This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter! If you like what you are reading, please consider subscribing and/or sharing! In their zeal to medicalize and pathologize higher-weight bodies for profit, the weight loss industry (and the advocacy groups they fund, and the elements of healthcare they influence) have worked hard to claim that “ob*sity” is a disease and then manipulate the definitions of ob*sity to their best interest. Let’s look at some:
As always, appreciate your fact-focused, common-sense approach. How to get that information out to the world often feels to me like David vs Goliath. I try to remember being told as a child that David won.
Today I'm curious about the news related to Medicare covering Wegovy for folks with heart disease or, it sounds to me, the potential for developing heart disease. (Which seems like everyone under the current broad interpretation!) Also read about a potential action by Congress to expand the use of these relatively new drugs. Wow! I'm gobsmacked.
The instant a medical provider uses the O word to try and push me back into eating-disordered behavior, I have a reflexive reaction. My eyes roll back and my ears close. If doctors really wanted to help patients achieve their best possible state of health, they'd stop doing this crap. It's been proven time and again that it doesn't work and, in fact, it does more harm than good.
I was also surprised by this a few years ago when I was writing a book chapter about BMI and realized there was no real definition of 'obesity in terms of body fatness anywhere! People throw numbers around but there is no real source! My book chapter btw is free and open access so anyone can download it it's called How body size became a disease and is in https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Critical-Obesity-Studies/Gard-Powell-Tenorio/p/book/9780367362447
Again the chapter is free to all, even though the rest of the book isn't.
As always, appreciate your fact-focused, common-sense approach. How to get that information out to the world often feels to me like David vs Goliath. I try to remember being told as a child that David won.
Today I'm curious about the news related to Medicare covering Wegovy for folks with heart disease or, it sounds to me, the potential for developing heart disease. (Which seems like everyone under the current broad interpretation!) Also read about a potential action by Congress to expand the use of these relatively new drugs. Wow! I'm gobsmacked.
Have you seen Audi Crooks? She plays basketball for Iowa State and is their high scorer often. She's got a larger body. I wonder what her BMI is?
The instant a medical provider uses the O word to try and push me back into eating-disordered behavior, I have a reflexive reaction. My eyes roll back and my ears close. If doctors really wanted to help patients achieve their best possible state of health, they'd stop doing this crap. It's been proven time and again that it doesn't work and, in fact, it does more harm than good.
I was also surprised by this a few years ago when I was writing a book chapter about BMI and realized there was no real definition of 'obesity in terms of body fatness anywhere! People throw numbers around but there is no real source! My book chapter btw is free and open access so anyone can download it it's called How body size became a disease and is in https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Critical-Obesity-Studies/Gard-Powell-Tenorio/p/book/9780367362447
Again the chapter is free to all, even though the rest of the book isn't.