Annie’s Healthy Weight & Eating Blog

If you are interested in the cultural issues that underlie the obesity epidemic, the Rudd Center at Yale’s website is required reading. They have done some great research on the social stigmatization around weight, and in my opinion have some of the most progressive and comprehensive ideas on making real change at the national level.

Here’s some info from their site on the shift in public opinion around obesity. Interesting reading!

There has been an interesting trajectory of public opinion about obesity. The majority of Americans are clearly concerned with obesity and there is growing support for obesity-targeted policies. The following table presents the changes that have been found in support of strategies that influence the environment in order to promote better nutrition.

Source: Brownell KD. The chronicling of obesity: Growing awareness of its social, economic, and political contexts. J of Health Politics and Law. 2005; 955-64.

The New York Times has been covering the social stigmatization of weight recently. Gina Kolata reported in an October Week in Review (their weekly OpEd section), that there is an ever- louder beat of the drum from researchers (and of course amplified by the media), blaming obese individuals for everything from higher gas prices to global warming. There was another piece more recently on the growth of fat-discrimination as a college study topic.

In essence, Kolata’s piece notes that social stigmatization of overweight is at an all-time high. But, while the great tide of disapproval helped stem other unhealthy behaviors like smoking or drinking, unfortunately it doesn’t work that way with our most ubiquitous coping mechanisms: comfort food and inactivity. All that self-loathing and fear of weight just makes us gain more.

Evidence mounts that it’s the healthy behaviors (being physically active and following a healthy diet) that determine health to a greater extent than the number on the scale. Remember that CDC report that noted that people slightly overweight lived longer? So, a thin person who under eats or overexercises is less healthy than an overweight individual following a healthy lifestyle.

But does that help us to exhale around accepting our body size? No! Why?

I think that food and fashion industries have just been wildly successful at sending messages to shape the culture and ensure our insecurity. An unhappy person is a great consumer, after all. Want to see what I mean? take a look at some of the ads on www.about-face.org. To learn more about this topic and connect with others around it, check out the International Association of Size Acceptance. The have lots of downloads, reviews of the science around size acceptance, pod casts and links. Just tons of great information.

I think the way out of the hatred and stigmatization of weight is simple education. Kids now really need media literacy in order to become conscious of what they can do to live healthy lives today. And for adults, I think there is more support to renounce the unhealthy aspects of our culture - look at the popularity of yoga! Yoga, of course, is a wonderful way of doing the mental work around releasing some of the underlying issues that cause all the suffering around poor body image, and waking up to the truth that each and everyone of us is perfect, and is divine.