This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter! If you like what you are reading, please consider subscribing and/or sharing! Thanks to everyone who sent me this article from Medical News Today and asked me to write about it! I’ll discuss the study, but I’m also going talk about the article because it’s a great demonstration of how even articles that appear to question weight stigma can still be deeply rooted in weight stigma.
Ragen, reading your newsletters and articles and posts has really helped me shift my mindset about my body and my relationship to it, to food, and to the world. I've learned to question things I always accepted and good lord, my mind is so much lighter without constantly worrying about how big I am and how much that means I have failed and/or am inconveniencing the world. It is an enormous relief that I'm not sure I can properly quantify. I still struggle, of course, but having your voice in my head and reading these regular reminders that anti-fat rhetoric is baked into our culture in ways that we often don't recognize has done wonders for my mental health and well-being. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being a voice of reason and confidence and acceptance - and backing it all up with SCIENCE. You rock!
You bring up an interesting point about your mind being lighter, with less worrying about your body size. It seems to me that, for many, their "cognitive ability" might be impeded if they are constantly bombarded with worries about their body size and/or how others will see them and treat them.
Oh for the love of Pete… I had no idea anyone was running with the biased idea that doctors think fat people are less intelligent (and intelligence is a disgusting ableist, racist construct), and decided to “prove” it.
I am so. Damn. Tired.
Also I’d never heard the myth that fat people were at higher risk of RA. I’m pretty sure that’s a lie.
This right here is why I love what you’re doing, Ragen: “Let’s stop trying to eradicate fat people from the world, and start creating a world where fat people can thrive.”
The scientific research on autoimmune diseases is littered with associations to ob*sity. Before reading Weight and Healthcare, I would have reported that connection in the literature, and left it unexamined. What none of the studies I've reviewed have done is control for what came first--inflammatory autoimmunity or ob*sity. And frankly, they can't pick those two things apart because auto-inflammation in its earliest forms is difficult to detect--even in its obvious forms it can be difficult to detect clinically. For example, autoimmune thyroid disease can be sub-clinical for decades--and cause weight gain--but the studies present the association as though ob*sity was a contributing factor to the development of autoimmune thyroid disease. Yet another example of blaming fat people for medical problems. I am truly grateful that I found this newsletter before writing any more posts that provide an uncritical look at the research associations between ob*sity and autoimmune disease (thank goodness, I only published one). That's because of you, Ragen. Thank you.
As someone with medical PTSD due to the terrible assumptions hcp’s make in the exam room, I am glad you have learned to think critically about this and examine the evidence before spreading bad science.
As to the eradication of fat people, I was unsurprised to learn that the late Lisa Marie Presley, who passed away due to a small bowel obstruction at only 54 years old, had gastric band surgery performed. People are led to believe such interventions are benign when they are anything but. As you've said before, doctors want people thin or dead, and they really don't care which.
"The amount of money that is spent on research trying to figure out what fat people do “wrong” that makes us fat and what could be done to eradicate fat people and prevent any more from existing is staggering and, as far as I’m concerned, absolutely wasted. Let’s pour that money into things that would actually help - like studies to create best practices in surgery and pharmacotherapy for supporting the health of fat people (rather than BMI-Based denials and a laser focus on things that might make us temporarily a bit thinner.) Let’s stop trying to eradicate fat people from the world, and start creating a world where fat people can thrive."
The through-line from century-old "race science" studies proving that European white people are superior to everyone else to garbage papers like this one is so clear. They just replaced "White European" with "Thin." Ragen's recommendations of Fearing The Black Body and Belly of the Beast should be required reading for anyone proposing "weight science" research.
To quote Aubrey Gordon from the Maintenance Phase podcast, their unstated premise is always "We know fat people are bad, but *why*?"
Just a quick rather sarcastic comment on the study/article in question: I doubt the cognitive superiority of the quoted author who never learned the mnemonic "people are not whiches." That "which" should have been a "whom."
Sorry, should have added his or her confusion of numbers: is the writer trying to draw a distinction (as some do) between "overweight" and "obese"? It's convenient to be able to count in or out at will those who are just a few percent "overweight" as opposed to those 10% or 38% or 80% over some arbitrary number.
Anyone remember, as I do, when height/weight charts presumed women were measured wearing high-heeled shoes?
This just infuriates me. I’m smart, damn smart, and all my life, people have been surprised to learn that because they assumed I was stupid because I’m fat.
Ragen, reading your newsletters and articles and posts has really helped me shift my mindset about my body and my relationship to it, to food, and to the world. I've learned to question things I always accepted and good lord, my mind is so much lighter without constantly worrying about how big I am and how much that means I have failed and/or am inconveniencing the world. It is an enormous relief that I'm not sure I can properly quantify. I still struggle, of course, but having your voice in my head and reading these regular reminders that anti-fat rhetoric is baked into our culture in ways that we often don't recognize has done wonders for my mental health and well-being. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being a voice of reason and confidence and acceptance - and backing it all up with SCIENCE. You rock!
You bring up an interesting point about your mind being lighter, with less worrying about your body size. It seems to me that, for many, their "cognitive ability" might be impeded if they are constantly bombarded with worries about their body size and/or how others will see them and treat them.
Oh for the love of Pete… I had no idea anyone was running with the biased idea that doctors think fat people are less intelligent (and intelligence is a disgusting ableist, racist construct), and decided to “prove” it.
I am so. Damn. Tired.
Also I’d never heard the myth that fat people were at higher risk of RA. I’m pretty sure that’s a lie.
This right here is why I love what you’re doing, Ragen: “Let’s stop trying to eradicate fat people from the world, and start creating a world where fat people can thrive.”
The scientific research on autoimmune diseases is littered with associations to ob*sity. Before reading Weight and Healthcare, I would have reported that connection in the literature, and left it unexamined. What none of the studies I've reviewed have done is control for what came first--inflammatory autoimmunity or ob*sity. And frankly, they can't pick those two things apart because auto-inflammation in its earliest forms is difficult to detect--even in its obvious forms it can be difficult to detect clinically. For example, autoimmune thyroid disease can be sub-clinical for decades--and cause weight gain--but the studies present the association as though ob*sity was a contributing factor to the development of autoimmune thyroid disease. Yet another example of blaming fat people for medical problems. I am truly grateful that I found this newsletter before writing any more posts that provide an uncritical look at the research associations between ob*sity and autoimmune disease (thank goodness, I only published one). That's because of you, Ragen. Thank you.
YES! Well said! I have often thought the same. It’s so infuriating that something seemingly so common sense is completely ignored.
As someone with medical PTSD due to the terrible assumptions hcp’s make in the exam room, I am glad you have learned to think critically about this and examine the evidence before spreading bad science.
As to the eradication of fat people, I was unsurprised to learn that the late Lisa Marie Presley, who passed away due to a small bowel obstruction at only 54 years old, had gastric band surgery performed. People are led to believe such interventions are benign when they are anything but. As you've said before, doctors want people thin or dead, and they really don't care which.
"The amount of money that is spent on research trying to figure out what fat people do “wrong” that makes us fat and what could be done to eradicate fat people and prevent any more from existing is staggering and, as far as I’m concerned, absolutely wasted. Let’s pour that money into things that would actually help - like studies to create best practices in surgery and pharmacotherapy for supporting the health of fat people (rather than BMI-Based denials and a laser focus on things that might make us temporarily a bit thinner.) Let’s stop trying to eradicate fat people from the world, and start creating a world where fat people can thrive."
^^^^^ this 100%
This has to be up there in the top ten of most ridiculous and biased of “studies”. People are fat because they are less intelligent? Good grief 🙄
The through-line from century-old "race science" studies proving that European white people are superior to everyone else to garbage papers like this one is so clear. They just replaced "White European" with "Thin." Ragen's recommendations of Fearing The Black Body and Belly of the Beast should be required reading for anyone proposing "weight science" research.
To quote Aubrey Gordon from the Maintenance Phase podcast, their unstated premise is always "We know fat people are bad, but *why*?"
Just a quick rather sarcastic comment on the study/article in question: I doubt the cognitive superiority of the quoted author who never learned the mnemonic "people are not whiches." That "which" should have been a "whom."
Sorry, should have added his or her confusion of numbers: is the writer trying to draw a distinction (as some do) between "overweight" and "obese"? It's convenient to be able to count in or out at will those who are just a few percent "overweight" as opposed to those 10% or 38% or 80% over some arbitrary number.
Anyone remember, as I do, when height/weight charts presumed women were measured wearing high-heeled shoes?
Yes! I had forgotten, but when you mentioned it, it came back to me. I was always mentally subtracting two inches from the charts.
This just infuriates me. I’m smart, damn smart, and all my life, people have been surprised to learn that because they assumed I was stupid because I’m fat.