Losing Weight and Making Money with Dr Bonnie Koo

Hello lovely ladies, welcome to podcast 27. Today I have an extra special treat for you. Recently I went on Dr. Bonnie Koo’s podcast, who is a certified life coach and a physician and founder of the Wealthy Mom MD. She is a fellow life coach and doctor who has a mission to help women create wealth and rewrite history.

I went on her podcast recently to discuss the similarities between losing weight and making money. This is really useful because so many of my clients come to me to initially lose weight, but using the mind management tools that I teach, they initially start using them for weight loss, but then apply them to making money and building a business. 

So this is really useful for anyone who is looking to do the same thing. I hope you enjoy it. Before we get started, just to let you know that if you're listening to this when it is aired, you can go to my website, www.amruticoaching.com to get a new document that I have created.

It's a lovely PDF document, which is about how to stop overeating during the festival season. So with Christmas coming up with the holidays coming up, I wanted to support all of you during this time. It is an amazing seven step process on how to stop overeating during the festival. Now you may not want to focus on losing weight during this time, but what you can do is focus on the simple seven steps that I teach you in the PDF, and you can learn how to stop overeating during this festival season. So I hope you enjoy it. Now, let's get started with the podcast with Dr. Bonnie Koo, enjoy. 

Bonnie: Welcome to the show. Doctor Amruti Choudhry. 

Amruti: Thank you so much, Bonnie. It's such a pleasure to be here.

Bonnie: So for my listeners who don't know you, can you just briefly introduce yourself? 

Amruti: Yeah. So I'm Dr. Amruti Choudhry. I am a certified life and weight loss coach in the UK and a retired physician because I have become a full-time coach and I coach South Asian women professionals on weight-loss. 

Bonnie: So for those of you listening might be like, okay, why is there a weight loss coach on the show? The reason why I wanted Dr. Choudhry in the show is this. If you follow me and you've been listening along then I have great news for you because all the skills that I've been teaching you can apply to losing weight. So it's really two for one. And so I want to bring her on specifically to pick out some of the concepts that we both coach on that end up being very similar in terms of the skill sets needed to either lose weight or make money.

And I would say from now on when you listen to my podcast, if you are someone who's trying to lose weight, ask yourself how does it apply to losing weight? Because it's the same. Plus Dr. Choudhry has a lovely accent, so it's  fun to listen to her. 

Amruti: I love that. Thank you so much, Bonnie.

Bonnie: So I thought the first thing we could talk about is processing emotions. Now it's something that we talk about a lot, meaning that you have to allow your emotions to come up and feel them and process them. You know, I know in weight loss, we talk about allowing urges, and so do you want to just spend a minute maybe explaining what that means exactly. 

Amruti: Yeah. So this is one of the topics I talk about a lot in my weight loss coaching. And it's because when people want to overeat, it's normally because they're trying to buffer against a negative emotion.

So what that means is they're trying to  push away a negative emotion and they use food to numb it out. And what often happens is when you're feeling an urge, which is an intense over desire to eat or do something off your protocol or anything like that. That's what often takes them away from following the plan that they've made ahead of time.

So we talk quite a lot on feeling urges and how to be able to process them, even when they feel like you're going to die, they feel like they're so strong and they feel like that you're not able to do so. So one of the things I teach them is  feeling your emotions and feeling your urges are exactly the same thing.

It's about tuning into your body, actually feeling it directly in your body, describing it, thinking  where they're feeling it in the body and tuning into their body as opposed to looking for something external to make themselves feel better. 

Bonnie: Yeah and that's definitely a skill that many of my clients...you don't coach just women physicians?

Amruti: No, I coach any South Asian professional. 

Bonnie: Yeah. So basically type A professional woman. And so I think we are  taught not to feel our feelings and something I've heard from Glennon Doyle, the author of Intame - it's such a simple sentence, but it really struck me - it said, “feelings are for feeling.” It's like, okay, duh, that makes sense. But a lot of my clients will use food as a buffer, you know, feeling they're in a bad mood and then they'll eat something to feel better. Go shopping. 

Amruti: So yeah, the buffer could be food or over shopping. They normally go hand-in-hand, and I coach a lot of women physicians as well, and it's exactly the same. We tend to find that when they do one or when they start losing weight, they may then go to another buffer. So before they learn how to fully feel their feelings, they , you know, may be following their food protocol, but then they go to overspending. I mean, that happened with me in my own journey. So I can  feel your pain. 

Bonnie: Yeah. No, that makes sense. You learn how to process emotions with one specific thing like food or spending money, but then once you've mastered that it usually ends up moving along, because I think we're always going to want to avoid feeling our feelings. You know, for me, social media is my biggest vice when I'm buffering personally. 

Amruti: And I think it's also because society  doesn't teach us about feeling our emotions. It's often frowned upon. It's often  like, “oh, that's quite woo”. That's quite like, you know, soft and mushy. And especially as women physicians that may not be scientific enough for us, but when we actually get into tuning into our bodies and feeling it, the actual freedom that you get is amazing.

Bonnie: Yeah, no, I totally agree. Also, I think there's this sense that if you have enough willpower or mental strength, you won’t need to feel your feelings, right? It's  perpetuated in medicine. So this just reminded me, because I think so many of us are just afraid of feeling our feelings, certain feelings, we go to such great lengths to avoid them and then the consequences can just be so huge. And so what I see in my clients is they're so afraid, and this is a segway into the next topic… They're so afraid of making a mistake and the consequence being, you know, losing money, that they don't even try. Because risk is so scary to them. The fear of failing, I think, is just so high in our clients because we're type A, we got straight A's and failure wasn't an option. And especially as a doctor, failure means you could hurt a patient unintentionally. And so do you see this in your clients? 

Amruti: Yes, this happens all the time. So when I'm actually coaching them from the beginning, we talk about how we're going to fail our way to success. And when they hear that initially they're horrified, like, what does that mean? I don't want to fail. But actually we talk about failing forward. So like how are we going to fail? And either look at that as a win or as a learning opportunity. So what can we learn from that fail? That's actually going to drive us closer to goal as opposed to further away from it. 

Bonnie: Yeah, our society's relationship with failure is not a great model to learn from because basically if you think about even just our school system, you know, the grades, I don't know how the grades are in the UK but here A is like the highest grade and F literally stands for, I think it stands for a fail. I don't know. I just assume that's what it means, but it's like getting an F is horrible, but you don't learn anything when you're always getting A. 

Amruti: Exactly that. And so what I teach is how can we learn our way there? Because with weight loss and I'm sure it's the same with making money, there’s a lot of trial and error, so it's not like there's a perfect route for every client. It's different for every client. And so you have to fail in order to know what doesn't work for you so it can drive you to actually find what does work and what will continue to work.

Bonnie: Yeah, I love what you just said, that it is a lot of trial and error, like finding the way that works for the individual. Like obviously you and I have, you know, steps and processes that we take our clients through, but like each individual journey can look so different. Okay. So here's a good one. So another analogy is weighing yourself on the scale, right? And then for money, it would be either the balance in your accounts or your net worth is probably a better metric. So how do you talk about that with your clients? 

Amruti: So it normally starts off with a lot of my clients fearing the scale, and we talk about how the scale is completely neutral. So it's the same  analogy as the bank account, say if it's negative or whatever the bank account is, and a lot of my clients think that the scale is causing them to feel a certain way, especially if the scale has gone up or anything like that. But what we look at is what we're thinking about the scale is actually creating our feelings. So I take them through - how do they actually want to think, even before they get on the scales? Like, what do they want to believe about themselves even without even looking at it? So this takes me to the belief aspect of what do they believe about themselves, even when the scale is going up or going down? With you it's probably the bank account going up or down. 

Bonnie: Yeah, I love what you just said, because basically it's like, we're allowed to believe whatever we want about ourselves, no matter what the external measure might be. And I think a lot of women think we're only allowed to believe certain things about ourselves, if certain external measurements also line up. And I think, you know, with weight loss especially, or just weight and body size, society just values thin women so much. I think a lot of women just feel like, “well, I'm not allowed to feel beautiful or think I’m beautiful or think I'm amazing if the scale doesn't match up with that”. 

Amruti: Exactly, and what we actually work on is body image and actually self-love first, and when you start loving your body, if you do want to lose weight, perhaps when the weight starts coming off. Because when you're beating yourself up into weight loss or the same thing with you, beating yourself up into making a certain amount of money, then it's never going to be sustainable because how you get there is how you stay there. So if you're beating yourself up for weight loss, when you get to your goal weight, you're going to keep continuing to beat yourself up and that's just going to lead you to burnout or self sabotage and then put the weight back on. 

Bonnie: Oh, totally. And this is basically the arrival fallacy concept, right? Like I'm sure some of your clients are like, “I'll be happy, I'll feel so great myself when...”  A lot of people feel like, “all of my money, stress and fears, or I'll feel secure once I have this much in the bank”. And then I just gently remind them. Yeah but you used to be a medical student, got paid no money for the most part, and then you became a resident where in the U S you get paid around $40-50,0000 a year. And then you became an attending where your income quadrupled for the most part. Each time there's a step up we think we're going to feel better, but it's like, it just magnifies. And in fact I will tell them like, if we don't clean this up right now - because the common thought for my clients, it's like, “I don't have enough”, or “I feel insecure about money” - it actually gets worse the more money you have. And I found this for myself and so I really had to get to work to clean up myself because I said if you don't clean it up and you end up having a million dollars, if that's your goal, you're going to be afraid to lose the money once you get there.

Amruti: It reminds me of  scarcity, right? Scarcity thinking with regards to money or with food. So what shows up for my clients is that when they first start off, it's like this scarcity of “I'm not going to have enough”, or “it won't be enough to sustain me”, “I won't be able to stick to this, I'll miss out”...you know, things like that. And then when they actually start getting to goal weight, it's  like, “will I be able to stay here? I won't be able to stay here”, you know? 

Bonnie: Oh, that's so interesting. Like, just thinking about my journey with weight. I'm pretty good at losing weight, like that's not a big thing, although lately it's been harder - I'm sort of looking my age...But when I get to my goal weight, I think it's such unfamiliar territory to me. And so I always end up gaining it back slowly over time or thinking “well, I can eat that now because I'm here”. I found that out many times. Do you think it's a different skill set to  maintain where you are? 

Amruti: Yeah, I think what happens is you don't get the external validation that you get when you're losing weight. So when you're losing weight, everyone's saying to you, “oh wow, you've lost weight. You're doing so well”. You can actually see the numbers moving on the scale, which you can choose to think it's working or whatever you choose to think about that. And when you're maintaining your weight, you don't get that external validation anymore. And so you have to learn how to self validate so you can still maintain it as opposed to relying on the external validation.

Bonnie: Oh, that's a good point, I don't think I've thought of it like that. So I think for money, it would be a lot of us aren't used to just having money, like just having it. Because I think so many of us think of money as we get it and we just, okay, what do we do with it? Meaning like how we spend the money versus just like really being, I don't want to say happy, but just feeling really sufficient with having the money and not needing to do something.

Amruti: Yeah, and a lot of my clients, they're just not used to being at goal weight. They just don't know what to do with themselves because for decades of their life they've been either gaining weight or losing weight, gaining weight isn't there. So now they have that freeness in their mind, they're like, “wait, what do I do with all of this mindspace and energy?” So they often like, you know, go and build businesses or take up hobbies or do something completely new because they've got so much free space in their mind now. 

Bonnie: Yeah, no, totally. Okay let's talk about another analogy. So one of the things I talk about a lot is spending plans, which is my preferred term versus budget. And I will actually say a budget sounds like a money diet, and nobody likes to be on diets. So I think there’s an analogy between money and eating plans. So, you know, we both trained at the life coach school and so I'm familiar with the basic weight loss tools that they use, although I'm sure yours are a little different.

One of the concepts I teach is to create a spending plan, and all that means is that we are making decisions about how we're going to use our money in advance, where we use our thinking brain, our prefrontal cortex, if you will, to make logical decisions about spending, because in the moment, if you haven't made your decision, your toddler brain will often take over. That's why you should never go grocery shopping when you're hungry. It's so funny because I'll make a list - I don't go shopping these days, I just get everything delivered - but when I used to go grocery shopping, even when I was hungry, I'd be like, well, if I make a list, I'll stick to the list. But yeah, there's something about when you're hungry, like you just start buying stuff that you don't need. 

Amruti: Yeah, totally. I now just order, because I know I would probably do the same. 

Bonnie: How do you teach your clients about, you call it an eating protocol, right? 

Amruti: Yeah so it's basically the same concept as the spending plan. It's using your prefrontal cortex or the thinking part of your brain to make decisions ahead of time for you so that you don't then rely on your primitive brain, the more animal part of the brain, because whenever we're relying on the animal part of the brain, it always wants us to do one of three things. Seek pleasure, avoid pain and stay how we are.

And whenever we're doing that, because the primitive brain likes to have routine and it likes to take the path of least resistance, it will always choose the cupcake over the avocado salad that you've got planned on your protocol. And so if you're not planning, then you're always going to be using that primitive part of your brain, which is why I encourage my clients to create a protocol so that they're using the higher part of their brain. That part of their brain is looking at their greater goals, and so they're more likely to sustain that and actually follow through when they're planning with their prefrontal cortex. 

Bonnie: Yeah, so for those of you listening might be thinking okay, then that sounds great, but then what happens when you're like in the moment, and this is where that first thing we talked about in the beginning of the podcast, allowing emotions, allowing urges, like that's the skill that you have to develop to basically follow through on the plan, right? So yeah, there's a process, and what we said earlier about you're going to have to fail and make mistakes because that's just part of how you get to the other side. And I think what came to me is you're not going to know how to do it correctly, because if you did you would have already lost the weight or already made the money. But I think society just makes us fear failure so much. A lot of us don't want to do it. And so we fail ahead of time. It's like, why bother? Because we don't want to fail. Stay failed, so to speak. 

Amruti: Right, exactly. That I like to think of it as like a skill that you learn. So it's basically like driving a car. So when you're driving a car, initially, it's like, “oh my gosh, I don't know how to drive. I don't know what goes where” and it feels really clunky. And then you go in the second time and then, you know, it's a little bit easier, then you do it like five or six times and it's getting easier. And then a few months later, you're just driving the car and it's  second nature. So it's the same thing with feeling urges and feeling emotions. It does feel clunky and scary at first, but then when you do it more and more, your primitive brain doesn't then offer you as many urges when it realises that you're not giving into them as much. And so your desire actually decreases drastically when you are going towards the urge, rather than running away from it.

Bonnie: Hmm. So it sounds like what you're saying is you need to put in the work. 

Amruti: Yeah. It feels hard initially. But remember there's discomfort either way, there's either the discomfort of staying the same and not growing or there's the discomfort of growth. And actually I'm feeling the short term discomfort to get the long-term comfort. So most of my clients say, yeah, I’d rather have the short term discomfort to get the long-term comfort. So yeah, it’s all about the delayed gratification, right? 

Bonnie: Yeah. So for spending plans, you know, we usually, we're talking about one month increments or, you know, I actually have them think about what they spend annually because certain things are monthly, but then certain things are - just for example - you know for a lot of my insurance premiums, I actually pay once a year because it's usually a little cheaper versus paying every month they add extra fees, but you still want to put it in your spending plan and know what it is monthly to make sure it adds up annually. So I'm assuming for eating protocols, you don't plan a month ahead of time because that's  crazy, right? So what are you doing? 

Amruti: So I recommend planning 24 hours in advance because that involves using that higher part of our brain to do so, but often I will also do event plans and plans for special occasions, plans for holidays, plans for eating out because these are situations where a lot of my clients worry, they think, “I can eat on protocol when I'm actually at home and you know, or at work, but actually when it comes to socializing and meeting with other people, that's when things may change.”  So that's when we create specific protocols for these occasions so that they're able to feel in control and having anticipated the obstacles that may come up, come up with solutions for themselves, and then you know, follow through with that in reality. 

Bonnie: Yeah, no, that's such a great point because I think the same applies for spending, right. Because if they're just having a, I don't know, like a regular month where they're just doing their normal daily routine, but then when they're traveling. Right. And so a lot, like a lot of my clients will be like, “but I want to be able to buy things” and I think it's really easy to think that these protocols, these plans are meant to be restrictive, right, cause that's just like the societal messaging.

We get told that dieting is restrictive and working on your money, then you have to spend less, like, it's like very like, you know, based on restriction. And so, you know, I teach the same concept. Because I have, for example, I have certain clients where they understand the idea of creating a spending plan, but then they're like “but I like to spend spontaneously”, or they don't want to have to plan every purchase. I'm like, well, great, you can plan for the spontaneity.

Like, it sounds ironic, but I'm like, you could put like, whatever that is for you, maybe a few thousand dollars where you're just like, if you want to buy something on a whim, like you can do that. It's just included into the plan. So when I travel is definitely where I tend to get in trouble with eating, but one thing I've just given myself, grace about is like, just because I'm someone who wants to be healthy or just maintain my weight, doesn’t mean that like, I can't eat certain things or that I can't let loose for certain times, right? I just can't do that every day.

So when I was at Cabo a few weeks ago, I don't think I really had an eating plan. I think my eating plan was to only eat when I was hungry and to stop when I was full - I just left it very, like, bare bones. And then I had to think about alcohol, because definitely alcohol could be, you know, not a problem for me, but after you have one or two drinks your thinking ability  goes down the drain.

Amruti: I know what you mean. 

Bonnie: So I've had to like, just be really conscious about that. Maybe say I will have two drinks. I actually don't even remember if I followed that or not, but I didn't really make it like a big deal if I drank a little more than I wanted to, or et cetera. 

Amruti: Yeah. So it's similar to  like you know, having that, that plan. So what I do with my clients is actually anticipate ahead of time and be like, okay, they are allowed to have whatever they want. So it's never about, you know, I'm telling them, you have to have this, they get to choose their plan, and it's basically then holding themselves accountable, which is what we teach in the coaching.

So they can have two drinks or they can have 10, they can put whatever on their plan, but then knowing that they're willing to stick to that plan. And when they do follow that, they're willing to  accept the consequences that may come with it as well. So when they're going to have 10 drinks, some of them are like yeah “I’m going to have 10 drinks, I'm going to really go all out” and then they, right. Okay. Well, I'd be willing to accept the consequences of  hanging the next day or feeling sluggish or  eating everything off protocol and things like that. So it's yeah. Accepting those consequences and  owning that, which is what, what I teach them clients.

Bonnie: Yeah. I think there's this concept that I see a lot in eating, but also with money is that there's like good and bad food, cause I think when people lose weight, they're thinking, “oh, I need to only eat quote unquote ‘healthy’ food, or I should go vegetarian or whatever the diet of the day or the year is, right? And I think for money, there's so much morality tied to what you spend your money on, and so it's interesting, I think I have some clients who, before they joined my program, they were afraid that I was going to tell them that they can't buy nice handbags or that they can't fly first class. And so I think this is such an important thing for everyone to hear, that that is not what this is about. And that is not what eating's about. So I want to hear your take on that. 

Amruti: Yeah so my take is that initially they come in thinking that they can't eat that. But what we teach them is there’s no can’t, there's no good foods or bad foods. It's just foods that are going to actually serve their bodies or foods that aren't really going to serve their bodies and it's going to be different for everyone.

And so when they  are able to look at that and see that they're making that choice to eat that. Then it's not like, oh, I can't have it anymore. It's just, I'm choosing not to have that, and then that takes that deprivation out of it. So it's not like, “oh, I had a bad food”. It's taking that emotion out of it and just seeing it as the facts. So I ate a doughnut. And so if you think of it, like, “oh, I've eaten a doughnut” and then go into the  all or nothing thinking like that means I'm going to eat off protocol all day, then that's obviously gonna, you know, make it harder to lose weight.

But when you look at it as I had a doughnut, I enjoyed the doughnut, I'm just going to go back on protocol...then it  just takes all of that emotion out of it and it makes it easier for them to look at it for what it is rather than the story that we create in our heads.

Bonnie: Yeah. And all the self judgment and shame we pile on top of that, right? And so I think one client specifically, she was someone who loved to give. Like, that was just one of the things that gave her so much joy to donate to charity. And she thought I was going to tell her to stop doing that so she could save more money. And I said, what if you learn how to make so much more money, you could give even more. Because I think so many of us, when we think of money, like we think of cutting expenses, right? And it's, I think the same as for dieting, losing weight is like they have to eat less food and they're going to just have to deal with it and be unhappy. And so that is one way - to create more money to do other things. But on the flip side, I don't know. I don't think there's an analogy for weight loss on the flip side.  

Amruti: The analogy that I can think of is over-exercising. So everyone thinks that they need to over exercise to lose weight, but actually sometimes over exercising is detrimental to losing weight. And so the less you exercise, in terms of strenuous exercise, it can actually be better for you. So that's the analogy that I can think of, not sure if it fully relates, but I think it  works.

Bonnie: Yeah, I definitely, when I was younger, I definitely was of the mindset that in order to lose weight, you have to not just eat differently, but also exercise a lot. And I remember, I still have the app on my phone which I just use it to track my weight, but my fitness pal, for example, I remember like I would enter the food and like calculate the calories, like who wants to count calories? Like, that's just, I'm just so glad I don't do that anymore, but I used to, and then I remember like entering the exercise and then like making sure everything added up, meaning if I ate a little bit more than I had to make sure I exercise to like negate the calories and like, that's just, yeah. That's what so many people do or they still do.

Amruti: Yeah. So a lot of people do that. So we have to get out of that diet mentality, the calories in calories out mentality, because it just doesn't work like that with our bodies. And so it's  like a lot of just reprogramming of the brain, because for so many decades of our lives we've been thinking that way right?

Bonnie: Yeah. All right. Well, this was such an interesting conversation. Why don't you tell us sort of like your top tip and you can give more than one if you want, for those women who do want to lose weight. 

Amruti: So I say the top tip is probably not what you're going to want to hear, it is learning how to feel your emotions and feel your urges. And I know we've talked about this previously, but if you can learn how to eat only when you're hungry and only when you're physically hungry, rather than when you're emotionally hungry and trying to push away a negative emotion or a positive emotion. That's when you will get down to your goal weight, because you'll be actually fueling your body with what it actually needs rather than what it wants, because you tend to lose weight when you eat what you need, not when you eat what you always want to eat.

Bonnie: Yeah, it sounds so simple. 

Amruti: You know, it sounds simple and it is simple, but it's the following through that is where it takes practice and it's like a muscle - and when you exercise that muscle, it aches initially, but then when you keep exercising, it grows and it does the exercise easily. So the more you do it, the easier it becomes. And I know that it sounds cliche, but it's true. Really, the more you do it, the easier it becomes. 

Bonnie: Yeah, and I think that's why it's so helpful to have a coach, to coach you during that process so that you're not doing it alone. You know, just having a guide and mentor to help you and understand how to evaluate things so that you're not beating yourself up. Because that's like the worst, right? Because all of us are gonna come up to obstacles and then how we treat ourselves is going to make all the difference.

Amruti: Exactly, and normally what happens in weight loss and probably in money as well, i's we feel a lot of shame when we've eaten off protocol and shame is one of those emotions that  wants to hide, right? So you want to not tell anyone about it, hide, cover it up, things like that. And so when you actually go towards the shame and see that actually the shame is not as bad as I think it is in my brain, then a coach can help you see that because if you aren't getting coached, sometimes you would want to follow that shame and hide, but a coach will actually be able to guide you towards it and feel it.

Bonnie: Yeah. So good. All right, everyone, so basically we just told you all the secrets to making money and losing weight, and it's the same, guys, as you can hear. Well, thank you so much for being here. I think my listeners learned a lot, and how can we learn more about you?

Amruti: Thank you so much for having me. So you can learn more about me by going to my website, www.amruticoaching.com, and I'm currently enrolling for a group coaching program so if you're interested, you can either message me on Instagram, which is @amruti,coaching, or message me on Facebook; I am Amruti Choudhry on Facebook, or you can email me and you can find the details on my website. 

Bonnie: Yeah, we'll be sure to link all that information in the show notes so people can just kinda click and, and find you easily.

Amruti: Thank you so much. Bye.

About Dr Bonnie Koo