There are a lot of articles and studies that try to compare health conditions and outcomes for fat people with those of thinner people, claiming that if fat people have a higher condition incidence or worse outcomes then it’s clear that fat bodies the issue. They are all, to a one, complete bunk. That’s because you can’t blame body size for health outcomes if access to healthcare is wildly unequal for those in larger bodies.

Here are five ways that weight stigma harms fat people’s health, with more harm being done to those in fatter bodies and those who deal with multiple marginalizations including racism, ableism, transphobia et. al.

In my latest piece for The Mighty I wrote about five types of medical stigma.

You can read the full piece here!

Did you find 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!)

UPCOMING ONLINE WORKSHOP:
Making Activism A Self-Care Practice

There’s a lot of work to be done in the world. Activism can create needed change, but it can also create overwhelm, especially when we’re fighting against our own oppression. In this workshop we’ll discuss philosophies and real world strategies to turn some of that work from draining and potentially harmful, into a self-care practice that supports us and helps protect us from the effects of oppression.

Details and Registration: https://danceswithfat.org/monthly-online-workshops/
*This workshop is free for DancesWithFat members

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

Wellness for All Bodies Program:A simple, step-by-step, super efficient guide to setting and reaching your health goals from a weight-neutral perspective.  This program can be used by individuals, or by groups, including as a workplace wellness program!

Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)

Non-members 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 (and I can do it remotely!) You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I recently had the honor of being a guest on Shohreh Davoodi’s podcast “Redefining Health and Wellness,” We covered a lot of ground (from medical weight stigma to dating while fat!)

Shohreh’s summary of the episode is below,

You can listen to it here

or wherever you listen to podcasts (Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, etc.)

We live in a fatphobic world that was designed to be difficult for fat folx to navigate. This harsh reality will not change until we all collectively address our learned bias against fat folx and work to destroy the systems that rely on weight stigma.

Simultaneously, fat folx still need practical coping strategies and tools to survive this unjust system and thrive in spite of it. While individual solutions to systemic oppression are not enough, they do have their place in the overall picture. Fat activist Ragen Chastain offers tips in this episode to help fat folx deal with weight stigma in healthcare, employment, dating, and on the internet. 

Did you find 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!)

UPCOMING ONLINE WORKSHOP:
Dealing With Fatphobia At The Holidays

Halloween candy and costumes, family gatherings, work parties, New Years bashes, New Years Resolution, and a ton of diet ads… whether we celebrate the holidays or not, the holiday season can be a perfect storm of fatphobia and diet culture. This year the pandemic adds another layer of stress. All that diet culture can really get you down. In this workshop we’ll talk about tips, tricks, and techniques to help us deal and have a happy holiday season on our own terms.

Details and Registration: https://danceswithfat.org/monthly-online-workshops/
*This workshop is free for DancesWithFat members

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

Wellness for All Bodies Program:A simple, step-by-step, super efficient guide to setting and reaching your health goals from a weight-neutral perspective.  This program can be used by individuals, or by groups, including as a workplace wellness program!

Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)

Non-members 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 (and I can do it remotely!) You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’ll start by sharing this important information from Christy Harrison (copied with permission):

“The large study (CW: weight-stigmatizing language, BMI numbers) of more than 10,000 people with COVID-19 found that having a high body-mass index (BMI) is NOT a risk factor for hospitalization, mechanical ventilation, or death.

This is one of few studies on this topic to fully adjust for confounding variables, and definitely one of the largest that I’ve seen to date.

Interestingly, it found that although Black patients were more likely to be hospitalized and to receive mechanical ventilation than white patients, they WEREN’T more likely to die.

This unusual finding may have to do with the fact that healthcare access is far more equalized in the Veterans Administration (VA) system, where this study was conducted; outside that system, unequal access to care means that folks who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color tend to have higher mortality as well as other poor health outcomes.

This study also found that Hispanic ethnicity was not associated with an increased risk of adverse outcomes, which again may reflect the better access to quality care that patients of color receive in the VA system.

That access and quality may be why larger-bodied patients fared just as well—and in some cases even better—than smaller-bodied patients in this study. (Fellow science nerds, see for yourselves in Table 1—though again, CW for weight-stigmatizing language and BMI numbers.)

In short, this evidence supports what I’ve been saying for months: reporters and commentators need to stop jumping to the conclusion that high BMI independently raises COVID-19 risks (and researchers need to stop deliberately looking for evidence to support that belief)—because when we have good studies that control for confounding variables, those supposed risks can dissipate or disappear.

Blaming weight itself for poor health outcomes (instead of looking for the underlying causes that have nothing to do with body size) is a form of weight stigma—and ironically, that kind of bias creates the very health problems that we’re trying to solve.” –Christy Harrison

I’ve talked about the issues with studies suggesting that body size was a risk before, as has Christy. Sadly, the likelihood that body size doesn’t increase risk doesn’t actually mean that fat people aren’t at greater risk when it comes to COVID-19 (or any other health condition) and that’s because weight stigma actually DOES increase our risk. And it shows up in a lot of ways:

• Lack of Equipment/Accommodation
  • Everything from blood pressure cuffs, to gowns, to beds, and more. Despite knowing full well that fat people exist, healthcare facilities often fail to meet our most basic needs.
• Lack of research
  • Research is typically only done on thin bodies. In some cases, fat people are then actually BLAMED when the practices and drugs that were created without including us don’t work for us.
• Lack of training
  • Health Care Practitioners – HCPs – often don’t have training on working with fat patients and, worse, weight stigma is often part of their training program.
• Practitioner Bias
  • Plenty of research tells us that fat people’s ability to get competent, ethical care is made difficult or even impossible due to practitioner’s weight stigma. We live in a fatphobia world where everyone – including HCPs – is encouraged to stereotype fat people and treat us badly.

There are, of course, amazing HCPs out there and I don’t want to discount that, but the truth is that all of the issues above can harm any fat person who needs healthcare. Which is why even if the study did show that higher weight people had poorer outcomes, we could not actually draw any conclusions about fat bodies, and why we MUST work to dismantle weight stigma in healthcare.

Did you find 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!)

UPCOMING ONLINE WORKSHOP:
Dealing With Fatphobia At The Holidays

Halloween candy and costumes, family gatherings, work parties, New Years bashes, New Years Resolution, and a ton of diet ads… whether we celebrate the holidays or not, the holiday season can be a perfect storm of fatphobia and diet culture. This year the pandemic adds another layer of stress. All that diet culture can really get you down. In this workshop we’ll talk about tips, tricks, and techniques to help us deal and have a happy holiday season on our own terms.

Details and Registration: https://danceswithfat.org/monthly-online-workshops/
*This workshop is free for DancesWithFat members

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

Wellness for All Bodies Program:A simple, step-by-step, super efficient guide to setting and reaching your health goals from a weight-neutral perspective.  This program can be used by individuals, or by groups, including as a workplace wellness program!

Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)

Non-members 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 (and I can do it remotely!) You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

When I was just at the start of this journey I was trying to quit a terrible diet program. It was one of those “medically supervised” programs where food is extremely restricted and the only difference between the behaviors required by that program and the behaviors I had exhibited while dealing with the eating disorder I was recovering from was that on the program I wasn’t allowed to exercise. (Why yes, it absolutely is medical malpractice to prescribe a diet to someone recovering from an eating disorder – or, you know, at all since almost everyone regains their weight and the majority gain back more than they lost, but I didn’t know that then.) Despite following the program to the letter, I was still gaining (regaining, really) weight. So I went in and told them that I was quitting.

They escorted me into a small room with a big poster about not quitting (literally that kitten on a rope saying “Hang in there baby”) and a woman brought in a binder with pictures of fat women, and she started flipping through it silently.  I watched for a while and then she said harshly “You might not know it, but this is what you look like, and these women are going to die alone in front of the television eating bon bons. Is that what you want for yourself? And aren’t you tired of hating your body?”

I realized several helpful things in that moment. First of all – I was tired of hating my body, I was exhausted from hating my body. I had been hating my body like it was a job for years at this point and it hadn’t made me happier, or healthier, or thinner. It had just made me tired.

I also realized that I didn’t find anything wrong with those women’s bodies, in fact I thought that they were beautiful.  I didn’t expect that they would never find love or have bad lives. (And I grew up in very rural America so I didn’t know what bon bons were but that whole thing went right over my head.) So it occurred to me in a rush: if I thought that their bodies were beautiful… and if I looked like them as this woman had insisted as if it was an insult…then maybe it was possible to think that my body was beautiful.

Of course that was just the beginning of a long process, but it was a beginning!

Now, I told you that story to tell you this one…

My birthday is in October. (It’s also the month of my Best Friend’s birthday, his husband’s birthday, and their anniversary, so nobody in my family is allowed to date people with October birthdays or have any important events in October, but that’s another story.) Anyway, in my family we celebrate “our birthday month” so today a box with huge red “perishable” stickers showed up addressed to me. Inside were 12 MEA Fine Foods Exotic Bonbons. They were from my mom. Because my mom had heard me tell that story and thought that I should know what bonbons are.

And that’s the story of how I’ll be sitting on the couch, with the woman I love, eating bonbons from my amazing and supportive mom, still fat as hell.

Did you find 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!)

UPCOMING ONLINE WORKSHOP:
Dealing With Fatphobia At The Holidays

Halloween candy and costumes, family gatherings, work parties, New Years bashes, New Years Resolution, and a ton of diet ads… whether we celebrate the holidays or not, the holiday season can be a perfect storm of fatphobia and diet culture. This year the pandemic adds another layer of stress. All that diet culture can really get you down. In this workshop we’ll talk about tips, tricks, and techniques to help us deal and have a happy holiday season on our own terms.

Details and Registration: https://danceswithfat.org/monthly-online-workshops/
*This workshop is free for DancesWithFat members

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

Wellness for All Bodies Program:A simple, step-by-step, super efficient guide to setting and reaching your health goals from a weight-neutral perspective.  This program can be used by individuals, or by groups, including as a workplace wellness program!

Price: $25.00 ($10 for DancesWithFat members – register on the member page)

Non-members 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 (and I can do it remotely!) You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!