25/09/2025
Borrowing this gem from the very excellent
This was not a concept that I really fully grasped until I started working in the eating disorder field.
Having had my own lived experience of an eating disorder, I was all across the other stuff. Emotional dysregulation, low self esteem, poor body image, perfectionism, cognitive distortions, attachment insecurity, over evaluation of weight and shape, etc. The list goes on, and all of that remains true and relevant.
But it wasn’t until I started doing the deep dive as a clinician that I truly began to grasp the impact of weight stigma and how all of that other stuff, in a way, exists inside it. Inside weight stigma and diet culture; the pervasive and all-consuming “water that we swim in.”
I started to learn how weight stigma exists at multiple levels; structurally (in systems, I.e. healthcare, education, policy), interpersonally (between people), and intrapersonally (within oneself).
I started to understand just how brainwashed and indoctrinated we all are, at all levels, into believing that there is one narrowly defined “right way” to have or exist in a body, and that every other “way” was wrong and was a project to be fixed.
Once you take the colloquial “red pill” and you start to learn about weight stigma, diet culture, and fat phobia, you can no longer un-see it. It’s everywhere. In our homes, our workplaces, in advertising and media, and importantly for this years , in healthcare.
Do yourself an experiment, and spend a day noticing…
- how many negative references are you exposed to that are related to weight or diet?
- how many assumptions do you notice people making about someone’s health, happiness, or quality of life based on their weight?
- how many times do you encounter the idea that bodies are “a project to be fixed”
