now. You can join the waitlist and learn more about this group over at theunstoppablemombrain.com/group, and when you're on this list, you will get all of the details for exactly how to enroll on May 21st and how we're going to work together.

  I cannot wait to see you there and I'll see you next week. Bye. Thanks for listening to the Unstoppable Mom Brain Podcast. It's been an honor spending this time with you and your brilliant. If you want more resources or information from the show, head on over to theunstoppablemombrain.com.