The Great Body-Acceptance Debate – By Joseph P. Williams (US News) / Feb 3 2020
A battle over the perils of obesity is playing out in pop culture and the medical community.
In the ongoing war over America’s waistline, the doctor’s office is a front-line battleground, and the stakes couldn’t be clearer.
Climbing obesity rates fuel related illnesses like type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Bariatric surgery, a drastic measure typically for the middle-aged, is becoming more routine for extremely obese adolescents. Obesity-related absences among U.S. employees cost the country as much as $6.38 billion annually in productivity, and scientists say severe weight gain is contributing to shrinking U.S. lifespans.
It’s no wonder doctors, nurses and other primary caregivers often insist – sometimes frankly – that patients measured with a high body mass index must lose weight.
Yet an insurgency to the white-coat offensive is rising.
Encapsulated by an essayist with the nom de guerre Your Fat Friend, overweight people are pushing back against caregivers who they say fat-shame them and blame common medical problems on their weight. Obesity, they say, isn’t always the cause of their issues, and diet and exercise aren’t always the solution.
The stigma she and other overweight people face too often “is thinly veiled by a purported ‘concern for our health,'” amounting to “well-intended bullying that only ends up compounding the harms we face,” Your Fat Friend wrote in an unflinching essay in December, one in a series arguing against size discrimination. “If so many are, as they claim, ‘just concerned about fat people’s health,’ the best way to express that concern is to address the overwhelming stigma facing fat people in doctor’s offices.”
Continue to article: https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2020-02-03/body-positivity-weight-bias-and-the-battle-for-a-healthy-life
