Divorce Helped Me Find Real Cause For Weight Loss

I ballooned to size 14 during my miserable marriage. But even while going through divorce, I couldn't shift the pounds, until I realized the real cause... Now I've lost 70lbs without weight-loss shots. This is the exact method I used.

A typical morning for me, thirteen years ago, would go something like this. I would wake up alone, the debris from last night's TV 'treats' littering the bedroom: the family-size bag of chips, the pot of dips and empty wine bottle – the solitary glass. Immediately, the dread, anxiety and self-loathing started to kick in, shortening my breath, making my heart hammer and my hands and feet tingle. I'd shower, dress and do my make-up, careful not to catch a glimpse of my size 14, 210lb body and puffy, blotchy face in the mirror.

Some mornings, when everything got too much, I would sit on the bathroom floor, digging the sharp corner of the toothpaste tube into the tops of my thighs until I drew blood: the pain distracting me from the far more painful reality running on a loop in my head – that I was a fat, worthless, 40-year-old single mother who had made a total mess of her life.

Long after the end of my twelve-year abusive marriage to a man with narcissistic tendencies, I was still suffering the aftershocks of the trauma. Though he hadn't been physically abusive, my ex had lied, cheated and gaslit me. When he eventually walked out, he left me homeless – his debts of around $95,000 caused our house to be repossessed – and living off welfare programs.

At one point I was literally down to my last dollar, with no idea how I could feed the children, then aged ten and six. What I hadn't realized back then was that these scars weren't just affecting me emotionally but physically, too. The reason I couldn't shift the 70lbs I'd gained during our unhappy marriage, no matter how much I dieted and exercised? I was still carrying the pain and panic of those years.

Caroline lost 70lbs without fat jabs and is the same weight as she was on her wedding day. The 53-year-old says she couldn't shift the weight she'd gained during her unhappy marriage because she was still carrying the pain and panic of those years. Only when I finally began to unpack trauma, specifically the role of cortisol – the 'fight or flight' stress hormone that flooded my bloodstream 24/7 for more than a decade – and its effect on my body, could I start to tackle this last hurdle on my road back to full recovery.

Now 53, I am the exact same weight I was on our wedding day: 147lbs, having lost that 70lbs – not through weight-loss drugs but through cutting loose from the mental and physical baggage. And you can too. The link between cortisol and weight gain and retention is well-documented. Your body thinks you're under threat and needs all the energy it can get to protect itself, making you constantly hungry and craving high-calorie foods.

This is why you so often gain weight during an unhappy marriage – but unless you deal with your demons post-divorce, you remain in this state of fight or flight. And it's impossible to shed the pounds until you do. I'd met my first husband in the late 1990s when we were both cabin crew. Two years older than me, and already with a divorce behind him (red flag number one), he showered me with attention and gifts.

Getting my name tattooed on his body after only three months of dating (an almighty red flag), seemed a bit extreme but I was flattered. I look back on our 1999 wedding photos and see a 26-year-old woman full of hope. It was only when I was pregnant with our son, William, in 2003 that my husband's mood swings started to escalate. Nothing I did or said was right, and he'd pick over every word looking for evidence to support his victimhood. Just the slightest infringement – a phone call at the 'wrong' time (he was frequently overseas or on a different time zone) or the 'wrong' subject would lead to a massive row. Why was I bringing this up now? What was wrong with me?

The weight of constant worry kept me on edge for years. I carried a heavy load of self-blame that never lifted. When my first son was born, he struggled to cope with not being the center of my attention. I remember sitting beside him one evening, utterly drained from breastfeeding around the clock, trying to reassure him that it was natural for a newborn to focus on me more than on his brother or sister. His face looked miserable and disappointed. It told me clearly that I had let him down once again.

As often happens, I piled on weight during pregnancy. Being exhausted with my nerves stretched tight did nothing to help. Fast food and snacks became my only comfort. I lived in baggy grey sweats, hating what I saw in the mirror. My husband lost all interest in me entirely. We slept in separate rooms.

I had given up work to concentrate on motherhood at my husband's instigation. He claimed he wanted to look after me, but this was another control tactic. Unknown to me, he was sinking us into debt with no obvious signs as to where the money was going. While we lived in a lovely four-bedroom detached house, there were no grand holidays and flashy cars. Yet somehow we had around $95,000 worth of debt. The full extent of this only became clear after the marriage ended.

I still believed in my family and wanted my marriage to work. We even decided to try for another baby. This led to a succession of four unexplained heartbreaking miscarriages before I became pregnant with Madeleine in 2008. I was six months pregnant when I discovered he was cheating. Suffering from terrible morning sickness, I had left my husband and son eating lunch. He had recently returned from a trip away and his mobile phone was in his jacket pocket in another room.

When it rang, I thought I was doing him a favor by not disturbing his meal. On the phone I heard a voice message from an American woman. She asked how her lovely English guy was. He had had a few trips to Chicago recently. When I confronted him, he went mad at me for interfering and acting like a mad woman. It was obviously a mistake, he insisted. A wrong number. A random coincidence.

He was so good at this trickery that he actually had me doubting myself. It was only when he said he had nothing to hide and thrust his wallet at me that the truth came out. I found a business card for a Chicago motel inside it. I rang the motel and found out there had been a reservation in his name. One that had been recently cancelled. Are you still going to deny this? I asked him.

He was cornered but even then managed to steer the conversation around to him being the victim. He said he had felt so helpless when I was going through the miscarriages that he had turned to another woman for support. Somehow, the conversation ended with me, the six-months-pregnant wronged wife, comforting him. We agreed to go for marriage counselling. Of course, he put on a great show heavily implying through clouds of fake compassion that all our relationship problems were caused by me, not him.

Luckily, the therapist saw through his charms. On one solo visit, the therapist told me to look up narcissistic sociopath. It opened my eyes for the first time. A narcissist is only happy when you are feeding their ego. Living with one means you constantly shift and mold yourself into what you think they want you be suppressing your own emotions. Your typical narcissist will be a deeply insecure individual who projects their pain outwardly through various abusive behaviors.

Every paper I read advised me to leave but I felt trapped. We had children together. I had no income. The constant stress of our relationship had left me feeling weak and depressed. Over-eating became more than ever. Where could I go? And as my husband was ever keen to remind me, who else would want me? My marriage eventually imploded in 2010 when the children were two and six.

We planned a family camping trip, but my husband vanished for three hours that morning before we were due to leave. He returned without explanation, and I chose not to make another scene, so we drove off on our holiday. During the vacation, he kept disappearing for hours at a time. On our return, I issued an ultimatum: stay or go. Once, there was no gaslighting or blame-shifting; he left. It took him just ten minutes to pack his things and walk out.

He insisted no one else existed, yet of course someone did. I found this out in the crassest way imaginable when a text meant for her accidentally landed in my inbox. After years of unhappiness, I was a wreck. I suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, irritable bowel syndrome, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, a heart condition, anxiety, and depression. My doctor prescribed six counselling sessions, but I only made it through three.

My husband told me the house belonged to me, yet I had no money for the mortgage or lawyer fees to sell it. With all that debt, some in my name, the bank repossessed our home. I moved into a small rental and scratched out a living picking up work as a podiatrist, my trade before I decided to see the world. Child support from my ex was sporadic, and as a debtor with no credit, I had to ask my dad to guarantee our rent, another humiliation. The children and I picked coins off the street when we were down to our last dollar.

But gradually, I began clawing myself back. I chipped away at my debt slowly and paid it off after about three years. On top of my podiatry clients, I started a small business selling healthcare products that earned me a decent living. Still, one thing remained beyond my grasp: my weight. Every diet ended in failure. No matter how much exercise I did or how good and careful I was, the weight would not shift.

In every podcast, Instagram post, and Zoom meeting, that same puffy, inflamed face stared back at me. I stuck to a size 12-14 wardrobe of grey and black baggy sweats. Simon and I were on holiday in Las Vegas in 2023 when I was fifty years old. The heat made me so uncomfortable that I decided I had enough. Through my work, I met a nutritionist who guided me to read more about trauma and its effects on weight. Being in this constant state of alert left me with acute metabolic dysfunction. The body keeps the score, even when we function and cope on the outside. When a woman lives in a constant state of fear, her nervous system becomes dysregulated because survival mode becomes the body's priority.

Caroline now eats a healthy, clean diet made up of higher protein foods and holds zero anger towards her ex-husband. In 2024, I founded the Mental Wellbeing Company. My weekly podcast, No Visible Bruises, has had more than six million downloads, and my best-selling book, How to Heal After Narcissistic Abuse, was published in 2024.

I met my husband Simon, a fifty-six-year-old mortgage broker, online and married him in 2018. The children grew into well-rounded, happy individuals who have no contact with their father by choice. William is training to be a family law attorney, while Madeleine has just completed her A-levels and heads off to university to study psychology. Regulations affecting the public must address these hidden costs of abuse so victims can rebuild without shame or financial ruin. The government needs to ensure support systems help people like Caroline recover from metabolic damage caused by chronic stress rather than leaving them to struggle alone in rental housing.

Once the threat fades, everything else starts to fail or shut down. The immune system, digestion, and endocrine functions all begin to compensate until they simply stop working properly. My body stuck in fight or flight mode even years after the danger was gone. That state became my default setting. A tiny prompt could send me spiraling into panic. Even exercise triggered this reaction by flooding my bloodstream with more cortisol. The extra stress hormones made me hungrier and pushed me to store every calorie I ate.

I had to tackle two major problems at once. First, I needed to change how I ate. Second, I had to regulate my nervous system and find new ways to handle distress without automatically reaching for food. Understanding my biology helped me notice triggers and patterns. I learned to spot the difference between genuine hunger and eating because I felt distressed. My research led me to a fat adaptation diet plan. This approach involves drastically cutting calories for a few weeks at a time. That process teaches your body to burn stored fat instead of the food you are currently eating.

I began this journey by starting with just 600 calories per day. Then I moved up to 700 and kept climbing slowly. Each increase allowed my metabolism to adapt and reset. The diet encourages cutting down on carbohydrates while increasing healthy fats because these provide better energy sources than carbs. On a typical 600-calorie day, I fasted until lunchtime. For lunch, I ate something nutritious like a chicken and avocado salad. Dinner consisted of salmon with plenty of vegetables.

Anyone thinking about this path must get professional medical support first. It was not an easy road to travel. My diet relied on higher protein foods such as eggs, chicken, fish, Greek yoghurt, and vegetables. Even then, my body remained proficient at storing calories just in case of a perceived threat that had stalked me for so long. I actually gained weight until my metabolism finally stabilized. I persevered through the struggle and it worked. Today, I stand at the exact same weight as in that wedding photo from 1999.

I hold zero diagnoses now. My irritable bowel syndrome is gone, along with all my other conditions. I eat a healthy and clean diet at around 1,800 calories per day today. My home includes a rebounder and reformer Pilates machine for exercise. I feel no anger toward my ex-husband anymore. While I will never excuse the abuse he made me endure, I can now explain it clearly. Sometimes you need to listen to your body carefully. You must understand it deeply rather than just on an intellectual level. Treat it at a deep nervous system level. My own system had put up with so much for far too long. Now I have found a way to be myself again.