Introducing the Weight Inclusive Toolkit from WITI

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I have waited for five years to write this post and I really cannot tell you how excited I am about it!

Summary

Over the past five years the Weight Inclusive Toolkit Initiative (WITI), a group of over 100 people with professional and lived expertise, most of whom have marginalized identities, have engaged in thousands of hours of labor to create the first standardized weight inclusive curriculum toolkit for nutrition and dietetics education, mapped to the 2027 ACEND standards and absolutely free for all educators, preceptors, students, interns, practitioners, and anyone in any field who is interested in weight inclusive tools.

I’ll tell you all about it but first, in case you are in a hurry, you can sign up to receive the toolkit here. You just fill it out to have the toolkit sent to you and, optionally, you can choose to join the Learning Community to have future information sent to you about things like learning opportunities including a monthly self-study module (with CPEUs) at no charge, and more!

Please also feel free to let others who might be helped know about the toolkit. A ton of time and labor went into it and now it’s time to get it out to the people who can help with it and be helped by it!

Deeper Dive

I am proud, honored, and humbled to have been part of WITI almost from the beginning as part of the governing board and as part of the Counseling Case Study content group.

The Weight Inclusive Toolkit was developed over five years through a
unique, community-driven process. Community members and leaders with lived experience, as well as RDNs, dietetics educators, preceptors, program directors, students, interns, and health professionals all contributed to the content. I will include more specifics about the process below. I will also say that I have personally learned and benefited so much from being part of this process and I am grateful.

Toolkit Contents

All of the toolkit’s lectures, webinars, and case studies are already pre-mapped to the new ACEND 2027 accreditation standards, saving valuable time for dietetics educators and preceptors when planning curriculum.

The contents include:

• Weight Stigma and Bias

• Defining Weight Inclusive Care

• Eating Disorders and Disordered Eating

• Expanded RDN Skill Set:

  • Screening and Treatment of Eating Disorders and Weight Cycling prior to Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT)

• Creating Safe and Inclusive Classrooms

• Case Study Presentations:

  • Counseling clients from diverse communities

  • Weight Inclusive Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT)

  • Supplemental case study questions for all MNT diagnoses

There are over 20 Lessons and Case Studies that include:

• Lesson Plans

• Webinars

• Lecture Slides

• Experiential Activities

• Homework Assignments

• Resources: books, podcasts, videos, websites, etc.

Additional Resources Include:

• Hundreds of Weight Inclusive Tools and Resources

• Multiple Research Libraries and an Annotated Bibliography

• Self-Study Educator/Preceptor Training Modules:

  • Meet continuing education requirements (CPEUs) for health equity and ethics from the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR)

While the toolkit is focused on Nutrition and Dietetics Education, I can tell you that it is has wide applicability beyond the Nutrition and Dietetics field.

Before we get into the toolkit creation process, a reminder that the toolkit is available at no cost and you can sign up to receive the toolkit here.

Toolkit Creation Process

Here is more about the process of creating the toolkit from the WITI document “The Weight Inclusive Toolkit: Foundations, Development and Dissemination” and with gratitude for early consulting from Jessica Wilson, MS RD.

The mission of the Weight Inclusive Toolkit Initiative (WITI) is to prevent harm to millions of patients/clients by educating thousands of future and current health professionals about weight discrimination, weight-inclusive care, and the intersection with the oppression of other marginalized identities.

The WITI governing board, committee, and consultants include fat advocates and RDNs across multiple practice areas who have advanced the field of weight stigma and eating disorders. In addition, community members with lived experience, dietetics professors, program directors, preceptors, researchers, students, interns, and other health professionals all contributed to the creation of the toolkit.

The majority of contributors have underrepresented identities, including people in larger bodies; Black and Indigenous people of color; LGBTQIA+ individuals; people with disabilities or neurodiversity; people with chronic diseases; and people from diverse religions and cultures, and they bring both lived and professional experience with the toolkit’s content. Multiple perspectives were incorporated throughout the development process, and the governing board collaboratively held authority for all project decisions. These diverse voices ensure that the toolkit reflects the communities it is designed to serve and integrates both lived experience and evidence-based care in weight-inclusive approaches.

WITI reached out to organizations such as the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), the Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH), and Fighting Eating Disorders in Underrepresented Populations (FEDUP): A Trans+ & Intersex Collective, which provided referrals for consultants with lived experience from the client’s perspective. Organizations such as EDRD PRO, Weight Inclusive Nutrition and Dietetics (WIND), Weight Inclusive Dietitians in Canada (WIDIC), and Medical Students for Size Inclusivity (MSSI) provided webinar donations/resources to help fill in some of the gaps in the content.

WITI also had sharing circles so that the content was reviewed by the whole committee, which included many perspectives from a diversity of identities and lived experiences. In addition, the webinar presenters all had lived experience related to the content they were presenting.

WITI was very intentional about taking enough time to prepare the toolkit and not rushing into content creation, which could have caused additional harm. WITI incorporated a recruiting phase and prep phase prior to content creation, without having a sense of urgency or expecting perfection with the end result.

WITI prioritized self-care for all members (participation was based on their capacity, and self-care reminders were incorporated during meetings). The board approved community dialogue guidelines and a repair process to help create an accountable space and minimize harm. When harm was caused (i.e., there was not enough representation or enough funding at the beginning of the project’s recruiting phase), the project manager took accountability, was transparent with everyone about what occurred, and took steps to repair the harm (i.e., establishing a governing board to make decisions, applying for more grant funding, etc.).

WITI established community dialogue guidelines, completed education, self-reflection, and sharing circles about topics such as racism, gender-affirming care, ableism, food insecurity, weight stigma, inclusive language, et cetera, to help members identify any biases prior to content creation. All committee members and interns completed the education and sharing circles as part of the preparatory phase of the project, and new members receive education about these topics as well.

WITI meetings also use check-in questions to promote fun, bonding, and commonalities among people from different identities.

WITI incorporated a very thorough review process, which included sharing circles to review the content (perspectives were provided from people with a variety of identities). The review process of the toolkit incorporated content reviewers and webinar presenters with lived experience and/or professional experience. The review process included: review by community leaders, fat activists, and scholars with lived experience of weight stigma, RDN/health professional review, community member review (client’s perspective), inclusive language review, continuity review, and accessibility review.

All content was reviewed using an accessibility checklist, which includes checking for accessible font sizes, alt text for visuals, accessible font type (i.e., sans serif), accessible color combinations, contrast of colors, accurate closed captions for the webinars, etc.

WITI offered payment to all webinar presenters, content reviewers, and client/lived experience reviewers for the toolkit. WITI offered additional honorariums to the presenters of the webinars, which were donated from WIND, EDRD Pro, and WIDIC. WITI also offered funding for lived experience library stories from clients and to the panelists who discussed the project at various conferences. Funding for content creators is still needed.

In addition, WITI received an offer to translate the toolkit into Spanish and adapt the toolkit for use in Mexico as part of a large university system with over 35 campuses in 25 cities in Mexico. After the toolkit is translated into Spanish, it would be shared with dietetics students and high school students who are taking nutrition courses for college credit at this university system.

WITI also has board members who are Canadian RDNs, and we are currently looking for Canadian grants or research grants to be able to adapt the toolkit for use in Canada. Applicable parts of the toolkit will also be shared with the public and RDNs on the website of the Weight Inclusive Dietitians in Canada (WIDIC).

I’m so proud to have been a part of this project and honored to be part of the incredible team that created it!

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*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.