I’m a major nerd for infographics, so when this one came across my inbox, I decided it was worth sharing. It’s of course overly simplistic, but it highlights a few important points that are definitely worth making.

Via: Rehab International

I’ve talked here before about weight stigma. I’ve shared my perspective on how weight stigma develops, how it exists among fat and thin women, and how our modern-day efforts to curb obesity are resulting in furthering the phenomenon. I’ve given lots of examples and even asked readers to share their own stories of weight stigmatization.

I’ve tried to use Nourishing the Soul as a vehicle for weight stigma awareness, because I think it’s so crucial. If we can’t see it, we can’t address it. And I want to put it in the face of each and every one of us, so that we can’t turn a blind a eye for one more day.

But in all this skill we’re developing to spot weight stigma — at the grocery store or in the boardroom or on an airplane — there’s often one place that’s sadly overlooked: the mirror.

When I say that weight stigma exists everywhere, that includes within each and every one of us. As progressive and educated and enlightened as we may be. As fat or as thin as we may be. As many friends of various shapes and sizes as we may have. We all have internalized our cultural weight stigma.

To deny this is to play the blindness card, and I can tell you how I feel about that. It gets us nowhere but further entrenched in our own biases.

It’s impossible to exist in our society and not have internalized at least some of the fear surrounding weight. This fear is often all-consuming for the patients that I work with; but even those without eating disorders are victims of the cultural obsession with thinness. Stand at a party or by a water cooler and you’ll hear it — the insidious whisper of fat talk.

It’s Weight Stigma Awareness Week. In honor of the occasion, I’m urging all of us –myself included– to take a long hard look at how our internalized weight stigma shows itself. It might be in the way that I treat the customer in line behind me at the grocery or the assumptions I make about my co-worker’s dating life. It might be in private ways or public ways; it might shout or it might whisper. But if you listen hard enough, you can hear it.

If you’re curious to learn more about weight stigma and get educated on the faulty assumptions about weight, I’d encourage you to start with some of these great pieces –

Weight Stigma: Notice Your Own Behavior First

In ‘Obesity Paradox,’ Thinner May Mean Sicker

Women May Suffer Fat Stigma Even After Losing Weight

The Skinny on Fat and Thin

 How do you observe weight stigma? 

NEDA Awareness Campaign 

I hate to admit it, I really do, but I’m one of those people who really loves to support philanthropic efforts, but then allows… life… to get in the way. It’s not that I don’t support the cause or the mission. It’s not that I think I have more important things to do. It’s not that I’m lazy or uninterested. I just get busy. And Saturday mornings feel like such a good time to sleep in. And I’m really trying to save for a new car. And… a hundred other things. Can you relate?

I’m hoping for my sake there are some nods going on out there. 

The fact is, the pace of life often doesn’t make supporting an important cause as easy as it seems it should be. But when something’s important, like really important, it’s time to get moving. At least that’s what I’m telling myself as I lace up my walking shoes and heading the 2012 Chicago NEDA Walk in just a few short weeks.

See, NEDA is an organization that I admire. And I want to help them continue to do the amazing work that they do tirelessly. At it’s core, NEDA’s mission is to support individuals and families affected by eating disorders. They do this through efforts around prevention, improved access to quality treatment, and increased research funding to better understand and treat eating disorders. I find myself on their website regularly, pulling information for parents of my patients, referring to toolkits they’ve put together, checking out the location of next year’s conference, and learning what issues are being lobbied in Washington.

And since NEDA does so much for my field, asking so little in return, I figure it’s my responsibility (maybe honor) to help advance the work that they do.

NEDA Walks started a few years ago as a way to unite communities around the awareness of eating disorders while fundraising for NEDA’s amazing programs. The walks are fun, family-friendly, and non-competitive. What’s most amazing, though, is the sense of power that can be created when people come together to stand up against life-threatening illnesses.

There’s so much work left to be done, and I know that organizations like NEDA can’t do it alone. We need improved and more widespread prevention efforts. We need more funding for research to understand these disorders better. We need more resources for people struggling and those who care about them. We need more advocacy so that eating disorders are given the acknowledgement they deserve by politicians, laypeople, and insurance companies.

If you or someone you know has been affected by an eating disorder (and chances are, that’s true), then join me in supporting this amazing organization. Check out the NEDA website to learn how you can join or create a walk in your town, or feel free to contact me if you’d like support me in my efforts!

I write about weight every single day. Whether it’s a blog post, a patient’s progress note, a journal entry, or a conference proposal, I’m constantly putting pen to paper on the topic of weight.

And without fail, every single time I write the word “overweight” – which let me tell you, is often – I internally cringe. It just doesn’t feel right in my body or my mind. And I think I know why.

It’s not even so much that I think the word is mean or hurtful, though it most certainly can be. It suddenly lumps an individual person into a category of people whom have been stigmatized at every single turn. I think that there are plenty of people who, like myself, use the word clinically to describe a person of a certain size, but do not have any intention of harming someone.

Of course, there is also a large sector of people who use the word with little regard for the person who is tied to the other end of it. They say it with disgust, disdain, or dismissiveness. It’s used as invective and meant to imply something about the individual.

So those things are true. But what I actually don’t like about using the word “overweight” is that it implies that there is a normal weight at which this individual should be. Plenty of physicians might argue with me (and I’d tell them to read Health at Every Size and get back to me next week), but after years of observing people managing eating issues, I can assure you that there is no one right weight.

In the eating disorders field, we often talk about a “healthy weight range,” and many suggest that range to be within maybe pounds. But the truth is that a healthy range is much, much larger than that.

And in fact, research shows that the underweight are at higher risk of premature death than overweight or even obese (the extremely obese are also at higher risk). Scientists believe that a little extra weight can actually be very protective. So if we’re really concerned about the health of this nation, why do we focus on “overweight”?

How often do you hear the term “underweight” thrown around? I’ll tell you. A quick non-scientific review of google search results shows 8,520,000 results for “underweight” and 54,200,000 for “overweight.” That’s almost 6.5 times as many results.

So in all this talk about achieving a healthy weight, the idea of what a healthy weight even means often gets lost. The National Institute of Health defines it through Body Mass Index (BMI). This measurement has inherent flaws, however.  For one, BMI makes no distinction between weight from muscle and weight from fat. That means that people like Tom Cruise, George Clooney, and Tom Brady are all in the “overweight” range.

Drs. Yoni Freedhoff  and Arya Sharma have a definition of what they call “best weight” that I really like. They say that one’s best weight is, “whatever weight they achieve while living the healthiest lifestyle they can truly enjoy.” Got all that?

What I like about this definition is that it incorporates the most important factor in this entire equation – living a healthy and enjoyable life. If you’re in the “ideal weight range” but sedentary, depressed, and/or have poor health indicators (e.g. blood pressure, cholesterol), what’s so ideal about that?

I also love all of the amazing reader responses to the question of “How do you define a healthy weight?”

As I’ve said at least a hundred times on this blog, language is crucial. Words create our realities, and so throwing around terms like overweight that may not mean, well, anything, seems dangerous.

What do you think of the term “overweight”? If you have been called this, what is it like for you? If you use this term, why?