https://weightandhealthcare.substack.com/p/the-deep-harm-of-world-obesity-day
Chosen excerpt and reaction:
Some days the weight loss and healthcare industries seem to work extra hard to make it clear to me that they want me thin at any cost, and they are happy kill me in the process, all while co-opting the language that my community has created to protect ourselves in order to profit from our harm. On those days it can be really difficult to wade through their muck and break down the harm they do piece by piece.
[….]
Put succinctly, WOD is a day that:
1. Encourages stigma against higher weight people
2. Recommends methods for manipulating body size that have been shown to be ineffective for decades
3. Insists that its worth risking fat people’s lives and quality of life in attempts to make them thin (again, hardly an anti-stigma position)
4. Suggests that the solution to weight-based oppression (which, remember, they are actively perpetuating) is for fat people to change themselves to suit their oppressors.
Yes. The medical establishment insisted that my husband risk his life to make them thin rather than investigate what he was concerned about. They risked his life over and over, and then his life was lost. After only 45 years of life. Congratulations, diet industry. You eradicated a fat person.
*pause to calm*
Regan Chastain’s post has links included and you should read it there and support her work directly.
I am a paid subscriber to her Substack newsletter, because it takes a lot of mental and emotional toil, which she describes here.
I have a lot I also want to say about my husband’s “case study” in particular and the emotional toll of using studies that pathologies him in order to glean the data to prove why they shouldn’t have is probably going to give me an ulcer and a broken hand from punching through a wall. So I deeply honor the literal work that Regan does to make this newsletter. The work of finding and paying for the journal articles, of summarizing them in a non-stigmatizing way being careful to not parrot diet culture language, and for calming and grounding herself in the face of both the things she has to read aiming to destroy her and then defensive or reactive critics trying to destroy her.
Honor her by reading her newsletters. Go back and read the other entries. Follow the links.
Honor her by subscribing. My latte every day costs $7.50 with the tip I include and a subscription can be less than that and they are both nourishing.
Honor her and the community by sharing and signal boosting wildly.
Thanks for reading this much.
