Why It Was Never About the Weight

Why It Was Never About the Weight

The deeper psychology of body image, visibility, and early experience

When a woman tells me she wants to lose weight, we talk.

But we rarely talk about the weight.

Instead, we explore what feeling lighter might symbolise.
What it might mean to take up less space.
What she believes will change when her body changes.

Because more often than not —
this isn’t about discipline, food, or fat.

It’s about childhood wounds, safety strategies, and the invisible stories we carry.

Visibility as a threat

Some women learned early that being seen was dangerous.
That attention came with strings attached.
That visibility invited control, criticism, or even harm.

In those cases, weight became armour.
Not just fat tissue — but protection.
A buffer between them and the world.

This isn’t laziness.
It’s brilliance.

The body always finds a way to protect what the mind can’t process.

The body as a battleground

Many of us grew up in homes where emotions weren’t welcome.
Where love was conditional.
Where we were praised for how we looked, but not how we felt.

So we learned to outsource self-worth.
To fix, shrink, and perfect our appearance —
because we believed that looking "better" meant being loved.

We were never taught how to feel safe in our own skin.
Only how to perform.

So we disconnected.
From hunger.
From rest.
From softness.
From our own permission to exist as we are.

It’s not just about confidence — it’s about survival

For some, gaining weight makes them feel like a failure.
For others, losing weight makes them feel exposed.

Both are valid.

Both speak to something far deeper than diet or motivation.

Body image is never just about the mirror.
It’s about memory.
And memory lives in the nervous system, not logic.

The healing isn’t surface — it’s somatic

Changing your relationship with food or fitness without healing the roots is like painting over cracks in the foundation.

Lasting change requires safety.
It requires self-trust.
It requires unlearning the idea that you need to earn rest, nourishment, or softness.

It means asking questions like:

• Who told you your worth was in your appearance?

• What did your body have to do to be accepted?

• When did you first feel like your body was “too much” or “not enough”?

And then learning to meet those wounds with compassion — not control.

Where to go from here

If body image struggles keep resurfacing, you’re not broken.
You’re being invited deeper.

This isn’t about trying harder.
It’s about listening closer.

To your past.
To your patterns.
To the parts of you that learned to cope the only way they knew how.

Your body doesn’t need fixing.
It needs witnessing.

And sometimes, the first step in healing body image…
is realising it was never about the body.

Kindness always,
Didi