I was reading a conversation online where a fat person was saying that they wanted evidence-based care from their doctors. A man replied that he teaches nurses and that he makes it a point to teach those future nurses to treat “ob*se people” with “compassion and never cruelty.”

This guy is well-meaning, but check again because he is completely missing the point. There’s nothing wrong with compassion, and it’s certainly a step up from how a lot of healthcare professionals treat fat people. But it’s not a substitute for competent, evidence-based healthcare.

Believing that being fat is a health condition that requires treatment is a problem, whether someone has compassion or not. It’s a paternalistic view rooted in weight stigma. It’s how we end up getting bullshit “people first language” instead of (potentially life-saving) evidence-based care. Calling me a “person with fat” doesn’t help me, having a blood pressure cuff that actually fits me and getting a prescription that isn’t “be thinner” does.

We aren’t asking healthcare providers to see us and think “oh, that poor fat person” we’re asking them to see us and think “there’s a larger patient, I will give them the same treatment a smaller patient would get.”

It’s not that compassion is a bad thing, it’s that all too often “compassion” just ends up being a condescending pity for the fatty who they believe smart or willed enough to succeed at diets, rather than realizing that we don’t fail diets, diets fail us. It’s giving us sub-part treatment but, you know, nicely.

The kind of compassion we need from healthcare practitioners is compassion for the issues (which can include health problems) that can come from living in a fatphobic world, compassion for the fact that we may have serious anxiety about visiting a healthcare practitioner because of the horrible experiences we’ve had with fatphobic HCPs. We need compassion in the form of armless chairs and loveseats in the waiting room and medical equipment that is built to accommodate us.

Fat people deserve compassion from HCPs but we deserve more than that. Fat people deserve compassionate ethical, evidence-based healthcare with the goal of supporting our health, not manipulating our body size.

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 cool stuff:

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 in a discussion today online where somebody actually said that “being thin is possible for everyone because calories in/calories out is just scientific fact” This ridiculous idea needs to die.

In order to continue to believe this, you have to believe that bodies have size diversity in every single way (heights, shoe sizes, elbow shape, finger sizes, hair colors etc.) literally everything except weight. That simply defies logic. But that’s not all.

You would also have to deny the existence of conditions that cause weight to be gained and maintained – lymphedema, lipedema, hypothyroidism, insulin resistance, PCOS, cushing’s, congestive heart failure, edema, and more.

You’d have to deny the well-documented fact that there are medications (some of them life-saving) that cause weight gain, including some anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, seizure medications, steroids, diabetes medications, antihistamines, blood pressure medications, birth control and more.

You’d also have to believe that the human body works with the same complexity of, say, a gas-powered lawnmower, and deny the known effects of dieting. If you give that lawnmower half the fuel it needs to mow a lawn every day for a month, it will stop halfway through the lawn every single day. It won’t adapt – it won’t learn to use fuel more efficiently, it won’t develop ways to store any extra fuel it gets. It just stops. Fuel in, fuel out.

But if you give the human body less fuel than it needs to perform the functions that you ask of it (also known as dieting) it adapts in a multitude of ways – everything from adjusting metabolism to messing with the hormones that drive hunger and satiety.

Basal metabolic rate falls during weight loss, meaning that as someone loses weight they will need to eat fewer and fewer calories to deprive the body of fuel in the hopes that it will consume itself and become smaller. Starvation is not sustainable and has dangerous downsides, even in the short term.

At the end of the dieting process, a body is biologically different than it was before dieting, having turned itself into a weight gaining, weight-maintaining machine, biologically different than a body that has never dieted because it has lived through what it perceives as a famine, (since your body can’t imagine that it’s sending you hunger signals, there’s food around, but you won’t feed it) and now it’s worried that there will be another one.

Finally, if calories in/calories out actually worked, at least one of the many studies that have been done on it would have shown more than a tiny fraction of people succeeding, but that’s not the case.

People are lots of different sizes for lots of different reasons, including the natural diversity of body sizes, diets may result in short term weight loss but the vast majority of people will regain that weight, and many will gain back more than they lost –  those are the facts.

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 cool stuff:

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
($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.

Live in our fatphobic world long enough and you’ll hear a thin person say that they “feel fat.” This can come from a few places, but the bottom line is the same.

Fat is not a feeling, it’s a physical trait.  Just like you can’t “feel” brunette, you can’t “feel” fat. The problem with people who aren’t fat saying that they “feel” fat is that, while it may not be malicious, it’s still rooted in, and perpetuates, fatphobia in a variety of ways:

Reinforcing a Fatphobic Stereotype of Beauty

When someone says that they “feel fat” because they don’t feel beautiful in some way (a mistake made by Ashley Graham, a model who owes her fame to modeling plus size clothes but does not want to be called a plus size model,) they are saying that fat isn’t beautiful, and that’s just 100% pure fatphobic bullshit.

Temporarily being ever-so-slightly less thin

If someone says they “feel fat” because they had a big lunch, or they’re a little bloated, they aren’t engaging in the realities of thin privilege. Nobody is refusing them medical care because they ate a big burrito for lunch.

Stereotyping

A woman in line ahead of me at a grocery store held up the 2 pints of ice cream she was buying and said to her friend “I feel so fat!” Because I am physically incapable of keeping my mouth shut in situations like this I interjected: “Really, cause it looks like you just feel like some ice cream.”

When thin people say that they “feel fat” because they are doing things that they associate with fat people, even though people of all sizes do them (which we know because they are literally doing them when they say it) it perpetuates stereotypes about fat people.

But it goes deeper than that. We have to be careful because fighting stereotypes can actually perpetuate oppression.  The truth is that the existence of stereotypes is the problem – not whether or not fat people conform to them. The actual issue here is that a thin person saying that they “feel fat” while engaging in behaviors that they associate with fat people also allows them to hold onto their stereotypes about fat people, without engaging in their hypocrisy. Thin people engage in all the same behaviors that fat people do, but if they admit that, then they have to examine their fatphobia – why they think that behaviors that are fine for them should be the impetus for bullying people who look different than they do. Claiming temporary “fatness” can help them to avoid engaging.

Body Dysmorphic Disorder

This is a condition in which a person becomes obsessed with a perceived physical flaw. While it occurs in people of all sizes and can be focused around a variety of parts of the body, a common expression is that a person who is thin believes that they (or some specific body part(s)) are too heavy/large/fat. This is a real condition and it can have serious negative impacts on people’s lives. Still, to say that they “feel fat” is wrong – they believe that they are, in fact, fat and, because of the effects of a fatphobic culture, they believe that being fat is bad.

Confusing Being Afraid of Being Fat with Being Fat

I recently read an article in which someone said that, despite being thin, they “feel fat” because they are always dieting and “watching their weight.”

They don’t “feel fat” they feel the fear of being fat, and being treated like fat people are treated (or perhaps like they treat fat people?) That’s a real fear in a culture where being fat comes with a ton of shame, stigma, bullying, and oppression.

Or it may be that they feel the pressure to be even more thin so that they can be the recipient of even more of the thin privilege that a fatphobic society offers.

These are both ways that weight stigma affects people of all sizes, but conflating these things with the actual experiences of being fat creates harm by conflating a fear of being oppressed with actually being oppressed and centering thin people in discussions of weight stigma.

The Solution

The solution to all of this, of course, is to end weight stigma and embrace the full diversity of body sizes. People who aren’t fat saying that they “feel fat” will never help get that done.

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 cool stuff:

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
($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.

Across social media I see people do “Transformation Tuesday” posts.  If you’re not familiar, this is actually code for “Weight Loss Tuesday” as people just post before and afters of their current body size manipulation attempt, and then other people who have bought into a fatphobic paradigm tell them how much prettier/younger/better they look now than they looked before.

People are allowed to do this (as long as the rules of the space they are posting in allow it.) But that doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful.

First of all, almost everyone who posts for TT is in the “honeymoon” period before the weight regain starts. The truth is that almost all of them will gain the weight back, many will gain back more than they lost.

I hear from so many people who are on the other side of this – having gained their weight back – for whom all that praise has become so much harm as they are reminded that their friends, family, and randos from that group they were in couldn’t wait to tell them loud and clear that they were better/healthier/more attractive when they were thinner. And then, of course, there are those who end up developing eating disorders and fighting for their lives. As more TT posts go up and garner “compliments” that reinforce sizeism, ageism, healthism, and ableism.

So as an alternative, I offer my Transformation Tuesday Story:

There was a time when I believed that I had to be thin to be healthy and happy. There was a time when I believed that smaller bodies were more beautiful, and that manipulating my body size was praiseworthy activity.  There was a time when I saw my body as “before” and celebrated the elusive “after” which, like almost everyone, ended up being a transitional phase during which I was briefly thinner between periods of being fat.

My life transformed when I realized that there’s no such thing as “before” and “after,” pictures, just “during” pictures.  My life transformed when I realized that being thin probably isn’t possible for me and, even if it was, it is not a goal worthy of my time, energy, money, or praise.

My relationships with my body, food, and movement transformed when I realized that health isn’t an obligation, barometer of worthiness, or guaranteed under any circumstances, and that my best chance of supporting my body was loving it instead of ignoring all of its signals in an attempt to manipulate its size.

Those relationships transformed when I started appreciating my body, rather than being mad that it didn’t look like a photoshopped picture of someone else – when I realized I had been duped by the beauty and diet industries’ cycle of disempowerment.

Those relationships transformed when I realized that my beauty isn’t diminished because some people can’t see it.

Those relationships keep getting better because they are now based on truth, respect, and joy instead of on diet industry lies, self-loathing, and desperation. By leaving behind a diet mentality and sizeist beliefs, I transformed my life not just on Tuesday, or for short time before the weight started coming back, but every day.

So if you are – or you become – one of the vast majority of people who regain all their weight (often plus more,) know that you are valid and worthy at any size.

Do you have a Transformation Tuesday story that doesn’t celebrate body size manipulation? Feel free to 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 cool stuff:

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
($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 wrote a piece about the issues with fatphobia, fat people and our knees (and the problems that we have in receiving any kind of competent healthcare when we have knee issues.) It was shared by a reader on Facebook who received this response:

 I agree that often the problems are tightness in the muscles and that should always be addressed if it’s an issue. But there is also a lot of research about the pure physics of having more force exerted on joints and feet that cause more wear and tear and lead to more arthritis. Is that research wrong? Is there counter-research being done? If you know of it, can you direct me to it? Thanks.

That’s not actually the most important question, but I’ll answer it anyway because it’s so very misunderstood.

To clarify, for this discussion when I talk about arthritis, I’ll be talking about osteoarthritis. And it’s way more complicated than just larger body = greater risk, first because so many factors are involved (everything from access to supportive footwear to participation in athletics at various ages, to the knowledge of coaches and trainers if one does participate etc.)

Research shows a correlation between larger bodies and greater risk, but that’s far from showing causation. Before the cause could be attributed to body size alone, there would have to be studies that control for the many variables that impact fat people.

To name just a few:

Fat people’s inability to get competent healthcare for joint pain (especially early joint pain,) Instead, we are typically being prescribed weight loss  – which causes additional issues:

The effects of weight-cycling (ie: yo-yo dieting) on long-term joint health since most diets end in weight regain, and most fat people are put on multiple diets, thus experiencing weight cycling.

The effects of exercising while purposefully giving your body less fuel than it needs (which is typically suggested to fat people as a “weight loss intervention”) on joint health.

The effects of stigma including the impact of stigma on fat people seeking out care at the same rate and level of injury/pain that thin people do, on fat people participating in physical activities that might mitigate their risk for arthritis etc.

These are just a few of the issues with research around weight and health. The truth is that, because of weight stigma, fat people experience the world differently than thin people do, and these differences impact our health – including our joint health – and all of that must be accounted for before we attribute health issues to fat bodies.

But like I said, that’s not the most important question. In fact, it doesn’t really matter because even if fat bodies were proven to cause arthritis, the advice/treatment given to fat people should not change.

There’s not a single study in which more than a tiny fraction of the participants succeed at significant long-term weight loss. In the vast majority of weight loss attempts, people lose weight short term, then gain it all back in a few years.

Even knowing these odds many doctors still prescribe weight loss under the “logic” that, while it almost never works it would, in theory, be great if it did. This is roughly the same as prescribing flying to patients with joint issues. I mean, if you jump off your garage and flap your arms really hard you probably won’t fly, but think of the joint pain relief you would feel if it worked and your feet never had to touch the ground!

Beyond that, the majority of dieters actually gain back more weight than they lost, so if someone believes that larger bodies are at greater risk for arthritis, a recommendation of intentional weight loss is the worst thing they could suggest, since the most common long-term outcome is of weight loss attempts is weight gain. (And of course more dangerous solutions – like dangerous diet drugs and  stomach amputation surgeries – risk fat people’s lives and quality of life for outcomes that could be achieved through far less dangerous means.)

If the medical establishment wants to improve fat people’s health, a good first step would be to actually care about our health, rather than refusing to give us good healthcare unless and until we become thin people.

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 cool stuff:

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

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
($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)

Non-Members click here for all the details and to register!

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRON-distance triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!  (DancesWithFat Members get an even better deal, make sure to make your purchases from the Members Page!)

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.

Here’s the next installment of my series of comebacks to the fatphobic nonsense we have to deal with. If you have a phrase you’d like me to create a comeback for, or if you have a comeback that you love, please leave them in the comments!

Read the first three installments here:

Part One

Part Two
Part Three

Again, let me be clear that these are just some suggestions.  They may not work in every circumstance  – especially considering things like power imbalances and privilege. Finally, I’m sure I’m not the first (or last!) person to think of these, so all the credit to those who are doing this work, especially those who came before me!

a

a

You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you, would you *like* to go to the gym with me tomorrow morning? I could show you around! (Self-righteously, as if my fatness must be because of my ignorance about working out).

You are obviously going to die early. There are no fat old people.

You’re not fat! Don’t talk about yourself like that, it makes me uncomfortable.

I’m not going to wear something sleeveless. No one needs/wants to see that.

“Just because it comes in your size, doesn’t mean you should wear it.”

Is my ass as fat as hers?

I’m addicted to sugar, it’s essentially poison.

You’re never going to find a husband unless you lose weight.

It’s so nice to be in Japan where I don’t see obese people.

“You wouldn’t be disabled if you were fat” or “I didnt know you could get a disabled placard for being fat”

One girl: “I hate myself I’m so fat!
Her friend: “You’re fat? I’m a cow.”

Doctor: “School’s out kiddo, time to go on a diet.”

While I was exercising “stop, you’ll break the machine.”

The diet and beauty industries don’t stumble into making billions of dollars. They employ very specific strategies, one of which is their cycle of disempowerment.

The cycle goes like this:

Step 1:  They Create The Message

The diet and beauty industries tell us what is good/beautiful based on the products they sell (essentially, they create “problems” out of things that are completely normal – fat bodies, grey hair, wrinkles etc. – and then sell “solutions”)

This happens through a lot of different mediums – advertisements, billboards, fashion magazines and more.  We are told sold a stereotype of beauty rooted in white, thin cisgender, able-bodiedness.

Step 2:  We Internalize The Message

We start to believe that the (completely made up) stereotype of beauty is reality.  We start to believe that bodies, and people, are better the more closely they approximate the stereotype. We even start to believe that only people who can fit the stereotype of beauty can be talented.

Step 3: We Enforce The “Standard” On Other People

This happens in so many ways.  It happens when we engage in negative body talk against other people. It happens when we care more about what an actor is wearing than the work she did that got her nominated for an award in the first place. It happens when we insist that people should dress in “flattering” ways (which is to say using clothes the create the optical illusion that we look closer to the stereotype of beauty.) In this way we become walking, talking, peer-pressuring advertisements for the diet and beauty industries.

Step 4:  People Are Disempowered, The Diet And Beauty Industry Profit

This cycle is incredibly profitable for the people who sell the promise of bringing us closer to the stereotype because, as my friend Courtney Legare likes to say, they are in the business of stealing our self-esteem, cheapening it, and selling it back to us at a profit.

We can break the cycle though, and we can do it in a lot of ways. We can stop engaging in negative body talk of any kind, we can interrupt other people when they start engaging in negative body talk (or we can just walk away.) We can examine our own prejudices and privilege as they relate to people who fall outside of the stereotype of beauty. We can purposefully celebrate bodies that fall outside of the stereotype in everything from our social media feeds to the art we have in our homes.  We can ask ourselves if the things that we buy, the bodies we celebrate, and the choices we make are supporting or challenging the current paradigm.

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 cool stuff:

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

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
($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)

Non-Members click here for all the details and to register!

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRON-distance triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!  (DancesWithFat Members get an even better deal, make sure to make your purchases from the Members Page!)

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.

Today I’m writing about the horribly misguided idea of putting exercise amounts on food labels. Before I get too far into it, I want to point out that this may be triggering to those who could develop, have, or are recovering from disordered eating and/or eating disorders.

Some UK researchers are trying to suggest that food labels should include “how much activity it would take to burn off food.” They are calling it PACE (Physical Activity Calorie Equivalent) and they claim it could “combat ob*sity.”

There’s so much wrong with this that I hardly know where to begin.

First of all, when I hear the phrase “combat ob*sity” I imagine someone rushing at me, wearing boxing gloves. All these metaphors that are used to discuss what are supposed to be health interventions for fat people are telling, in their common theme of violence. Combating… tackling… war on… – these are all things that harm, not help, their victims. It’s another reminder that they want us thin or dead and they don’t seem to care which.

They are claiming that this is based in research. In reality, the The UK Royal Society for Public Health wanted to use PACE labeling and created a project team who seem to have been tasked to find a way to say that the research supported it (anyone who learned scientific method at the fourth-grade science fair knows that this has already gone awry.)

They cobbled together the results of 14 small studies, each of which had a different design, and almost none of which were carried out in real-world settings. The studies found that in a single incident of reading a PACE type label (typically in a non-real-world setting) people consumed fewer calories. They then extrapolated from that single incident to three meals and two snacks a day to come up with a number of calories not eaten that sounded more impressive.

Then the study’s author put out a statement that said “Public health agencies may want to consider the possibility of including policies to promote it as a strategy that contributes to the prevention and treatment of ob*sity and related diseases.”

Except that’s not what they found. All they found that in one incident of using a Pace label, a small group of people ate a few less calories in that one incidence. (Seriously, the number of words in their press release that mean “maybe, we don’t actually know” would be impressive if it wasn’t so awful – might, may, maybe, linked, suggests, associated, some promise, likely to, could, the list goes on and on. They have not drawn a single solid conclusion. Not. One.

And here we see one of the major problems with research around weight and health- it’s held to an impossibly, shockingly, low standard. As a former research methods student, I can tell you that making the claims they are based on the “research” they’ve done would cause a student in a Beginning Research Methods class to fail their assignment.

Then there are the issues with the actual calculation.

“Under the proposed system, a small bar of chocolate would carry a label informing consumers that it would take 23 minutes of running or 46 minutes of walking to burn off the 230 calories it contains.”

The number of calories that are burned during a minute of activity varies wildly from person to person, based on many factors that include everything from the person’s weight, muscle mass, balance of slow- and fast-twitch muscle, and level of fitness, to how fast the person is running or walking, what kind of surface they are doing it on, and how hilly it is.

The lack of even the most basic science here is staggering. And that’s not the worst of it.

You see, it’s not just fat people these so-called scientists don’t care about, it’s also people of all sizes who may develop, have, or are recovering from, eating disorders. Because the idea that you have to use activity to earn food or that you should “burn off” off food using exercise is a precursor to, and common behavior of eating disorders.

So people who are supposed to be public health professionals are going to risk perpetuating eating disorders, some of the most deadly mental illnesses, because in a few small studies a few people ate a few fewer calories one time?

At the very least, interventions that claim to be pro-public health should not leave the public less healthy. This is beyond irresponsible.

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 cool stuff:

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

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
($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)

Non-Members click here for all the details and to register!

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRON-distance triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!  (DancesWithFat Members get an even better deal, make sure to make your purchases from the Members Page!)

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.

Imagine working your entire life with the dream of making the NBA, playing in a game that’s aired on ESPN.

Then, imagine that you make that dream come true! You become a number one draft pick. Heartbreakingly, you have a knee injury common to basketball players that causes you to miss the first 44 games of your career. Then imagine finally getting to make your NBA debut at the age of 19 – and scoring 22 points – 17 of them in the fourth quarter on seven consecutive possessions in just three minutes, causing the stadium to erupt in chants of “MVP!”  and then, when it was time to leave the game to protect the knee rehab “WE WANT [YOUR NAME!]” in a game being aired on ESPN. All your dreams coming true.

Now, imagine you learn that ESPN’s announcer team of Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy spent basically the entire game body-shaming you, starting literally four minutes into your professional career. Including questioning if you were heavier than the official reported weight, claiming that you were out of shape, creating a graphic to compare your weight to the rest of the NBA players like it’s a stat, and saying that they wouldn’t have drafted you number one if they had a re-do.

That’s exactly what happened to Zion Williamson.

Then of course, there are armchair doctors all over the place blaming his knee injury on his weight. David Griffin, the Pelican’s executive vice president told ESPN “The notion that this happened because Zion is in poor condition is asinine. He wasn’t in poor condition when he went 12-of-13 last week against Utah. That’s not what it is. He’s just a very unique body type and certainly from a physics perspective.”

I’m sorry that this is happening to Williamson. That said, the Pelican’s approach is a good model for treating people in larger bodies who have injuries (rather than a medical community that insists that we have to become thin people before we can get ethical, evidence-based care.)

Plenty of people responded to point out that body-shaming is wrong, which was really heartening. Of there were those who claimed that the announcers had a professional responsibility to body shame him. For the record, Williamson is killing it.  He’s played in 9 games and scored 20+ points in 7 of them. In a game played last Thursday, “When he was announced in the starting lineup for that game against Chicago,” CBS Sports reports, “he received the loudest cheer not just of Pelicans players, but of Bulls players as well. Everyone in attendance was there to see Zion Williamson put on a show, and he did. He finished that game with 21 points while shooting 81.8 percent from the field.” 

In a game played today “Williamson had yet another sensational showing, posting 31 points, nine rebounds and five assists while shooting 10 for 17 from the field and 11 for 14 from the free-throw line. He did all this in 28 minutes. ”

Some, well-meaning but misguided, said that Williamson shouldn’t be body-shamed because he’s not really fat.  But that’s missing the entire point, since countering fat-shaming by denying fatness says that the current target doesn’t deserve poor treatment (which is true) but at the expense of reinforcing the incorrect idea that they would deserve it if they were fat (or some greater degree of fat), or that being called fat is an insult.  There is no size at which people deserve to be treated poorly.

There is absolutely no justification for fat-shaming, whether it’s an NBA player or a person just trying to do their shopping.  Body-shaming is just wrong.

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 cool stuff:

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

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
($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)

Non-Members click here for all the details and to register!

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRON-distance triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!  (DancesWithFat Members get an even better deal, make sure to make your purchases from the Members Page!)

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.

Now that I live in LA, the Oscars have a special personal meaning – that I should avoid downtown because of the traffic.  But of course the Oscars mean more than that – it’s a night where artists get to see if they have won one of their industry’s top honors, which – especially for the women and femmes – will likely be completely overshadowed by people’s opinions of their dresses, hair, make-up, and bodies.

Much of this talk will be steeped in fatphobic terms like “flattering,” and that will be amplified for the fat people whose options are massively limited because most designers refuse to dress them and because people discussing their “fashion” will have already been bathed in fatphobia, including the idea that, for fat people, the only appropriate use of clothing is to create optical illusions to try to make us look thinner.

 Once again, we – and especially women and femmes – will be given the message loud and clear that how we look is far more important than what we have achieved.  I’ve discussed this before and there are plenty of things that we can do if we’re not onboard:

• When talking about the Academy Awards, focus your conversations on what the nominees and winners achieved – actually discuss their work.
• Talk about the Oscars’ continued lack of representation of marginalized communities (including  People of Color, and women, and non-binary people – who are literally left out of award categories that are divided on a gender binary) and share the writing for people from these groups.
• Share Janelle Monae’s incredible opening performance
• Talk about people who used “fashion” to make an important statement.

• Don’t click on “best and worst dressed” lists. Consider the possibility that people who are grown ass adults are allowed to wear whatever they want, and that if we don’t like it the correct solution is to not wear it, not to take to the internet to engage in what is often pretty difficult to separate from any other cyberbullying – this goes double for people in marginalized communities.

• Just say no to Fashion Bashing
• Speak out against body shaming and fashion bashing when you see it – on your friends’ social media, in the comments sections of articles about the Oscars, etc