Once upon a time, the world didn’t hate fat or fat people and dieting wasn’t a $72 billion US industry. Take yourself to an art museum or thumb through an art book (not modern) and see for yourself. Or read Ken Mondschein’s article, “Fatness and Thinness in the Middle Ages.”  To be sure, fat has been associated with greed, gluttony, excess, and other negative traits. However, he says, there were times when fat was viewed more positively: “So, too with foreign lands—the fictionalized John of Mandeville tells of how foreigners ate inordinate amounts, and the romancier Rusticello has Ma ..read more

Checking out after a medical appointment, I was trying to write a check on a (to me) high counter and remarked to the nurse that I wished I were taller. She said, “But you’re so tiny, so petite.” I replied to all 5 feet 1 inch of her—an attractive, slightly higher weight woman—"Well, you’re not exactly tall. There’s not much difference in our height.” Then came the kicker when she said, “Oh, no, but you’re thin. I wish I were thin like you.” Though I’ve had these conversations before, they still stun me and I never know what to say. There wasn’t much I could say with people around us and me be ..read more

There is absolutely no doubt that fat phobia is alive and well and thriving in our culture. The question is whether it has to take root in your mind and make you miserable. Do you even know of anyone who’s of higher weight and pays no attention to fat phobia? My guess is that you don’t and that’s one of the reasons you fall prey to it. So, let me introduce you to Shannon Walton who finally got tired of being bullied about her weight. “Battling obesity—and telling bullies to ‘Kiss it!’” tells her story and shows how she took charge of her life and fought back. Says Walton who lives in Sheffield ..read more

I wonder if higher weight people are feeling more under siege than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic. I don’t mean because of heightened stress, feeling home bound, or battling with increased emotional eating, although they are all factors to be considered. I mean feeling under siege due to the comments of others about higher weight people being at greater risk for becoming seriously ill with the virus. If you’ve been on the receiving end of such comments, don’t for a minute let people shame you. I’m not going to go into numbers about the relationship between COVID and weight because that is b ..read more

The actress Kate Upton once declared, “To me, what’s sexy is when you look like you’re having a good time.”  Many girls and women try to look like they feel sexy. They dress provocatively and carry themselves seductively. One girl wore pants to her therapy session with the word “juicy” scrolled in rhinestones on her backside, and another girl came to her session in four-inch stilettos.  But if you are happy in your body, you don’t need to turn it into a billboard advertising your wares. Authentic good body image comes from inner self-satisfaction.  Because th ..read more

Embrace: One Woman’s Journey to Inspire EveryBODY is an engaging, enlightening 2016 documentary, the story of Australian photographer, wife and mother Taryn Brumfitt who decides to stop hating her body. Here are quotes about the film that I hope make you want to see it. You can watch it on Amazon Prime, find the video on Apple iTunes, and check out the trailer at .  From MEDA Inc. (I’m a former advisory board member): “The protagonist and director of the documentary, Taryn Brumfitt, struggled with her body image. After she had multiple children, she became obsessed with obtaining a ..read more

We’re all used to seeing successful people, mostly women, paired with low or average weights. This is what the media shows us, what society promotes as reality, and what we come to believe. But watching a documentary, Surge, on aspiring Democratic legislators, it dawned on me that some of these women were role models not only as females but as women who would be called “higher weight” in this culture and weren’t stuck sitting around telling themselves they couldn’t do this or that because of it. Actually, I’d had this thought when I first learned of Stacey Abrams, former member of the Georgia ..read more

Off the top of your head, how connected are you to your body? I don’t mean to your appetite, but how synced you are with the pain and pleasure you feel in your entire corporeal self. Your disconnection is both a cause and result of dysregulated eating. The hopeful news is that, with practice, you can tap into sensing exactly how your body is feeling any time which will help you enormously in making wiser decisions about food. You do this by performing a body scan (“Oh, Hello There, Body” by Greater Good (11/26/19, Lion’s Roar, https://www.lionsroar.com/oh-hello-there-body/, accessed 2/1/20) in ..read more