Fear of Weight Gain & Other Little Everyday Fears: How to Trust God With Our Fears

Title: Fear of Weight Gain & Other Little Everyday Fears: How to Trust God With Our Fears

Podcast Date: November 25, 2025

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Description

Are you tired of letting fears—big or small—shape how you live and see yourself? In this powerful wrap-up to our "Fear Free Fall" series, Heather Creekmore tackles one of the most common (and sneaky) fears: the fear of gaining weight. But that's just the beginning. This episode goes deep, unearthing all the little day-to-day worries that seem so normal… until you realize they’re holding you back.

Heather asks tough questions: Where do our fears about weight really come from? Are our fears about gainign weight about health…or worth? What does the Bible actually teach about bodies, value, and holiness—and are we prioritizing “taking care of our temple” over what God specifically asks of us? Heather shares surprising biblical truths, eye-opening cultural stories, and practical steps to trade fear for faith—even if your fear is “just how I am.”

Whether you find yourself obsessing over the scale, or caught in smaller worries that never seem to quit, you’ll walk away with a fresh perspective and actionable advice. Don't miss Heather’s candid encouragement and the very real invitation to find freedom, trust, and joyful expectancy… starting today.

🔗 Referenced Episodes:

• What Is Gluttony (And What Isn’t)?
  
  
• The Daniel Fast: Surprising Truths
  
  

✨ If you’re interested in further steps, check out Heather’s 40 Day Body Image Workbook, or join an upcoming group for community encouragement.

Ready for less comparison and more joy? Hit play and start living free from fear!

For more helpful resources and to join Heather’s weekly email, visit improvebodyimage.com. And if this episode helps you, leave a review and share it with a friend—it makes all the difference!

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated and has not been edited for accuracy or clarity.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:02]:

Life Audio. Hey, friend. Heather Creekmore here. Welcome back to the Compare to podcast. We've been in a series called Fear Free Fall, and today we're wrapping it up with one of those fears I hear all the time, the fear of gaining weight. But we're not just talking about that. We're also naming a bunch of smaller fears. The ones that may not even register as fears because they're so constant.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:24]:

You think, well, that's just how I am. That's how I think this episode is for you. If you're tired of letting those fears, big or small, dictate how you live, what you believe, and how you see yourself. Our goal today isn't to analyze fear for fear's sake. It's to invite Jesus into these fears so that we can trade a fear filled life for one that's filled with faith, trust and joyful expectancy. I'm glad you're here. Before we jump in, if you haven't checked out the 40 day body image workbook, this is your time now. I know you're thinking, Heather, it's not my time, it's the holidays.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:58]:

I have 8,000 things to do. But hear me out. This season can stir up every body image issue you thought you'd buried. Stress comparison, photos, parties. It all flares up. And this workbook gives you small daily truth resets that will help you replace the cultural lies all around you with biblical truth. So don't wait until January 1st like it's a new diet and the new year. No.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:26]:

Grab your copy now and start your 40 day journey now before the New year hits. Ground yourself all through December with this truth. It's available wherever books are sold. And then in January, if you want, we'll be reading it together in another 40 day journey community and you can join us and go through it again. So I highly recommend that. Now let's get to today's episode. Okay, so a few weeks ago I asked you in my weekly email and oh, are you getting my weekly email? If you're not getting this friend, go to improvebodymitch.com Sign up for those you're missing out. But I asked the question, what fears weigh you down day to day? And I got a bunch of responses.

Heather Creekmore [00:02:11]:

They were beautiful. They were vulnerable. But you could probably guess what the top answer was. It was a variation of, I'm afraid I'm not exercising enough. I'm afraid I'm going to gain weight. You said it in a number of different ways. I'm afraid I'll get fat. I'm afraid I'll gain the weight back that I lost.

Heather Creekmore [00:02:28]:

But it all came down to the same thing. So that's where we're going to start today, the fear of gaining weight. And then by the end of the podcast, we're going to talk about some of those other little fears, too. So this isn't just about the fear of gaining weight. If you don't have a fear of gaining weight, then maybe skip to the end because there's some good nuggets there too. But let's start with the fear of gaining weight. Why do we have this fear now? For some of us, we say it's tied to our health, that this is actually a fear of losing our health. But for many of us, I think it's deeper than that.

Heather Creekmore [00:02:56]:

I often ask clients, okay, imagine your health doesn't change at all. You're still healthy, but you gain weight. You have to wear a different size, the number on the scale is higher. What then? And that's where it gets hard, you know, Because, I mean, the truth is, friend, thin people get sick, then people get diseases. Heavy people get sick, heavy people get diseases. Weight doesn't always define your health, although our culture treats it that way. But the truth is, our fear of gaining weight most of the time isn't about health. It's about worth.

Heather Creekmore [00:03:35]:

Now this is where it gets interesting, right? Because some cultures celebrate larger bodies. We share a video in our 40 day journey. It was just shared there recently about a culture where the mothers were force feeding their daughters to make them heavier because that's the only way their daughters had a chance of getting married. Because in that culture it was seen as beautiful and desirable to have a larger body. I have a very good friend who's Indian, and she explained to me how having thin children was very shameful in Indian culture. And so you wanted to feed your children fattening food so they would be larger, because that is how you showed wealth and status and you just avoided shame by having children that were larger. Clearly, friend, that's not the way it is for a lot of us in the West. But also, clearly this is cultural.

Heather Creekmore [00:04:27]:

Somewhere along the way, we absorbed a lie that said smaller is better, thinner is, oh, this is where it gets tricky. Holier. Is that biblical? But we decided bigger is bad. For some of you. You may have internalized the belief that gaining weight is even sinful. And that's why today we're going to look at what does the Bible actually say, friend, don't just take my word for it, get in the word Read your Bible. You have 15 minutes. You have 20 minutes to scroll and hear what everyone else is saying about these things.

Heather Creekmore [00:05:04]:

Search your Bible. There's no verse that says having a larger body is sinful. And if your knee jerk reaction is, well, Heather, you forgot about gluttony. What about gluttony? That means that, you know, gluttony means having a larger body is sinful. Okay, first of all, go listen to the episode I did on gluttony recently. We misunderstand gluttony a lot, right? But you know as well as I do that even if we were going to define gluttony as overeating, which I don't, so again, go listen to that episode. There are some people that can eat a ton and never gain weight. And then there's some of us that can look at food and gain weight, right? A person's body size does not tell you how much they're eating.

Heather Creekmore [00:05:46]:

You can't look at someone and assume what they eat or how they live. Even medical experts have admitted they were so wrong about this recently. Some doctors, I think they're called obesity doctors or obesity specialists, Harvard and Johns Hopkins and other places surrounding this GLP1 conversation, they've come out and I've listened to a number of podcasts where these doctors have been on, and they're so apologetic. And the one doctor I think it was, the Harvard doctor, you know, shared a story of running into one of her patients at a grocery store. And the patient was in line with her cart full, like ready to check out. And she said the patient just kind of turned around and looked her and said, see, doc, this is really what I buy. This is really what I eat. I know you don't believe me, but this is how I eat and I'm still this size.

Heather Creekmore [00:06:35]:

That should make us sad. We don't get to judge people's health, certainly not their holiness, based on their body size. In fact, I would say that the Bible calls that partiality, right? We're looking at someone and we're deciding something based on their appearance. Oh, goodness. Read the Book of James Friends. Partiality is a sin. It's not good. What's really interesting, though, like the word fatness is all through the Bible, right? And sometimes it's not so great, but sometimes it's actually celebrated.

Heather Creekmore [00:07:07]:

Take Isaiah 55. Two, for example. It says, eat that which is good and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Interesting, right? The word fatness here means abundance, delightfulness. It doesn't mean excess or sin or Maybe think about the prodigal son story where they celebrated the prodigal son's return by slaughtering the fattened calf. Like, what you have to understand is an ancient culture, kind of like the cultures I described earlier, where they're force feeding their children. In ancient culture, if you were larger, that was a status symbol. Being fat often represented blessing, richness, prosperity.

Heather Creekmore [00:07:48]:

Think about the Daniel fast. I did a whole episode on that and there's some good stuff about the Daniel fast in my 40 day body image workbook. But in the Daniel fast, the miracle is that those boys only ate veggies and they got fatter in appearance. Read your English standard version of that scripture. They did not lose weight. They did not get skinny. They did not. I don't know what we would say now, like, lose all their inflammation.

Heather Creekmore [00:08:15]:

Those boys got fatter. It was a miracle that they fasted from fattening foods and got thin, fatter. But nowhere in there is it insinuated that that was a bad thing. In fact, it was quite the opposite. So biblically speaking, fat isn't bad. It's just culture that's twisted. That word, it's not God. Of course I'm laughing a bit because having lived through, I think it was, was it the 90s when like people P H A T fat was popular and you'd be like, yeah, that's fat.

Heather Creekmore [00:08:49]:

Oh yeah, that's fat. We kind of, I guess, tried to make it a good then, but boy, I don't think it's ever stuck. So some of you are like, okay, Heather, I hear you, but what about taking care of your temple? You're probably not taking care of your temple. If your body gets bigger, that's not taking care of your temple. Okay, like, first of all, how do you know? I don't know about you, but I can't make my thyroid run any faster. Like, I can't make my metabolism run any faster. There are things I can do to support those things, right? But at the end of the day, I am limited in what I can do to actually change my body. Yes, there are things I can do, but I don't have ultimate control at the end of the day.

Heather Creekmore [00:09:33]:

Okay? So that's just one thing here. But, but here's the real shocker, okay? We talk about this take, take care of your temple thing all the time. You ready for this? I hope you got your Bible out. I hope you're reading your Bible, because here's what's going to surprise you. That verse isn't actually in the Bible, there is not a verse that says take care of your temple, not, not there. Now we got dozens and dozens and dozens of other commands about things to do. Pray without ceasing, love your neighbor, you know, be generous, be kind, don't envy, don't do anything out of selfish ambition. Like I could go on and on and on with things that we are supposed to do and are directed to do specifically in Scripture.

Heather Creekmore [00:10:17]:

But there's no command to diet. There's no command to exercise in a certain way. There's no command to reach an ideal weight. If you are a Weight Watchers person from back in the day, there's no weight tables of if you're this high, you should weigh this amount. No, none of that is in the Bible. Those are all man made 20th, 21st century concepts. And so here is my challenge to you, friend. If you are feeling guilt, shame, condemnation, if you're feeling like I'm failing at taking care of my temple, my body's changing, my size is changing, I'm not taking care of my temple, I'm not being a good Christian because I'm not taking care of my temple.

Heather Creekmore [00:11:00]:

Here's what I want you to pause and do. I just want you to think about all those other commands of God. I mean, do a quick Google search and you'll get a hundred of them like that. Think about all those other commands and ask yourself, how am I doing on these? How am I doing on humility? How am I doing on serving? Do I even know what my role is in the body of Christ? Am I serving in my role in the body of Christ? Do I know what my spiritual gifts are? Am I meeting with other people in Christian community, at church? Am I praying without ceasing? Am I trusting in the Lord with all my, like go through all those things, right? And there's even specifics around money too, right? We have specific direction around how to steward money in the Bible and yet no specific direction about how to steward our bodies in the Bible. So if you've gone through that whole list of all the things, all the things you're supposed to do and you're getting them all, right, you're nailing them all. Heather, I'm awesome at the hundred things God specifically tells us to do, then I give you full permission to obsess over taking care of your temple as something you need to do for, for God to be at the top of your go good Christian list, right? But friend, if not you, you gotta see things in proper perspective. Of course our bodies are good Gifts, So we take care of them, but we don't get to obsess over that. And we don't get to prioritize that over all the things that God specifically asks us to do.

Heather Creekmore [00:12:33]:

If you're not serving him, if you're not loving others, if you're not generous, if you're not praying, friend, you are wasting your time and energy trying to take care of your temple because you're missing out on what God has actually specifically directed you to do. To do something that, how dare I say. If taking care of your temple is at the top of your list over prayer, generosity, humility, love of neighbor and service, then it's not really about God and what God's asking. It's really about you. And this is where it gets hard. And we're going to come right back to kind of what's hard about that right after this quick break. This is where it gets hard. Because for many of us, our image is an idol.

Heather Creekmore [00:13:25]:

I think of the story of Jesus and the rich young ruler, and the rich young ruler comes to him and he's like, I'm doing all the things. Like, I got it. Like, I know how to love people. I. I'm doing all the things. And he says, what do I need to do, Jesus? Like, I got all the things. And what does Jesus tell him? He says, sell everything and follow me. And what does Scripture tell us? The man walked away sad, not because he didn't want Jesus, but because he could not let go of his wealth.

Heather Creekmore [00:13:52]:

That was too hard. That was too much to ask. And for us, that wealth might be our body size, it might be our appearance, it might be our look, it might be our beauty in this culture. That is what gives us status. That is what makes someone in the economy of our culture more valuable. Here, here. The wealth, economic language, and the word value. You have more value if you look a certain way.

Heather Creekmore [00:14:24]:

And that's why it is terrifying to say, I'm going to follow Jesus. And what if he asked me to let go of my dieting? What if he asked me to let go of my control? What if he asked me to let go of this ideal body image, this ideal body idol? It's hard. And I work with so many women that are like, I don't think I can give that up. I just don't know if I can. I want to follow Jesus, but I'd like to follow Jesus and keep my idol. But it doesn't work that way. We have to choose. You can't have two masters.

Heather Creekmore [00:14:58]:

And we hold on so tight to what we want that we miss out on the transformation that Jesus wants to bring. You can't chase health or beauty and surrender fully to Jesus. If one of these has become your God. See, here's the truth. Holiness has nothing to do with body size. Holiness actually means otherness. It means being set apart, pure, like God in character. It's not about how you look.

Heather Creekmore [00:15:25]:

It's about who you belong to. Romans 12:1 instructs us to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. That's not about dieting or sacrificing eating dessert. Oh, friend, that's really twisting scripture in a corrupt way. It's about devotion. It's about a daily surrender that says, God, use my body for your glory, no matter what size I am. If losing weight will be helpful to you, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with losing weight.

Heather Creekmore [00:15:54]:

I'm not anti weight loss, but I just don't want us to confuse it with what true obedience is, with what true holiness is, with what God is actually calling us to. Let's zoom out just for a minute. Because every fear has a root. Maybe your fear isn't about gaining weight. Maybe it's something like you're afraid of being invisible. Maybe you're afraid of being misunderstood. Maybe you have this deep fear of disappointing someone. Maybe you fear that you're too much or you fear you're not enough.

Heather Creekmore [00:16:26]:

All of these little fears are really just branches growing from the same root. It could be fear of rejection. It could be fear of failure. It could be fear of not being loved. And that's why this Fear Free Fall series, I hope, has been so helpful to you. Right? Because when we name the fear, that little fear, what we have the opportunity to do is to examine that fear and figure out, okay, what's really under that fear. Okay. It's not just that I'm afraid I won't be dressed right for this church function.

Heather Creekmore [00:17:04]:

It's really that I'm afraid I'll be rejected. I won't be accepted. Or it's really that I'm afraid people will see that I'm not perfect because I couldn't put the right outfit together. Right. That's just one illustration. But when we name our fears, then we have the opportunity to invite Jesus into them to see what's really behind them, what lie it is that we're believing. Instead of God's truth, we're believing a lie like that. Acceptance comes from having all the people like you, right? Nothing biblical about that.

Heather Creekmore [00:17:35]:

In fact, scripture kind of Says, if I were still trying to please man, I wouldn't be pleasing God. But when we can identify what those roots are, what those lies are, what those fears are, then. Then that's when we have the opportunity to loosen their grip. So here's my challenge to you. I want you to ask yourself, like, what am I really afraid of? If you were one of my clients and we're working together, I would have you write down your fears for a whole week. And I do a whole week because it normally takes about three or four days to even start listening to them. They're so common to us that we don't even hear them. We don't even acknowledge them.

Heather Creekmore [00:18:12]:

It's just. This is just how I live. I live afraid of this. I live afraid that I won't get a parking space. I live afraid that I will be late for work. I live afraid of what other people are going to say when they see what I'm wearing that day. I live afraid of what my stomach's going to feel like in the morning when I get up. I live afraid of what the scale is going to say about me.

Heather Creekmore [00:18:31]:

I live afraid of food. I live like, there's so many different fears. And so the first step is just pausing and be like, oh, that's fear. Oh, oh, that's what it is. Right? And then what I want you to do is I want you to write it down. There's something powerful that happens when you commit to paper. That fear you've acknowledged, okay, there's nothing, like, magical about writing it down. But when it lives in your head, I don't know, it can kind of stay negotiable.

Heather Creekmore [00:19:00]:

Maybe, like, you can talk yourself into or out of it being real. And it's like, yeah, maybe I don't really feel that way. But when you write it down and then you come back to it later, like, oh, I actually wrote that down. Oh, I guess I actually do feel that way. Oh, I guess it's actually a problem. When you write it down, something powerful happens. So I would suggest that you start writing these fears down, and then we should analyze them. Okay.

Heather Creekmore [00:19:22]:

Just look at them, and as you look at them, see, like, if there's categories you could put them into, because for a lot of us, right, there may be a category like control. Like, all of these fears are really about me wanting to control things or wanting things to always go my way. Or maybe they're about image. Maybe they're about acceptance. Right? Maybe they're about your body. Or maybe they're about Something else really underneath all of our fears. The question is always, what are we trusting? I say I trust Jesus, but is that really what my trust is in? Or is my trust in my ability to control things? And then there's my fear of what if things don't go my way? Is my trust in my ability to control the way I look or my ability to make other people like me because I look or act a certain way? Right. If we are trusting in our own abilities.

Heather Creekmore [00:20:18]:

Oh goodness, friend, we're not actually trusting in Jesus, are we? And this is where it gets so tricky, right? Because we say we have faith. I have big faith. I believe Jesus died on the cross. Sure, I believe that. I believe God created the universe. Sure, I believe that I'm going to heaven someday. We have all, all this big faith. But then in these little parts of our lives, when push comes to shove, we have to ask ourselves, actually, do I actually trust God? Do I actually have the faith in God that I say I have? Oh, that's when it gets tough, friend.

Heather Creekmore [00:20:54]:

We ask ourselves, can I trust you, God, that you're going to take care of me even if I loosen my grip? Can I trust you, God, if that number on the scale goes up, even though I'm deathly afraid of gaining weight, Can I trust that you got me, God? Can I trust you around my food and body issues? Can I trust you that if I surrender my food and body issues, if I surrender my wealth in this area, that it will still be good if I follow you? Oh, friend, we have to bring these fears, these trust issues, these control issues to him and we have to ask for help. But I promise you, if you ask for help, he will answer. He's not gonna leave you hanging, friend, like, if this is just a lot and you're like, I don't even know how to sort all this out, I hope you'll reach out. Right? That's why we do coaching, individual coaching, group coaching, like that's. We have programs like the 40 day body image Journey, which is a pretty low cost opportunity for you. Just get started on addressing these areas where maybe you do wrestle with fear and faith around your body and food. But friend, I promise you, once you start digging in, oh, there's so much hope to be found, there's so much growth available, there's so much encouragement available. And so don't delay, don't wait, reach out.

Heather Creekmore [00:22:15]:

We can help you sort these, start sorting these things out. It's not going to be an overnight process because chances are those lies and Those fears have been building for years, maybe decades and decades and decades. But I do know one thing for sure. I know that it's possible for you to be free from these fears that are squashing your faith. And I want you to be free. I want you to be free to live out the life that God has designed for you. I want you to be free to live in the freedom and joyful trust, knowing He's a good God with good plans for you, plans that are for your good, but ultimately for his glory. That's what I want for you, friend.

Heather Creekmore [00:22:55]:

So thanks for listening today and thanks for listening to this whole series. If this series has touched you or helped you, will you do me a big favor? Will you leave a review that means so much? It helps other people find the show. It's so important. And we really don't have that many reviews for how many listeners we have. So it would encourage us so much if you would just pause in this busy holiday season and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcast and then, hey, share it with a friend. Grow. Help us grow the show by sending this on a friend and be like, hey, remember that conversation we were having about being afraid of wa Wa. Listen to this.

Heather Creekmore [00:23:29]:

What do you think of this? Because I tell you what, if you want accountability in your life, but also if you want to grow right? Having deep conversations with friends about this content is one fantastic way to do it. So again, thank you for listening. I hope something today has helped you stop comparing and start living. Bye Bye. The Compare To Podcast is proud to be part of the Life Audio Podcast Network. For more great Christian podcasts, go to lifeaudio.com.