In case you’re dealing with people who don’t know that they should mind their own business, leave you alone, and not give you the “gift” of fatphobia this year, here’s a little cartoon that can help! (I’m putting out new videos every Wednesday during the holidays. This link it to a playlist so you can just keep watching and see the new ones from this year, as well as last year’s!)
UPCOMING ONLINE WORKSHOP: When Good Friends Do Bad Diets
As the New Year comes around, the diet industry is doing everything it can to convince all of us to make another (ultimately doomed) weight loss attempt. Even when we aren’t fooled, often our nearest and dearest are still riding the diet roller coaster. And typically that means that they want to talk about it – anywhere and everywhere – in ways that can be anything from annoying to harmful. In this workshop we’ll talk about options for dealing with this in all the scenarios that we may find ourselves in.
Did You Like It? 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:
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!
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)
I had the honor being a guest on the Recovery Bites podcast with Karin Lewis.
We talked about:
Navigating in a society designed to exclude, shame, and oppress people on the basis of shared characteristics or identities.
Medical weight stigma in regards to diagnosis, care, and treatment options.
Nurturing the parts of self that question authority and challenge the narrative.
The ways in which diet culture, dieting, and fatphobia perpetuate eating disorders and can make full recovery feel impossible.
The value and need for trust between client and provider.
How fat activism aims to dismantle diet culture and fatphobia in the community so that people of every size have equal opportunity to fully recover.
Strategies one can use to stand up for themself and advocate for equal healthcare and education of health practitioners.
The dangers of weight-loss interventions and weight loss surgery.
Challenging the beliefs that add to the oppression of fat people and moving into thoughts and actions that support body liberation for those of all sizes.
You can check it out here (and while you’re there, check out all the episodes!)
UPCOMING ONLINE WORKSHOP: When Good Friends Do Bad Diets
As the New Year comes around, the diet industry is doing everything it can to convince all of us to make another (ultimately doomed) weight loss attempt. Even when we aren’t fooled, often our nearest and dearest are still riding the diet roller coaster. And typically that means that they want to talk about it – anywhere and everywhere – in ways that can be anything from annoying to harmful. In this workshop we’ll talk about options for dealing with this in all the scenarios that we may find ourselves in.
Did You Like It? 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:
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!
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)
This year Fatch – The Fat Sketch Comedy Show, and I collaborated on a video message about the importance of having seating that works for people of all sizes whenever/wherever it’s safe to gather.
Hint: Link is to a whole fat positive holiday playlist, so keep watching to see all the videos!
UPCOMING ONLINE WORKSHOP: When Good Friends Do Bad Diets
As the New Year comes around, the diet industry is doing everything it can to convince all of us to make another (ultimately doomed) weight loss attempt. Even when we aren’t fooled, often our nearest and dearest are still riding the diet roller coaster. And typically that means that they want to talk about it – anywhere and everywhere – in ways that can be anything from annoying to harmful. In this workshop we’ll talk about options for dealing with this in all the scenarios that we may find ourselves in.
Did You Like It? 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:
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!
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)
As the count goes on, a new group of fat jokes about donald are making the rounds.
One was said by Anderson Cooper when he compared donald to an “ob*se turtle on its back”
Before anybody starts in with “it’s not fat-shaming!” It absolutely is fat-shaming. First, because it uses a term that was created to pathologize and stigmatize fat bodies, and second because it was utterly unnecessary for the metaphor. Saying someone is like a turtle on their back is a clear metaphor (well, simile but whatever…) Making the turtle fat doesn’t make the comparison any more clear, it just adds fat-shaming to it.
The other are “jokes” I’ve been seeing are around the number 270 (which is the number of electoral college votes needed to win the election,) Some make fun of weight gain from stress eating (which is both fatphobic and potentially harmful for those dealing with disordered eating and eating disorders,) or including the idea that the only way donald “could get to 270 is by losing 50 pounds.”
The way you know that is fat-shaming is that his weight (244 pounds) is a matter of public record. So this entire joke rests on the premise that it’s funny to suggest that he is heavier than he is (which is fatphobia) and/or that it’s funny to think that he weighs 320 pounds (which is fatphobia since there are people who weigh 320 pounds and it’s no funnier, better, or worse, than weighing any other amount.)
If you’re thinking: It’s not fat-shaming because he is a horror of a human being! It’s not fat-shaming because he (and his doctor) lied about his weight! It’s not fat-shaming because it’s about his health! It’s not fat-shaming because he is a fat-shamer himself!
I covered all of those attempted justifications in this post.
Bottom line though, if you’re scrambling to find a justification for why these jokes either aren’t fat shaming (they are) or why fat-shaming is justified in this situation (it’s not) then I urge you to just go ahead and consider the scrambling itself is proof that they are indeed unjustified fat-shaming.
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.
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!)
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!
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)
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.
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.
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!
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)
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!)
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.
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!
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)
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.
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!
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)
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.
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!
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)
I’ve been an Official Ambassador for the National Eating Disorders Association since January of 2019. While I will continue to work to make sure NEDA makes good on their commitments to intersectional justice within Eating Disorders community, I’m very sad to say that based on their current actions I cannot in good faith continue as an Official Ambassador. Before I write more about that, I want to thank the staff I worked with who are genuinely committed to intersectional justice and are left without the support they need and deserve…Thank you for all you do, I’ll miss working with you.
Below are the resignation letter I sent to the leadership of the organization on Monday, as well as a video of my talk at the NEDA virtual walk on Saturday.
If you want to give feedback to NEDA (for example asking that they reinstate Chevese Turner and that they provide a detailed outline of specifically how NEDA will create systemic internal changes so that they can truly serve the entire diverse eating disorders community) you can send it to Susan Vibbert (susanvibbert at gmail dot com) She is a board member I met at the NEDA Gala last year and she has agreed to forward these communications to the NEDA board. You are also welcome to leave comments below and/or e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org and I’ll get your feedback to her.
My Resignation Letter
I write to you today with a heavy heart. For nearly two years, I have been honored to serve as an Official NEDA Ambassador, donating my time, writing and speaking, online spaces, and funds to support what I believed was a renewed mission of supporting all individuals and families affected by eating disorders.
The abrupt firing of Chevese Turner without any transparency was deeply concerning to me and to many members of the eating disorders community. The absence of any messaging coming from NEDA about the situation continues to raise even more concerns. The failure over the past two weeks to respond to hundreds of public requests, for both transparency around the decision and clear commitments to continue the work that she was leading for intersectionality within the community, adds to the issues. Allowing people who claim to have “inside info” about the situation to act as the de facto voice of NEDA, posting racist and fatphobic screeds on your own Facebook page is inexcusable.
Many of us watched for years as NEDA centered the voices, stories, and needs of thin, cis, white, younger women to the near exclusion of all others, ignoring those of us asking for change. In fact, my first involvement with NEDA happened when they partnered with an “anti-obesity” organization and then defended their choice to me as a “compromise.” (I started a petition and letter writing campaign, and a few days later they ended the partnership, but it was clear to me that it was about optics and not harm reduction.)
Your merger with BEDA and Chevese was a second chance that I, and many other people, were giving NEDA to do the right thing. Chevese being fired with no transparency and no communication about ongoing commitments to intersectionality has been a clear message that NEDA is actively failing to become the inclusive, intersectional organization we know it could be, and that the community needs it to be.
Choosing to move forward with Weight Stigma Awareness Week is especially troubling. That you would take ownership of a fat woman’s project, fire the fat woman abruptly with no comment, and then claim credit for raising awareness of weight stigma as if nothing happened, is truly beyond the pale. Sadly NEDA has given me no reason to believe that you aren’t abandoning the pursuit of intersectional justice within eating disorders treatment and advocacy in everything but appearances, perhaps hoping to ride out the backlash and settle back into the comfort of focusing on the thin, white, cis, girls and young women while giving only lip service to others in the community.
While I am committed to doing whatever I can to help NEDA pursue a mission that includes all individuals and families affected by eating disorders, I am heartbroken to say that I can no longer be an official ambassador for NEDA. I can’t and won’t lend my face, body, labor, or reputation as an ambassador since it indicates a tacit approval of the current situation, and an inclusivity that isn’t currently being practiced, while holding a position that doesn’t have any authority to create change.
I am resigning as an Official NEDA Ambassador effective immediately, and I ask that I be removed from the Ambassador page of the website.
If I may offer one piece of advice, in our conversation Claire said that perhaps NEDA’s PR in this situation had been “a little too much by the book.” I don’t know what PR book you’re using, but I would recommend burning it, because this strategy is nothing short of disastrous. If the hope is that you can ride out the backlash and go back to business as usual, then I would urge you to reconsider. The backlash will be loud and it will be sustained, because people’s lives hang in the balance.
I implore NEDA to do better – reinstate Chevese, recommit clearly and publicly to centering the voices, stories, and needs of People of Color, Trans and Non-Binary people, Higher Weight people, and other marginalized populations, and then prove those commitments in your actions, and the allocation of your resources.
I continue to hope that NEDA becomes the organization that the diverse community of people who are affected by eating disorders desperately needs it to be, and I will continue to work toward that goal.
Sincerely,
Ragen Chastain
Talk from the virtual NEDA walk:
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.
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!
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)
An article came across my inbox called “The Habits of Successful Weight Losers.” It piqued my interest because the truth is there isn’t a single study where more than a tiny fraction of people succeed at long-term, significant weight loss (this has been shown in literature reviews starting in at least 1999 and was recently acknowledged by Canadian Healthcare professionals. (Note: The article is not linked here due its potentially triggering nature, it’s also one of many of it kind so the points made here address this mistake generally.)
I clicked to read the article, curious if it would make the most common mistake of only looking at short-term weight loss (most people succeed at losing weight short term, but gain it all back within two to five years, a huge number of studies simply look at weight loss during the first year and then claim success) or if it would make the less common, but potentially more harmful National Weight Control Registry mistake.
It turns out that it was the latter. I often use the National Weight Control Registry in talks I give to general audiences, health professionals, and university students, faculty and staff to show how easy it is to be duped by diet culture and the poor “science” that backs it up. In this case the person making this mistake is a celebrated personal trainer, fitness speaker and writer, and PhD who has actually written a book written on this premise, so it’s no surprise that so many people with less training in understanding and analyzing research do make the same mistake.
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: Getting Jiggly With It! Movement In A Fat Body
Movement/fitness/exercise by any definition is never an obligation or barometer of worthiness. But for fat people who want to move our bodies – whether it’s because we enjoy it, or because of the benefit(s) we get from it (even if we don’t enjoy it,) whatever our reasons a fatphobic culture can create barriers, misinformation, and other difficulties for us. In this workshop we’ll explore tips, tricks, and information to help us move our bodies for our own reasons. (This workshop can also be helpful to fitness pros who want to create a fat-positive practice!)
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!
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)
Dances With Fat 