September 24, 2023 — A good friend often reminds us about the importance of kindness, and of course, she is right. The world offers us too little kindness too often and we make it better when we add the warmth of kindness to the corner of the world we share. But our friend Gary Foster took it a bit […]
May 22, 2023 — Despite a great deal of progress in recognizing weight bias and stigma, many challenges remain in overcoming it. Explicit expressions of weight bias no longer get a free pass. So they are becoming less common. But implicit weight bias is as strong as ever. Perhaps even more challenging is the weight bias that people direct […]
December 4, 2022 — We have been living in an age of outrage for a while now. Blame it on politicians, social media, cancel culture, or whatever you like. But that impulse to assign the blame for it might be an indicator that we are suffering from a deficit of forgiveness. Writing in the New York Times, Timothy Keller […]
March 2, 2022 — For OCW2022 today, Rebecca Puhl and Ted Kyle take on a tough question: can we put an end to weight bias? In answer to that question, there’s both good news and bad news, highlighted in a new video release today. First the Good News Without a doubt, awareness of weight bias has grown over the […]
February 14, 2022 — People have both love and loathing for this day, say consumer researchers. Given those mixed feelings, this might be a good time to reflect upon the love, grace, and self-compassion we direct inwardly. In this age of mindfulness, pop psychology tells us that we need self-compassion to function well in a challenging environment. How seriously […]
December 16, 2021 — Stages of Change is is a concept deeply embedded in our thinking about health behaviors and obesity. “How ready are you to change?” is the core question. But when applied to obesity care, it is a model with shameful power to promote implicit bias. A new perspective today in the New England Journal of Medicine […]
November 1, 2021 — Today marks the opening of ObesityWeek (OW2021) and the one thing you won’t want to miss is the Presidential Plenary. That’s because it packs a fabulous inventory of the hottest topics at ObesityWeek into just two hours. The premier is at 10:00 am (East) today, with an encore at 9:30 pm tonight. But the most […]
September 30, 2021 — The “War on Obesity” has claimed many victims, but made little progress against the disease itself. This approach to obesity has done a fine job of setting up a war inside our own heads – self-stigma. “Weight stigma is widespread, damaging and difficult to eradicate,” writes Rebecca Puhl in the Washington Post. In fact, the […]
September 22, 2021 — We have an opportunity before us, say Thiago Gagliano-Jucá and Caroline Apovian. They are writing in Annals of Internal Medicine to reflect on the implications of words we use in healthcare. Specifically, they are talking about the words providers attach to obesity – words like morbid. These are words that leave patients feeling judged. Such […]
September 20, 2021 — The concept of food addiction holds strong sway in popular culture. You can find tips for overcoming it. WebMD will tell you how to diagnose and treat it. Psychiatrist Anna Lembke has a book to sell you. In Dopamine Nation, she describes the source of addictive behaviors linked to food, phones, and sex. It was […]
