I have written a lot about strategies that fat people can use to attempt to overcome their healthcare provider’s weight bias in order to get competent evidence-based care. From cards that can help people have conversations, to lies that may have to be told in order to get necessary care. As always, I want to point out that fatphobia (medical and otherwise) becomes our problem, but it is not our fault and it shouldn’t be happening. We shouldn’t have to gear up for a doctor’s appointment.

I have found that one of the most helpful things to ask a Healthcare Provider when they attempt to prescribe weight loss for a health condition is:

How do you treat this issue in thin people?

I hear from blog readers all the time who were able to use this question to get healthcare beyond the suggestion that they should try to look different (of course it isn’t foolproof, sometimes the HCP is simply unable to get beyond their weight stigma.)

This is good, but there’s actually quite a bit more to it. Getting the care that thin people get isn’t good enough, because that care is created FOR thin people. We deserve more than that. There are so many areas of healthcare that need to be fixed.

Let’s start with medical research. Research is typically done on “average weight” people, without even an attempt to understand how medications or procedures could best be created/used for fat people (despite the fact that we keep hearing about how many fat people are in society.)

Should dosage be increased by weight? Is this pill ineffective after a certain weight (like Plan B which starts to lose effectiveness at 165 pounds and becomes completely ineffective at 176 pounds.) The fact that they don’t even bother to consider fat people in most health research is a serious type of institutionalized oppression. (And, of course, fat people aren’t the only ones – people of color, trans and non-binary people, and women are a few of the groups who aren’t adequately represented in research, those with intersecting marginalizations even more so.)

This one’s a bit graphic, but those responsible for handling cadavers for medical schools won’t bother work with larger bodies, which means that future doctors don’t practice on fat bodies. (Considering that they had no problem flying a fat body 5,000 miles for an exploitative television show it seems like they already know how to solve this.)

Then, of course, there’s the fact that surgeons often tell fat people that they can’t do routine procedures on us because they are “too risky,” then recommend…wait for it…weight loss surgery. Not only is bariatric surgery often more dangerous than the surgery that the fat person actually needs, and not only are those who have had the stomach amputation surgery at additional risk for the surgery that they could have just had in the first place, but the idea that surgery is no problem if you want to mutilate your digestive tract in the hopes of creating a disease state that will force you to starve, but an arthroscopic surgery to fix your knee is just way too risky, would be laughable if it wasn’t being used to harm so many people.

At the absolute least, fat people deserve care that is based on research that includes fat patients, with equipment that was made to work for fat patients, from doctors who were educated on how to work on fat bodies, and are not operating out of weight stigma. It’s really not that much to ask.

Was this helpful? If you appreciate the work that I do, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time tip or by becoming a member. (Members get special deals on fat-positive stuff, a monthly e-mail keeping them up to date on the work their membership supports, and the ability to ask me questions that I answer in a members-only monthly Q&A Video!)

Like this blog?  Here’s more stuff you might like:

Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)
Click here for all the details and to register!

Body Love Obstacle Course

This e-course that includes coaching videos, a study guide, and an ebook with the tools you need to create a rock-solid relationship with your body. Our relationships with our bodies don’t happen in a vacuum, so just learning to see our beauty isn’t going to cut it. The world throws obstacles in our way – obstacles that aren’t our fault, but become our problem. Over the course of this program, Ragen Chastain, Jeanette DePatie, and six incredible guest coaches will teach you practical, realistic, proven strategies to go above, around, and through the obstacles that the world puts in front of you when it comes to living an amazing life in the body you have now.
Price: $99.00 Click here to register
($79.00 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)

Love It! 234 Inspirations And Activities to Help You Love Your Body
This is filled with thoughtful advice from the authors Jeanette DePatie, Ragen Chastain, and Pia Sciavo-Campo as well as dozens of other notable names from the body love movement, the book is lovingly illustrated with diverse drawings from size-positive artist Toni Tails.
Price: $9.99 softcover, $7.99 Kindle, ($6.95 + free shipping for DancesWithFat Members)

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m (still!) training for an Iron-distance triathlon! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com .

While many of us are spending lots more time at home, I thought it might be a good time to play a little Diet Ad Bingo:

I have become incredibly annoyed with all of the diet ads that I get bombarded with every day (dude, magical weight loss tea is not a “movement’ that people can “join”, what the effing crap.)

Whenever they are online I mark them as “misleading” or, at least, “I don’t want to see this” and hide them.  But some I can’t delete,  so I decided the next best thing to deleting them is making them into a game.

In that spirit, I offer the Diet Ad BINGO card below. You’ll note that “Disclaimer” is the free space because, since they don’t work, they all have some sort of disclaimer/fine print (like “results not even close to typical” or “this diet may kill you.“) As always, people are allowed to diet if they choose (underpants rule!), and people are allowed to poke fun at the diet industry which makes over $60 Billion a year selling a product that is such a failure that they are legally required to say that it doesn’t work every time they advertise it.

Happy BINGO-ing:

Was this helpful? If you appreciate the work that I do, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time tip or by becoming a member. (Members get special deals on fat-positive stuff, a monthly e-mail keeping them up to date on the work their membership supports, and the ability to ask me questions that I answer in a members-only monthly Q&A Video!)

Like this blog?  Here’s more stuff you might like:

Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)
Click here for all the details and to register!

Body Love Obstacle Course

This e-course that includes coaching videos, a study guide, and an ebook with the tools you need to create a rock-solid relationship with your body. Our relationships with our bodies don’t happen in a vacuum, so just learning to see our beauty isn’t going to cut it. The world throws obstacles in our way – obstacles that aren’t our fault, but become our problem. Over the course of this program, Ragen Chastain, Jeanette DePatie, and six incredible guest coaches will teach you practical, realistic, proven strategies to go above, around, and through the obstacles that the world puts in front of you when it comes to living an amazing life in the body you have now.
Price: $99.00 Click here to register
($79.00 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)

Love It! 234 Inspirations And Activities to Help You Love Your Body
This is filled with thoughtful advice from the authors Jeanette DePatie, Ragen Chastain, and Pia Sciavo-Campo as well as dozens of other notable names from the body love movement, the book is lovingly illustrated with diverse drawings from size-positive artist Toni Tails.
Price: $9.99 softcover, $7.99 Kindle, ($6.95 + free shipping for DancesWithFat Members)

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m (still!) training for an Iron-distance triathlon! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com .

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

I was recently part of a discussion about weight loss online. I was pointing out the research about intentional weight loss methods – and the fact that what the research shows is that most people can lose weight short term, but almost everyone gains it back long-term with most gaining back more than they lost. Someone immediately jumped in and said “I lost weight and kept it off, so what about that. Anyone can do it if they try hard enough.”

I see this a lot in these types of discussions. Hell, the National Weight Control Registry is literally built on this mistake (by people who should know better, but there seems to be more profit in acting like they don’t.)

The careful reader will note that in the original conversation I said “almost everyone” gains the weight back. The term here is “outlier,” someone whose experience/outcome is far different than what is typical.  The existence of outliers cannot be used to prove that the outcome they experienced could have/can be achieved by others.

So the fact that a tiny percentage of people don’t regain all their weight does not indicate that everyone can have the same outcome. There are people whose parachutes don’t open but they survive. That doesn’t make it reasonable for them to insist that their experience proves that anyone can survive their chute not opening if they just try hard enough.

That’s ludicrous. And yet every time we state the facts about the failure rates of intentional weight loss attempts, here comes someone who wants to talk about how their aunt’s best friend’s babysitter’s mom did it, like that cancels out the mountain of evidence that shows that only a tiny fraction of people succeed at significant weight loss long term.

When it comes to maintaining significant weight loss there are a number of factors that may contribute. A couple common examples:

It’s possible that they haven’t gained their weight back…yet. Most people gain their weight back in 2-5 years (which is why so many of the people you see on diet commercials are within that time frame.) This is the one I see most often. When challenged, I find that many of these people think that saying “I’m definitely not gaining it back” is someone evidence of their future purported success. Spoiler alert – it is not.

It’s possible that they developed disordered eating/an eating disorder (which wouldn’t be surprising since many diets encourage the exact same behaviors that people dealing with eating disorders struggle to stop.) This is a worst-case scenario since they are likely to be congratulated and supported for their dangerous eating disorder behaviors, and terrified to regain their weight because of the positive reaction they are receiving.

Regardless, if “trying hard” to be thin would make us thin, every fat person I know would be thin. The truth is that almost everyone who attempts weight loss will lose weight short term but gain it all back longterm, with many gaining back more than they lost. This means that the vast majority of people who commit to dieting will waste time, money, and energy in a futile – sometimes dangerous – pursuit.  Alternately, we could get off the diet roller coaster and never, ever get back on.

Was this helpful? If you appreciate the work that I do, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time tip or by becoming a member. (Members get special deals on fat-positive stuff, a monthly e-mail keeping them up to date on the work their membership supports, and the ability to ask me questions that I answer in a members-only monthly Q&A Video!)

Like this blog?  Here’s more stuff you might like:

Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)
Click here for all the details and to register!

Body Love Obstacle Course

This e-course that includes coaching videos, a study guide, and an ebook with the tools you need to create a rock-solid relationship with your body. Our relationships with our bodies don’t happen in a vacuum, so just learning to see our beauty isn’t going to cut it. The world throws obstacles in our way – obstacles that aren’t our fault, but become our problem. Over the course of this program, Ragen Chastain, Jeanette DePatie, and six incredible guest coaches will teach you practical, realistic, proven strategies to go above, around, and through the obstacles that the world puts in front of you when it comes to living an amazing life in the body you have now.
Price: $99.00 Click here to register
($79.00 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)

Love It! 234 Inspirations And Activities to Help You Love Your Body
This is filled with thoughtful advice from the authors Jeanette DePatie, Ragen Chastain, and Pia Sciavo-Campo as well as dozens of other notable names from the body love movement, the book is lovingly illustrated with diverse drawings from size-positive artist Toni Tails.
Price: $9.99 softcover, $7.99 Kindle, ($6.95 + free shipping for DancesWithFat Members)

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m (still!) training for an Iron-distance triathlon! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com .

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

Greetings from social isolation, I hope that everyone reading this is doing as well as possible as we navigate this together. We’re in the middle of a global pandemic, so of course, people are using this opportunity to perpetuate fatphobic bullshit.

To be clear, there are serious conversations online about people fearing weight gain during social isolation, which is in itself indicative of the issues in a society that is built on weight stigma and diet culture. The worst of it, to me, are the memes. Because the memes are seen as “jokes” which means that they get shared and people get defensive about it when we point out that they are harmful, and go into that whole “why can’t you take a joke” bullshit. (Hint – it’s not that I can’t “take a joke” made at my expense that harms me, it’s that I shouldn’t have to.)

Of course people are arguing that this isn’t fatphobic, which is patently ridiculous. These memes are absolutely fatphobic because anything that suggests that a fatter body is a negative outcome is fatphobic. Anything that puts fat bodies in a negative light is fatphobic. This is not, in any way, complicated. And there is never any justification for fat-shaming.

But it’s not just the fatphobia – though that would be bad enough to demand that it stop. These are also harmful to people of all sizes who are dealing with disordered eating/eating disorders/body dysmorphia while dealing with quarantine – in a time when they are often cut off from their typical support and resources, memes like this reinforce a fear of body size change due to eating.

There is plenty of humor to be had without doing harm to other people. If someone can’t manage to find it, then maybe humor is just not for them. Definitely don’t share this bullshit and, if you’re up for it, consider saying something when you see them posted,

You can confront directly, or try something a little softer, like “I didn’t realize it, but memes like this actually contribute to eating disorders and weight stigma, so I wanted to pass that along” and/or you can copy this blog post if you think it will be helpful.

Was this helpful? If you appreciate the work that I do, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time tip or by becoming a member. (Members get special deals on fat-positive stuff, a monthly e-mail keeping them up to date on the work their membership supports, and the ability to ask me questions that I answer in a members-only monthly Q&A Video!)

Like this blog?  Here’s more stuff you might like:

Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)
Click here for all the details and to register!

Body Love Obstacle Course

This e-course that includes coaching videos, a study guide, and an ebook with the tools you need to create a rock-solid relationship with your body. Our relationships with our bodies don’t happen in a vacuum, so just learning to see our beauty isn’t going to cut it. The world throws obstacles in our way – obstacles that aren’t our fault, but become our problem. Over the course of this program, Ragen Chastain, Jeanette DePatie, and six incredible guest coaches will teach you practical, realistic, proven strategies to go above, around, and through the obstacles that the world puts in front of you when it comes to living an amazing life in the body you have now.
Price: $99.00 Click here to register
($79.00 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)

Love It! 234 Inspirations And Activities to Help You Love Your Body
This is filled with thoughtful advice from the authors Jeanette DePatie, Ragen Chastain, and Pia Sciavo-Campo as well as dozens of other notable names from the body love movement, the book is lovingly illustrated with diverse drawings from size-positive artist Toni Tails.
Price: $9.99 softcover, $7.99 Kindle, ($6.95 + free shipping for DancesWithFat Members)

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m (still!) training for an Iron-distance triathlon! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com .

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

I talk a lot about medical fatphobia (because medical fatphobia literally kills fat people,) and I’ve now heard from several super fat people who went for their annual visit to the gynecologist only to be told that the gynecologist doesn’t have the proper size speculum. In most cases, the person was just told outright that they couldn’t be helped (prompting them to e-mail me to see if I knew of any options.) But in one case the patient was told that specula that would work existed, and that if the patient wanted to buy one (the doctor suggested Amazon.com) they could bring it in for an exam. Then the doctor refused to refund their co-pay, since they “shouldn’t have expected” that they could be accommodated. With a speculum. At the gynecologist. For a pre-scheduled pap smear.

This is such blatant and disgusting fatphobia that I can hardly put my rage into words. It’s not just specula – thought that feels like a particularly awful aberration since going to the gynecologist is such a stressful situation to begin with, and putting off the visit can mean missing/postponing a cancer diagnosis. But it’s also blood pressure cuffs, knee braces, higher weight capacity beds and chairs, longer needles for vaccinations and other procedures, and on and on and on.

In some cases the needed medical equipment doesn’t exist – larger size knee braces, for example, may need to be custom made. And that’ s completely unacceptable since it is a known fact that fat people do both exist, and have knees.

But in many cases, the items absolutely exist but the healthcare facility has simply chosen not to bother to provide competent care to fat patients. This is, obviously, inconsistent with any belief in “doing no harm” or anything resembling a community health practice.

Plenty of fat patients have been forced to participate in humiliating weigh-ins under the guise of it being “medically necessary” (spoiler alert: It’s almost never medically necessary) only to find that their healthcare practitioner cant’ even take a correct blood pressure because they haven’t bothered to spring for the properly sized cuff (which I found for $30 online from a medical supply company, and $12 on ebay.)

Size discrimination by medical facilities should not be allowed. Patients of all sizes should be able to sit and lie down as necessary for the care. They should be able to get an accurate blood pressure reading – something that is as basic as basic gets when it comes to medical care. Not bothering to have appropriately sized needles shouldn’t be a barrier to vaccination. A visit to the gynecologist should not be a BYOS party.

I don’t want to hear another damn word about how fat people have poorer health outcomes until fat people have equal access to competent, stigma-free care (and of course this is compounded for those who are subject to other oppression and bigotry in healthcare including racism, transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny.)

Fat patients deserve the same care that thinner patients get, there is absolutely no justification for anything less.

Was this helpful? If you appreciate the work that I do, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time tip or by becoming a member. (Members get special deals on fat-positive stuff, a monthly e-mail keeping them up to date on the work their membership supports, and the ability to ask me questions that I answer in a members-only monthly Q&A Video!)

Like this blog?  Here’s more stuff you might like:

Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)
Click here for all the details and to register!

Body Love Obstacle Course

This e-course that includes coaching videos, a study guide, and an ebook with the tools you need to create a rock-solid relationship with your body. Our relationships with our bodies don’t happen in a vacuum, so just learning to see our beauty isn’t going to cut it. The world throws obstacles in our way – obstacles that aren’t our fault, but become our problem. Over the course of this program, Ragen Chastain, Jeanette DePatie, and six incredible guest coaches will teach you practical, realistic, proven strategies to go above, around, and through the obstacles that the world puts in front of you when it comes to living an amazing life in the body you have now.
Price: $99.00 Click here to register
($79.00 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)

Love It! 234 Inspirations And Activities to Help You Love Your Body
This is filled with thoughtful advice from the authors Jeanette DePatie, Ragen Chastain, and Pia Sciavo-Campo as well as dozens of other notable names from the body love movement, the book is lovingly illustrated with diverse drawings from size-positive artist Toni Tails.
Price: $9.99 softcover, $7.99 Kindle, ($6.95 + free shipping for DancesWithFat Members)

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m (still!) training for an Iron-distance triathlon! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com .

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

 

I started this post a while ago, but it seems extra pertinent now that more kids are hanging out at home reading!

Recently Glamour ran an article titled “The First Body-Positive Children’s Book Just Came Out, and It’s Exactly What the World Needs Now” Before we get to our discussion of books, there are some things we need to talk about.

For starters, this is not remotely the “first body-positive” children’s book. Claiming that this book is the first of its kind (and to be clear, I don’t know if that was the author’s decision, the writer’s, or the editor’s) is an act of erasure and it’s a big deal.

There have been books trying to help kids love their bodies for a long time. Very few of them include body size, but if you search for “body-positive children’s books” you’ll find many, many books written to help kids overcome the body shame they experience because of marginalizations including racism, xenophobia, and ableism as well as things like height.

If you are looking for fat-positive children’s books the list becomes quite a bit smaller (and some of the books that were meant to be size positive are pretty terrible – using terms like “overweight” that pathologize kid’s bodies, books that are supposed to be about developing a healthy relationship with food but instead moralize food in ways that we know to perpetuate eating disorders, ) but still, this book is far from the first.

The first that came to mind for me was Sonya Renee Taylor’s Celebrate Your Body (and Its Changes, Too!): The Ultimate Puberty Book for Girls

And Amy Pence-Brown wrote a great article about this that you can find here.

Three Birds Counseling also has a fabulous list

Kids books are a bit outside of my wheelhouse so I crowdsourced answers and you can find that thread on Facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/ragenchastain/posts/10219779923439843

I definitely recommend that you vet any of these books before giving them to kids in your life. I also want to acknowledge that not all books do a good job of being inclusive of kids of color, queer and trans kids, disabled kids, neuroatypical kids and other intersectional marginalizations.

If you have a favorite fat positive children’s book, please leave it in the comments!

Was this helpful? If you appreciate the work that I do, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time tip or by becoming a member. (Members get special deals on fat-positive stuff, a monthly e-mail keeping them up to date on the work their membership supports, and the ability to ask me questions that I answer in a members-only monthly Q&A Video!)

Like this blog?  Here’s more stuff you might like:

Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)
Click here for all the details and to register!

Body Love Obstacle Course

This e-course that includes coaching videos, a study guide, and an ebook with the tools you need to create a rock-solid relationship with your body. Our relationships with our bodies don’t happen in a vacuum, so just learning to see our beauty isn’t going to cut it. The world throws obstacles in our way – obstacles that aren’t our fault, but become our problem. Over the course of this program, Ragen Chastain, Jeanette DePatie, and six incredible guest coaches will teach you practical, realistic, proven strategies to go above, around, and through the obstacles that the world puts in front of you when it comes to living an amazing life in the body you have now.
Price: $99.00 Click here to register
($79.00 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)

Love It! 234 Inspirations And Activities to Help You Love Your Body
This is filled with thoughtful advice from the authors Jeanette DePatie, Ragen Chastain, and Pia Sciavo-Campo as well as dozens of other notable names from the body love movement, the book is lovingly illustrated with diverse drawings from size-positive artist Toni Tails.
Price: $9.99 softcover, $7.99 Kindle, ($6.95 + free shipping for DancesWithFat Members)

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m (still!) training for an Iron-distance triathlon! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com .

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

I want to start by saying that I’m not trying to give anyone advice on how to handle the current pandemic. I am personally taking as many precautions as possible. I also want to acknowledge that our choices as to how to handle this are all affected by our privilege and that the most marginalized people face the most harm.

A question that I am getting A LOT recently is “I’m hearing that “ob*sity” is a risk factor for contracting COVID-19 – is that true?”

I’ll start here by saying that I think the biggest concern is medical fatphobia – that fat people will not be able to access the same care as similarly situated thin people.

I also want to point out that the word “ob*sity” was created for the sole purpose of pathologizing a body size and it is not a word that I think is appropriate to use in any context (for the reasons below and more) and I’m only using it here because it’s what’s used in the lexicon and it’s (mis)use is part of the issue.)

When it comes to risk factors, correlation is not causation and weight stigma within the medical field, including in medical practice and research, is well established and so must be considered when considering any “data” that involves weight/BMI.

“Ob*sity” is the result of a math equation (weight in pounds time 703 divided by height in inches squared is greater than or equal to 30) By the “logic” here I’m at greater risk along with a good portion of the NFL and a whole lot of bodybuilders, so unless all of us have been shown to be at greater risk, this is a very questionable statement of risk.

Even if they are trying to talk about the actual presence of adipose tissue, there would have to be data that showed that the actual presence of adipose tissue increased risk – and even if that were the case “ob*sity” would be the incorrect word to use since BMI does not, in any way, measure body composition.

So-called “ob*se” people don’t have anything in common except a height/weight ratio.  This group has as much diversity as any group of people who happen to share a single physical characteristic.

In fact, the things that this group is most likely to share are experiencing weight stigma, and a lifetime of dieting/weight-cycling. Both of which are also correlated with the same health issues that are commonly correlated with having a larger body, and neither of which are ever controlled for in studies about health outcomes making these confounding variables.

Bottom line: conflating “ob*sity” with health/risk status is not an evidence-based practice and while it may not be a negative outcome for fat people to take extra precautions, it can create direct harm, including when blaming fat people for our health issues creates barriers to healthcare access.

To read more about this, check out Christy Harrison’s excellent piece about this.

Was this helpful? If you appreciate the work that I do, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time tip or by becoming a member. (Members get special deals on fat-positive stuff, a monthly e-mail keeping them up to date on the work their membership supports, and the ability to ask me questions that I answer in a members-only monthly Q&A Video!)

Like this blog?  Here’s more stuff you might like:

Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)
Click here for all the details and to register!

Body Love Obstacle Course

This e-course that includes coaching videos, a study guide, and an ebook with the tools you need to create a rock-solid relationship with your body. Our relationships with our bodies don’t happen in a vacuum, so just learning to see our beauty isn’t going to cut it. The world throws obstacles in our way – obstacles that aren’t our fault, but become our problem. Over the course of this program, Ragen Chastain, Jeanette DePatie, and six incredible guest coaches will teach you practical, realistic, proven strategies to go above, around, and through the obstacles that the world puts in front of you when it comes to living an amazing life in the body you have now.
Price: $99.00 Click here to register
($79.00 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)

Love It! 234 Inspirations And Activities to Help You Love Your Body
This is filled with thoughtful advice from the authors Jeanette DePatie, Ragen Chastain, and Pia Sciavo-Campo as well as dozens of other notable names from the body love movement, the book is lovingly illustrated with diverse drawings from size-positive artist Toni Tails.
Price: $9.99 softcover, $7.99 Kindle, ($6.95 + free shipping for DancesWithFat Members)

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m (still!) training for an Iron-distance triathlon! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com .

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

 

 

Fatphobia, weight stigma, and weight-based oppression are not in our heads – they are real and fat people experience them constantly in everything from fashion, to travel, to working out, to medical care and more.  The more fat we are, the more oppression we experience and things are even worse for those who are part of multiple marginalized groups.

One of the things that we can do to combat this is to make sure that we’re always putting the problem where it belongs – which is on fatphobia and not on our fat bodies. This is a skill that can take some practice, especially since internalized fatphobia can often make blaming our bodies a nearly automatic subconscious response to experiencing fatphobia. here is a three-step approach to shifting things to make sure you are putting the problem where it belongs.

Step One:

Acknowledge the Fatphobia (or weight stigma, or whatever word works for you – I’m using fatphobia in general here to mean any situation in which fat people cannot expect to receive the same treatment, accommodations as thin people)

Step Two:

State What’s Happening, Putting The Blame Where It Belongs (on fatphobia, not your body)

Step Three:

Choose Next Steps

Let’s look at some examples:

You want to go on a trip but you realize that the size of the plane seats means you’ll need two seats.

Step One:

This is fatphobia. The airline industry is extremely fatphobic.

Step Two:

They knew fat people existed when the built the planes and yet they choose not to accommodate us. The airline sells travel from point A to point B, and that travel requires a seat that accommodates the passenger. I only want what thin people are already getting which is travel from place to place in a seat that fits me.

Step Three:

Consider the alternatives, perhaps you can fly Southwest (the only airline who gives passengers as many seats as they need.) Perhaps you can go by train or car or another method of transportation. You may choose to buy the second seat. You may choose to contact the airline and complain. Whatever you decide is a valid choice. While this has become your problem it is definitely not your fault.

Your doctor ignores your symptoms, doesn’t listen to anything you say, and just keeps pushing weight loss

Step One:

“This is fatphobia. Weight stigma is rampant in the medical community.”

Step Two:

I deserve compassionate, evidence-based care. This isn’t it. Weight loss isn’t evidence-based medicine, and the most likely outcome is weight gain. This doctor is committing malpractice and putting me in danger.

Step Three:

You might decide to try another doctor. You might ask this doctor to respect your wishes as the patient and/or discuss the evidence basis of his claims (I’ve created some free cards to help you to that, they are currently available in English and French) You might ask your doctor what they would prescribe to a thin patient with your health issues.  If you are in a situation where that’s not possible you might lie to your doctor and tell him that you’ll attempt weight loss, then ask him to please address your health issues with the other available options in the meantime. Again, whatever you decide is valid, you should never have been put into this situation in the first place.

Your friend or family member makes a negative comment about your body/suggests that you should lose weight etc.

Step One:
This is fatphobia – in a fatphobic society, these comments are seen as acceptable.

Step Two:
The person talking to me has been duped by fatphobia and they are visiting their bigotry on me. I don’t have to agree with them, center their feelings, or be ok with them talking to me like this.

Step Three:
Your response here will take a lot into account, including the way that your family/friendship works, if you are relying on this person etc. I wrote a post giving some simple steps for boundary setting and some sample response, you can find that here.

You are sitting on a chair and it breaks

Step One:

This is fatphobia, I should be able to expect chairs to work for me in the same way they work for thin people.

Step Two:

It sucks that this place didn’t want to bother to get chairs that actually accommodate everyone.

Step Three:

This one can be rough because the urge to self-blame can be so strong. You can say something like “Shoddy ass chairs” in whatever tone you like (angry, laughing etc.) You can decide to leave, you can loudly asked for a better-constructed chair. You can leave. You can ask the people with you to advocate for you. And remember that you have every right to be upset, because this situation is upsetting, but you didn’t do anything wrong.

Fatphobia is not our fault, though it very often becomes our problem. Reminding ourselves that fatphobia, and not our bodies, is the problem can help us to handle these situations in ways that honor our bodies and keep us in the best possible mental space.

If you have other scenarios please feel free to leave them in the comments.

Was this helpful? If you appreciate the work that I do, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time tip or by becoming a member. (Members get special deals on fat-positive stuff, a monthly e-mail keeping them up to date on the work their membership supports, and the ability to ask me questions that I answer in a members-only monthly Q&A Video!)

Like this blog?  Here’s more stuff you might like:

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Body Love Obstacle Course

This e-course that includes coaching videos, a study guide, and an ebook with the tools you need to create a rock-solid relationship with your body. Our relationships with our bodies don’t happen in a vacuum, so just learning to see our beauty isn’t going to cut it. The world throws obstacles in our way – obstacles that aren’t our fault, but become our problem. Over the course of this program, Ragen Chastain, Jeanette DePatie, and six incredible guest coaches will teach you practical, realistic, proven strategies to go above, around, and through the obstacles that the world puts in front of you when it comes to living an amazing life in the body you have now.
Price: $99.00 Click here to register
($79.00 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)

Love It! 234 Inspirations And Activities to Help You Love Your Body
This is filled with thoughtful advice from the authors Jeanette DePatie, Ragen Chastain, and Pia Sciavo-Campo as well as dozens of other notable names from the body love movement, the book is lovingly illustrated with diverse drawings from size-positive artist Toni Tails.
Price: $9.99 softcover, $7.99 Kindle, ($6.95 + free shipping for DancesWithFat Members)

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m (still!) training for an Iron-distance triathlon! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com .

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

Intermittent Fasting or, as I like to call it, repeated short-term starvation, has become all the rage. And while its evangelists would have you believe that it can help everything from inflammation to swimmer’s ear, there are some very real dangers.

It can cause problems for people who are dealing with blood sugar issues, and people who are pregnant. It can lead to decreased alertness, pancreatic damage, and increased cortisol levels and can cause us to develop unhealthy relationships with food and our bodies.

In an excellent piece from Bustle, Nutritional therapist Emily Fonnesbeck, RD pointed out:

Restricting your eating to only certain times during the day ignores your body’s needs, leaves you undernourished, and could cause the pendulum to swing to the other extreme once you do have permission to eat. This type of dysregulated, haphazard and chaotic eating pattern negatively impacts hormone balance, immunity, digestion, and sleep patterns. While intermittent fasting may appear healthy, it has the very real potential to make you unwell.

I don’t think it even appears healthy, but I understand how a world rife with fatphobia and the associated disordered eating would lead people to advocate for starvation.

As always, I want to be clear that people are allowed to do whatever they want with their own bodies. But it does not follow that I have to let them pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

Looking through the research that supposedly “supports” intermittent fasting, you’ll find short-term studies, huge drop-out rates, focus on short-term individual numbers rather than overall and/or longterm health outcomes, and a looooot of animal studies.

Reader Jane Lincoln pointed out this study that illustrates many of the issues at once. It compared three groups – fasting, caloric restriction, and a control group. 38% of the people in the fasting group dropped out. Those who were in the fasting group struggled to eat the amounts prescribed.  Compared to a calorie restriction group and a control group there were “no significant differences between the intervention groups in blood pressure, heart rate, triglycerides, fasting glucose, fasting insulin, insulin resistance, C-reactive protein, or homocysteine concentrations at month 6 or 12.” The only significant difference was increased LDL (“bad”) cholesterol in the fasting group.

The study concluded, “Alternate-day fasting did not produce superior adherence, weight loss, weight maintenance, or cardioprotection vs daily calorie restriction.”

And since we know that the long-term result of almost every attempt at weight loss through caloric restriction is total weight regain, with many gaining back more than they lost, I think the actual conclusion is that intermittent fasting is just more risk with no benefit. Y’all, if it walks like a fad diet, talks like a fad diet, and harms people’s relationships with food and their bodies like a fad diet – it’s a fad diet.

Was this helpful? If you appreciate the work that I do, you can support my ability to do more of it with a one-time tip or by becoming a member. (Members get special deals on fat-positive stuff, a monthly e-mail keeping them up to date on the work their membership supports, and the ability to ask me questions that I answer in a members-only monthly Q&A Video!)

Like this blog?  Here’s more stuff you might like:

Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)
Click here for all the details and to register!

Body Love Obstacle Course

This e-course that includes coaching videos, a study guide, and an ebook with the tools you need to create a rock-solid relationship with your body. Our relationships with our bodies don’t happen in a vacuum, so just learning to see our beauty isn’t going to cut it. The world throws obstacles in our way – obstacles that aren’t our fault, but become our problem. Over the course of this program, Ragen Chastain, Jeanette DePatie, and six incredible guest coaches will teach you practical, realistic, proven strategies to go above, around, and through the obstacles that the world puts in front of you when it comes to living an amazing life in the body you have now.
Price: $99.00 Click here to register
($79.00 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)

Love It! 234 Inspirations And Activities to Help You Love Your Body
This is filled with thoughtful advice from the authors Jeanette DePatie, Ragen Chastain, and Pia Sciavo-Campo as well as dozens of other notable names from the body love movement, the book is lovingly illustrated with diverse drawings from size-positive artist Toni Tails.
Price: $9.99 softcover, $7.99 Kindle, ($6.95 + free shipping for DancesWithFat Members)

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m (still!) training for an Iron-distance triathlon! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com .

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.