What is my body telling me about my weight?
Not a willpower problem, and not a character flaw. Weight is a symptom, and symptoms have drivers.
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Sound familiar?
- Your weight changed and nothing about your life did
- It sits around your middle now in a way it never used to
- You eat well and it makes no difference any more
- You've lost it before and it came straight back
- You're hungry in a way that doesn't feel like normal hunger
- You've been told to eat less and move more, again
Understand what's driving your specific symptom
Pick the one that sounds most like you. Every answer gets read three ways.
What's actually happening What you've been toldWhy did my weight change in my 40s when nothing else did?
Falling oestrogen changes how your body handles insulin, and insulin decides what gets stored. The inputs stayed the same. The system processing them didn't.
Nothing about what you were doing had to change for the result to change.
Medically
Thyroid becomes more common in these years and does exactly this, so a full panel matters rather than TSH alone. Fasting insulin is worth asking for specifically, because it shifts years before glucose looks abnormal. And even if the thyroid or the insulin comes back abnormal, you may need medical support for the short term, and it is always important to look at what is driving it. That is where you look functionally.
Functionally
Insulin sensitivity drops through the perimenopausal transition, and elevated insulin promotes storage and blocks fat being used. Muscle also falls away faster now, and muscle is where you burn things.
Energetically
A body changing shape at precisely the point a woman has least in reserve to meet it, and usually while being told it's her fault. The frustration is not vanity.
Your metabolism didn't break. It's running with less help than it had before, on whatever your cells have been given. That's a supply question, not a discipline one.
Why do I gain weight around my middle now?
Because cortisol has a preference. The receptors it works on are far denser in the fat around your abdomen than anywhere else on you.
where its receptors are densest
You cannot out-exercise a stress response that never switches off.
Medically
Central weight gain with other specific features occasionally points to something that needs excluding, so it's worth a doctor's eye rather than assumption. Thyroid and insulin come first.
Functionally
Cortisol receptors are dense in abdominal fat, so a chronically activated stress response stores centrally. It also breaks down muscle and disrupts the hormones that tell you you're full. You cannot out-exercise that.
Energetically
The body holding reserves against a threat it hasn't been told has passed. Weight gain very often starts after a period of real stress or loss.
Where your body stores something is information, not an accident. It's telling you which signal has been running too long without a break.
Why am I always hungry and craving sugar in the afternoon?
Because that isn't hunger, it's a crash. Your blood sugar dropped and your body is asking for the fastest possible way back up.
The craving is not weakness. It is a correctly functioning emergency response to a real drop.
Medically
Persistent crashing is worth investigating rather than managing. Fasting insulin alongside glucose reveals insulin resistance years before HbA1c does.
Functionally
Blood sugar crashing two to three hours after eating triggers adrenaline and cortisol to bring it back up, and that arrives as urgent hunger for something fast. Leptin resistance separately blunts the signal that tells you you're full.
Energetically
The 3pm craving as the most honest moment in the day. The body asking plainly for something it has been running without since breakfast.
A craving is a request, not a failure. It's your cells saying the supply isn't reaching them steadily, in the loudest language they have.
Can stress make me hold onto weight?
Yes, and more directly than most people are told. Cortisol changes what gets stored, what gets burned, and how hungry you are.
Every one of those pushes in the same direction, and none of them is about willpower.
Medically
Chronic stress physiology is real and measurable, though a single morning cortisol reading won't show it. It's the rhythm across the day that matters, and one reading can't show a rhythm.
Functionally
Elevated cortisol drives storage around the middle, breaks down muscle, increases appetite for calorie-dense food and dysregulates the hormones that signal fullness. It also shunts shared hormone precursors towards cortisol and away from everything else.
Energetically
The body that has been in emergency for years, holding reserves because nothing has told it the emergency is over.
Stress spends the same resources everything else needs. That's why it turns up as weight, and as tiredness, and as a cycle that moves, all at once.
Why does my weight swing so much in a single week?
Most of a short-term swing is water, not fat. Fat does not arrive or leave that fast, and knowing which is which saves a lot of grief.
Weighing daily measures mostly water and mostly tells you how you feel about yourself.
Medically
Sudden or persistent swelling that doesn't settle is a different thing and worth a doctor. Thyroid affects fluid too.
Functionally
Sodium, carbohydrate intake, the second half of your cycle and cortisol all move water. Stored carbohydrate holds roughly three times its own weight in water, which is most of what a fast early loss actually is.
Energetically
The number on the scale becoming the day's verdict on a woman. Very few measurements have caused this much unnecessary harm.
Most of what moves week to week is water. What actually changes underneath moves slowly, and it's driven by what your cells are working with.
Am I not trying hard enough to lose weight?
No. In almost every case where weight won't shift despite real effort, there is a driver that hasn't been looked at.
Insulin resistance can run for years while glucose still reads normal.
Medically
Insulin resistance can exist for years before glucose becomes abnormal, and fasting insulin is the marker that shows it. It is rarely run. Thyroid, and specifically T3, is the second most common miss.
Functionally
Elevated insulin makes the body actively defend its weight, storing readily and releasing reluctantly. That is a physiological state, not a motivation state, and no amount of effort argues with it directly.
Energetically
This is the belief that does the most damage on this page. Women arrive having been told, or having concluded themselves, that the problem is them. It usually isn't.
Effort was never the missing ingredient. The question is what your cells have had to work with, and nobody has looked at that yet.
Have I damaged my metabolism from dieting?
Repeated restriction does change how your body behaves, but not permanently, and not in the way it's usually described.
reversible
Adapted, not broken. Muscle and thyroid conversion both respond to being resourced again.
Medically
Under-eating impairs the conversion of thyroid hormone into its active form, which genuinely slows things. That is measurable, and it's why T3 is worth having on the panel.
Functionally
Restriction costs muscle, and muscle is where you burn things. It also slows thyroid conversion and raises cortisol. All three are adaptations to scarcity, and all three respond to being fed and resourced again.
Energetically
The grief of years spent fighting a body that was only ever responding sensibly to being under-supplied.
Not damaged, adapted. Your body responded correctly to being given less than it needed. Give the cells what they need and the adaptation has no reason to persist.
Is losing weight really just calories in, calories out?
Energy balance is real physics. It just isn't the whole story, because both sides of that equation are set by hormones you're not choosing.
Both sides are hormonally governed. That is why two women eating identically get different results.
Medically
Energy balance holds as physics. The clinical question is what is setting each side of it, and that is hormonal, which is why two women eating identically can get different results.
Functionally
Thyroid, muscle mass, cortisol and sleep all set what you burn. Insulin, leptin and ghrelin set what you want to eat and how full you feel. None of those are chosen, and all of them are affected by what your cells have.
Energetically
The most quietly cruel idea in women's health, because it makes every failure a personal one and hides everything that was actually happening.
The equation is real. What sets both sides of it is your hormones, and what sets your hormones is what your cells have to build them from.
Nobody has looked inside your cells
Your symptoms are your cells telling you they're short of something.
A blood test reads what's travelling around in your blood. That's what it's built for and it does it well. It was never designed to look inside the cell, which is where your body actually builds hormones, makes energy and settles inflammation.
So the thing driving your symptoms can be sitting inside your cells while every test you've had comes back clean. Nothing was missed. Nobody looked there, because that isn't what those tests do.
A hair test reads what actually made it inside the cell, across three months. That's where your pattern is.
What is circulating in your blood
This morning, one moment
Finding disease, and it is very good at it
Yes. That is its job.
What’s inside your cells
The last three months, the whole season
Finding what is running short before it has a name
No. It is a screening tool, not a diagnostic test.
They answer different questions. One is not better than the other, and you want both.
And the pattern is the point. Not another list of things it might be. The specific combination that's yours, because that's the bit that tells you what to actually do.
A hair test is a screening tool, not a diagnostic test. It doesn't diagnose thyroid disease, PCOS or insulin resistance, and it doesn't replace your doctor. It shows the layer nobody has looked at. Female Fundamentals practitioners are trained to listen to your body differently, by looking at the pattern underneath your symptoms.
Get started →A hair tissue mineral analysis plus two 1:1 appointments with a Female Fundamentals practitioner. Details on the next page.
Dr Anthea Todd
Dr. Anthea Todd, D.C. founded Female Fundamentals™ after observing her female patients’ struggles in the complex healthcare system. Her mission is to simplify and add fun to female healthcare.
With a background in chiropractic, a dual master’s in women’s health medicine and reproductive medicine, and expertise in functional medicine, functional neurology, cardiometabolic health, gastrointestinal health, immune-hormonal health, bioenergetics, and neuro-emotional technique, she’s reshaping women’s health.
Her goal is to empower women and professionals to see their bodies as the solution, not the problem, emphasising that the magic we seek is within. Author of the best-selling What’s My Body Telling Me?
Most approaches make you pick a lane. Medical, or functional, or energetic. Female Fundamentals is the first to read all three together. Helping you use the body, not bias, to listen to what your symptoms are telling you that you need.
Other Fundamentals
Your body isn't the problem
When you have reached a medical dead end, this is where you come. A practitioner who knows where to look.
Get started →A hair tissue mineral analysis plus two 1:1 appointments with a Female Fundamentals practitioner. Details on the next page.
Written by Dr Anthea Todd, author of What's My Body Telling Me?
Educational information only. It does not diagnose, treat or cure any condition, and it does not replace advice from your doctor.