Episode #50: The Scale and Gathering Data

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Summary

I see all too often how data and objective results become a barrier to taking action. So in this episode, I’m showing you how to get to a neutral place before you decide on the role you want the scale and data to play in how you approach reaching your ideal weight.

As high achievers, we have a significant interest in data. However, when we look at the scale or what our body looks like, we have a whole slew of thoughts that can hold us back from clean evaluation. When you can approach data with neutrality and decide how and if you actually want to gather data, you become Unstoppable.

Tune in this week to discover everything you need to know about the scale and gathering data, and how to become the playful scientist as you analyze any data you decide to collect. I’m sharing why neutrality is an important part of making any decision, and I’m walking you through what I have found to be the three most useful data parameters in my own life.

Join me today at 12PM Eastern for a free webinar! If you feel like you’re coasting along in neutral gear and not seeing real results, but you’re ready to shift into drive, I’m sharing three frameworks that are going to help you do exactly that. Click here to reserve your seat!

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Why you never, ever have to step on the scale if you don’t want to.
• The purpose of data gathering and why, if you feel triggered by the scale or gathering data, I don’t want you to do it.
• How we have attached subjective meaning and emotion to objective data that discourages us from taking action.
• Why getting to an emotionally neutral place allows you to make your most powerful decision around how and if you want to gather data.
• How to understand what your goals for the future are, so you can get clear on the kind of data you want to gather.
• Why the most effective way to evaluate data and results is to become what I call the playful scientist.
• 3 data parameters I have found most useful in reaching my ideal weight.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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• Episode #21: The 12 Phases of Weight Loss (Part 1)
• Episode #22: The 12 Phases of Weight Loss (Part 2)

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 50. The Scale and Gathering Data. I wanted to record a podcast episode all about the scale and gathering data, and more importantly, creating neutrality around what your gravitational pull on this earth is. I think that sometimes, especially high achievers have so many thoughts about the data.

  We look at the scale or what our body looks like, and we have a whole slew of thoughts that sometimes hold us back from clean evaluation, and that is what this episode is designed to talk about. I see all too often, especially for high achievers, that sometimes we allow data and objective results to become a barrier for taking action.

  So this episode is really designed to show you how to get to a neutral place before you decide how and if you want to be gathering data. I'm going to share why I think it matters so much and exactly how to get yourself to neutral, and then you get to decide. Also, before we get into today's episode, I want to make sure that you know about my live webinar happening today, March 14th, Tuesday at 12:00 PM Eastern.

  Quit the Strict Meal Planning and do this Webinar Instead, is truly one of my favorite webinars to deliver because it really addresses the solution to reaching your ideal weight in the simplest, most straightforward way. I teach three frameworks, and I wanna tell you I didn't just pull them out of nowhere.

  I share with you my personal stories and tell you why each framework that you learn in this webinar is absolutely necessary to solve this problem once and for all. You can register for free over at theunstoppablemombrain.com/webinar, and if you can't make it live, don't worry. Register right now and you'll be sent the limited time replay.

  You can stay on until the very end if it's of interest to you, and I will tell you exactly [00:02:00] how I work with my clients to help them reach their goals. There are a few spots left in the group, so now is the absolute best time to make your decision. Okay, let's get into today's episode, bringing neutrality back to the data.

  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.

  I wanna actually just start with one thing at the very, very start of this episode, which is all about data gathering, you never, ever, ever, ever, ever have to step on the scale if you don't want to, and I think it's really important for me to start this episode from that place with the intention that this episode is not designed to convince you to step on the scale and start measuring numbers and measuring your body.

  This episode is not designed to convince you to measure your body or step on the scale and gather data. You don't ever have to do that if you don't want to. And I think it's important for me to say this at the start because if you find data gathering is triggering for you, I don't want you to do it. The purpose of data gathering isn't to inflict small traumas for you every single time you do, but the intention of today's episode is designed to paint data gathering in a different way.

  I want you to make the decision about whether or not to weigh yourself, whether or not to measure yourself, whether or not to gather data from a place of neutrality. I wanna share with you why I think it's valuable, how you can get to neutral, and then you get to make your most powerful decision around how and if you do.

  So, take this episode through that lens, knowing that you know you best. Something that I have learned to value over time, and I definitely didn't start this way, was really looking at data gathering and objective measurements as a sign of helping me see whether something is working or not. So what I need to really first start with is, do I have a goal?

  What is the texture of my goal? Is my goal, specifically a number on the scale, maybe my goal, just how I want to feel in my body. Maybe my goal is how I want my clothes to fit me. I think that understanding what my future goal is is going to be really helpful in deciding what kind of data I want to gather.

  I like to teach my clients a process that I call the playful scientist, or what I think of as the most effective way of evaluating data and results. Now, before I get into the playful scientist in just a few minutes, I wanted to first take a moment to talk about what it means to gather data and why we are doing it.

  When you think about the lens that you have for what your goals are, I want you to first ask yourself, do you actually have a goal in mind? I don't mean just 10 pounds or 50 pounds that you might wanna lose. I mean, what's your intention with reaching your ideal weight? Is it simply a number on the scale?

  Do you have a magic three-digit number in mind that you have just been wanting to reach, or is there something more? I think for me, when I was at my heaviest, yes, I wanted the number on the scale to be different. I wanted it to be lower, but really more than that, I wanted to feel better in my body. I wanted my clothes to fit a certain way, and I think that it's important to really broaden our definition of our goals so that we can start to gather data with that lens as well.

  I'm going to be sharing with you the three data parameters that I find valuable at the end of this episode. But before I get into the three data parameters, I want to first get into understanding the power of data. Why is it even valuable, and what is ever in our way into gathering it. The reason that gathering clean data is valuable is because it gives you the most information.

  When you run any experiment, a scientist will tell you that the more data points you have, the more reliable your conclusions can be. If you just have one, two, or three data points, your conclusions will have to be really broad. Your brain is going to have to make a lot of guesses around the conclusion.

  But when you have a hundred data points, imagine all of a sudden you can get really specific with your conclusions and more than just the specificity around your conclusions, you can have a lot more confidence in understanding what's working and what isn't. When you don't have data, there is nothing to assess or analyze.

  So, here's what happens. Your brilliant brain will do the next best alternative. She will start to make assumptions. We always want to give our brain direction, right? So, what happens when we don't have data or when we don't have objective measurements? In the absence of data, your brain will start to fill in the blanks with assumptions.

  And here's what my relationship with assumptions is. Assumptions are rarely correct. Let me just say that again. In the absence of data, your brain will do the next best thing. She will make assumptions and assumptions are rarely correct. They lead to really superficial evaluations, and they lead to tweaks and changes to your plan without being informed with information.

  So, when you make changes with that data information and proper assessments, really the tweaks and changes you're making to your plan are completely random. It's like you're trying to drive to your destination with a blindfold on. You take random action, randomly changing your plan randomly, you start deleting things, or sometimes even throw the whole plan away and think you need to start from scratch.

  Gathering data and really having more information allows us to avoid doing this. So I hope that this paints a little bit of a compelling case as to why data gathering is good, because information is powerful and it will help prevent your brain from making assumptions. Our goal in data gathering is to give your brain an opportunity to make tweaks that are informed rather than random. Now, this sounds amazing, right?

  Like I feel like I'm making a fairly compelling case for why gathering data is so important, right? When you're running any experiment, having a hundred data points is better than two or three, but what's in the way then, if it's so amazing, if this case sounds fairly compelling, why don't we all just do it?

  Why don't we all just stand on the scale or take measurements and really gather the data? I'm gonna tell you the reason that we ever don't gather data. The reason that we ever feel triggered by the data is because we attach a meaning to the data. So, let's get into this. You have some data that is objective and measurable.

  For a specific example, I'm just going to use the number on the scale. Now, don't worry. I wanna be sharing with you a few other examples other than just the number on the scale. But just for this example, let's just use that. So, you have this objective number on the scale, and I'm gonna share my own personal story, my own case in this example.

  So, you have this objective number, and I've made the case for why gathering this objective number is so valuable. But what happens when you step on the scale, and you see that number when you step on the scale and you see the three digit number? You have some thoughts about it. And that set of thoughts that you have your subjective opinion about the data generates an emotion in your body, and it's this emotion that will drive every single action or inaction you take in regard to the data and your goal.

  I just wanna take a moment, just in a nutshell, to recap the Think, Feel, Act cycle, which I just described. The only reason that we ever take any action to avoid the data that three-digit number is because we're having a feeling, an emotional experience about the data. That's what's driving us to avoid it.

  But where is that feeling coming from? That feeling always comes from a set of thoughts that you're attaching to the data. You are attaching meaning to what it means about you when you step on the scale. Let me give you my specific example from my personal real life. For many years, particularly during my OB/GYN residency, I had the spidey sense as I think we all do that I was gaining weight.

  Now, I didn't know for sure because I wasn't stepping on the scale. That's why I'm sharing. This is all from my personal, real lived experiences. I didn't step on the scale, but it was a hunch that I had because I could feel my clothes getting a little bit tighter. And because of residency, we wear scrubs a lot.

  I was able to get by a few years without weighing myself, but I had this spidey sense. My body felt a little bit heavier, and then eventually by third year residency, I had to go up a size in my scrubs. I had this hunch, and my thought was, if I step on the scale, the number is going to be up. Okay. I wanna just share with you why it is that I didn't step on the scale?

  I had a hunch that if I step on the scale, the number is going to be up. And when I thought that, when I allowed myself to visualize, oh my gosh, the number is going to be up, the feeling that I had in my body was dread. And because I didn't want to feel the dread, I took the action of avoiding stepping on the scale.

  I call this monkey emoji-ing yourself. You know those monkey emojis where you see a little monkey covering their face, their eyes, their ears, and their mouth? This is monkey emoji-ing yourself, and that is what I did through most of residency. I have referred to hiding from the data in a few different ways on this podcast.

  Sometimes I refer to it as monkey emoji-ing yourself or hiding from the data. And back in episodes 21 and 22, where I shared the normal 12 phases of weight loss, phase seven, which is normal, is all about hiding from the data. So, yeah, I was monkey emoji-ing myself or pulling a phase seven during residency, and I did this not because of the number on the scale.

  I wanna be really clear about this. It wasn't the number on the scale that really led me to monkey emoji-ing myself. It was because I didn't want to feel the dread. But here's what I want to tell you. Not stepping on the scale didn't solve anything. I was avoiding an emotion in my case at dread at the cost of not knowing what was actually happening.

  Let me just say that again. I was avoiding an emotional experience at the cost of not knowing what was actually happening. This is where the term ignorance is bliss feels appropriate. I think at the time I had convinced myself that ignorance is bliss, but is it really, is ignorance really blissful? I like to think that while you want to keep your eyes covered and really be in a state of ignorance, Sure, maybe it's blissful for those few moments or months or years, but then there will come a moment when your desire to reach your goal, your desire to reach your ideal weight will require you to take your hands off your face, in which case then ignorance all those days, weeks, and months that you stayed in that space is the doorway to confusion and even deeper frustration.

  So back to residency, I didn't want to feel dread. I was fearing the emotional experience of it. And so my brilliant brain offered me an alternative. Let's just avoid the scale. And while I did this, my brain made plenty of assumptions. Maybe I felt heavy one day, or I noticed my clothes were getting a little bit tight, particularly towards third year when I felt like my scrubs were getting a little bit tight.

  And because I didn't have any actual data, my brain made a lot of assumptions. I had a constant monologue, a chatter in my mind in the background. You have no control over this. This is too hard. I can't believe you. It's probably because you've been eating a lot of french fries. You should probably cut those out.

  I can't even begin to tell you the low buzzing monologue that I had in my mind because it wasn't really even conscious. It was just in the background. Every time I saw a reflection or caught a photograph or physically felt uncomfortable, the chatter would start up. And this just created more and more overwhelm and it delayed me from solving the problem.

  I wanna just take a little bit of a deeper dive into this think, feel, act cycle. The real reason that I felt dread wasn't because I was just thinking that the number on the scale's going to be up. It's because I thought the scale's going to be up, and it means something about me, something inherent about my skills, my capability, and my capacity.

  So I was really thinking the scale's going to be up. The number on the scale's going to be higher, and that means I'm so far behind. That means I will never figure this out. That means I'm so incapable and weak at solving this. Can you hear the underlying current around those thoughts that created the dread?

  It's this underlying current that is the specific reason that will hold you back from owning your results a hundred percent of the time. I teach this concept inside The Unstoppable Group that I call 100% responsibility, and I like to think about this concept as a nuanced topic, but in a nutshell, it teaches that you can take 100% responsibility for your current results and own them.

  You can see clearly how you created those results, completely. And you can do it without an ounce of shame, blame, or judgment. I'm telling you, when you learn how to take 100% responsibility without an ounce of shame, blame, or judgment, you will blow your worldwide open. How much, let's paint this exact personal example that I've just been sharing with you.

  I step on the scale, and I see 200 pounds. And my old way of taking responsibility, and this is something that so many high achievers have just learned from decades, is I would actually also not only take responsibility, but I would also add some self-inflicted shame and blame. I would say, I can't believe it. I haven't figured this out.

  There you go again. See, we're so incapable of solving this. The way that I used to take 100% responsibility in my past used to be attached with a negative meaning about me. This is not really taking a hundred percent responsibility. This is just doing 100% shame, blame and judgment. I wanna tell you what it would be like to actually take 100% responsibility of your results and of the data without any self-inflicted shame, blame, and judgment.

  Maybe you step on the scale, and you see the 200 pounds and you might even feel the sting of disappointment because it's not a result you want. I want you to imagine what it might be like to take your hands off your eyes and un-monkey emoji, and you think this number makes perfect sense.

  I wonder how it does. Now, I know that the second example might feel like a really foreign concept or a super stretch, like what are you talking about? I can't even imagine stepping on the scale and seeing a number I don't like and not making it mean something about my inherent capacity. This might especially feel like a stretch if you've had a long history that's contentious with the scale, especially if you've made that number mean that you're a failure or you're weak or incapable.

  But I want you to know the only reason that this feels like a foreign concept, or a real stretch is because you've been coming into your data collection with a critical lens. Not curious. I call evaluations inside The Unstoppable Group, the playful scientist on purpose. It's because it's my favorite way to describe the tone and texture of how I recommend evaluating results.

  For this, I really like to think about my four-year-old. My daughter does not have a critical bone in her body. She's playful and curious, and sometimes she's very shy, but she hasn't yet learned criticism. She instead asks a lot of questions, so if she sees a piece of data or if she observes something happening, she'll look at me and ask me, why?

  Why mommy? Why is that happening? What's happening here? Why did you do that? Why is this this way? Why is this that way? When you think about children and the way they ask questions, they don't ask questions least in judgment, shame or blame. They're genuinely curious. Their brain is actually trying to understand what they're observing.

  Now, if I answer in a kind of garbage way, it will not satisfy her. She'll keep asking why and why and why until I can dig deep enough to answer her question in a way that makes sense for her. I think what happens a lot of time for so many young people, and I know that this happened, especially in my childhood, is when little children ask the questions like, why is it like that?

  Why did that happen? How is this happening? Like a lot of that sometimes what we do is in our impatience and in our desire to just move along with our day, we often shut down the questions. We tell them, stop asking so many questions. What I want you to know is that it's normal if you've done this, it's likely been modeled to you when you were growing up, but this is also something that we are doing to ourselves. We kind of shut down asking why something is the way it is, and we learn to stop being curious. So now we know that data gathering helps prevent your brain from making assumptions. It gives us information that we can leverage into making powerful tweaks.

  But what's in the way? It's always our thoughts about the number and the meaning that we assign to what we make the data mean. When you make the data mean something inherent about you, your brain will want to protect you. You will stop gathering the data. So, I'm here to invite you to just consider this. You could absolutely keep this.

  If the data feels triggering to you because of your thoughts about the number. Don't do it. Your brain is just trying to protect you, and you can absolutely keep this. But you could also decide to change your relationship with the data, so you didn't need protection. I wanna just say that again. You could keep protecting yourself from the data because of the thoughts you have and the things that you make that number mean.

  Or you could change your relationship with the data as you didn't need protecting, because really ask yourself, what are you ever really protecting yourself from? It's always how you're going to talk to yourself, right? If you imagine that on the other side of looking at the data was a little four-year-old child, curiously asking questions and wondering why things are the way they are.

  You don't need protection from that small, youngest curious child, right? I want you to know that it's actually possible to glean incredible wisdom when you engage with the data in this way. Now, I will be honest, I really think that some of this work is best done with the coach.

  It's really hard when your brain is offering you all of the doom and gloom and critical self judgey thoughts to see the real truth. A coach allows you to put on the most objective lens so you can get out of your own way. Remember the story I was telling you a few moments ago about me in residency? I gained 25 pounds in about three years simply because I wasn't able to look at the truth objectively.

  And when I hit that 200-pound mark, I finally remember looking at the scale and knowing I had to change it. I didn't want to hate the number, I didn't wanna hate my body anymore, but I couldn't reach my ideal weight with a bat in hand. I needed a coach to show me what I wasn't seeing, and to challenge so many self-inflicted stories.

  I had to learn how to change my relationship with my body, with the data to actually make meaningful change. And this happened with coaching. But in the meantime, I want to offer you a neutral place where you can land when you don't love your results. And then I'm going to be wrapping up this episode with the three types of data gathering that I recommend.

  So just a recap. You can see that data gathering might be really useful, particularly for you to understand what's working and what's not. It helps you prevent wasting time. It stops you from making random assumptions, and it gives you valuable information to inform tweaks and powerful change. But maybe you're like, I don't love where I'm starting, Priyanka.

  I hear you. I want you to know that that's okay. I want you to just pause and recognize and really take stock of that. You don't have to love where you're starting. Don't let your starting point be a barrier to you doing this work. Let me just say that again. Don't let your starting point be a barrier to you doing the work.

  You could simply start with neutral. Neutral means that you look at the data and you detach the number, the data that you see from anything inherent about you as a human. I want you to think about what it would be like if you took your hands off of your eyes and you said, I see this data. I don't like it, but I see it.

  I don't like it, but I also know that it doesn't mean anything about my inherent capacity and my skills. Now, just what I'm telling you right now, this place of landing at neutral on its own is going to be a skill. You're not going to learn this overnight, but this episode is designed to plant a seed of possibility that it's possible to change your relationship with the scale, with gathering data, with results, to a place where you can start to really glean wisdom to get better, more effective results.

  I also want to say that just like this is not a lesson you will learn overnight and a skill that really warrants practice, it's probably a lesson that you're going to have to learn many, many, many, many, many times over. It's like one of those things where you think you've learned something, but then you really haven't and you have to learn it again.

  I'm still learning this in deeper and deeper layers, and I think that that's perfectly normal. I wanna just wrap today's episode with zooming out on data gathering. I promised you at the beginning of the episode that I would share with you three different ways of gathering data, and I want you to decide whether one or all of these are going to serve you, and then you get to make your most powerful decision knowing yourself best.

  I also wanna preface by saying that data fluctuates. So, our bodies are not robots. We're not meant to be losing weight in a linear fashion, like you can graph it on a spreadsheet and just see like a straight line coming down. Data is going to fluctuate. You will see changes day to day if you take measurements or gather data at different times of the day or even different weeks of the month.

  If you're menstruating, if you ovulate, all of that is going to matter. So, one thing I want to just kind of preface this data gathering by saying is that when you are gathering data, if you're stepping on the scale or taking measurements, try to be consistent. Try to pick a similar time of the day. A similar week of the month that you want to gather data.

  So, measurement number one is definitely the scale or any physical measurable number. Maybe you take measurements of your body or simply stand on the scale, and then there are some scales that are actually very fancy. You can calculate percent body fat and get different measurements that are all tangible numbers.

  The reason that I'm starting with this as the very first way of gathering data is I think it's just the most common, the most familiar and the easiest for, I think the high achieving working mom to wrap her mind around. It's very measurable. It's very tangible. You can write it down and actually see trends on exactly what is happening, so you can start to glean wisdom.

  I would say for most definitely not all, but for most, it's really valuable to weigh yourself daily at the same time every single day. This means weighing yourself on the weekends and even on vacation. You can bring a small travel scale simply together, data to know what's happening. I see time and time again where we stop weighing ourselves for special events or holidays or weekends or maybe for [00:26:00] vacations.

  But what unfortunately happens when we don't gather data for weekends and holidays and vacations is we come back on that Monday morning feeling kind of surprised. And I think that that's what I really like about data gathering on the scale, is you can do it very consistently. You can do it daily, and you don't ever have to be surprised when you come back from a weekend or a vacation.

  So, I want you to just play with the idea that it's possible if it feels reasonable to you, if it feels like it would serve you to consider what it would be like to gather data on a daily basis. Let me move on to the second parameter that I really like to offer. If the scale is either not something you want to do or if you want to have an additional data point, I really like to look at how your clothes are fitting you.

  Now, yes, there can definitely be the objective size of your clothing that you can start with, but I think more than that is to pay attention to how the clothes fit and fall on your body. You can actually start to see tangible differences when you are putting efforts towards your goal, how your clothes start to feel looser, how they start to fit you differently as time progresses.

  And the thing that I like about this, even though this is a slightly more subjective form of data gathering, is, I like that this parameter helps you bring attention and awareness to your body. I think all too often when we are only focused on the number on the scale, we can kind of become a little bit myopic and we lose sight of how our body is actually feeling.

  So I really like to offer that. Yes, the data, the number on the scale is really valuable, but bringing awareness to your body, bringing awareness to how clothes are fitting, you can be really valuable as well. The third and final parameter, and to me this is my favorite parameter, is how your body is physically feeling.

  Now this might sound intangible cuz it's like, I mean, where's the measurement for that Priyanka? I have no idea how to do that. I want you to know that you can actually assign a scale, a scale of one to 10 to make it tangible for you. So, this might be a ten if I feel really heavy in my body and one is I feel really light.

  I want you to ask yourself today at your starting point, how do you physically feel in your body and just allow the very first number to come to mind. You don't have to think about this so much, but what's the first number that comes to mind when you ask yourself that question? Notice how you are able to make a feeling in your body an objective measurement.

  I remember for me, when I weighed 200 pounds, that was one data point. I had weighed 200 pounds that I felt like a nine or 10 out of 10 on the scale, I felt bloated. I felt heavy in my gut, and I remember that if I had to put a number, it would probably be a nine or a 10, and it allowed me to have a specific number, which created an objective, measurable data point.

  And what that allowed me to do is on a monthly basis, I could check in and ask myself, how am I feeling this month? How is my body feeling this month? And not surprisingly, the number on the scale from one to 10 where 10 was heavy and one was light, really correlated pretty well with the number on the scale.

  So, as I started to lose weight every 10 pounds or 15 pounds, I noticed the way that I felt in my body was so much better over time. Every month I could say, okay, this month I feel like an eight out of 10. This month, I feel like a seven out of 10. And my goal in really achieving what I wanted wasn't just the number on the scale like I was sharing at the start of today's episode.

  My goal was I wanted to feel lighter in my body. I didn't want to feel heavy or bloated in my gut. I wanted to feel light and energized and assigning a scale like this allowed me to measurably see that actually, in fact, I was feeling better. I want to add one caveat to the specific parameter, and that is to choose a week of the month that is relatively consistent if you still get a period.

  And I say this because depending on where you're at in your menstrual cycle, whether you're ovulating or menstruating, or a week in between, the way that you feel in your body is going to be different. Very often you might find that while you're ovulating, your body feels heavier or more bloated.

  Or maybe right after you have your period, you feel a lot lighter. So just decide to become aware of your body and how it relates to the menstrual cycle, and then pick a week that feels consistent month to month where you can gather this data. As you can see, I'm just sharing three parameters, but there are so many.

  I encourage you to define parameters that would serve you, and just note that data, whether it's the number on the scale, a measurement of your body, how your clothes are fitting you or how you physically feel can be neutral and you can put objective measurements around it. You can choose one or all as forms of data.

  And just know this, the data that you gather is going to help you evaluate whether what you're doing is working or not. Otherwise, you're likely driving blind. Imagine looking at the data with the brain of a curious four-year-old who's simply trying to understand and make sense of the results. It might be really unfamiliar for you to look at the data and your results like this, but I promise you it can be playful.

  And I want to end with one last thing about data and results. When you do allow yourself to be playful, you can have more fun reaching your goals. It doesn't have to be so heavy and serious because honestly, constantly being in a state of heavy and serious can be really exhausting. I want you to know that it's possible to have a lighter touch when you're evaluating your life, and this applies to everything.

  What if you could look at every result in your life with a light and playful lens? This doesn't mean that you don't take it seriously. You can feel light and playful as you look at results and as you gather data and still take your goals and dreams seriously. I promise when you do this, when you start to bring more playful, curious energy towards gathering data and your results, you are going to start creating so much more powerful action often.

  I hope that today's episode started to at least plant a seed of neutrality around data. I can think back to so many times in my youngest, youngest years where data and grades and report cards and results did not feel neutral. What we are really uncovering and unraveling here together is to be able to say that, yes, an A plus is better than an F, but the A plus doesn't mean anything about my inherent capacity.

  The F doesn't mean anything about my inherent skills. I think that when we can start to detach the report card, the A, the B, the C, the D, the F, from who we are as humans, from how we talk to ourselves, we can start to create so much more powerful change. I can seriously imagine my four-year-old, unless I teach her otherwise, can look at a grade, can see an A, a B, a C, a D, or an F, and be like, I wonder why I got that.

  I can really imagine her doing that and be like, I wonder why. Why? I wonder why I got the B. I wonder why I got the C. I wonder why I got the F. And I think that when we do that, when we allow our brain to stay in that place, to be in wonderment and stay in curiosity, we can actually uncover the real reason for what created the data to begin with.

  I hope this was a helpful episode and I will see you all next week. Bye. Hey, if you're enjoying this podcast, listen up. I am hosting my next free webinar live on Tuesday, March 14th at 12:00 PM Eastern, and you do not want to miss. Quit the Strict Meal Planning and Do This Webinar Instead is really a webinar where I teach some of my core principles and teachings and bring to life why I want high achievers to have more than just a solid plan to reach your ideal weight.

  If you miss the last live webinar, don't worry. This one is just for you. Put it on your calendar now and block the time to come live because I promise you it is so much better when you do. You can grab your seat for free over at theunstoppablemombrain.com/webinar and make sure you check your email inbox where I will be sending you all of the details.

  Hitting your goal, reaching your ideal weight is not about cutting things out, counting points and counting calories and having stricter plans. Hitting goals is about solving what is missing at the root. I seriously love this webinar so much. It has been one of my absolute favorites to deliver. If you cannot make it live or if you miss it, don't worry because I'll be sending you the limited time replay.

  Only if you're registered. You will not be able to sign up for the replay after the event. So make sure you go right now to theunstoppablemombrain.com/webinar and I will see you there. Okay guys. 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.