Insecurity: The Weight We Don’t See

For most of my life, weight wasn’t a thing. I was that guy. The one people joked could eat a burger and somehow lose five pounds while doing it. In high school, I topped out around 140 pounds at 5’10”, which meant I looked like a strong gust of wind might take me out. If the sun was up, I was moving, racing cars on a bike (and occasionally winning), shooting hoops, golfing until dark, or trying to see how far a baseball could possibly go before gravity intervened.

Food back then wasn’t complicated. I grew up on a small farm. We raised cows and pigs. We fished. We grew vegetables. “Processed food” meant steamed rice. No labels. No macros. No guilt. Just… food.

Then I got older. And life happened.

Activity slowed. Responsibility picked up. I discovered beer. And fast food. And the kind of ultra-processed foods that would make my childhood self stare in confusion and ask, “What animal did this come from?” If I’m being honest, there’s probably a large chunk of my 20s where I didn’t eat anything that could be confidently identified as real food.

That 140 lbs became 175.Then 200. Eventually… nearly 270 pounds.

I didn’t gain weight, I duplicated myself. And no, sadly, the clone did not come with extra confidence or emotional stability.

The Mental Shift No One Warns You About

Here’s the thing people don’t tell you about weight gain, or weight loss for that matter: It messes with your head way before it messes with your body.

I got married. I stayed at that larger version of myself for a long time. Eventually, I decided I needed to change, so I did what a lot of us do: I started working out.

Hard.

I built muscle. I felt stronger. And because I was lifting weights, I told myself I could eat whatever I wanted. Balance, right?

Except mentally, I was not okay.

I was working a high-stress job in mortgages right as the economy decided to implode in 2008. My routine became painfully predictable:

• Work out

• Work

• Eat terribly

• Drink to forget the day

• Repeat

I was neglecting my body. I was neglecting my mental health. And worst of all, I was neglecting my wife, the person I love more than anyone.

Something had to change.

Confidence on the Outside, Scrambled Eggs on the Inside

Somewhere between 2006–2008, I started meeting regularly with a friend of mine who is a pastor. Every couple of weeks, we’d sit down and talk, not about religion in a formal sense, but about me. Why was I numbing out? Why was I avoiding the people and things that mattered? Why was I running from myself?

Outwardly, I looked confident.

Inside? Absolute scrambled eggs.

I was carrying insecurities about:

• Not being good enough

• Failing myself, my wife, my employees

• Being “the fat guy”

• Drinking too much

• Losing my wife

And here’s the scary part: Once that darkness starts stacking, it compounds fast.

Food and alcohol became coping mechanisms. Comfort. Escape. Temporary silence.

But those conversations, those uncomfortable, honest ones, forced me to confront the patterns underneath the behavior. I started to see how my reactions to stress almost always involved eating, drinking, or both.

That awareness didn’t make me perfect. Not even close. But it made me work to be consistent. I learned to say what I mean, do what I say, and commit fully - to my marriage, myself, my life.

And that matters more than perfection ever will.

Why Weight Loss Messes With Our Heads

Here’s what I know now, because I'm living it in real time: A weight loss journey isn’t just about food or movement. It’s a mental reckoning. When my body starts to change, I expected things to get easier. Lighter body, lighter mind… right? Instead, old insecurities showed up like they’d been waiting in the parking lot the whole time. Same doubts. Louder voice. Better timing. Somehow always arriving right when I felt proud of myself.

I learned pretty quickly that weight loss doesn’t create new mental struggles, it exposes the ones that were already there. For me, it shows up in familiar ways. One “off” meal feels like a moral failure. I’d eat a slice of cake and my brain would immediately go, Well, guess this week is ruined. Might as well keep going. It isn't hunger talking, it is perfectionism. The all-or-nothing thinking that says if you can’t do it perfectly, it’s not worth doing at all.

Then there are the “shoulds.”

I should have worked out harder.

I shouldn’t be hungry.

I should be further along by now.

If there’s a word that has done more damage to my mental health than almost anything else, it’s should. It sounds responsible. It feels motivating. But all it really does is turn effort into shame.

And even when progress was obvious, when the scale moves, when clothes fit differently, my brain doesn't celebrate. It zooms in on what hasn’t changed. Loose skin. Stubborn spots. The mirror stops being a reflection and turns into a critic with a clipboard.

Then comes

the fear I didn’t expect at all. What if this doesn’t last? What if I can’t maintain this forever? The more progress I make, the more pressure I feel to never slip, never stop, never let go, like one wrong move will send me right back to the version of myself I worked so hard to escape.

Add in impatience, because effort doesn’t always show up on your body as fast as it shows up in your life and insecurity starts whispering that none of it matters anyway. And then there’s the social side no one talks about enough.

Eating out. Family gatherings. Trying to subtly hide you are on a diet. Wondering if people are judging you… or worse. My mind likes to go to that dark corner where I think people are thinking the worst about me.

I now understand that none of this means we're weak.

It means our brain is doing what it was designed to do: protect what’s familiar. Even when familiar wasn’t healthy. Change registers as stress. Your body wants its old normal back. Layer that with emotional attachment to food, years of coping, and long-held beliefs about self-worth, and of course your mind fights back.

That’s not failure. That’s biology and history in a cage match.

What Actually Helped (From Someone Still Doing the Work)

What changed things for me wasn’t discipline or perfection. It is learning how to respond differently when my mind starts spiraling. I stopped letting the scale be the judge and jury. I started paying attention to how I felt. How I move. How I show up for my life and the people I love.

I practice mindfulness instead of mindlessness, pausing long enough to ask, Am I actually hungry… or am I avoiding something right now? I choose kindness over punishment. Progress isn’t linear. “Cheating” isn’t failure, it’s being human.

And when the lies show up: the shoulds, the all-or-nothing thinking, the fear, I remind myself of something important: I’ve survived harder things than this. I’ve come farther than my insecurity wants to admit.

Still Insecure. Just Better Equipped.

I won’t pretend I’m cured. Some days that old darkness still tries to push through. The difference now is I recognize it for what it is—and I don’t hand it the steering wheel.

This journey isn’t about becoming a new person. It’s about taking better care of the one I already am.

And that matters far more than any number on a scale.