EP 123: Real Confidence- There’s a Voice in Your Head and it’s Stealing Your Confidence

January 04, 2026

I have one. You have one. And sometimes it’s been there so long you barely notice until one day, one decision or one change shows you just how much it’s been influencing your confidence all along.

For me, it was fat noise. A constant din of “You’re too big. People are judging you. You can’t do this.” And it showed up everywhere: trying on clothes, climbing stairs, getting on planes, even in photos I’d snap for work.

It wasn’t just about how I looked; it was about how I felt in the world, how I carried myself, and how I made decisions. Even though I told myself over and over that “body shape doesn’t matter,” the truth is it did—just not in a way I understood until I lost 40 pounds.

Of course my body changed, but unexpectedly, so did my mental landscape.

Suddenly, I could see how much of my life had been shaped by guilt, shame, and self-blame. Fat noise had been controlling me for decades, whispering that I lacked self-control and that every ache or limitation was my fault.

My fat noise could be your imposter syndrome, achievement anxiety or health worries. But whatever is it is, the lesson is the same and I’ll school you in it in this episode. So hit play and let me be the voice in your ear that cuts through the noise and puts you back in control of your confidence.

Episode Transcript

EP 123
Welcome fellow confidence crusaders, neuro nerds and success equalizers. This is your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host, Alyssa Dver, and I'll be sharing a bit of basic brain science, some surprising social secrets and a touch of tough love. Why? Because I believe confidence is everyone's fundamental right and choice. So let's get to it.

The information shared in this podcast is for general educational and discussion purposes only. We do not endorse or recommend any specific medical treatments, medications or weight loss products. Always consult your doctor or qualified health care professional before starting, changing or stopping any treatment or healthcare routine that goes beyond common good health practices. Thank you.

Alyssa Dver:
Some of you are going to be very angry with this podcast, and I know that, but the ones that need to hear it, want to hear it, will appreciate hearing it. I'm doing this for you because I didn't realize how being overweight was really getting in the way of my confidence. I didn't realize it because I kept saying, body shape doesn't matter, but it was really bothering me. So I want to talk about something that I'm labeling fat noise. Now, for those of you who heard of food noise, with some of the new medications on the market, the Ozempic would go vs Mongero, Wegovyi, the list goes on. Some of them, not all of them, have been credited with removing fat, sorry, food noise from people's heads. I'm gonna flip those throughout this podcast. I'll try not to. And food noise is that constant cognitive cycle in your brain that keeps reminding you, what are you going to do about your next meal? Where? What are you going to eat? I'm going on a plane. Do I have enough snacks? It's like that constant annoyance about you got to eat. You got to worry about food and whether or not you've either you've ever had food insecurity or not it's there, and not everybody has it, or not everybody hears it. I guess I did. I didn't realize it. It was, you know, that clean your plate. People are starving in some part of the world, message all the time, and you know what, if you don't have enough to eat, kind of thing, my parents weren't part of the Depression. Their parents were, but I don't think that was part of it.

I don't know. I think it was just a focus on food and always being kind of, how shall I say, getting your share of it. You know, I didn't even grow up in a big family. It wasn't like it was a problem to get my share of food. It was just always this, you gotta, you gotta make sure you got something to eat, right? So that's food noise. But I'm talking today about fat noise. And fat noise is something that I again, I created the phrase just because I'm like, you know, I didn't realize how much was going on my head all the time being fat. So here's the truth.

I recently lost 40 pounds. I turned 60, and I was like, life's too short, and I want to live the rest of my life not only feeling good mentally, but healthy. You know, my knees were aching. I had issues with my feet, all, all kinds of things. And it was always me saying, it's because I'm fat. I snore. I'm fat. I can't do this because I'm fat. You know, I'm not agile because I'm fat. I have been puff up the stairs because I'm fat. Was just fat. Fat. Fat was always the answer. So 40 pounds gone now, which is a good amount of weight? I don't care how big you are in the beginning, it's still a good amount of weight. And I'm very proud of myself. Yes, I got help, but I needed help. I tried a lot of different things, and nothing was working for years and years and years. And reality is, I think a lot of people feel the same way.

So fat noise, let's talk a little bit about what that is and why I'm talking about it today, because it had a direct line to my confidence. You know, I was always a little heavy, I wouldn't say fat, but always had a few pounds to lose in my day, and it just got worse over time. Of course, after having children and menopause and all that wonderful hormonal transformation, I certainly put on more weight than was healthy. I used to be very active, self proclaimed gym rat, and stopped doing that actually, not even during covid, but after covid. And always, you know, I'm too busy. There's always an excuse, right? And even though in my head, I knew that was what was going on. It was easier to kind of just blame the achy knees, blame the busy schedule. You know, it's just easy, right? I'm not doing this what I should now. I do eat properly, lots of it, thanks to my husband, who is not only diabetic, so we watch all kinds of carbs and sugar stuff in our house, but because he's a great cook and makes some really great meals for us all the time that are really healthy.

So that wasn't so much the issue as it was just carrying around all this weight that had accumulated all the years and not exercising it off, but at the same time not seeing any results when I did exercise. So feeling pain and all that. So when I finally turned 60, because I am so happy to be here, fully confident. You know, I love to shop. I love to wear cool clothes. I love to, you know, feel good about the way I look. And I was like, screw it, I'm going on this some kind of medication. And it took two years. Now, you know, I've been doing it for almost, probably their part, two years with all kinds of medicines to find the one that worked at the right dose. It's been a long journey, and in many ways, it's like a pound or two pounds a month. It's not a pound a week, it's a pound a month. I'm not one of these people that started and all of a sudden the weight, you know, melted off and, no, no, it took a long time, but here's where it was biting me in the ass for 60 years.

You know, not only shopping, I would have to go right to the extra large sizes, and I would get frustrated that they didn't have whatever it was I wanted in my size, or it looked like, you know, a balloon, or it just, you know, I would say, look at the smaller sizes. There's so much cuter, there's so much nicer, there's so much more variety. I hated the way I looked in pictures. I wouldn't even look at pictures. You know, I'm a speaker. I'm a CEO. I get my picture taken all the time, and I couldn't even look because in my first reaction, I look fat. You know, look at the fat. I wouldn't see anything else in the picture, except how fat I was, I would worry, in full transparency, about how others would perceive me. I know that there is a negative bias to being people who are fat, you know. And I'm not talking about somebody thinking I'm sexy and worth having sex with. I'm talking about just the respect and the credibility on stage in a meeting, and all of that was playing in my head as much as I was trying to tuck it away and be at my confident best. You know, all of that was not just poking. It was like overtaking my confidence.

And now I realize it. Now I see it. I see all that fat or I hear all that fat noise that was there, and I know I blame myself, right? There is this sense of, I have no self control. You know, this is something I can control, and I don't. So all that guilt, all that blame and shame, all those excuses for why my body was screaming at me, my knees, my feet, things that were telling me, girlfriend, you're fat do something about it. And I was in this terrible cycle, you know, you know I wasn't sleeping. Well, I'm fat. Snoring, right? I mentioned that, you know, horrified to find out that I was snoring. And of course, you know, my excuse was because I'm fat now, after losing the weight, not only are all those things better, right? They're all better. I can go into a store. I'm now shopping in the medium section, large section, at worst. But that's pretty cool. That makes me feel good. I'm wearing sizes I even wore since I was probably in high school. It's amazing. I am feeling really good, to the point where now I am realizing how much of that fat noise was killing my confidence. I walked onto a plane the other day, an airplane, and it was Southwest, where you get to pick your seat, right? So you're not pre assigned seat, but you're pre assigned boarding times, a section, and I was, of course, one of the last sections is, for some reason, I always am. I have great luck with parking, not such great with boarding planes. And as I'm getting on the plane, all the front rows, all the first couple rows on the window and the aisle were fat people, the middle seats there were open, and I think they knew damn well that it would be the last seat that people would take, not just because it was middle, but because it was a really squishy middle. And I thought I wonder if they even bought they probably had to upgrade to get those priority seating, that priority boarding, because they didn't want to have to deal with squishing into a middle seat themselves. I'm like, oh, I never thought of that per se. But for me, I do know that when I would get on a plane, I'd be like, okay, I got to open the seat belt the whole way to get this thing on. Embarrassing. You know, somebody's going to squish next to me. Embarrassing, even that was noise in my head.

So again, for those of you out there that are suffering from that kind of situation, I hear you. I feel for you, and you may be mad at me now that I'm acknowledging it. But here's the thing. The reason I do these podcasts, the reason I'm doing all the work on the confidence space is when we recognize things that are against, what we want to stand for, who we want to be, when we take a stance, when we do something about these things, even if it is taking a medicine or getting surgery, for crying out loud, there's people that you know, you look at and you're like, get some surgery, right? Get that thing taken care of, whatever it is. When we take ownership and action, it makes us feel better if we choose not to take action. Fine. We're making that choice very consciously, and we're saying, you know what, I'm cool with the way things are. I don't want to do the other thing that would change it, right? So it's taking agency of what's important for you. That's always the bottom line. So I want to take a very quick break for our sponsors, because when I come back, I am going to just ask you some questions for you to assess do you have fat noise, or maybe some other kind of noise in your brain that you are pushing around to a different place so you don't have to deal with it, but subliminally, or maybe very clearly, it's killing your confidence? All right, we'll be right back.

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Alyssa Dver:
All right, this has been very self deprecating in some ways, but also very honest podcast. And not to say that the other ones weren't. But in reality, this was really hard for me to admit to myself. And I'm hoping that for those that are listening that feel the same way, you're going, Yeah, I feel that way too. Or maybe you or maybe you didn't realize you felt that way, and often going, Holy shit, right? So how is fat noise, or some kind of other noise in your head impacting confidence and to identify it, I think that we need to not only realize what's making us feel guilty, because guilt is the opposite of confidence. It is that feeling that we are not respecting ourselves, that we're doing something that's counter to what is important to us, our values, our needs and our wants. So if you have too much weight on what are you going to do about it? I know it's easier said than done. I put it on my New Year's resolution list every year, and after a while, you know, it gets kind of old seeing it there that every year after year, but we know what these things are most of the time. So what are you going to do about it?

And if you decide that you don't want to do anything about it, or you can't do. Anything about it for whatever reason, financially or religiously or emotionally, whatever it is, be honest with yourself. Say, that's the way it's going to be, and I'm going to just move on. Now again, I'm I know this is easier said than done, but it's important to acknowledge the things that are causing this noise in our head, this silent killer of our confidence, and at least say, I hear you, I see you, and I am going to control you. I'm not going to let you control me. So think about it. Have you been putting off some kind of again, some kind of a surgery or procedure, some kind of a situation? Maybe you need a vacation. Maybe you're so exhausted that you're like, I really need a vacation. Take the damn vacation already. Stop putting it off. Stop feeling guilty, because that guilt is killing your confidence, and your confidence shows it shows in your decision making. It shows in how you show up in the world, and it certainly affects everybody around you. So whether it is getting on a semiglutide, getting some kind of a surgical thing, seeing a doctor, taking a vacation, buying yourself some new clothes, because your clothes are just old and too big, whatever it is, I'm giving you not just permission. I'm encouraging you to figure out what's rattling around in that brain, and finally, stay we're dealing with it, or we're choosing not to. Alright, let me know what you think these podcasts sometimes, you know, I don't know who's out there listening because it's hard to track, but I'd love to hear from you, and love to get some feedback on any and all, especially this one, take care of my friends, live confidently, and let's get rid of that stupid noise in our brain that tells us otherwise.

Before we totally wrap up. I want to let you know that full transcripts and show notes for this and other Real Confidence episodes can be found on www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com/podcast. I also want to remind you once again that the best way to get confidence is to give it to others, and you can do it just by liking and sharing this episode on your preferred podcast and social media channels. You can even give me some confidence by noting topics you'd like me to consider for the future. So for now, this is Alyssa Dver. Thank you for helping to bring more confidence to the world.

EP 123: Real Confidence- There’s a Voice in Your Head and it’s Stealing Your Confidence

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