A mom of three is going viral on the internet after revisiting childhood photos that challenged a belief she carried for decades: that she was “too fat” growing up.
Switzerland-based Katrin W (@kiki_cooks_fit) shared a reel on Instagram with a series of old pictures of herself.
She wrote on the text overlay: “POV you were always told that you were already too fat as a child and a teenager… and then you find photos.”
The images show a smiling, ordinary-looking girl, far from the version Katrin said she was taught to see. “I was never the ‘fat kid’ I was told I was,” she wrote in her caption. “Yes, my body changed like every normal kid’s does. But I wasn’t big. I wasn’t ‘too much.’ And yet, for as long as I can remember, my parents made me believe I was.”
Looking back now, the 39-year-old said the disconnect between what she was told and what she sees in the photos is still unsettling.
“When I look at those childhood photos today, I see a completely normal, growing girl,” Katrin told Newsweek. “I wouldn’t describe myself as a ‘fat child’ in any of them. That’s what makes the gap so confusing.”
What stayed with her wasn’t a number on a scale, she explained, but a lasting message that her body needed to be managed.
“For years, I was told I had ‘too much’ and needed to be careful,” Katrin said. “Even now, when I point to the photos, the explanation sometimes shifts, but the underlying message stays the same. It was the belief that my body was something to control or hide.”
Katrin is careful not to frame her parents as villains. She sees their comments as shaped by the culture they lived in—one governed by diet culture and narrow beauty ideals.
“Supermodels were extremely slim, magazines were full of diet trends, and there was a constant message that the thinner you were, the more desirable and successful you appeared,” she said.
Katrin recalled her mom having what she considered a “perfect” body, yet still criticizing herself.
For Katrin, those messages had devastating consequences. “I believe the seed for my eating disorder was planted very early,” she said, explaining that while it surfaced later—after trauma and a toxic relationship—the foundation was already there.
She has experienced dramatic weight fluctuations and tried “nearly every diet imaginable,” many of which were not conducive to her healing journey.
Katrin’s reel has been viewed 3.5 million times and received nearly 3,000 comments from other women who have struggled with body dysmorphia and weight stigma.
“Yup same! I wish I could hug that girl every time I come across old pictures,” one user wrote.
“I got comments about my ‘belly’ when I was 15,” another added. “I was a competitive cheerleader at the time. I’ve looked back on those photos, and I had a VISIBLE six pack.”
“Our parents’ obsession with our weight was honestly insane,” a third added.
Katrin hopes that by sharing her story, preconceptions over children’s health can reach parents before similar narratives take root.
“Many parents were shaped by the same pressures, but it is our responsibility now to break that cycle,” she said. “Children only get one childhood, and it should be as free as possible from the idea that their body is wrong.”
