Thanks to the 26 people who joined me in lively discussions about avoiding weight stigma and addressing anti-fat bias at the networking tables at the CFHL Forum last week. We talked about what works - explicitly stating that weight does not equal health, meeting our program participants where they’re at, bringing empathy, and more. And we talked about what’s challenging - lack of good curricula, media and societal messages, and more. We only scratched the surface of this important topic, and we agreed that we wanted to continue the conversation. So join us here! Tell us what you’re doing to address bias and avoid weight stigma in your work. Share your challenges. Let’s keep talking!
A few years ago we changed our team name from “Obesity Prevention Team” to “Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) Team” in order to be more inclusive and sensitive, and recognizing that the term “obesity” is very loaded and can be triggering for people. I’ve been learning a lot about the hisorical and racist origins of anti-fat bias. Right now I’m reading the book Fearing the Black Body: The racist origins of fat phobia, by Sabrina Strings. I also recommend the Maintenance Phase podcast for a takedown of diet and wellness culture. One of the hosts is Aubrey Gordon and she wrote another good book called “You Just Need to Lose Weight and 19 Other Myths About Fat People.” One of the things she talks about is how you need to design interventions for and with fat people in order to really be inclusive and make people feel safe, and I’ve been thinking about that a lot.
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Love the name change - language matters! I also like the Maintenance Phase podcast, and the Sabrina Strings book is next on my list!
Hi all, I am a weight-inclusive, fat-positive dietitian, and relatively new to CFHL. One big challenge I’m facing is the lack of weight-inclusive and food neutral curricula available among the state-approved curricula list. One thing I’ve found that works well is introducing weight stigma and anti-fat bias from a DEI lens.
I would love to see CFHL as a whole shift from the current weight-centric model (healthy = low weight; promoting weight loss and food rules is the answer) to a weight-inclusive model (healthy = looks different for everyone; promoting holistic wellbeing; body diversity is normal and celebrated).
A resource to share:
Looking forward to connecting with others who are interested in supporting this change!
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Thanks for sharing this resource, it is super helpful! I would also like to see CFHL shift to a weight-inclusive model and it would be great to have curricula to support this, and remove curricula from the list that are harmful.