Help - My Colleague Thinks Weight Loss is a Magical Fix-All!

Reader Question

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A newsletter reader who is a health professional, sent in the following question:

I was talking to another health professional about a patient of his who had made a complaint. He said ‘if only she lost 100kgs, she’d be fine’.

And I didn’t know where to start. What to say - if I got started, I’d take all day to explain myself. I needed a one-liner to start him thinking that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t about her weight. And he is otherwise a compassionate person. I thought of what you might say, but by then he was out the door:).

Assuming that weight loss will be a cure-all is a very common mistake (and one that is purposefully perpetuated by the $70+ billion dollar weight loss industry.) Unfortunately, it’s also a deeply harmful mistake.

When healthcare providers believe that weight loss will solve all of a patient’s problems then they often fail to give them the evidence-based treatment that they would give to a thinner patient with the same symptoms/situation which means missed diagnoses, delayed interventions, and harm.

In terms of a one-liner, I’ve often had some luck pointing out that thin people have the same health issues that heavier people do. Some options:

“I’ve noticed that we can be quick to blame weight even though thin people get the same health issues “

“Since thin people get the same issues, becoming thin can be neither a sure preventative, or a sure cure”

“I think we get misled that weight loss is a fix-all, even though people of all sizes get these same health issues.”

If you want to go further you can say something like “Since people of all sizes get these issues and since almost everyone who loses weigh ends up gaining it back, we’re much better off giving the same interventions, regardless of size to make sure that the patient is getting ethical treatment.”

I am a a fan of long, thoroughly cited answers and explanations (as regular readers of this newsletter know well!) so I want to thank this reader for this reminder that quick responses are an important tool in our toolbox. Giving someone something to consider in thirty seconds or less can be the start of real change and, if we’re in a position to do so, it’s always worth a try! Plus it can make us feel better to say something and that’s a worthy outcome as well.

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More research and resources:
https://haeshealthsheets.com/resources/

*Note on language: I use “fat” as a neutral descriptor as used by the fat activist community, I use “ob*se” and “overw*ight” to acknowledge that these are terms that were created to medicalize and pathologize fat bodies, with roots in racism and specifically anti-Blackness. Please read Sabrina Strings’ Fearing the Black Body – the Racial Origins of Fat Phobia and Da’Shaun Harrison’s Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness for more on this.