Getting Past Blame into Real Obesity Care

It’s odd when you think about it. Roughly 40 percent of Americans are living with obesity, but only about two million of them ever get any real medical care for it. We don’t mean bogus diets or advice from Aunt Sara. We mean real, evidence-based obesity care that can improve a person’s health and life.

A new video narrative from Health Central offers extraordinary insight into the journey of one person – OAC Board Member Patty Nece – in finding real obesity care.

Getting Past the Blame

The first hurdle – and perhaps the biggest – is getting past the blame. Pervasive stigma and bias leave many people with a crushing burden of guilt. Patty describes her own experience:

For years and year – for decades – I blamed myself for my weight. I felt ashamed, I felt guilty, I felt like a failure.

What I’ve come to learn through thoroughly science-based, very good treatment, is that you might have done everything you know to do to control it. But in the end, you’re not in control of it totally. And once you’ve realized that, it make it easier to fight the battle.

What she’s describing is internalized weight stigma. Her story and volumes of research demonstrate just how toxic that stigma can be.

Beyond Weight Loss to Better Health for Life

In our weight-obsessed culture, most people assume that obesity care must be all about weight loss. And make no mistake, weight loss is important for many, many people.

Patty Nece and Scott Kahan, photograph © Remedy Health Media

But real success, Patty discovered, came from medical obesity care that could help her do more than just lose some weight. With the help of obesity medicine physician Scott Kahan and his team, Patty found a path for improving and maintaining her health for the long term:

It used to be that the scale was my be all, end all, measure of success. I think I’ve changed since then. Now for me, my barometer is health. It’s a longer term outlook and a longer term motivator for me. And I know that the numbers on the scale can be fickle. It’s taken a lot of work to see the numbers as just data.

Obesity is a difficult condition to wrestle alone. It’s complex and it’s chronic. Many barriers stand in the way of getting good care. Patty gives us an intimate view of how she moved past blame and found a professional team who could help her find better health beyond the scale.

Click here to read and hear and see more of Patty’s story.

Patty Nece, photograph © Remedy Health Media

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February 15, 2018