Summary 

We’ve all said it before: “I’m doing everything, and it’s not working.”

It feels true. It feels justified. But it’s also the exact thought that keeps so many overachievers stuck in frustration, burnout, and start–stop momentum.

In this episode, I’m adding a little extra “masala to the chai” and calling out this sneaky, disempowering sentence for what it really is: a silent results killer. We’ll dig into why it’s so costly, how to spot it in your own inner soundtrack, and the high-currency questions that can flip it into progress.

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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Why “I’m doing it all, and it’s not working” is more dangerous than it sounds—and how it fuels powerlessness.
• The hidden belief this thought reveals and why it sabotages your efforts before you even start.
• The two real reasons you’re not hitting your goal (and why neither means you’re failing).
• How to swap frustration for curiosity and ask the questions that lead to solutions.
• The surprising link between this thought, “start–stop” energy, and mismatched results.

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 Podcast. I have been wanting to record this podcast episode, like this specific topic for a few weeks now, but I've been holding back because it's a little bit spicy. It's, we're adding a little bit of extra masala to the chai today, but. Also, I feel like if I don't talk about this topic and I don't call it out, it would be doing you such a disservice. So we're going to be talking about the thought, I'm doing it all, and it's not working. If you have ever, as I'm sure many of you have tried to achieve a goal and maybe you've missed the mark, you try to lose weight, you try to go for that big job promotion, you try to improve a relationship, you try to drop percent body fat or to get stronger and you find yourself missing the mark, you might experience a lot frustration, especially if you're like me, you have tried again and again and again and maybe missed the mark again and again and again. I've had this conversation now with enough women, both clients and non-clients, friends, neighbors, colleagues, peers that I've seen this one sentence, it's super insidious. It might feel very like you're just stating the news, but it's actually a really insidious thought that is going to hold back your ability to lose the weight that you want to lose or to feel better in the way that you want. So we're gonna use weight loss of course. As an example on this podcast, if you've tried to lose weight and you feel a lot of frustration that you have lacking results, you might have had the thought, but I'm doing everything. Can you feel like there's like almost like a little bit of a righteous indignation? There's a little bit of anger, there's a little bit of frustration, there's a lot of self doubt and disbelief, and what I have found when we are telling ourselves any version of the story, I'm doing it all, but it's not working. You're going to find yourself feeling perpetually powerless, and the only reason that you might ever tell yourself I'm doing it all. It's not working. It's actually, if you really think about what that thought even means, it means that there's a part of you that believes it will never work. Lemme just say that again. If you have had the thought, I'm doing it all, but it's not working. It's actually a really insidious, very secret way of disguising this other thought, which is it probably never will, and I think the biggest trouble when we tell ourselves, I'm sure that you can imagine where I'm going with this. When you think it's never going to work, no amount of my efforts is ever going to produce results for me. That discouragement that you feel, that feeling of powerlessness, that you feel is what actually drives you off track even more. It's what drives you too. Quit in really micro, small, small moments. It's what drives you to throw in the towel every time you hit an obstacle. It's what drives you to not put in your full effort. It's what drives you to take your foot off the gas the moment that you feel uncomfortable. So I've been noticing this idea of the quote, I'm doing it all, but it's not working as one of the main reasons that you'll never actually solve the weight loss struggle. I want you to imagine what would happen if you literally never thought that sentence ever again, just bear with me. I know you might want to hold onto the sentence. You might even say, Priyanka. I have very compelling reasons to hold onto the sentence, but look at all of my results. It hasn't worked. I hear you. Let's just put that on the nightstand for just a minute. Bear with me. If you never, ever, ever thought the thought, I'm doing it all and it's not working, if you never had that sentence in your mind, what might you start thinking instead? Let me explain to you why I am kind of inviting you to do this exercise. Every time that you have the thought, I'm doing it all, but it's not working. Number one, you feel defeated. Number two, you feel completely discouraged. Number three, you mount even more disbelief. You create confirmation bias. You never figure out. What is it that I'm not doing? What is it that I am doing? Where is my missing skill, my missing strategy? Where is my actual gap for why I haven't hit my goal? You never actually figured that out, and for overachievers that even spend five minutes per waking hour thinking, but I'm doing it all and it's not working. Five minutes per waking hour, if you sleep eight hours per night. Which I don't know that you are, that's 9.3 hours per week that you're not using that you could leverage to actually solve the problem. So here is the truth. This is why I wanna call this a little spicy. Maybe it's a little bit of a little too much spice for your masala chai today, but I feel like I have to say it. The longer you hold onto the thought that you're doing it all, the longer you will stay feeling powerless and your results will keep waiting. You're not doing it all my friends. So if you have lacking results on the scale, if you have lacking results in a relationship, if you have lacking results in your professional career, if there's something that has felt outta reach for you, it is not because you're doing it all and it's not working, it's because something has been missing in your skill or your strategy. Either you didn't have a plan that actually guaranteed success. That actually supported your hormone health that helped you lose the weight you wanted, or you felt so stressed and so overwhelmed that your nervous system didn't allow you to actually do what you said you were going to do. You numbed out and tapped out. You snacked or scrolled or procrastinated in tiny little moments, and those add up, or you didn't have an evaluation process in place to really look at. Where your gaps have been. So I think that one of the most important things that I realized, because I have had my fair share, especially over the last few years of a lot of discouragement, a lot of failed attempts at lots of things. I share them here on the podcast all the time. All of my massive epic fails. I think I even shared recently with my email list and possibly on Instagram. Yes, on Instagram as well. I'm @burnstressloseweight on Instagram, so you can go back and find this photo that I took. It's from mid-July where it literally looks like I have a pregnant belly, like my belly is so bloated because of just a few decisions. You can go and read that post if you want to go and take a look at it. I'm talking about massive epic fails. But the one thought that I stopped thinking a few years ago as it pertains to weight loss and my body goals is I'm doing it all and it's not working. Instead, now when I have a massive epic fail, or if I have lacking results, I ask myself a high currency question, which is, I wonder what I didn't do. Or I wonder what I wasn't willing to feel. So if you could go back with a time machine to this past weekend or this past week or maybe this past month or past season where you might have had a plan on paper, but you didn't do exactly what you said you were going to do. I'm saying exactly doing what you said you were going to do when you were going to do it. It is for one of those two reasons. You didn't do what you said you were going to do or you weren't willing to feel an uncomfortable emotion. Now, there's a whole slew of reasons that smart overachieving women don't know how to sometimes feel uncomfortable emotions without tapping, numbing, or procrastinating.

  So if that's you, we have other podcast episodes about that topic, and it's such an important skill to learn. I call these emotional super skills, how to keep your foot on the gas even when you feel uncomfortable. But we have to start identifying specifically like a dark to a bullseye. What was it that led me to have these lacking results? I kind of think about lacking results as the superpower that overachievers actually need to have to build their bank of self-confidence. It's so common for us to think we need to be confident. First, clear first on our ability to lose the weight. We want to hit the body goal. We want to have that professional goal that we dream of wanting and having for ourself. But the moment that it gets hard, or the moment that you are imperfect, or the moment that you don't get the results that you dreamed of getting, we are so fast to abandon ourself, and I think that that is what this episode is kind of all about. Actually telling yourself I'm doing it all, but it's not working is, in my opinion, a self abandonment script that you have, and you'll know that this is self abandonment because it doesn't feel good to tell yourself that it feels so disempowering to tell yourself that it feels like you create more confusion. When you tell yourself that, I just want this short and sweet podcast episode to really highlight for you to just start catching, how often do you feel frustrated with where you are on the scale with where you are in a career, with where you are, with how you feel in your body? And rather than feeling frustrated, which remember the frustration is not coming from your results, the frustration is coming from the thought. I'm doing it all and it's not working. Or I've tried so hard and it's not working, or it's so hard, like just feel, the reason that we do this is because righteous indignation feels better than feeling powerless, but frustration is actually quite powerless, right? So imagine instead of spending even a moment's bandwidth ever telling yourself, ever thinking that inner soundtrack, I'm doing it all, but it's not working. I want you to practice flipping the script. Flip the script too. I wonder. What specific decision I didn't make? I wonder what part of my strategy was missing. I wonder what part of my strategy I wasn't deeply committed to, and what emotion was I unwilling to feel? And usually when we start to ask that question from a place of real curiosity, this is the opposite of abandonment, right? I love using my children as an example. Like if my kids missed the mark on something. They've recently been super into swim season and swim teams and the meets and improving their times on their races when they missed the mark. Especially for my son, he's older and he really cares about improving his time, especially Butterfly. His stroke, he loves doing the butterfly. He's gonna be 10 soon and he got bit by the swimming bug and whenever he misses the mark, like his time is not improved compared to last meets time or the last practices time, we could go down the road of I'm doing it all and it's not working, or I'm going to practice every day, but I'm not getting faster. Like we could do that. And again, a lot of people do do that, so you might be surrounded by people that think in that way. It's very common, especially in the land of overachievers, like we are surrounding ourselves with people that have that way of thinking. So again, the people you surround yourself with. Matter a lot because when you see other people complaining about their results or complaining about how they're doing it all and it's not working, you're going to start picking up that lingo in your mind. You're not even going to realize. That you're doing it. I want you to just imagine like I'm thinking about my son because he does this a lot. If he ever thought I'm doing it all and it's not working, I can guarantee you that within a few weeks, maybe a few months, maybe if he really stuck with it a couple of years, he would eventually get to burnout and quit the sport of swimming altogether rather than what we want to do with our children. And if we do this with our children, maybe we have to offer this to ourself, is to ask. A better question. If my time for my 25 free or my 25 butterfly didn't improve, I wonder what skill I was missing. I wonder what strategy I didn't have. I wonder what emotion I was unwilling to feel. Did he not show up to practice? Did he not stay for the whole thing? Did he not give his practice efforts, his all? Did he think about the technique and the form that he had when he was swimming? Like we can start asking so many better high currency, high value questions. That will actually lead us to the answer. Now with my son, he is the most disciplined when it comes to swim. He's an anomaly. He loves swim so much that he goes to more practices than he needs to. He's hilarious. But the thing that will be missing for him is sometimes he will overlook, he'll be so focused on getting faster. His mind will not think about technique. His mind will not think about the form that he needs to have or the direction to tilt his head or how to kick his legs. Like his attention will be so focused on the end outcome that he will forget about thinking about his specific technique in the moment. So this just comes back to this idea of the more we tell ourselves, I'm doing it all. It's just not working. It will create a miserable experience of you trying to achieve this goal. It will create a miserable experience that will eventually lead to you quitting on it or burning out with it, or wanting to completely throw it away. Until you feel so uncomfortable in your body that you pick it back up again, and then now you've maybe sabotaged results. You're trying to undo some of your weight gains, like there's a whole mountain of work there or you will feel so frustrated and powerless that you keep making some of the same mistakes again and again and again simply because you don't ask these other questions instead. So if you feel like I'm calling you out, first of all, I'm doing it with so much love. I'm doing it with love and I'm also doing it because if we don't call out the cost of this one sentence, the cost of keeping, I'm doing it all, but it's not working. If we don't call out the cost of it, you'll keep it forever. You can keep this sentence for a lifetime. Many people do actually. Many people will keep thoughts like this for a lifetime. They will keep low currency thoughts like it's so hard. It's not working. I've tried and failed so many times, like I can go on. There's like a whole list of low currency thoughts that we can have that will be the real reason that you feel discouraged and it will be the real reason that your brain will create convincing, compelling, and convenient tiny justifications to not do the tiny, tedious works that it takes. And I've been talking about on this podcast that achieving any goal that's gonna be on the scale or off is full of both pieces. There are parts of the process that are fun. There are parts of the process that are gratifying and there are parts of the process that are boring, and that's okay. There are both pieces of the process, but when we have thoughts like this that doing it all, but it's not working, it probably never will. I really want you to start catching that invisible thought that underlying this entire episode, this entire episode is really trying to shine a light for you to put the light bulb on. Are you secretly under the guise of practicality, believing that you will never hit your goal? And if you are, I want you to just see the cost of keeping that disbelief. I cannot tell you time and time again how often we think that the facts in our life, the circumstances, this could be the three digit number on the scale. This could be the words that a colleague or a boss said to you. This could be the results that you have in a relationship or in your professional career. None of these circumstances are ever the reason. That we feel disbelief or that we have doubt. The only reason we ever have doubt or disbelief is because we have a sentence in our mind about our results. A thought like, oh, it's so hard. Oh, I wanna try and fail. Oh, what if it doesn't work? And if we don't start catching these thoughts in real time and just see them for what they are, they're just very normal human brain thoughts, they can start to run our entire life. And before you know it, years will start passing you by and you'll wake up one day. Wondering why you let doubt and fear keep you in kind of the start, stop inaction energy. Here's the last thing I'm going to say before I wrap up this episode. When you think I'm doing it all, but it's not working and you feel frustration or doubt or disbelief, you're actually someone that is probably working harder. You're probably really putting in a lot of effort, but you're also spinning in circles. That's probably why your brain feels like you're doing it all because you likely are like, I want you to imagine you're in, in an ocean with a, with a boat and a paddle, and you're just, you're rowing. You're rowing really hard, and so your brain feels like I'm doing it all. I'm working so hard, but you're doing it all. But your start, stop energy is preventing you from ever creating momentum. You are spinning in circles, which means you're putting in a lot of effort, but then you're making some of the same mistakes, so I want you to just really notice that you can be putting in a lot of effort, but you can put in a lot of effort and have really mismatched results. And the only reason for that is start stop energy. You keep jumping ship when it gets uncomfortable. You don't make decisive decisions to create your roadmap to success. So you keep sitting in indecision and rumination. You keep spinning, spinning and indecision and. Half ass, half effort energy creates half ass half effort results, and it will feel so true to you that you feel like you're doing it all.

  So today's podcast episode, if it felt like I was calling you out and you feel a little triggered by it, I just want you to note that I love you. And also this one sentence, I'm doing it all, but it's not working is a lie. And it's a lie that will cost you your results. So to recap, I really want you to start catching how often are you telling yourself some flavor of. I'm doing it all, but it's not working or I'm doing it all. It probably won't work. It probably won't last. How often are you telling yourself sentences like that? How many minutes of your life are going into that energy into what would be the impact for you to just catch it and flip the script? Two, I wonder what skill I was missing. I wonder what piece of my strategy I didn't do. I wonder what emotion I was unwilling to feel. And imagine you just started thinking in that way. What would the impact on your results be? I hope that you enjoyed this. Spicy. Is this spicy? I mean, I feel like I. Fairly, fairly PG, fairly PG, but also I really wanted to call out this one very, very expensive sentence that Overachievers are telling them. Solve this one sentence, especially about weight loss. I see it all over the place and it feels like you're just keeping it real or telling the news and you're not. I promise you, you're not doing it all. If you don't have results on the scale, it is because you are not actually doing it all. You might be doing a lot, but you're not doing it all. And I felt like I had to share this episode because of some of the conversations I have been having with so many women. It's like literally the same sentence, just kind of in different ice cream flavors. They say it in slightly different ways, but the cost is still the same, which is you feel frustrated and that's gonna make you quit and make you throw in the towel. I really hope that you enjoy today's slightly spicy, but still PG rated episode and you just start catching yourself to start noticing it. Catch it with a little bit of humor. Now that I've said it, it's almost like once you see it, you can't unsee it. Just start catching how often you're telling yourself some flavor of, it's not going to work. I'm doing it all, and it's not working. Just start catching it. Do me a solid. Just start seeing how often you're telling yourself that and actually even just becoming aware that this is just a sentence and not the news in itself will release. Its power over you, which is on its own, deeply impactful. I hope you love today's podcast episode. This is one that I've been wanting to record for a while. It's just been on my mind. It is a tiny but mighty concept, but I really think will create, I hope some relief for you that these are just thoughts that very normal human brains have, and it's possible to just not think them anymore. Like really, you can just decide you're not going to think these thoughts anymore. If you love this podcast episode, give this episode a rating, a review on your favorite podcast platform. Share it with a friend, and also I have, I mean, there are so many episodes in the Burn Stress, Lose Weight Bank account of podcast episodes. If you want to get real quick hits of philosophy and science and strategy on how to start hitting goals.

  This week I have a private podcast. It's a four episode private podcast episode series we talk about, episode one is how to lose weight and support your hormone health, especially in perimenopause. Episode two is how to burn stress and lose weight. This week, episode three is how to handle urges and cravings to snack and scroll Anywhere, anytime you were in the world. And episode four is how to create Accountability Super skills. So these four private podcast episodes will really help you start taking action this week. So you get out of this like if you feel like you're in a rut, or if you feel like you've been in a rut for a while, it will really get you out. You can go and grab that over at burnstressloseweight.com/bodyreset. That's the name of the private podcast, the Body Reset Podcast. I will email you, so make sure you go and check your email inbox once you have signed up and I will email you. There's a private URL that you have to click to access the private podcast. You can't just search for this in your typical podcast feed. It is a private podcast that you have to get the link for. So go and sign up for that if you want it, and I will meet you in your email inbox with the link. And I hope you guys all have an amazing week. Start catching this one very insidious sentence, and if you do start catching it, I want to hear from you. I want to hear from you when you start catching it and start turning it around. Send me a DM over on Instagram or send me an email. I hope you guys have an amazing week and I'll see you at the next. 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.