August 6, 2024 — “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” Ancient texts remind us there is nothing new about stigma and bias toward people living with illness and disability. But still, it is jarring to encounter such expressions of weight bias as the Telegraph published not long ago. William Sitwell wrote: “Fat people are costing us all billions. […]
June 7, 2024 — Mandisa Lynn Hundley was an American gospel and contemporary Christian recording artist. Known simply as Mandisa, her death on April 18 this year at the age of 47 was due to complications of class 3 obesity. Though obesity is quite common and its complications are frequent causes of death, Mandisa is a rare example of […]
March 19, 2024 — Celebrity weight loss is a bane to the world. For years, Oprah found herself sucked into it and, as a result, took on a lot of self-stigma. In an hour-long program on ABC last night, though, she shared her new awareness of this: “I have to say that I took on the shame that the […]
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 […]
