Category: weight-related shame

Weight Bias is Limiting Access to Weight Loss Surgery

I read an article today written by a doctor who found himself examining his sense of bias when he was faced with a 600 lb patient in the emergency room. Nurses and technicians around him made snide remarks and a surgeon made it clear he wanted to find a way to foist the patient off …

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Being Realistic about Weight Loss Expectations

I saw a meme-style chart for a women’s “3 Month Workout Plan for Six Pack Abs” in my Facebook News Feed. One of my gaming people posted that she was getting started with it. I can’t tell the woman’s age but she’s definitely forties or older. The “plan” calls for 100 Jumping Jacks, 100 Crunches, …

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Food Insecurity and Obesity: The Paradox that Affects More Than Just the Poor

Food Insecurity and obesity

Why is there a correlation between food insecurity and obesity? It appears to be a paradox; is it really? I was directed today to an insightful infographic posted on the blog of Registered Dietitian Brooke Schantz. At the bottom of this post, I’ve placed the “Nourish to Flourish” infographic from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. …

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Is It Support? Or Fat Shaming?

I hate this weight loss book so much I won’t even tell you what its title is. I’m capable of relating only briefly what makes this book so abysmal. It is an example of what I see as a particularly insidious form of fat shaming—that which originates from what is presented as “support.” Let’s start …

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Dealing with Food Brain & Food Cravings: Holiday Edition

Shoma Morita

My food brain is so sneaky. It knows Thanksgiving is approaching and it’s conjuring up all kinds of thoughts about food cravings! What creeps into my mind the most recently are thoughts of going off on a binge because Thanksgiving is going to be a lost cause, a super indulgent day. I am easily suppressing …

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Biggest Loser is Oblivious to Its Failures

It’s simply naive to believe that NBC’s “Biggest Loser” is about “changing lives.” It’s got to be the most heavily merchandised television show in history. From $3000-per-week “resorts” and cruises to in-show commercials and a broad range of branded products, it’s a money machine that exploits the public’s fascination with watching presumably broken and messed …

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When My Food Brain Has a Mind of Its Own

Today I experienced something that I dread, something that happens to me that I hate more than anything I deal with in my life and I would give anything to be free of it. My favorite tea is Stash Chai Spice black tea. I get it at the Jewel grocery store down the street but …

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Mocked for Being Too Thin? What It Says About Fat Shaming

In an interview with HuffPostLive, television personality Giuliana Rancic describes how she endures taunts for her extreme thinness in social media. The interviewer seems to be suggesting that Rancic is very thin as a result of having battled cancer but she looks about the same today as she did before her diagnosis. Rancic wants to …

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Weight Loss Reality TV Reaches a Shocking New Low “My Big Fat Revenge”

I wouldn’t have thought there could be a weight loss reality TV show more offensive and exploitative than Biggest Loser but “My Big Fat Revenge” on the Oxygen network is beyond comprehension. Overweight women tearfully recount stories of humiliation then plot revenge against their tormentors. The two women in the episode I watched seem to have …

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If It’s Not Emotional Eating, Why DID You Get Fat?

If I’m going to make the case against the idea that very overweight people are all “broken” and filled with self-loathing, indulging in emotional eating all the way to serious obesity because of stress or trauma they’re struggling to deal with, then why do I think people get very fat and why do they stay …

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