Letters on self-abandonment, identity, and finding your way back.
My doctor recently invited me in for what they described as a health “chat.”
After years of texts reminding me that my BMI placed me firmly in the category modern medicine finds deeply concerning, I finally decided to go.
The outcome was both unsurprising and strangely clarifying.
My blood tests are normal.
No diabetes.
No thyroid issue.
No major medical explanation for why my body has held onto weight for most of my life.
I understand nutrition.
I exercise.
I know what triggers overeating.
I know what supports my health.
I’ve even tried Mounjaro
And yet, after decades of trying to “fix” my body, the only pathway left available to me through the NHS is bariatric surgery (stomach stapling or adding a sleeve).
After that appointment, I reflected and realised that it wasn’t the suggestion of surgery itself that caught me off guard.
It was the underlying assumption beneath the entire conversation:
If the body is not responding the way we want it to, the body itself must be the problem.
But what if that isn’t true?
What if many of the symptoms modern women are experiencing are not evidence of failure, but evidence of adaptation?
When you step back and look honestly at how many people are living their lives, it becomes difficult to ignore the bigger picture.
We are overstimulated, sleep-deprived, emotionally overloaded, hormonally dysregulated and permanently connected to stress.
Many women are carrying the invisible weight of work, caregiving, emotional labour, financial pressure, decision fatigue and a nervous system that rarely feels safe enough to switch off and relax fully.
And then we continue to approach health as though the issue is simply calories, willpower and compliance.
Modern wellness culture has become obsessed with control.
Track the food.
Close the rings.
Hit the protein target.
Optimise the morning routine.
Drink more water.
Try harder.
Meanwhile, the body is whispering:
I’m exhausted.
Rather than asking only, “How do we make the body smaller?” it asks:
“What conditions has the body been living under?”
In Ayurvedic philosophy, weight gain is often seen as a downstream symptom of deeper imbalance within the system.
Chronic stress, emotional suppression, irregular rest and nervous system overload are believed to weaken agni — the body’s metabolic and digestive fire.
When that happens, the body begins to accumulate what Ayurveda calls ama: undigested residue, both physical and emotional.
The result can look like heaviness, inflammation, emotional eating, fatigue, sluggishness and difficulty losing weight even when someone appears to be “doing everything right.”
The body is not broken.
The body is adapting.
That distinction matters.
It especially matters for women who have spent years interpreting their body as an enemy to fight, control, shrink or discipline into submission.
One of the most confronting things I’ve realised recently is how many stress responses become personality traits when they go unchecked long enough.
Hyper-independence becomes capability.
Overthinking becomes a responsibility.
People-pleasing becomes kindness.
Pushing through exhaustion becomes ambition.
Even hypervigilance can start to feel like competence.
We normalise it because everyone around us is functioning in a similar state.
Until eventually we no longer recognise what calm feels like inside our own body.
This is why I no longer believe wellbeing can be reduced to habit stacks, supplements and self-improvement routines alone.
A body that does not feel safe will always struggle to let go fully.
I think many women know this intuitively, even if they’ve never had language for it before.
The question is no longer:
“How do I force my body to change?”
It’s:
“What would help my body stop believing it needs to stay in survival mode?”
That question changes everything.
Because there is a difference between supporting the body and constantly overriding it.
And I suspect far more women are exhausted from self-override than we currently realise.
So I’ll leave you with the question I’ve been asking myself lately:
What might change if you stopped treating your body like a problem to solve and started listening to what it has been trying to tell you?
What if your body isn’t fighting against you?
What if it’s been trying to protect you all along?
With love,
You can find out more or work with me at pujamcclymont.com
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