Status Updates From “You Just Need to Lose Weig...

“Fat people should be allowed to tell the stories of our own bodies.”

3/3 They only function when we lash together our drives to stigmatize mental illness, fatness, and trauma and they allow us to do what so many of us are already driven to do: ruthlessly judge fat people, even in the name of compassion.”

2/3 Fat people are neither created nor defined by trauma, disordered eating, or some vague idea of emotional dysfunction. These ideas only function if we believe that fatness is a failure, a derivation from the natural ideal that is thinness.

1/3 “We simply do not know why some people are fat and others are thin and the closer we get to an answer, the more complex the picture becomes. Pathologizing fatness as an expression of emotional brokenness is another way to marginalize fat people; first presuming that our bodies are cause for blame, then laying that blame squarely at our feet.

“Fat people have existed in every corner of our world, in every moment of our history. Like thin people, some of us experience traumas that stay with us for a lifetime, others don’t. Like thin people, some of us eat to comfort ourselves, others don’t. While all of the studies in this chapter offer sound scientific understanding of a correlation, it is only that. A correlation.”

mental health/trauma + weight

“That doctor diagnosed Nees with Obesity Pain. Later, Nees found out she had progressive scoliosis, a condition that isn’t caused by being fat, but can be caused by consistent physical activity in adulthood.”

Man, the framing of this sentence is disappointing, coming from a writer who works to break down health misinformation. Makes it sound like consistent physical activity is a detriment to our health.

2/2 - None account for the widespread and widely documented substandard healthcare received by fat people, which can lead to postponement of care, misdiagnosis of crucial health conditions, and denial of care altogether in some cases.”

1/2 “Each of these mortality estimates is just that, an estimate, based on existing available datasets. Few control for family histories of conditions they readily attribute to body weight, like type 2 diabetes or heart disease. -

“It is absurd to claim that all excess deaths of fat people are the result of being fat, just as it would be to claim that all swimmers die of drowning, all birthing people die in childbirth, or all people who wore jeans at the time of their death were killed by their Levi’s.“

kind of an inaccurate and foolish comparison in my opinion