Dr Charlotte Ord

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Dr Charlotte Ord

Charlotte is a Counselling Psychologist and TV mental health expert specialising in issues around food, body image & eating.

She has an extensive background in health and fitness and is passionate about promoting health at every size and body diversity.

09/03/2026

Back in my fitness career 💪, I made a workout DVD called Back to Basics. Unlike many celebrity releases, I didn’t overtrain or follow extreme diets in prep for that DVD. I wanted to be authentic and ate healthily, trained sustainably, and honestly? I looked soft and untrained compared to the completely ripped images people were used to seeing on fitness offerings.

That experience taught me something really important about body perception and normative delusion:

When something extreme is repeatedly presented as normal, our brains start to believe it’s typical, even if it’s actually very rare or unrealistic. This’s exactly what happened with fitness DVDs years ago, and it’s happening again now with rapid celebrity weight loss, often fueled by medications, extreme routines, or behind-the-scenes efforts that aren’t visible.

When dramatic weight loss looks achievable, it can increase body dissatisfaction, comparison, and disordered eating behaviors because we internalize an ideal that’s not actually realistic for most.

This isn’t about shaming anyone’s body, or life choices.

It’s about understanding how culture shapes our psychology and why seeing these trends so repeatedly matters especially if you’re trying to improve your body image.

💡 Two things you can do to help protect your peace and recovery if that’s relevant to you, are:

1) curate your social media feed so that you’re primarily following accounts that support body diversity and health at every size and auditing out any that evoke negative comparison and body shame for you.

2) join my newsletter for evidence-based psychology tips and support on healing your relationship with your body and food 🩷

25/02/2026

From April 2026, GP practices in England will be financially incentivised to prescribe weight-loss drugs.

These medications may be helpful and appropriate for some people. But when prescribing is tied to financial targets, it raises important ethical and psychological questions.

Weight stigma already affects the quality of care people receive. When smaller bodies become an incentivised outcome, it risks reinforcing the idea that body size is the primary marker of health or worth.

Healthcare should be grounded in dignity, informed consent, and evidence-based care, where the individual, not their weight, is at the centre.

This conversation isn’t about being for or against medication. It’s about protecting ethical care and challenging the assumption that smaller is always better.

What are your thoughts?

08/02/2026

Sorry Oprah but I disagree. Calling ob*sity a disease doesn’t reduce stigma, it often reinforces it (the very word itself is rooted in racism and comes from the Latin word ‘obesus’, meaning, ‘having eaten oneself fat’).

When we label higher-weight bodies as medical problems to be fixed, we don’t create compassion, we create shame. We increase disordered eating, reinforce the idea that certain bodies are “wrong,” and push people further away from healthcare not closer to it. Which of course then skews health data around weight.

Weight is actually a very poor proxy for health. You cannot determine someone’s wellbeing by looking at their body, and yet weight remains one of the most overused and least accurate health markers we have.

The real shift isn’t calling ob*sity a disease. The real shift is building a healthcare system that isn’t weightcentric and that supports health without pathologising bodies.

Follow me for evidence-based psychology-led conversations about body image, mental health, and what real wellbeing actually looks like.

body

05/02/2026

We’ve started talking about “food noise” as if it’s some modern pathology; something to suppress, hack, or medicate away.

But in psychology, persistent food preoccupation has been recognised for decades as one of the clearest signs of restriction, under-fuelling, or chronic dieting.

When your body doesn’t feel safe, physically or psychologically, it increases food thoughts.

Not because you’re broken but because your nervous system is trying to keep you alive.

The problem isn’t food noise.

The problem is a culture that profits from convincing you it shouldn’t exist. A culture and diet industry that has created a problem and now wants to sell you the solution to it.

Because if hunger is framed as dysfunction, someone can always sell you a cure.

In my newsletter, I go deeper into the psychology behind appetite, body trust, and why so many “wellness” narratives quietly replicate eating disorder logic in more socially acceptable packaging.

I offer evidence-based psychology for people who want a more peaceful relationship with food and their body.

Sign up via the link in my bio 🩷

28/01/2026

Knowing body ideals are unrealistic doesn’t stop your nervous system from feeling them.

And that’s because body dissatisfaction isn’t a logic problem, it’s a learning one.

Your brain has been trained to link thinness, youth, and perfection with safety and worth. Potentially for decades.

So when you scroll and feel “not enough,” that doesn’t mean there’s actually something wrong with you..

It just means you’re human in a culture that profits from your self-doubt.

If this feels like you, here’s some first steps to support yourself:

• Notice comparison without judging it
• Curate a social media feed that supports you
• Practice daily body respect (not love - that’s often unrealistic, to start with at least)

The work isn’t convincing yourself you’re wrong …it’s about retraining your brain to see your body as a teammate.

And that is possible. I’ve done it myself and witnessed the shift in many, many clients.

If this resonates, I share simple, science-based tools like this every week on my newsletter. Sign up via my profile page 🩷✨

selfacceptance

25/12/2025

Merry Christmas everyone 🎄🩷 Here is my Christmas Mission for you if you choose to accept it.. taking diet and weight talk off the table and giving yourself permission to step away from unhelpful conversations that detract from what Christmas really means to you… that will be different for us all but may include love joy connection, gratitude, fun, magic and enjoying all the beautiful and yummy food this time of year often involves 💫 🩷🎄🙏🏽

This isn’t about controlling what other people want to talk about, but it is about choosing your peace.

Wishing you a joyful and peaceful day whether you are celebrating this holiday or not, with lots of love 🩷🎄

30/11/2025

Acknowledging what you didn’t receive growing up is a turning point in healing from mother hunger. Without that awareness, it’s easy to assume the pain you carry, the loneliness, the anxiety, the self-criticism, must mean YOU were the problem. But when you can name the reality, “I had valid emotional needs, and they weren’t met”, the story shifts from one of self-defect to one of compassion. Your struggles become completely understandable rather than evidence of a personal flaw. And that’s where healing begins.

This shift matters deeply for your relationship with food. When emotional needs for comfort, soothing, or attunement weren’t available, it’s completely human to turn to food as a source of nurturance, numbing or escape. Food becomes a way to feel safe, to manage difficult feelings, to fill a hole, or to create a sense of control that was missing elsewhere. When you see this through the lens of unmet attachment needs rather than self-blame, you can approach your eating patterns, and emotional hunger, with far more kindness and curiosity.

For more on this make sure you’re following me 🩷

And for a validating and insightful resource on mother hunger I highly recommend book, ‘Mother Hunger’.

28/11/2025

Mother hunger can feel like a deep yearning; a need you might feel embarrassed to admit, even to yourself.

But that longing isn’t shameful. It’s so human. And it’s a normal response to an attachment need that wasn’t fully met.

You’re not “too much.” You’re not needy. You’re carrying an emotional wound that deserves understanding, care and healing ❤️‍🩹

Follow me for compassionate guidance on healing mother hunger and make sure you’re signed up for my newsletter for deeper tools and support 🩷

25/11/2025

We need to talk about the thinness we’re suddenly applauding.

Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s recent Wicked promo appearances, and even more so the public reaction to them, reveal something deeply concerning about our culture.

Because when extreme thinness is instantly framed as “goals,” especially at a time when GLP-1 drugs are more accessible than ever, we reinforce a very dangerous idea: that health, worth, and success come in only one size.

This isn’t empowerment.
It’s a massive step backwards into a glorification of an aesthetic that demands disordered behaviour.

We’re drifting further and further away from truly healthy, weight-diverse, self-accepting care… and deeper into a culture that treats shrinking as an achievement.

Our kids are watching.
Our friends are watching.
We ALL absorb these messages.

It’s time for a different narrative; one that honours real wellbeing, diverse bodies, and our shared humanity.

22/11/2025

On last night, I told something I wish every parent, teacher, and policymaker knew: when a child is bullied for their weight, their body isn’t the issue, the bullying is. Kids deserve to feel at home in their bodies, not to see them as battlegrounds.

That’s exactly why I wrote Body Confident You, Body Confident Kid, because supporting children starts with supporting ourselves. Our own body image, and the way we speak about and treat our bodies, becomes the model our kids learn from.

When we help both parents and children trust and respect their bodies, we set them up for a relationship with themselves rooted in care and nurturance, wherever their weight naturally falls on the weight spectrum.

If you want to build this foundation for yourself and the kids in your life, you can grab a copy of my book via the link at the top of my profile.

19/11/2025

As a psychologist specializing in body image and eating disorders, it worries me enormously when rapid weight loss is celebrated as “inspirational.”

It’s not inspirational, it’s dangerous.

Extreme restriction, whether in a thin body or a bigger one, is never healthy.

Yes of course GLP-1 medications can help *some* people under medical guidance, but when extreme restriction and obsession with the scale are normalized or applauded, the risks to both physical and mental health are very real.

Feeling faint, obsessing over the scale, rapidly losing weight.. these aren’t things to admire, they’re red flags.

We need to be encouraging nourishment, not depletion, health, not harm, and support, not shame 🩷

15/11/2025

Something is really worrying me… and I’m not sure we’re talking about it enough.

It’s becoming normal to:

Inject ourselves to lose weight,

Inject ourselves to look younger than we are,

Inject ourselves to reshape our faces,

Inject ourselves to change skin or muscle tone.

And now headlines say Robbie Williams may be going blind from weight-loss injections but plans to continue anyway.

This isn’t about Robbie. It’s about what this reflects about us as a society… we’re trying to medicate away loneliness, shame, self-doubt, and the fear of not being enough.

But no injection can heal those places, or take away existential angst. Injections may change a number on the scale or smooth out some wrinkles, but they can’t resolve the psychological wounds underneath.

My fear is we’re edging toward a Capitol-like culture where perfection trumps wellbeing and yet still leaves us feeling not enough.

So maybe the real antidote isn’t another injection… but compassion, connection, and learning to feel at home in ourselves again. And that’s what my account is here for 🩷

Follow me if that sounds like what you need, and let me know your thoughts in the comments.

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Guildford

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http://www.charlotteord.com/

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