episode 220: the thing everyone gets wrong about body image
We’ve been conditioned to believe that only women in bigger bodies struggle with food and body image—but what if that’s completely wrong?
In this episode, I’m breaking down why body image issues and disordered eating aren’t exclusive to any one body type. You’ll hear real stories from women in smaller bodies who still struggle, despite fitting the cultural "ideal."
Inside this episode:
Why we assume weight loss = happiness (and why it’s not that simple)
The hidden struggles of women in smaller bodies
What photos and your friends' complaints about their bodies reveal about your own beliefs
How to comment about someone’s appearance without talking about their size or shape
This conversation is about more than just food—it’s about the way we, as women, see ourselves and each other. If this episode resonates, share it with a friend.
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2025-03-10 11-04-52
[00:00:00] Hi friends. Welcome back diet diaries. You know, you're listening to, um, I'm going to jump right in today. There's no announcements. I don't think, I don't know. Um, this episode is coming out on Monday, March 17th and uh, yeah, let's get right into it. I've had these notes for a couple of weeks that came up after I was having a conversation with two of my really good friends.
I'm not sure if this is something I've ever talked about before, but what I wanted to talk about today is that I think there's a perception that only women living in bigger bodies have, I'm going to say the word issues, right? I'm using that term broadly and loosely with food and also that only women in bigger bodies struggle with body image.
I can understand why people think that, right? Because a lot of that comes back to representation, right? That, uh, bigger bodies are so underrepresented, and so demonized, and, uh, are, [00:01:00] have made to be such a problem that you, by default then, the way like some of our flawed logic works, is that if you are in a smaller body, then you are healthy, then you are happy, then you have a fine relationship with food, then you feel good about how your body looks.
Obviously, the way our human brains work is way more complicated than that, and that is completely not true at all. But I want to first kind of like validate why it is that we think that. And then kind of have a conversation and call into question how we can start to reframe that. Uh, because I think it's really important for For this kind of, when I say conversation, I mean like bigger conversation outside the walls of this podcast.
Um, in terms of the way we think about bodies. Um, Um, you know, very specifically, I'm going to kind of read a quote from someone, um, and here's what she said. I'm someone who is smaller, thinner, and very active, and I [00:02:00] have a lot of food eating behavioral stuff and I never knew body image was something I needed to work on until you started doing this work.
Right. She's someone who follows me, who I have a relationship with. Exercising a lot complicates food intake and diet and weight loss. And you've been so helpful for me. A lot of the marketing points for food behavior sent around people who are bigger bodied, and there's an entire market of women who are more in line with my body type and fitness level who are also struggling with these things.
And This is not just a sample size of one. I've had this conversation with many women who are in what society and culture would call smaller bodied. Um, just about a month or so ago, I had a former client, Stephanie Brinker on this podcast, who openly, she openly talked from her mouth about her size and her body image struggles.
Here's what she said. Um, I never had an issue with arms, but I felt that way about my legs, they have cellulite and I never wore shorts. Now I want to preface this by saying I was a size four at the time. [00:03:00] It didn't matter if I was 113 pounds, 118 pounds, 123 pounds at the time, I wouldn't wear shorts. Now, I would bet a lot of money that there are many of you who are thinking right now, what I wouldn't kill to weigh any of those numbers that she has said, because you believe that if you do, everything would be good.
Life would be better. You would be happier. You could wear whatever you wanted. And here's out of the mouth of someone who was in a size four, right? Which culturally. Everything would tell us that a size 4 is ideal, an ideal size, an ideal body type, and yet she still could not wear shorts. So what does that tell you?
That tells you that the struggles that we have are not about our size. They are about what comes from within and the expectations that are placed on us. And that achieving a certain size is not the answer we think it's going to be. And again, like I know that I say that a lot [00:04:00] and, and I've started to realize that me saying that can maybe feel a little bit alienating because I think that even hearing this, I think there's still a belief, and I get it, where you're like, but if I weighed that much, I wouldn't feel that way.
That wouldn't happen to me. I, I would totally get that. It would be such a drastic change that I'd be so grateful to weigh 123 pounds and be a size four that I would wear shorts. And I get why we think that. And I'm not saying that you potentially wouldn't Maybe feel better about how you looked, right?
This is not a zero sum game. I'm not saying that that couldn't happen. What I'm asking you is to consider the possibility and you know you've talked to friends who are in smaller bodies than you, who are in bigger bodies than you, and everyone is complaining about how they look. Everyone is. You know you have commiserated with friends before.
Where you've been like, Oh my God, it feels so disgusting, I look fat. And your friend says to you, Oh my God, you look great, I look fat. I can't wear shorts. I can't wear a tank top. I can't wear this. I can't wear short hair. I can't wear whatever it [00:05:00] is. And you're looking at them like, What the fuck are you talking about?
Right? And again, it comes back to like, that subjectivity. This is no different than when you look at an old picture of yourself where you were smaller and weighed less and you look at it now and you're like what the fuck was I talking about where I thought I had to lose weight, but at the time you thought you were disgusting, right?
All of these kind of, I'm gonna call them anecdotal, um, experiences. They are meaningful, they, they do add up. They are telling you something, something that you may not want to hear, because it feels a lot easier to say, well, if I just lose the weight, then I'll be happy. That feels very black and white, it feels very concrete, it feels very cause and effect.
And so there's a lot of comfort in thinking that. And again, I'm not saying that if you lose weight, you won't maybe have some increased body satisfaction. That is definitely possible. But it is, if you think it's going to like solve everything and that you won't, rather than saying [00:06:00] solve everything, that you won't have any concerns or stress or dissatisfaction or insecurity about your body, that is the part that's not true, right?
It all exists on a spectrum, and I think our expectation is that when we lose weight, everything will be better. Not just how we look, but therefore we'll be a happier person, a more worthy person, a more likable person, a more attractive person, um, a more content person, a more confident person. And I think that looking back at old photos and looking at friends who are criticizing and feeling frustrated in their own bodies, and you're looking at them like, what the hell are you talking about?
All of these experiences, again, and pieces of information are telling you something. They are telling you that that belief that you have, while it seems logical and there's something very comforting about it, may also not be true. And so I just think that. As women, right, it was just International Women's Day over the weekend, which I don't even know who made that up.
I don't know what it means. I feel like these are like Instagram holidays [00:07:00] and certainly, yes, sometimes it's great to have an occasion to celebrate things and talk about things. Separate issue. But all these women are out there posting about International Women's Day and let's support women and all women are great and let's lift each other up and a rising tide lifts all boats and all this stuff and yet here we are constantly chasing after another woman's body and I'm sorry, but that's not lifting each other up.
That's competitiveness. That's thinking that someone else has it better than you and Also believing that only women in bigger bodies have issues, when that's also not true. Um, that women at any size and any shape can struggle with disordered eating, a clinical eating disorder, and body image issues. And, Noticing that, accepting that, seeing where it pops up around you in as easy and as simple of a situation as when you talk to your friends and listening to the way that your friends talk about their bodies to each other is proof of that.[00:08:00]
Um, and I want women who are in smaller bodies who are listening to this to know that if you are struggling with food and you feel unhappy about how your body looks, it's okay. I get it. It's normal. And I think that there's a lot of women who are in smaller bodies who feel even, who feel a lot of shame about this because they think, well, I'm not in a bigger body.
I'm not in a plus size. I look how people think I am supposed to look and I'm still not happy. And if that's you, I get it. And there's a, it makes total sense why you feel that way. And you don't have to have 30, 40, 50 plus pounds to lose in order to struggle with how your body looks. But I think that there's a belief that, that that you do have to have a large amount of weight to lose.
And so [00:09:00] you might be walking around with kind of this frustration or this dissatisfaction or this discomfort in your body. And not really understanding why because it seems like, oh, well, I should love my body. I'm a size four. I'm a size six. I'm a size two, whatever it is. And yet you don't. And why is that, right?
Um, and so I just wanted to share a couple of these examples from women that I know, a couple of examples from all of our lives that are universal experiences, photos, talking to friends, that start to really connect the dots on this. Um, and I want to pull away the stigma, which might seem a little like, There's such a stigma against people in bigger bodies and this is by no, in my, no, by no means.
trying to dilute that at all. Like two things can be true. There's also a stigma that exists against women in smaller bodies that they are just supposed to love how they look, and that they don't have disordered eating, right? Um, and that if you do lose weight [00:10:00] and you do get to a smaller body that whatever you did to get there is cool and good, right?
So there's a lot of, I'm pulling in a lot of things, and I feel like this episode's a bit all over the place. Um, and again, like, yes, it does come back to the fact that, uh, larger bodies are vastly and hugely underrepresented and are stigmatized and there's, you know, fat phobia. These are all very real things.
But again, as always, two things can be true. That can be true, and there can also be women in smaller bodies who are also out there really, really struggling. And I just wanted to shed some light on that, really. If you are someone who's listening, who is in a body like that, I want you to know that you're not alone.
And I want all women, right, is if you're really, if you posted something for International Women's Day, well, guess what? Like, this applies to you. And we need to have awareness and realize that most women are struggling in their bodies. And regardless of size, regardless of shape. And you could say, Oh, women in bigger bodies are struggling even more.
I mean, that's like saying, Well, you know, [00:11:00] my cancer is worse than yours. Like, I don't, it starts to become, um, like comparative suffering really gets us nowhere. Um, you know, I just speaking personally, like I obviously have very openly struggled about my body and my struggles. And, um, you know, the largest size that I ever took Was a 14 maybe into a 16.
I still wear 14 sometimes, right? Things fluctuate and change. Um, I definitely weighed over 200 pounds at certain points. Um, but there are women who are in bigger bodies than that who would look at me and be like, what the fuck is she complaining about? Right? Um, And I absolutely have a form of thin privilege, right?
Any women who can wear a straight size have a form of thin privilege. Whether or not you want to admit that or you'd like to hear that is irrelevant. You do. Um, and also you can still struggle in your body and have body image issues. These things all [00:12:00] coexist. And If you are someone in a, what's like this new like, social media trend term, midsize, right, I don't know where the fuck this came from.
Size 8, size 10, I guess it's maybe even incorporating a size 12, although sometimes in fashion a 12 and 14 are considered starting moving into plus sizes. Um, That if you are that size, you might look at someone in a 0, 2, or 4, or 6, and think that they have it better than you, and they're happier. And someone in a 22 plus might look at someone in a 10 or a 12 and think, oh well look how small they are, they have it better than me.
And it's just this constant chase. And the reality is, 95 percent of us are all experiencing the same thing, where we're thinking that the other woman has it better than us, when really she's thinking the same thing we are, and so we're chasing something that doesn't even actually exist. And if we could all start doing some work and really identifying how we [00:13:00] can develop our self worth on things that are outside of our size and shape.
That's where progress would actually happen. And I'm not saying stop comparing yourself, because that's not possible, right? I do that too, but I'm just saying we need to be aware of the assumptions that we make about other women based on their appearance. That's not helping us. It's not helping other women.
It's not helping anything for International Women's Day. I keep coming back to that, but that's why I feel like a lot of that is such bullshit, because I think that like, I don't know. It's a nice, it's a nice idea in theory, but in actuality, I don't think that a lot of us are actually following through on some of that stuff in the way that we think.
And I'm, you know, I'm not, I'm calling myself, I'm calling all of us out, right? Just be honest with yourself. Um, lifting up other women, lifting up yourself is about truly supporting yourself and creating your self worth off of things that are connected to your values. And who you are as a person and to how you take care of yourself [00:14:00] and how you show up in the world to your character and Those things can exist and be true at any size and at any shape So I This is I you know, I don't have like I'm not really offering any skills today I'm just kind of talking about something that's been on my mind that has come up with several women that I know Include some clients some not And I just think it's something important to talk about I think about shedding light and creating awareness around Disordered eating and body image issues for all women, not just for a certain population of women is very important.
Um, and I work with some women who need and want to lose weight and I work with some women who don't need and don't want to lose weight, but they're often, they are still struggling with the same things. And again, you might think that because they're in a smaller body that it's not the same. But I would argue that you've never walked in their shoes, you've never, you haven't had their lived experience, you don't know what they have suffered through, and that's an unfair assumption to make, that just because someone is in a smaller body, [00:15:00] that they have it all figured out, or that they are okay, and they're happy, and have a good, what, all these things, right?
We cannot make those assumptions. Um. There is so much that goes on. I mean, this is just, I feel like even ridiculous saying this. It's like the whole thing of like, you know, be kind to everyone you meet because they are facing a battle that you know nothing about, right? And one of those battles could be how they, what they ate for breakfast and what they're allowing themselves to eat for lunch.
Um, and this also goes back to why when you comment to someone whose body has changed recently, you don't know the circumstances under which those changes have happened. And you could inadvertently be reinforcing some really stressful, damaging, disordered behavior. And there are so many ways to compliment and support someone that is outside, again, of their size and shape that could have to do with their appearance.
I'm not saying don't ever talk about someone's appearance, right? There's a lot of ways that you can talk about someone's appearance that does not have to do with their size or shape. [00:16:00] Um, that top looks great on you. Oh my God, you changed your hair. It looks phenomenal. I love that shade of lipstick. Like, you look so happy today.
Your smile looks gorgeous. Um, you walked into this room with such confidence. Like, there's so many ways to talk about an appearance because yes, let's be honest, appearances matter. We care about appearances. I care about my appearance. I'm not saying by any means that it doesn't matter. But appearance and size and shape are not the same thing.
And that's a really important distinction to make. Oh my gosh, I'm going off on another tangent. I'm going to wrap it up. If you're still with me, thank you for listening. Thank you for hanging in here. Appreciate if you shared this episode of the podcast with anyone that you think could benefit from it.
Um, and I'll be back, of course, next week.