Here we go, a post that is bound to turn some heads as it is a topic that is riddled with discrimination and people’s own views on body positivity/shaming. Now it would be idiotic and close minded of me to say that all doctors are either fatphobic or not, as they are a large group of individuals who all have their own personal prejudices and believes. However, there has been a rise in complaints from people who have been to the doctor for a check up and the conversation of weight and more specifically weight loss has arisen.
The only thing I can talk about with complete certainty is my own personal experience with the situation, as a teenager I was very overweight as well as asthmatic. I spent a lot of time in my teen years struggling with weight and my lung capacity, going into the hospital on multiple occasions when asthma attacks kept me from sleeping or being able to go day to day without difficulty. Every time I went in to see a doctor about the most recent asthma attack the conversation about my weight was brought up and it sucked, I felt terrible about my body every time they did.
But saying this, I never believed my doctors to be fatphobic when we were having these conversations, this is because many reasons. The largest reason for this was the fact that they only ever told me it would be beneficial for me to lose weight, as with the added weight on my body and on my organs it meant my lungs had to work even harder to get my body’s required amount of oxygen. A lot of people might think it was terrible for someone to tell me it would be a good idea for me to lose weight, but I was told by a lot of people to lose weight, it just happened that some of them were medical professionals.
I was told by family members, friends, crushes, bullies and other people I met that I should lose weight and all of them for varying reasons. My family and friends told me I should lose weight because they knew that when I looked in the mirror I wasn’t happened with what I saw. Crushes and bullies told me to lose weight because “No one is going to want to date you, looking like that.” And then other people probably told me just to make themselves feel better about themselves. This is where I feel the most important part of this comes in, the reason behind someone telling me to lose weight. My family and friends were looking out for my benefit and my wellbeing, the crushes and bullies would be a mix of not caring about how I felt or to purposely bring me down about how I looked.
Then there are the doctors who told me, and their reasoning behind telling me was never to make themselves feel better, they were not to shame me for how I looked, they weren’t doing it as an automatic response to seeing my size. It only ever came up towards the end of an appointment when either me or my parents would ask the doctor about what sort of thing would help improve my asthma and well being. Now, I am not a health professional, a nutritionist, or even a personal trainer and so I will never give advice to anyone about there weight unless they specifically ask me for it. With that in mind, I will only ever suggest weight loss with the preface of “If you want to lose weight…” as it is a choice of the individual.
My last point of this possibly controversial post will be that since my teenage years I have in fact lost weight, which I chose to do when I was tired of seeing myself in the mirror. However, the doctors were right my asthma improved beyond what I thought it could after I lost weight. Not to say that they are right about everyone, and we all know that the BMI system is deeply flawed. All I hope anyone reading this will take away from this post is not to label an entire profession for those inside it that are fatphobic and to take into account that weight is a huge factor when it comes to health and wellbeing meaning that it will be a topic of conversation during check ups.
The Nerdy Bartender 