Psychologists Off the Clock 450. Life After Weight Loss with Jill Stoddard
Mar 11, 2026
Jill Stoddard, psychologist, bariatric coach, and TEDx speaker, shares her personal weight journey and work with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. She discusses choosing gastric bypass, life after major weight change, cultural stigma around medical weight tools, and therapeutic strategies like values work and experiential craving practices. Short, candid conversations about body judgment, health motives, and long-term maintenance.
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Therapy Client Sparked Life Changing Surgery
- Jill Stoddard describes decades of yo-yo dieting that began after parents called her “Tubby,” leading to sneaky eating and deep shame.
- A therapy client's mention of bariatric surgery prompted Jill to research and choose gastric bypass in March 2021, losing 90 pounds and maintaining it for five years.
Weight Loss Tools Reveal Cultural Biases
- Jill argues that calling surgical or medication-assisted weight loss “cheating” reveals cultural bias about acceptable ways to change the body.
- She compares tools like surgery or GLP-1s to inventions that make life easier and questions why they attract moral judgment.
Backlash Reawakened Lifelong Body Shame
- After surgery Jill faced mixed reactions including a relative telling her she needed to “eat a steak,” which triggered a spiral back into lifelong body shame.
- She sought reassurance from a friend and learned to rely on medical data—her doctor said her labs were perfect—to counter external judgments.
