Weight and Healthcare

This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter ! If you like what you are reading, please consider subscribing and/or sharing! The idea that people can gain “clinically meaningful health benefits” by losing 5-10% of their body weight is ubiquitous and ridiculous. Sometimes it is recommended as a way to improve general health, to reduce cardiometabolic risk factors, or to improve a specific health co...

I received a request to write about an article titled “Graphic and grisly beverage warning labels stressing sugar content dangers could curb ob*sity*, study finds.” The study found no such thing. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe

Our current medical view of weight and health is deeply muddied by weight loss industry involvement. I created this list of questions as a guide to interrogation. It can be used by or with healthcare practitioners, or by anyone who wants to take a critical look at our current weight and health paradigm. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe

I received this question from reader Jeremy: “I’m in healthcare and I was recently in a training that was talking about O-word as a chronic disease (eye-roll) and then they used the term lifelong relapsing remitting obesity but didn’t elaborate what it meant, can you help?” Thanks for asking Jeremy, let's get into it! Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/sub...

I've written previously about the serious issues with the field of so-called “ob*sity* medicine.” Today I’d like to talk about what could be. What if there was a field of medicine dedicated to providing better care to fat* patients rather than dedicated to making us thin? Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe

Thanks to everyone who sent me this article from Medical News Today and asked me to write about it! I’ll discuss the study, but I’m also going talk about the article because it’s a great demonstration of how even articles that appear to question weight stigma can still be deeply rooted in weight stigma. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe

Healthcare practitioners have a long history of blaming and shaming fat patients for the failure of intentional weight loss. While fat activists and weight-neutral healthcare practitioners have been talking about this for literally decades, we are starting to hear pushback against this from, what seems at the outset, an unlikely source – the weight loss industry. Suddenly they seem to be falling a...

I have permission to share the story of a patient I advocate for. She is fat and has Type 2 Diabetes (T2D). Her latest A1C test was 7.1%. This is .1% over her goal and up from her previous test. Her doctor told her that she didn’t need to adjust meds but should “do her best to eat less sweets and carbohydrates.” This is incredibly common advice (perhaps especially with fat patients for whom many h...

I received the following question from reader Ximena: “I appreciate how you always look to find out how much money different doctors have taken from pharmaceutical companies but I’m wondering, is there any proof that these payments actually influence doctors?” This is a great question, and there is research about this... Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/...

This series is part of the work I did with WIND (Weight Inclusive Nutrition and Dietetics) to create a comprehensive response to the disastrous American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines for higher-weight children . I was part of the team that analyzed the research that, the AAP claims, supports their recommendations, and I’ll be publishing my breakdowns here as well. Today’s study is The eff...

Embroiled in lawsuits and investigations across multiple countries about the dangerous side effects of their weight loss drug Wegovy (which I interrupted writing about to write about this,) Novo Nordisk put out a press release today with the headline “Semaglutide 2.4 mg reduces the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events by 20% in adults with overw*ight or ob*sity in the SELECT trial.” Normall...

I was recently asked for an interview by a reporter who was writing about Novo Nordisk’s new weight loss drug . I sent a long answer via email and then we did a 30 minute phone call. The quote that appeared in the article didn’t come from my email interview or the phone interview, but rather from a piece I had written here, so I thought I would share the full email interview that I sent (I asked t...

As a fat patient who often exercises my right of informed refusal when it comes to recommendations of weight loss, I have had to correct my chart multiple times when the healthcare provider who recommended the weight loss labeled me as “non-compliant.” I’ll tell you how I handle it, but first I want to dig into the whole concept of “compliance” and weight loss recommendations. I refuse weight loss...

This series is part of the work I’m doing with Weight Inclusive Nutrition and Dietetics (WIND) to create a comprehensive response to the disastrous American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines for higher-weight children . I’m part of the team that is analyzing the research that, the AAP claims, supports their recommendations, and I’ll be publishing my breakdowns here as well. Today’s study is L...

I received this question from an anonymous reader who is an RN, and it’s a question I’ve received in various shapes and forms from a number of providers: I feel like I’m surrounded by weight stigma all day long - negative body talk in front of (sometimes to and at!) patients, diet talk amongst the staff (sometimes also in front of patients) jokes at high weight patient’s expense behind the scenes...

This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter ! If you appreciate the content here, please consider supporting the newsletter by subscribing and/or sharing! I’ve previously written a series about fat people and joint health, including joint pain , osteoarthritis , and resources to fight BMI-based joint surgery denials . I’ve added a new resource to the list thanks to Dr. Greg Dodell who let me know...

Noom has announced the start of Noom Med, a division focused on selling diet drugs. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Weight Watchers just did the exact same thing . Let's talk about this. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe

In part 1 we started discussing the study “Working toward eradicating weight stigma by combating pathologization: A qualitative pilot study using direct contact and narrative medicine” by Rachel Fox, Kelly Park, Rowan Hildebrand-Chupp, and Anne T. Vo. We discussed the issues with existing weight stigma research and the approach that this study is taking. Today we’ll take a look at the study and it...

I was thrilled to learn of a study by Rachel Fox, Kelly Park, Rowan Hildebrand-Chupp, and Anne T. Vo called “Working toward eradicating weight stigma by combating pathologization: A qualitative pilot study using direct contact and narrative medicine.” The study explains why research that seeks to end weight stigma cannot come from a pathologization of fatness. Thanks to Rachel Fox for reviewing my...

There is about a century of research showing that the most common outcome will be that people lose weight short-term and then regain it long-term as their bodies adjust to food restriction and change physiologically in order to become weight maintaining, weight regaining machines. Then there is deeply flawed research (often funded and/or conducted by the weight loss industry) that uses a number of...

Two columns in the New York Times by "The Ethicist" (one where someone wants to comment on their friend's weight and behaviors and another where someone is concerned about the safety of weight loss drugs) show what happens when weight stigma meets staggering hypocrisy. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe

Wow, did a lot of you write to me about this one. Someone wrote in to the New York Times column “The Ethicist” to ask if they should “intervene” because their friend, who specifically asked them not to talk to her about her weight, is fat and, in their perception, has health issues (which of course the letter writer blamed on her weight.) So obviously the answer was “you should stop monitoring you...

I often get asked by practitioners what they can do to become better providers and advocates for their higher-weight clients. I conceptualize this as a four-step progression. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe

In Part 1 I talked about Beachbody’s supposed rebrand to “Bodi” to focus on health. I signed up for the 14-day free trial to check it out myself. I was holding out hope that perhaps they really were moving away from their weight loss focus, but all of those hopes evaporated after two minutes of scrolling the site. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscri...

I recently got a question from reader Marisol asking “I have food and bee allergies, so I carry epipens. I just came across your writing about vaccine needles and it made me wonder about the needle on my epipen, should I be worried?” Let's talk about it. Get full access to Weight and Healthcare at weightandhealthcare.substack.com/subscribe