HealthNotDiets Digest, Issue 5, 2018
January 29 - February 4, 2018
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Happy reading!
Articles and Blogs
What therapy taught be about disordered eating
by Cara Peterson
“There is immense complexity to the issue of an eating disorder. Keep this in mind and be gentle with those struggling with this issue, whether it be someone you know or yourself.”
Does medicine overemphasise IQ?
by Ezekiel Emanuel and Emily Gudbranson
“If medicine hopes to identify and train a phenomenal next generation of caring, effective physicians who can lead multidisciplinary teams and induce patient behavior change, the medical profession must start by recognizing the importance of EQ."
“Success” and Stomach Amputation
by Ragen Chastain
"Thin people are not required to get a surgery that risks their lives and forces them to engage in behaviors that approximate an eating disorder just to get basic healthcare. Fat people shouldn’t either. “
To those who want your fat family member to lose weight
by Your Fat Friend
“Did you think of my life as something on hold, an understudy reading lines until my thinner self came along to star in the real show? ...Had I misread your warmth as love? Had it been tinged with pity all these years?”
Your Nutrition Advice Won't Help if It's Not Culturally Sensitive
by Christine Byrne
"Seven registered dietitians of various cultural & ethnic backgrounds [were asked] about the intersection of food & culture, why diversity in the nutrition field is so important, & how they work to give culturally sensitive nutrition advice.”
What happens when food just doesn’t interest you anymore?
by Sarah Vance
"[losing interest in previously loved foods] is a sign that you are leaving diet culture behind and spending more time doing more interesting things in your life.”
The intensive care doctor who nearly died in her own ward - and what it taught her
by Dr Rana Awdish
"To listen to our patients with a generous ear requires a willingness to relinquish control of the narrative, to abandon our assumptions to make room for truth.”
Body acceptance begins with grieving the thin ideal
by Meredith Noble
"Even though this process can produce some difficult emotions, the peace that is waiting for you when you truly accept yourself and eat intuitively is positively worth it. “
This is such good advice.
How video games demonize fat people
by Anshuman Iddamsetty
"In 2018, the AAA video game remains our most persuasive and powerful cultural product. And yet it almost exclusively depicts the fat body, my body, as a noxious threat, a monstrosity, an object of ridicule, something to be dealt with violently. But why?”
Why I'm not body positive
by Michelle Hopewell
“The idea of being positive about your body & loving your body is something that should be universal. It shouldn’t be that some people get to love themselves & others don’t. So please regardless of who you are & even if it’s uncomfortable, love yourself.”
The fragility of body positivity: how a radical movement lost its way
by Evette Dionne
“the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was snatching body positivity out of the hands of fat women and then convincing them it was never theirs in the first place.”
Research &
Clinical Practice
Next time someone is claiming that larger people eat poorly compared with smaller people you can show them this.
Guo, X., et al. "Healthy eating index and obesity." European journal of clinical nutrition 58.12 (2004): 1580.
Here’s a great example of how fears about larger bodies and their capability for healing and function have led to unnecessary delay and exclusion from life enhancing surgeries. This paper essentially says ‘oh, turns out that we don’t have any medical justification for weight based discrimination in knee replacement surgery....’
Vaishya, Raju, et al. "Is total knee replacement justified in the morbidly Obese? A systematic review." Cureus 8.9 (2016).
"a large proportion of US adults are misclassified as cardiometabolically unhealthy according to BMI categories...entities should not rely on BMI when formulating health policy [and] a clinical focus guided by weight and BMI may be misdirected."
Tomiyama, A. J., et al. "Misclassification of cardiometabolic health when using body mass index categories in NHANES 2005–2012." International Journal of Obesity 40.5 (2016): 883.
Interesting editorial in the journal BMJ Evidence Based Medicine: discusses where marketing and medicine meet: manipulating the definition of disease should only be done to the benefit of those suffering.
Brodersen, John, et al. "Overdiagnosis: what it is and what it isn’t." BMJ (2018): 1-3.
Shareables
'Too hard' never stopped early heart surgeons from trying to do better. 'Too hard' never stopped oncologists from trying to do better.
'Too hard' is no excuse to not try to improve surgical outcomes for people in larger bodies.
We're itching to make heroes out of you.
‘Weight loss’ is like that dude at work that takes the credit for everyone else’s work.
Ask: what did the intervention group do that the control group didn’t?
>>the reported outcomes may be a result of any (or a combination) of those things, not necessarily the weight loss.
Wanna see what actually happens during intentional weight loss without the ‘sales pitch glow’? Look into the famine and malnutrition research literature.
If you don’t have the regular practice or capacity to monitor patients closely for an eating disorder or internalized weight stigma, you should not make routine weight loss recommendations for a specific diet. There’s a whole profession for that: refer them to a dietitian, a non-diet one!
Thinking that you don’t need to ‘do the work’ is exactly why you need to do it!
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See anything you think I'd like to share or comment about? Post in the comments below or email me at fiona@healthnotdiets.com