December 4, 2018 — No doubt, the intentions behind this headline were good. “Obesity is too dangerous to normalize,” said a letter to the editor on Sunday in the Washington Post. That letter came in response to a commentary about plus-size fashion that pleaded for clothes that will let bigger women simply be themselves. And feel good about it, […]
December 1, 2018 — Plus fashion is growing up and perhaps moving into the mainstream. It’s inevitable. In a world where roughly 75 percent of the population is living at a high BMI, fashion that focuses only on stick-thin models can’t survive. But growing up is hard. So plus fashion is in its awkward phase, as Washington Post fashion […]
November 26, 2018 — One of the highlights of ObesityWeek 2018 was Rebecca Puhl’s award for scientific achievement. Not just because we admire her and her pioneering work on weight stigma. But also because she rewarded us. She delivered an inspiring lecture on finding a path to less weight stigma. Stigma researcher Angela Alberga explains: It was incredible to […]
November 2, 2018 — “’Obesity’ is not the health risk it has been reported to be,” says the HAES® Fact Sheet. But that assertion stands in stark contrast to the findings of a new study in Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology this week. The study adds to a large body of evidence and begs a question. At what point does […]
October 27, 2018 — Faced with an inescapable choice, who will live and who will die? That’s the question that researchers put to a massive global sample. It was a hypothetical question prompted by self-driving vehicles. Should the vehicle swerve to avoid hitting a large group of people? Even if it means certain death for a smaller group? Should […]
October 23, 2018 — Yesterday at FNCE, dietitians witnessed an event with a split personality. Was it a debate? Or was it a conversation? The title said it was both – a debate and a conversation on weight management and Health at Every Size®. (People in the HAES movement want you to know, that’s their trademark.) Whatever it was, […]
October 20, 2018 — Medscape tells us that 64 percent of physicians believe obesity is a disease. For nurses, the number is a bit smaller – 54%. But believe it or not, this looks like progress to us. More healthcare professionals are coming around. More of them are finally understanding obesity as a disease. Shifting Opinions Five years ago, […]
October 12, 2018 — There’s no gentle way to express this. We suffer from a huge ethical blind spot regarding access to obesity care. Today, as National Obesity Care Week focuses upon access to care, we must acknowledge just how big this gap is. Of course, we focus a lot on the issue of access to obesity treatment. We […]
October 11, 2018 — Weight bias and stigma hold power over us. It can poison just about everything we might do about obesity. And yet today, it unites us. As we observe National Obesity Care Week, our focus today is squarely upon weight bias. Two Ways to Express Bias Two distinct types of bias work against us. First and […]
September 15, 2018 — Language unites us and divides us. Certainly, this is true for the language of obesity. A new study in JAMA Surgery tells us that patients seeking bariatric surgery don’t like people calling them fat. Nor do they like people calling them obese. Instead, they give higher marks to the language of having a high BMI […]
