December 13, 2022 — The American Diabetes Association is out with their new standards of care for 2023 and at the top of the list of seven major changes is a refined focus on obesity. Changes in medical care are subtle and slow. But when you look at how it has evolved over recent years, the shift in views […]
November 23, 2022 — Whether or not it’s by intention, when and if parents try to talk with their children about body weight, it comes across as finger wagging. In fact, research published earlier this year tells us many youth never want their parents to talk about their weight – especially not their fathers. Parents might want to offer […]
October 8, 2022 — Weight loss is a complicated subject these days. For good reasons, many people hesitate to dwell on it. Moral panic about fatness, weight bias and stigma, and concerns about eating disorders have made this subject controversial at times. So as we look at the meeting at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that starts today […]
May 8, 2022 — Lourdes “Lulu” Garcia-Navarro has earned herself a new fan club. Simply, clearly, and better that most anyone who knows the subject of obesity, stigma, and health, she just told the world how weight stigma undermines our health. She showed us how health professionals are part of the problem. But most of all she showed us […]
May 4, 2022 — With the opening of ECO2022 today, a talented team from Canada, Chile, and Ireland set an important theme. For years now, this team has been translating obesity care guidelines internationally to put people first. Not BMI. No more one size fits all. It starts with Canadian obesity guidelines that emerged in 2020. The concept that […]
April 22, 2022 — In obesity care, the longer view of a weight history is essential to understanding a person’s journey of health. It’s all about the trajectory of a lifetime. For example, on Reddit a person reflects on their own history: “My current weight is the most I’ve ever weighed. At the moment I’m at 174 lbs. Before I […]
April 19, 2022 — The problem with doing things to prolong your life is that all the extra years come at the end, when you’re old. Bob Mankoff captured this fundamental quandary in a New Yorker cartoon years ago. But the problem of managing health and risks remains on our minds nonetheless. So a new study in JAMA Network […]
April 4, 2022 — Motivational interviewing (MI) is a foundational tool for obesity care. In this setting, it is all about listening, understanding, and bolstering a patient’s motivation in seeking care for obesity. But what should we make of the revelation about it last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine? A study found that it doesn’t, by itself, […]
February 23, 2022 — Are we listening to each other? Not too much, it seems. It’s not even clear that we’re listening to ourselves. Often, we’re too busy making a point. Right now, we’re hearing a lot of people making points about weight neutral healthcare. Dani Donovan, a 30-year-old patient advocate with binge eating disorder recently found a medical […]
November 28, 2021 — Medical terms can carry a lot of baggage. Leprosy, cancer, diabetes, autism, and obesity are just a few examples. What they all have in common is that they describe conditions that can cause a lot of trouble, but either don’t or didn’t have an easy resolution. So to greater or lesser degrees, people attached stigma […]
