The Weight We Carry: How Emotions Live in the Body

There were times in my life when I put on weight seemingly overnight—the “oh crap” moment when my jeans wouldn’t even clear my hips, like they’d shrunk.

The weight had crept on during times when I felt disconnected and life ran on autopilot: periods of numbing with food, wine, noise, distraction—when I’d stopped moving, stopped noticing.

Weight felt like a flaw to fix with another diet or exercise plan.

But now I know weight isn’t the enemy—it’s simply a messenger, reflecting unprocessed, often buried emotions: grief, burnout, heartbreak, or the ongoing strain of holding everything together. Our bodies hold onto that weight until we’re ready to feel what we’ve been avoiding.

When Life Changed, So Did My Connection to My Body

Looking back, it wasn’t always the high-stress chapters that unraveled me. Some of the most demanding seasons of my life—full schedules, big deadlines, endless logistics—I showed up for myself. I cooked, I moved, found breath in yoga, steadiness in strength training. I wasn’t always at peace, but I was present.

The harder times came in the spaces between—the transitions, the moves, the relationships heading toward breakup, the mornings that felt unanchored, the nights that stretched endlessly, the grief.

That’s when it would creep in.
A little more wine while cooking.
A little less movement.
A little more mindless eating—not from hunger, but from habit.
Another late-night scroll or online order.
A quick fix, comforting for a moment but never quite filling the void.

It wasn’t overindulgence. It was disconnection.

It’s subtle, this turning away. It doesn’t announce itself.
And that’s the tricky thing about emotional weight:
It rarely arrives in one clear moment.

It’s the quiet build-up of choices that come from feeling disconnected—from yourself, your needs, your emotions.

No wonder there are so many diet books.
It’s easier to control food than feelings.
Easier to follow rules than face our emotions.
Easier to restrict food than to examine what we really need.

What Brought Me Back

What brought me back to myself wasn’t another diet, strict routine or a sudden burst of motivation.

It was something quieter. Something older.
A voice I’ve carried with me my entire life.
My mother’s voice.

She didn’t always have the words for emotions, but she had rhythm.
She had standards.
A way of steadying herself when life tried to pull her under.

In the moments when I drifted—when I stopped caring for myself or started to disappear—I’d hear her voice in my head:
“Get up. Get dressed. Get out.
It wasn’t harsh. It was direct, practical, and loving in its own way.

I always thought of it as a way to get back on course.
And so I did.

Not with new rules, but with standards.

Standards became my anchors—simple, non-negotiable acts of care I could return to when everything around me felt uncertain:

• Moving my body to shake off the fog
• Cooking simple, nourishing meals
• Taking a walk, even if just to the corner
• Sitting quietly long enough to ask myself: How am I, really?

These standards gave me a way back to myself.
They became a skeletal structure—simple but steady—that helped shift me out of numbing and back into feeling.

It gave me enough shape to get curious again about what I was actually carrying and what I needed.

Because underneath the behavior—under the wine, the late-night scrolling, the distraction, the silence—were emotions waiting to be felt.
And there had been many times in my life when I’d tuned them out—sometimes knowingly, sometimes not.

What Are Emotions, Really?

At their core, emotions are energy in motion.
They’re not just passing moods or overreactions—they are biological events: full-body responses designed to help us adapt, connect, protect ourselves, and survive.

And while they may be wired in, how we feel and express them is deeply shaped by our perception of safety, environment, and past experience.

Every emotion—fear, grief, anger, loneliness, joy—comes with a physical signature: a quickened heartbeat, a clenched jaw, a hollow feeling in the gut. The body is always responding.

When emotions are acknowledged, they can move through.
But when they’re ignored, suppressed, or overridden—they don’t vanish.
They relocate. They settle in the body.
They linger in the nervous system, the gut, the muscles, the immune system.
They wait.

This isn’t just emotional or poetic — there’s hardwired biology behind why we carry what we can’t feel.

Here’s why that matters: emotions aren’t just feelings—they activate our body’s stress-response system. To understand why emotional suppression shows up physically, we need to look at the science behind stress.

What Is the Human Stress Response?

The stress response is your body’s built-in survival system. It’s designed to help you respond quickly to danger—whether that danger is physical, emotional, or even just perceived.

This system runs through a powerful communication loop in the brain and body called the HPA axis—short for the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis.

• Hypothalamus: the brain’s alarm system, constantly scanning for danger (real or imagined).
• Pituitary gland: relays the message.
• Adrenal glands: release cortisol and adrenaline to help you survive short-term threats.

This all happens in a matter of seconds—and it’s incredibly effective in short bursts to prompt you to react.

But when the stress is emotional or ongoing—like grief, chronic overwhelm, or long-term disconnection—this system doesn’t get to shut off. It stays active. And that’s when problems begin.  

The stress response switch stays on—even subtly, even without our conscious awareness—cortisol doesn’t shut off.

And that has consequences.

Chronic cortisol elevation affects nearly every system in the body, and begins to hold on to weight, tension, inflammation—because it believes it’s still in danger.

• It increases abdominal fat storage, especially around the belly
• It disrupts digestion, slowing down metabolism and triggering bloating or constipation
• It suppresses immune function, making you more prone to illness and inflammation
• It throws off sleep cycles, leading to fatigue and brain fog
• It interferes with hormones that regulate hunger (ghrelin) and fullness (leptin), increasing cravings—especially for sugar, salt, and comfort foods
• It lowers resilience, making it harder to regulate emotions or cope with change

Even when we don’t feel stressed, our body can still be operating in survival mode—especially if we’re holding on to grief, overwhelm, or old emotional patterns we haven’t yet faced.

This is why emotional awareness is so essential. Not just for peace of mind—but for physical health, hormonal balance, and long-term well-being.

It’s not just what we eat.
It’s how we feel.
And whether or not we’re paying attention to the stories our body is trying to tell.

It’s not just about stress—it’s about emotional dysregulation.
And if you’re not tuned in to what you feel, your body will feel it for you.

This happened to me at different points in my life—especially during grief.
I wasn’t just grieving.
I was avoiding grief.
And my body responded the only way it knew how—by holding on.

When Feeling Feels Like Too Much

Sometimes, we’re not just unaware of our emotions—we’re actively avoiding them. Because feeling feels like too much.
Too messy. Too disruptive. Too vulnerable.

Many of us were never taught how to connect the mind and the body. We’re taught to think through problems, not feel our way through them.
We’re praised for pushing forward, not for tuning inward.

So we grow up disconnected—believing that managing our behaviors will handle the emotions. But it rarely does. Instead, we distract. We scroll. We snack. We stay busy. We power through.

But what we avoid emotionally, we often carry physically.
That’s not weakness—that’s adaptation. Survival.

Eventually, the body asks for more.
And if we don’t listen—really listen—it stops asking. It starts demanding.
Through fatigue.
Through illness.
Through unexplained weight gain, tension, inflammation, or burnout.

We might think we’re managing just fine. But the body knows the truth. And when we override it too long, we don’t just feel off—we get unwell.

The body isn’t betraying you.
It’s trying to get your attention.

Dr. Gabor Maté writes about this beautifully. He says addiction isn’t weakness or lack of willpower—it’s about pain. About trying to soothe what hurts. Whether it’s food, alcohol, overworking, or people-pleasing, we’re not trying to harm ourselves—we’re trying to escape ourselves.

And the work of healing isn’t just behavior change. It’s returning to the root.

“The question is not why the addiction,” Dr. Maté says. “But why the pain?”

Emotional avoidance is a major driver behind addictive behavior. If you find yourself reaching for something—whether it’s food, wine, distraction, or constant busyness—it might be about pain, loneliness, fear—emotions you haven’t had space or safety to fully feel

Instead of judging or dismissing the behavior, what if we got curious about the need beneath it?

When we focus only on behaviors—quitting drinking, cutting sweets—but ignore the emotion, the feelings simply go elsewhere. They find new outlets:
Control.
Workaholism.
Mindless Scrolling.
Shopping.
Over-exercising.
Fixing everyone else’s problems.
Busyness to avoid stillness.

The addiction may shift, but the emotional need remains.
Recognizing this is the first step toward healing.
And the way back isn’t harsh—it’s gentle.

Healing begins when we stop focusing only on the symptom—and start tending to the signal.

You don’t need another diet or harsher discipline. You need awareness. Compassion. Space.
When you begin to process what you’ve been carrying,
The weight often shifts—as the body returns to balance.

Start here:
• Pay attention—your emotions exist for a reason
• Listen to yourself with empathy, not judgment
• Allow yourself to feel without rushing to “snap out of it”

And when you’re ready—return to your standards.
Not as punishment, but as presence.

Your body isn’t betraying you.
It’s speaking to you.
It’s waiting for you to come home.

“The body keeps the score. If the mind won’t feel it, the body will.”
— Inspired by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk