#i'm assuming ethics certification is not a thing that's required because if so... HOW?

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

Shibusawa 🤝 N : researchers with extremely dubious certifications who electrocute children to extract their abilities

[fatphobiabusters]

I'm reminded of this quote I heard last year:

"I think the point at which the penny dropping as she puts it was when I came to realize that I couldn't guarantee that weight loss was going to improve health. And I was like, If I'm promoting this as a thing where I'm prescribing weight loss for patients, I'm encouraging people to, like, pick lower calorie options and all this kind of stuff and like—there's risk to what I'm saying. Like there is with anything in life, but there's risk to what I'm saying. There's risk to people's relationship with food. There's risk to their body image and how they see themselves. There's risk with eating disorders. There's all this risk that I now know about, and I can't guarantee the benefit that I thought was obvious. So it seemed like a no brainer to me. I was like, If I can't- like, as doctors we balance risk and benefit all the time. Like if we recommend a certain operation, there's risk there and there's always going to be risk there. And we would only recommend it if the benefits outweigh that risk. The same should be with weight loss. Why am I recommending weight loss when I can't guarantee it's sustainable, I can't guarantee it's going to improve someone's health, I can't guarantee that it's not going to actually worsen their health because there are a whole bunch of risks associated with people attempting different weight loss. So I need to just stop recommending it."

—Dr. Joshua Wolrich, an NHS surgical doctor (Train Happy podcast episode #28, But What About Weight and Health)

I think this quote is especially relevant since this doctor is a surgical doctor. If I'm remembering correctly, he was interested in the field of nutrition at the time he was a guest for this podcast (of which I haven't listened to the rest). I don't know whether or not he's gotten the required certifications since he said this and published his book, so it's easy to think "What would a surgical doctor know about weight and nutrition?" But as shown in this ask and likely so many other fat people's lives, any type of doctor at all will be so confident that it's their place to tell you to abuse your body to temporarily change your weight. They'll have no problem understanding when other aspects of the body are not their expertise, but not with weight because weight loss is just so "obvious." Surely that means it's okay then for me—an ear, nose, and throat doctor—to tell a patient to lose a little off the stomach. It's a simple "if-then" situation, similar to how allowing divorce causes more unhappy marriages and more divorce! Just look at the numbers and nothing else! /s

I also imagine that he as a surgical doctor did or still does participate in weight loss surgeries. So it's very easy to assume what you believe about weight and weight loss is correct when you don't question the deadly, extremely harmful, and pointless surgery you perform on fat people, especially when you're never the person who sees them three years down the line. You get to forget after performing the surgery and then move onto the next patient, but your fat patient never forgets. It's hard to forget when that surgery gave them an eating disorder, a substance use disorder, depression, suicidal ideation, the inability to eat barely anything beyond a single slice of ham due to their mutilated digestive organs, malnutrition, and then still after all of that they regained the weight despite an entire surgery and following the instructions afterwards to a T.

When people in the medical field actually follow their field's code of ethics, are actually given basic, unbiased education on weight, nutrition, and the experiences of fat people, and actually stay in the only lane they have the training to be in, then it's not hard to realize that insisting a random fat patient should lose weight when you know absolutely nothing about them besides the bare minimum information needed for you to help with a single part of their body is unethical, biased, stigmatizing, discriminatory, and harmful to that patient's health.

But when has the medical field ever cared about fat people's health anyway?

-Mod Worthy

medical fatphobia and weight loss medication tw i guess

today i saw my endocrinologist, and he asked me if i had ever considered going on a medication for weight loss. this has never happened to me before, and i told him that no i hadn't, and he told me to think about it.

i think the medication is wegovy, which is a medication originally for insulin resistance/diabetes that is now also approved to be prescribed "for obesity".

i just don't know what to think. i don't even really know what i'm asking specifically- maybe just if that's ever happened to y'all or if any followers have insight. i feel like i need to hear thoughts from other people who are actually educated on fatphobia and understand what it's like. thanks for any response you may have

Im not sure why an endo would think it's their place to talk on weight loss. That's something your primary doctor, the one who has your complete records and history, should do. Even if I think it's bad advice and rooted in fatphobia, at least that doctor has your whole info. It's uh. Audacious for these secondary doctors to think they should recommend weight loss, ever. They simply don't know enough about you as a patient to ever """"ethically""""" recommend it.

Like my gyno recommended weight loss to me for my pcos (Even though pcos causes weight gain but okay 🙄) like, uh, do you have my blood tests? If so you'd see they are fine. Did you minor in nutrition? No? Why are you talking to me about this shit then. I almost went off on her about how I have disordered eating and texture aversions so I'm lucky if I eat enough variety of foods to be nutritionally complete. (That whole thing was a wild ass mess. Like didn't expect aphobia in the gyno appointment but okay. By the time the weight loss talk started I was stunned. Two times I've seen this woman and she stunned me both times.)

Anyway all that to say is that, doctors might be educated on specific things but man, they can be ignorant and audacious.

I garentee our follows have experienced something like this. I'll post it so if they want to add on they can.

Im sorry that you had to deal with that.

-mod squirrel