Summary 

Ever catch yourself talking your way out of doing what you said you’d do?
Maybe it’s skipping your workout, changing your food plan “just this once,” or promising you’ll start fresh Monday. This episode dives into that exact moment — the subtle mental negotiation that quietly steals your consistency, confidence, and results.

We’ll unpack why negotiation is completely normal (not a willpower problem!) and how to build the real skill that creates lasting freedom — the ability to keep your foot on the gas even when your brain is trying to talk you out of it.

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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Why negotiation shows up even for disciplined, high-achieving women
• How overthinking keeps you “hanging on the bar” and drains your energy
• The pull-up analogy that perfectly captures what’s happening in your brain
• What to do in the moment when the “maybe just today” thoughts hit
• How mastering this one skill builds consistency, freedom, and pride that lasts

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Download the full transcript here.

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  Hey friends. Welcome back to Burn Stress, Lose Weight. Today we're talking all about the power and the problem with negotiating. I don't mean negotiating for a promotion or a pay raise. I'm talking about the mental chatter that we all do when your brain is trying to talk you out of being consistent with a winning strategy, so you have a plan that you know is going to get the job done, you have a plan that you know is going to make you stronger, help you lose weight, finish the project that has been just looming around in the background of your mind, but there's a part of your brain that resists doing the work, and that's where negotiation comes in, right? We have a lot of stories compelling, convincing, and very convenient, very justifiable reasons that maybe just this one time, maybe just in this one moment, maybe just for today, we take our foot off the gas, maybe we take a break, maybe we start again tomorrow, we have a million, I mean hundreds of thousands of thoughts for why we should not take action in that moment. And that is where negotiation comes in. So today's podcast episode is to talk to you about where negotiation comes from. It's completely normal if it has been you. I see you. Listen, I have been there. I totally get it. And also, if you don't have a strategy on handling the negotiating that you experience in your brain, you'll notice yourself being very inconsistent. Now, you're someone that's generally disciplined person. We know this because you show up to work on time. You pay your bills on time, you pay your taxes, you pick your kids up at the bus stop. You're a very disciplined person. However, there are probably certain areas of your life, specifically the areas that you don't have the goals, the results that you want on the scale are off, that you have likely been inconsistent, and this is why. This is one of those skills that is essential and worth learning. Before we dive into today's podcast episode, I want to make sure that you know, we are starting our October cohort of Burn Stress, Lose Weight this week. if you missed enrollment last week, if you didn't get on a consult call with me or have a chance to talk with me about your specific goals, about how our work together will help you move the needle in losing the weight you want while feeling better. It's not too late to join us. You can get all the nuts, bolts, and details over at burnstressloseweight.com/group, and there may not be any consult spots open anymore that you see on that calendar, but you can simply send me an email at [email protected] and we can chat that way to see if this group would be a best fit for you. Okay. Without further ado, let's get into this episode on negotiating. So as I've been sharing on the podcast, I have been focusing on strength training as one of my primary goals in my forties. I really want to protect muscle metabolism and my vitality as I get older, not just lose weight on the scale, but really feel my best inside out. And part of that has been really prioritizing strength training. Seriously having the nutrition to match my strength training goals and being really consistent with it, and I shared on the podcast before that 2023 and 2024 were massive epic fails because I was inconsistent in small moments, very much because I would negotiate when I felt overwhelmed, whenever I felt stressed with work. It was the very first thing to go whenever I felt kind of behind in. Any part of my life, the very first thing to go, my brain would negotiate with all the reasons why today was the day that I should maybe take a break. But the wins that I've experienced in 2025 around strength training and fitness was built on the back of failing in 2023 and 2024. Here's what I want to paint negotiation as because I've talked with so many. Very smart, professional women across industry, and they have told me that they don't just want to lose weight or achieve some specific metric or a body goal. What they really want to experience is freedom. Does that sound familiar? You just want to experience freedom from the mental chatter. You don't want food or food noise to be a problem for you anymore. You want to be able to. Through a social scenario or walk through a season without feeling like you're not going to do what you said you were going to do, it is that freedom that we are all wanting. And yet, a lot of times if you don't have a very specific step-by-step strategy on how to handle that very normal moment, you're going to do what you might've done in the past, which is to give in in tiny moments. Here's what this showed up as for me and why I really wanna just jump on this podcast today. I'm like, I'm wearing a sweatshirt. My hair is barely combed, but I really wanted to share this story because it painted such a visually perfect analogy of exactly what negotiating is doing if you don't have the skillset to overcome it. So I have been working on doing pull-ups at the gym. I've been sharing with all of you that I spent a lot of time working on my leg muscles and my back muscles because they're the largest muscle groups. And when you work on building large muscles, you'll build your metabolism and muscle burns fat even in your sleep. So it felt like a really smart thing to do to focus on my leg muscles and back muscles. However, one of the things that I really wanted to work on was pull-ups as a part of my strength training fitness regimen. And to do that, it meant that I would grip a bar and have to pull myself up. Now I cannot do a pull-up despite all of my many months of strength training. It is still one of those exercises, one of those. Things that I cannot do, I'm working on it. We will get there eventually, but here's what I realized happening. I was holding onto the bar. I was working with a trainer who's kind of walking me up to doing a proper full pull-up. So we're doing like baby pull-ups, we're doing modified pull-ups for me to build my hand strength and for me to build my grip strength, which is currently my weakest skill. We talked about the weakest skillset a couple of episodes ago, so if you did not listen to that, go back and listen to that. We're working on my grip strength because if my grip strength improves. I'll be able to do that, pull up with a lot more ease. So that's a, a skillset we're working on. And here's how I noticed negotiating coming up for me and how in the past it used to completely take me off track. It's the reason that I had so many epic fails in years past. So I'm hanging there. I want you to literally visualize this is what we are doing. Anytime that you have been inconsistent with your food plan, anytime that you've been inconsistent with doing what you said you were going to do, this is all that's happening. I want you to imagine that you're holding onto a bar and the plan, the goal is for you to try to pull yourself up. Now while you're hanging there, just holding onto the bar and hanging there, your brain is having a lot of very normal thoughts. Thoughts like, I don't know if I can do this. This might be really hard. It feels really tough. I've never done this before. The last time I tried I couldn't do it. So the longer that your brain entertains sentences like that, the longer that your brain is thinking about all the reasons that you probably can't do it all the reason that it's probably going to be really hard. Your hands are just getting tired. Your hands that have been gripping onto this bar are starting to slip, and then there comes a very normal moment because again, your grip strength is not going to last in perpetuity. You cannot physically hold onto the bar anymore, which is the real reason that you let go.

  So I was doing this, I was holding onto the bar. I was literally hanging there, and I'm just like in my mind and noticing my Priyanka, okay, you have to think about this. You have to get yourself riled up. Like you've got this, you can do it. I'm like trying to pep myself up and my trainer looks at me and he literally says stop thinking, just go. Just hearing him like I almost needed him to just say that so I could get outta my head and start taking action. It was the thing that actually helped me pull myself up on the bar rather than get to a point of so much fatigue that I had to let go. So I want you to just take this analogy and run with it and how this applies to you taking action today or this week. Really think about what has come up for you in the last season where maybe you did not hit your goals. Maybe you stagnated, you fell behind, you maybe gained some weight back, or you undid some of your results. Where did negotiating in tiny little moments completely drain your bandwidth and energy? Where your hand grip got to the point that you had to let go of the bar? This is not a moral failing of you. This is just your brain and body physiology. You cannot hold on in perpetuity. So the lesson here is not to get mad at yourself for not having an endless amount of strength, aka willpower and discipline. The real skillset here is to catch the fact that the longer you stay in thinking about it, the longer that you stay in trying to get yourself excited. Get yourself motivated. Make sure that you feel completely aligned and in complete belief the longer that your hand gripped. Is starting to slip. Now, the reality is a lot of times overachievers make the mistake of thinking that they have a discipline problem or a consistency problem, but that's not actually the real issue, right? If you are someone that pays your bills on time, that shows up to work on time, you're someone that picks your kids up at school on time, or from soccer practice on time, you are not someone that has a discipline problem. But if you look at the very specific areas where you have lacking results, if that's with your weight loss goal, your body goal, maybe it's a promotion, a career or relationship, likely in those specific areas, you haven't been consistent because you negotiate. Now, the first thing to know is negotiating in itself is literally not a problem. We can spend a lot of time getting really mad, feeling kind of entitled, feeling as frustrated that, great. There we go again. I can't believe I'm negotiating. I wish that I didn't negotiate with myself. We can spend a lot of time wishing for your brain to not negotiate. Or what we can do is the higher quality work of getting really good at managing the negotiating. Here's the example, because we know I love painting a good analogy. Imagine that your toddler, when they were two, three, maybe four years old, had a total meltdown temper tantrum in the grocery store. They saw the colorful ring pop or the rainbow lollipop, and they just started having a total meltdown about wanting to have the lollipop right. Now if you're a mom, we've all been in that moment where you're experiencing a toddler having a total epic meltdown. And maybe in the very beginning when you're new to handling temper tantrums with your toddler, maybe you've given in a couple of times, here's what happens, right? So when your toddler's having the total epic meltdown. People are looking at you. It's a scene. It's like turning into a whole situation. You might have felt either embarrassed that your toddler's behaving this way. You might have gotten mad at your toddler for having the temper tantrum. You might have felt frustrated that you're this mom that can't handle your kid. You had a whole host of thoughts for this toddler having this temper tantrum, and maybe at some point in the past you decided, you know. I don't want to deal with this tantruming toddler. Let me just give them the lollipop. I'll deal with this later. And every time that we have done that historically, you likely have experienced that your toddler learns a really important lesson. They learn the longer I cry, the louder I yell, the more tears I have, the bigger scene that I make, the higher the likelihood that she's going to give in. Now, this is the toddler being brilliant. This is kind of what they're designed to do. They're designed to learn these lessons. They're designed to learn, how do I get exactly what I want? And they learn every time. They have a huge temper tantrum my mom's going to give in. And the trouble with this, every time we give into one of these tantrums, we start to become really afraid of our toddler. We are afraid of going out with them in public. We're afraid of taking them to that candy store because what if they have a tantrum again? Right, like we get so afraid of the situation because we are flashing back to that moment that we had to give in because we couldn't handle the situation. This is exactly what we do when it comes to taking your plan, that's going to absolutely get you to your body goal and having a lot of negotiation around it. If you're someone that has been inconsistent with your weight loss plans in the past, you might have created this identity that you're just someone who gives into negotiating, and that is a really slippery slope and a really unfortunate mindset to be in because when you believe that you are just someone who gives into the toddler, you're just someone who gives into negotiating. What starts to happen as you build this into you identity is you start to exit strategies before you've even started. You'll notice that you'll make a plan for next week or next month or next year, and you'll tell yourself, let's just see how it goes. You will start to plant seeds of doubt in your mind even before you've started because you're so afraid of that moment, that very normal, super uncomfortable moment of staying firm with yourself in the moment that you're negotiating. Don't worry all is not lost. Your toddler does not have to start magically behaving for you to feel in complete control of the situation, nor does your brain have to completely stop negotiating for you to really start to create some confidence in yourself that you will do what you said. Now, I think that this skillset, the power of handling that moment that you negotiate takes more than just listening to this podcast episode. It's not a skillset that you're going to learn from a workbook, from a video, or from a module. You literally have, the only way to build on this skillset is to put the reps in, to take your brain there to actually put it into active implementation on a daily basis, I'm going to walk you through each of these steps, and I want you to just decide that you're ready to start right now because when you start taking action on this now, you're going to have the longest runway to build this muscle up, so it's your strongest muscle for next year. Step one is to know that negotiating is normal. Your brain negotiating to go off plan is not a moral failing. It's not weakness, it's not a lack of discipline. It is a very, very normal part of your brain that simply wants a break from your life. It simply wants you to take your foot off the gas, it wants you to snacking, scrolling, to take a break from stress, from overwhelming, and from frustration in the past, negotiating has gotten you there. So step one is really important, but also very simple. It's simply to stop making the negotiating a problem. Step two is probably the hardest part, but this is the one where the juice is, and that is to grow your discomfort tolerance. When I say grow your discomfort tolerance, this is the part that you cannot learn in a work book You're not gonna even learn just by listening to this podcast episode. The only way to grow discomfort tolerance is to put the reps in. This means there's going to come at that very normal moment that your brain offers you a three C story. A convincing, convenient, and very compelling reason to not do what you said. A thought like maybe this time. I can just not do it. Maybe I'll start again on Monday. I have a lot going on right now. Maybe I just push this off to later. There's going to be thousands of thoughts like this that are going to be very, very sneaky. They will feel very justified, particularly if you're a busy professional working particularly as a busy professional woman. You have a lot of things going on, so it makes a lot of sense that your brain wants you to take your foot off the gas, but this is that moment I want you to. Pause the soundtrack, like really, really pause here. Just becoming aware of the soundtrack in real time. There's going to be a very normal moment that you feel the discomfort of the negotiating, and this is where you have to keep your foot on the gas. Now here's the good news. When you stop thinking about it so much, this is where you have to catch the soundtrack. Stop indulging. In the soundtrack, it was like me hanging on the bar and wondering, can I do this? Should I do it? Let me pep myself up. Let me get excited. Let me get motivated. No, don't think about it. Just do it. This is where, in that moment, when you notice yourself, should I, shouldn't I? Should I eat a little bit more? Should I not, should I go into the pantry? Should I not? Should I have a few chips, should I not? Don't keep thinking about it. Catch the negotiating. Know that it's normal, and keep your foot on the gas. Again, this is a moment. They're tiny. These are tiny, tiny, tiny, invisible moments where overachieving, very smart women are wanting to feel completely aligned, comfortable, confident, excited to do what they said they were going to do. But this is where your results are living. This is where your results and scale are living this year. It is those few bites past satiety. It is the few bites, slicks and nibbles that you're taking here and there. That is where your results are living in the next seven days. While it might feel uncomfortable for just those few moments, now we get to step three. When you do what you said you were going to do, don't think about it. Just do it. It's like when I pulled myself up on that barbell, I felt so proud of myself. I felt so proud of myself, and it's that pride. It's the purest, cleanest form of pleasure. It is a dopamine high that lasts for more than a few minutes that we are really craving. It's actually that dopamine high of. Feeling pride at the end of doing what we said we were going to do, that starts to rewire your brain with new habits. I'm going to share two words that sound fancy, but I want to share them with you because everything I'm describing is evidence-based strategies on how to rewire your brain with new habits. The very first one is metacognition, and the second one is neuroplasticity. So metacognition is simply becoming. Aware of your thoughts, becoming aware of your patterns. If you take a fine tooth comb over the last season, over the last month, over the last year, that you have missed the mark on you hitting your goal weight, your body goal, that promotion, the career, the relationship goal that you have wanted. If we take a fine tooth comb over those thoughts and those actions, you will see certain patterns. And metacognition is basically an awareness tool that lets you glean wisdom from those thoughts. There are certain thoughts, certain patterns that take you off track and that make you inconsistent, and a lot of them are steeped in letting yourself negotiate. So simply becoming aware of your pattern starts to change it. You can start to catch your thoughts in real time. You can catch yourself negotiating in real time and simply using metacognition. As a tool for yourself where you're not living in autopilot, you're not just giving in for no reason, you're catching it, you're validating it. You're normalizing it. That's not a problem. And you can take different action now that you can see it clearly. And this leads me to the second word, which is neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity describes the ability for our brain. Hard wiring to change. You might hear someone say like, oh, I'm too old to learn new habits. You are literally never too old, and it is never too late for you to change some of these habits, which are going to inform the results you get in the next 90 days. Now it's true that the longer that you have had. Certain habits, some maladaptive patterns. The more reps that you have not followed through has built in more super highways in your brain. It's not a problem. It's just what it's, so, this is where I want to encourage you. I'm inviting you to let yourself feel uncomfortable if you have put in a thousand reps in negotiating and giving into that moment. I want you to put in the equal amount of reps to create new patterns. Biggest mistakes that I see a lot of smart women make is they will learn about this, right? Metacognition, they'll become aware of their patterns, they'll become aware of some of their habits. They'll put in a couple of reps in not thinking and just going and following through and being consistent. And then they'll wonder, wait a second, why am I still negotiating? Isn't it supposed to be gone by now? Shouldn't I have already hit my goal? This is the most unfair thing to do to yourself. If you've had decades of negotiating with yourself and giving in. If you've had years and hundreds and thousands of reps of giving into that moment of negotiating, give yourself a fair shot, really putting in the reps. Again, you don't have to spend years at this, but even just 30 days of being consistent with this work is going to completely game change your entire experience of weight loss. The last thing that I want to share that has made a huge difference for me. In that very normal moment, the discomfort that I'm experiencing hanging on the bar, I notice my brain starting to negotiate and I'm about to stop thinking and just going. I simply think about why my goal is worth it to me. Every time I'm just noticing myself hesitating. I notice myself starting to take my foot off the gas. I simply remind myself without harshness and criticism and like you have to when you're supposed to, and you should. I start telling myself, Priyanka, just remember why you want this. Remember how good you feel when you do the pull up. Remember how good you feel when you keep your foot on the gas, and just that one sentence is plenty to take you over the edge. So I hope that this podcast episode sheds some light on how negotiating is so normal. It is a very common tendency for the overachiever brain to simply drive you getting a break. If you have been stressed and overwhelmed and frustrated, and you're not giving yourself real breaks in your life. Snacking and scrolling is going to be the quick and easy way to do it. That's number one. Number two, if you have been giving in to negotiating patterns in the past, the toddler part of your brain has simply learned the longer and harder that I tantrum the more likely she is to give in. This is where you have to renegotiate terms with the toddler part of your brain. Have a script in advance. Just know like, I know you're going to have a tantrum about this. I know it's uncomfortable. We're going to do what we said and remember. That moment's going to come. It's not a problem. There's a way to walk yourself through it, and when you do, you start to create what I have experienced, which is real freedom. Freedom is not the negotiating going away. Freedom is having the confidence that you can handle negotiating in any and every scenario. And to me. In my experience, that's reality. Negotiating is never going to go away. So if you're waiting for that, it's going to be a really long ride. It's going to be a perpetual uphill battle. I think a much more realistic way of thinking about it is negotiating is never going to go away, but if you want freedom. From that experience where you feel disempowered and like a victim to the negotiating, you have to put in the reps and it is uncomfortable. This is going to require that you grow discomfort, tolerance, and when you do, it really opens up so much, not just confidence for you maintaining your results for a lifetime, because this is one of those skills you're going to need forever, but it starts to create real wins for you in the next seven days. I need, think about that. Wins in the next seven days wins over this next season. This season between Halloween and Thanksgiving and all the cultural holidays. This is when social gatherings, all the special foods come out, all of the events, all of the family gatherings. This is when most people who use food to celebrate, which is so normal, start to gain the most amount of weight. And I don't want you to think you have to wait until January 1st to take a hold of this. I really want you to imagine that it was possible for you to experience this holiday season, to catch those very normal moments where maybe you negotiate a little bit with yourself back and forth to stop thinking and keep your foot on the gas in a way where you can create real, meaningful connection with your loved ones eat in a way that you enjoy, that supports your hormone health and supports your body goals, so that on the first of the new year, you're already ahead on your goals, which to me is going to feel so good. I hope that you enjoy today's podcast episode and from now on moving forward, any time that you notice yourself negotiating with, should I or shouldn't I, A little bit or a lot, a couple more bites or not, I want you to visualize yourself hanging on the bar. The longer that you let yourself think about it. The more fatigue your hand grip is going to become. Just remember that it's decide in that moment. I'm not going to keep thinking about this. I'm just going to do it. I hope that you enjoyed today's podcast episode and this conversation around negotiating it is one of those amazing skillsets that truly will create freedom for you. I want that for you. If you know that you want my help inside, Burn Stress, Lose Weight, Feel Unstoppable, our group coaching program, I would love to see your name, join the group, send me an email, or you can DM me over on Instagram. I'm at Burn Stress Lose Weight, and I hope you guys all have an amazing week. Bye. Thanks for spending this time with me on the Burn Stress, Lose Weight podcast today. I hope that you are leaving today's podcast episode feeling a little lighter and more inspired than when we started. It turns out. That you don't need to have a stress-free life to hit your goals on and off the scale, but when you feel more empowered to respond to your real life stresses, with true strategy, we will game change how we show up, and how we hit our goals. If you wanna take what you are learning here on the podcast and put it into real life implementation, it might be time for us to work together in the Burn Stress, Lose Weight, Feel Unstoppable Group coaching program. Head over to burnstressloseweight.com and you can learn all of the details, the nuts, the bolts, when the next group is starting and exactly how you can join. Okay, friend, I'll see you next time.