Weight and Healthcare

This came up in our monthly subscriber Ask Me Anything and then from another email from reader Julie who wrote: “I hurt my knee playing soccer. After a lot of of imaging I was told it wasn’t surgical. I asked for a referral to physical therapy and my ortho referred me to PrescribeFit. I assumed it was physical therapy but it seems like it’s some kind of online diet thing. Can you tell me what’s go...

Many of you have reached out asking me to write about Brandi Mallory and Mandisa Hundley’s deaths. Today is the day I’m going to do that. I want to start by saying that their deaths, regardless of cause, are a tragedy and my heart goes out to them and their families, friends, and loved ones. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe

I got the following question from reader Kyrie: I started having pain in my knee after I jumped out of a truck and twisted it. I went to my regular doctor and he referred me to an orthopedist. He (the orthopedist) told me that the only thing that could possibly help was to lose weight. I asked the question that I learned from you “what would you recommend for a thin patient in this situation?”  Th...

Reader Kellisa sent me the following question:I appreciate all the different things you write about, but some of my favorite newsletters are where you show how people and studies are paid for by the diet industry. I know this was a while ago, but I just found the newsletter you wrote about where you figured out that the person behind that “bill of rights” was actually a lobbyist for Novo Nordisk a...

As I discuss the issues of GLP-1 agonist and GLP-1/GIP co-agonist weight loss drugs Semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy) and Tirzepatide (Mounjaro/Zepbound)I’ve been increasingly hearing from people who are engaged in practices with these drugs that are not remotely evidence based. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe

This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter ! If you like what you are reading, please consider subscribing and/or sharing! Reader Shauna asked “I just saw an article about the Body Roundness Index, is that as silly as I think it is?” The Body Roundness Index seems to be the weight loss industry’s response to finally having to (at least begin to) admit that the Body Mass Index (BMI) is nonsense....

This came up in our monthly Subscriber Ask Me Anything discussion and it’s something I get asked about a lot – how can you advocate for a fat* friend/family member in a healthcare appointment? Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe

The co-opting of concepts from weight-neutral health community to sell weight loss (or obfuscate the harm it causes) is rampant. We’ve talked about this with the concept of weight stigma and fake anti weight stigma events , PR campaigns , and marketing . In today’s edition of “words mean things” we’re going to talk about the co-option of the concept of weight-neutral. Get full access to Weight and...

In my recent quick guide to creating a size-inclusive office , I mentioned troncoconical blood pressure cuffs and I heard from a number of people in healthcare who said that they had never heard of them so I thought I’d write a follow-up piece. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe

In part 1 we talked about the research (or lack thereof) around the ways in which GLP-1 drugs, taken in large doses for weight loss, might impact the absorption of other medications. Today, we’re going to hear from someone who was personally impacted by the issue. I received the following information from Jennifer Jonsson who gave me permission to publish it and use her name.   Get full access to...

One of the questions I’ve been getting a lot is about how the new GLP-1 weight loss drugs (Novo’s Semaglutide Wegovy) and GLP-1/GIP co-agonist weight loss drugs (Lilly’s Tirzepatide/Zepbound) can interfere with the absorption of other medications. In part 1 we’ll look at the information around this and in part 2 we’ll have a personal story of someone who experienced it.   Get full access to Weight...

Let’s start today with what P-hacking is, and then we can talk about why we needed to talk about it in the first place. Please note this is an overview, there are many more layers and complications to this, these are the basics. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe

In Part 1 I talked about the WaPo/Examination piece “As ob*sity rises, Big Food and dietitians push 'anti-diet' advice…General Mills warns of “food shaming"; dietitian influencers promote junk foods and discourage weight loss efforts.” I discussed my experience with being interviewed, as well as some basics about the piece. Today I’m going to talk about their methodology, such as it is. Get full a...

The headline ran “As ob*sity rises, Big Food and dietitians push 'anti-diet' advice…General Mills warns of “food shaming"; dietitian influencers promote junk foods and discourage weight loss efforts.” (As is my policy, I don’t link to studies or articles that contain weight stigma, but I give enough information to Google.) Why am I calling it a hit piece? For two reasons, first because I know that...

In part 1 we examined the massively misleading opening claim of the abstract of the new study “Long-term weight loss effects of semaglutide in obesity without diabetes in the SELECT trial” by Ryan et al, published in the journal naturemedicine, and we looked at the magnitude of the conflicts of the authors.  Today I’ll dig into the rest of the study.   Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at w...

As you might imagine, I subscribe to a large number of medical publications and in the last couple of days I’ve been receiving updates from them falling all over themselves to breathlessly claim that weight loss was maintained for 4 years on Semaglutide 2.4mg (aka Wegovy) in the SELECT trial. The ways in which these claims are misleading are egregious and anti-science. In part 1 I’ll look at the i...

This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter ! If you like what you are reading, please consider subscribing and/or sharing! During the Q&A at a recent talk at a medical conference a healthcare provider at the end said “there is so much to do, what would you suggest is a good place to start?” There are plenty of places to start, but one that jumps to mind is in creating an accommodating office. Ge...

In part 1 we talked about the long-standing, evidence-free phenomenon of “jump-starting” weight loss using some kind of short-term extreme food/caloric restriction. Today we have another version straight from the doctor's office. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe

I received the following question from reader Deena: I love when you talk about the funding and other conflicts of interest of the people who write studies. It seems obvious that you don’t think disclosures are adequate, so I’m just wondering - what do you think that disclosures should include? Deena is exactly right, I do not think that disclosures as they are currently done are anywhere near ade...

In part one we looked at the staggering conflicts of interest and issues with the efficacy in the Semaglutide 2.4 (Wegovy) cardiovascular trial (Semaglutide and Cardiovascular Outcomes in Ob*sity* without Diabetes DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2307563) especially as compared to the deeply misleading claims in Novo Nordisk’s “ company announcement ” publicity stunt prior to publication. Today we’re going to d...

Today we’re going to talk about common advice that has long been a pet peeve of mine. It is advice that I, myself, have been given and that I’ve heard from countless people. It happens when someone (a fitness professional, a doctor, whomever) tells a higher-weight person that they should not lift weights/lift heavy weights/strength train etc. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhe...

In their zeal to medicalize and pathologize higher-weight bodies for profit, the weight loss industry (and the advocacy groups they fund, and the elements of healthcare they influence) have worked hard to claim that “ob*sity” is a disease and then manipulate the definitions of ob*sity to their best interest. Let’s look at some: Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substa...

Moving forward I’m going to be writing about efforts on a number of fronts that are trying to recommend weight loss and, in particular, weight loss drugs to older adults. Much of this is part of the weight loss industry’s holy grail of getting their drugs approved by Medicare, so I wanted to provide some basics around this today. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.subs...

Every single day I hear from people who have had terrible experiences with healthcare providers. I often write about issues with overt weight stigma and the weight-loss paradigm in working higher-weight with patients/clients. Today I’d like to discuss things that often get said in front of these patients, but not to them. These things can cause significant harm, including damaging the relationship...

This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter ! If you like what you are reading, please consider subscribing and/or sharing! This is the final in a three-part series about Tirzepatide (Brand name Mounjaro for Type 2 diabetes and Zepbound for Weight Loss.) In part one we discussed the basics of the drug, in part 2 we discussed the authors of this study and finally, in part three we’ll finish discus...