Our culture worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue. People – particularly women, femmes, trans, people in larger bodies, and people with disabilities – believe that if their body doesn’t match the thin ‘ideal’ that they’re broken and fundamentally flawed. They spend massive amounts of time and energy trying to shrink themselves even though research has proven weight loss isn’t sustainable or healthy. Truth bomb: thinness does not equal health. If this has been a long-held belief of yours, you’ll want to listen in for a different perspective.
What you’ll learn in the episode: In this episode, you’ll learn:
- The myths that cause us to believe fat=unhealthy
- The social determinants of health
- How the fat=unhealthy myths are informing your relationship to food and your body
Mentioned on the show:
- K.M. Flegal, B.I. Gradubard, D. F. Williamson, and M.H. Gail. “Excess Deaths Associated with Underweight, Overweight, and Obesity.” Journal of the American Medical Association 293, no. 15 (2005): 1861-67.
- Vaughn W. Barrya et al., “Fitness vs. Fatness on All-Cause Mortality: A Meta-Analysis”, Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases 56, no. 4 (2014): 382-90, doi: 10.1016/j.pcad.2013.09.002.
- R.M. Puhl, T. Andreyeva, and K.D. Brownell, “Perceptions of Weight Discrimination: Prevalence and Comparison to Race and Gender Discrimination in America”, International Journal of Obesity 32, no. 6 (2008): 992-1000, doi: 10.1038/ijo.2008.22
- 12.S. Klein et al., “Absence of an Effect of Liposuction in Insulin Action and Risk Factors for Coronary Heart Disease”, New England Journal of Medicine 350, no. 25 (2004): 2549-57.
- 14. Michael Marmot and Richard G. Wilkinson, eds., Social Determinants of Health: The Solid Facts,2nd ed. (Copenhagen, Denmark: World Health Organization, 2003).
