#medical fatphobia tag

[cygnahime]

I would like to thank the fat/disabled/mad/trans/etc communities for making me confident enough that when the plastic surgeon I saw today started on "diets TOTALLY work, you should try mine," I simply told him we were done and left.

[thebibliosphere]

Man, fuck doctors sometimes. I was finally able to see a neurologist with the intent of figuring out why about a month or so after a surgery I suddenly couldn't stand or sit upright without lower back pain. Like, very, VERY suddenly this came on.

And they told me to try losing weight about it after giving me a once-over.

And when I directly asked them if I wasn't what sh considered 'overweight', would she order many tests? Yes, she said she would.

I -did- get to make her backpedal by explaining I had worked hard to gain weight since for most of my life I was extremely underweight due to neglect, at least.

All this to say I relate to your tylenol woes. May we both find the help we need soon.

Man, doctors have such sticks up their asses about weight. I'm so sorry that was your experience.

I remember when I first moved here, and I started seeing a new healthcare provider. My symptoms weren't as bad yet, but they were heading that way, and the advice they kept giving me was to "lose weight."

I was 125lbs soaking wet. If that.

When I dropped... gosh, I think it was 30, almost 40lbs in about 3 months last year, I actually had a nurse congratulate me on it. Like no, Deborah, that's a sign there is something very, very wrong. (spoiler alert, it was my mast cells burning down my GI tract.)

Fatphobia literally kills.

[cygnahime]

what the ENTIRE fuck, that's actually maybe the winner for "you let your fatphobia do all your thinking" because that is THE OPPOSITE of how The Process works and has been since the invention of pregnancy????

Pregnancy consumes A Lot of energy because "eating for two" is not a joke but the literal truth! So people who are short on food and under physical strain, their bodies are LESS LIKELY to sustain a pregnancy rather than flush that shit! Because your body is focused on keeping YOU alive!

It's the same reason that second babies often come along quickly after an adopted/ivf/surrogacy first baby, because "fear of failure" is another form of stress that reduces fertility/pregnancy success rates.

but no, losing weight will DEFINITELY both reassure your body's systems and make growing an entire person easier on you. because the worst thing you can possibly be is FAT.

apparently it is common in fertility clinics to recommend to their (fat) patients...to lose weight

bro what the fuck are you talking about. you think DIETING or EXERCISING MORE is going to make someone's body think they are BETTER able to have a baby??? no!!! someone trying to become pregnant should probably actually be trying to eat more fats and folic acid and shit! they should be going into fat bear mode!!! convince that body you are in SUCH a safe metabolic place to nourish a pregnancy!

anyway there are no positive effects to this practice and (despite it NOT BEING NOTED) seems to have negative outcomes on subsequent pregnancies. quelle surprise.

[lastoneout]

CW: Discussions of weight loss, fatphobia, eating disorders, and cancer.

I still cannot get over how when I dropped 30lbs in part because I had a massive IBS flare for like two months that was so bad I was going to get multiple tests to make sure I didn't have cancer and yet I could not and STILL can't even mention it to a doctor(or most people) without them congratulating me. Like there are a few things a doctor can say that piss me the fuck off but congratulating me for dropping 30lbs during a period of my life where I thought I might be DYING instantly makes me hate them. I'm STILL having to say "I got really sick and lost 30lbs" to make people shut the fuck up. I was getting skinny so fast it was scaring my family AND me but whatever I guess being skinny is SO great and I should be thankful I went through hell that permanently changed my body in a way that I genuinely don't like!

'Cuz that's the other thing, I don't like how I look now. I gained like ~8lbs when I was in bed with the blood clot and ngl I started actually liking the way my body looked again. I don't like how I look rn, my fiance does(he loves how I look 100% of the time and I appreciate that endlessly) but even he admits I looked happier and healthier when I weighed 160lbs and now I kinda just look like I'm exhausted. When I got up to 143lbs I was looking in the mirror like "oh, I almost look like myself again, I forgot what it felt like to be happy with my body" like I looked healthier!! But nah the weight is already falling off because 135lbs is my new baseline and there's nothing I can do about that. (Also I hated how I had to get new knee braces made because my old ones don't fit anymore and I had to buy new clothes because the ones I enjoyed don't fit anymore and augh the only thing that is making me like my body rn is dressing butch, if I didn't have that I'd be going insane.) And I still have to deal with people acting like this thing that has legit ruined years of body positivity work is a good thing. Because at least I'm skinnier.

Society is so sickeningly "skinny positive" it legit disgusts me. And like this isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to what fat people go through, and it's why I'm so fucking passionate about fat liberation, I've watched tons of people I love completely destroy themselves to look more like me and I have to sit here and not only feel awful because I love them and don't want them to have to go through this but also because I know even looking like me wont be enough. Doctors still tell me to lose weight because I'm like a couple of lbs outside of "healthy" on the BMI scale, which is insane I weigh less than 10lbs more than I did when I was SIXTEEN atm and I can't say anything because I know they won't listen if I explain that even just being this thin is making me hate myself and feel like shit.

Fatphobia is so fucking evil. It absolutely destroys people. I genuinely baffles me that most skinny people can't see it because it's being used against us too, just in an affirming way and to me that is genuinely repulsive. Every compliment on my weight loss makes me want to punch through a brick wall. Knowing my story is going to be used to bludgeon other people with my condition becuase I lost weight without doing anything so "everyone" should be able to makes me so angry I could cry. It actually makes me feel sick to be praised for this, to know I'm a "success" story, to be lumped in with people who hate the people I love for the way their bodies naturally are, who want my loved ones to destroy themselves, who think I'm better than them when I am absolutely not.

Fat liberation is what we need to work towards, not "skinny positivity" or whatever, this is a systemic issue just like sexism and racism and homophobia and ableism and it must be dismantled if we want to create a better world for us all.

[mars-ipan]

god i cannot wait to be off these steroids…

[the-moogle-of-your-nightmares]

new most hated genre of post: people ~getting back at the fatphobes~ for 'complimenting' fat characters by saying they're 'so brave' and 'look like they're so soft and wholesome and give good hugs 🥺' (indeed fucking gross, call it out, stop that) by '''joking''' about how skinny people are 'so cute because they're so sharp and bony and give bad hugs, and you could totally break them in half 🥺'

fun fact! you are not describing the bodies of privileged thin people who just can't take a joke! you are describing the bodies of people who are disabled and/or otherwise extremely ill and/or starving! you are talking about people who face high rates of mockery and medical abuse! even without the other three factors, being underweight has massive impacts on your health and shortens your lifespan greatly! it also makes you physically weaker and much easier for people to manhandle, hurt, and kill, because unlike being fat, being underweight is inherently mutually exclusive with being strong.

how fucking sick do you have to be to talk this way about the bodies of cancer patients, AIDS patients, people with other wasting diseases, people who are atrophied from disability and/or confinement by abusers making it impossible to exercise, people with eating disorders that manifest by reducing their body mass, homeless and food-insecure people in regions that have decided arbitrarily that they should starve, famine victims, war victims, VICTIMS OF THE

FUCKING HOLOCAUST

what kind of soulless fucking ghoul do you have to be to mock us, to say that our bodies are unpleasant to even be touched and treat it as the height of ridiculousness that anyone we love might find us to be anything else, to imply that the only reason someone actually would is because they have a gross objectifying fetish, to treat us as a joke to own people who say annoying things about your stupid fucking blorbos, to talk gleefully about beating and maiming and murdering us and what our bodies would feel and sound like crunching under your hands

i watched my mother die of cancer. i watched her body wither even more quickly than most--on the order of weeks, not months--after she had a sudden stroke that destroyed her sense of taste. i watched her break down in tears more than once when she tried something different, just a tiny little snack, in hopes that maybe this time it would be edible, only for this one to taste like car exhaust too, because she was so, so hungry. she died so hungry.

i'm not going to get too deep into my own body and medical issues here. just writing this out so far is about as much as i can handle, and vomiting up all the years of trauma right now would just about break me. but in short i am an extremely underweight disabled person who's been watching my mind and body waste away for a long time, knowing there's basically nothing i can do about it and it's very likely to kill me, being constantly concern-trolled and splained and guilted and shamed and victim-blamed about how i just don't want to get better, how if i just had the right attitude and powered through it and tried this special diet they read about on facebook and 'it's not that hard to make food, just.... do it :/' then i would magically be okay, i've had people fetishize my body and praise me for it and say i'm lucky and it's great that i lost weight and they wish i had my body when i was malnourished/physically ill/actually dying, i've had to see constant victim-blaming Scare Em Straight PSAs from supposedly eating-disorder-conscious assholes about how DID YOU KNOW THAT IF YOU DON'T EAT ENOUGH YOU'LL [gruesome detailed descriptions of what will happen to me, culminating in my early death],' i've had caretakers demand to know who they can pawn off responsibility on for my death if i died soon so they wouldn't get in trouble for neglect when the police found my corpse

'well fat people also--' shut the FUCK up i'm not talking about fat people right now, i am talking about underweight people because we are the ones you can't keep out of your fucking mouths. have a brain and a fucking soul, and also i can attest that your blorbos are shit solely on account of you using them as an excuse to behave like this. FUCK you.

[homunculusalphonse]

fatphobia under the guise of "concern" for one's health is still shitty, regardless of "good" intentions.

[anothermonikan]

saw a post that annoyed me and chose to not rant in tags about it because it wasn't even a fault with the post it was an addition that ticked me off and OP doesn't need to hear all that. I'm god's strongest warrior <3

[hazel2468]

Ok I gotta bitch about something real quick here.

So, good news first- got a diagnosis. PCOS. I had a feeling (and several of my friend are now correct), but it's good to have a solid "Yeah, this is what's going on here".

But anyway. Kvetch time.

So, my endo is pretty great. She offered to hook me up with their gender specialist, so I might be getting the ball rolling on that soon, which is exciting and terrifying. But we had a call and went over everything. More good news- my levels look great. Everything is normal and my thyroid levels are, quote, "beautiful". But we started talking about PCOS, talked a little bit about HRT. And then she brought up diet stuff, which I imagine is standard.

But what annoyed me was that she was talking about how to adjust what I eat because of "health risks". And so I asked her to clarify for me- is there anything in my labs of concern? And she said no- everything looks fine and dandy. I asked if there is any indication that I should be making any kind of serious changes based on my labs. Again, no. Everything looks good.

So... The only "issue" there is my weight.

My levels are good. I've been in a bit of an experimental "what can I eat that won't upset the void where my gallbladder used to be?" phase, but overall I've been eating the same as I have for years. I did tell her I wanted to work out more and, now that I'm fucking finally fixing my sleep schedule I might actually be able to make time to lift in the mornings.

But what annoyed me was that all of that stuff- good stuff- eating in a way that doesn't upset my intestines, working out more because fuck it I wanna be a strong theydy, the fact that my labs are not only normal but look great... All of it just falls before the fact that I am fat. All of it.

And to be clear, I'm not pissed at my doctor, specifically. I'm pissed because all of it seems so standard. It's the "this is the PCOS spiel" kind of thing- the general stuff that you say. And the annoying thing is that, apparently (and I was already well aware of this but it always sucks to be reminded), it doesn't actually matter what my habits are, what I eat, if I work out or not, how my labs look, at least in the eyes of the general medical standards.

No, what matters is that I am fat, and therefore I am unhealthy and need to change everything- even though literally everything else speaks to the contrary.

And what's even MORE annoying is that... I have PCOS. I have hypothyroid. Those are BOTH conditions that cause weight gain. Those are both conditions that make losing weight even harder than it already fucking is for most people.

So the fact that the medical standards for diagnosing someone with PCOS involve looking at their BMI and determining that they need to change their whole lifestyle solely based on how they look- not on their actual habits, not on their ACTUAL LAB RESULTS, but their weight?

IDK that just annoys me. It pisses me off. It put a damper on the whole "You have an answer finally AND also you're doing really well health wise.... OH but you're fat and so we need to lecture you about your diet and exercise and imply that the reason you should do those things is to lose weight."

[batz]

neurologist says my optic nerves are fine/same as last few appointments but still tells me to start taking 12 diamox a day and tells me to get out before i can ask why . also diamox like. cannot fix an issue involving my veins. but idk im not doctor so whatever

im 100% not taking 12 pills a day tho thatd hurt me. past few appointments hes just been rlly wanting me to have more diamox even tho he keeps saying im in remission but he wont answer when i ask why i need the meds then

[nixerium]

Ah yes, gotta love the recent hit game of “can I shower or will that take most of my energy”

Especially since it’s a trick question anyways

[vampirebutterflies]

actually I’m gonna bitch here for a sec like WHY is being disabled so expensive like I have very good healthcare and thank fuck for rebates but !!! still!!!!

main bullshittery bugging me rn though is the absolutely unrelenting fatphobia (and so many layers of ableism) in anything to do with hashimotos

like it is FUCKING infuriating to have this constant rhetoric of “you have hashimotos?? here’s how to stop being so FAT and UGLY! (:” “here’s how to LOSE WEIGHT with hashimotos!!” “15 tips to drop 15 kilos!!!” “got hashimotos? comment HELP ME or dm to get access to my private HASHI WEIGHT LOSS group!!!” “best diets to lose weight with hashimotos!!”

even the ones that sneak this shit into otherwise decent resources you’ll have a good run of beneficial info punctuated by “oh you’re probably balding and ugly and fat but that’s okay!!! we EMBRACE body positivity here!! by bullying you into being skinny and fitting our beauty standards so you can finally love yourself!!!!” “link in bio for my best selling book HASHI HELL TO HEALED HEAVEN: HOW I SAVED MYSELF FROM BEING FAT AND BALDING AND UGLY AND TURNED INTO THE PERFECT THIN BEACHY BABE!” Violence violence violence murder maiming killing arson destruction FUCK

[thebibliosphere]

im glad you've figured out the boob situationTM, but i must say that i was stopped in my fucking tracks when you mentioned both that you're 135 pounds and that youve had doctors say you need to loose weight. 135 pounds?!? if one ever needed a clearer example of how america's medical institutions are obsessed with weight over the actual health and vital signs of the patient, that'd be the perfect case, because what person weighing 135 pounds needs to LOSE WEIGHT? no one needs to loose weight as much as they just need to exercise for general health, but people at that weight especially don't need to. they fucking shouldn't.

what, are they working under the assumption that your muscles can't fuck you up further if you're just skin and bones instead? some goddamn doctors, man.

Mmm. It's unfortuantely not limited to the US healthcare system. I grew up in the UK, and I've got pretty strong memories of always being told to lose weight even when I was at my absolute lightest so I'd be at the "better" end of the BMI scale.

Because of this, back when I first moved to the US 10 years ago, I weighed about 120-ish lbs soaking wet, and the first doctor I saw looked at me over the top of her glasses, tsked, and told me that based on my BMI I should aim to be 5lbs lighter for optimal health and that "extra" 5lbs was why I had acid reflux.

(Spoiler alert: even when I rapidly dropped 30lbs last year due to a medical complication, I still had acid fucking reflux.)

I'm so, so thankful now that core providers of my healthcare team think BMI is bullshit because, holy fuck, it it bullshit.

[honeysuckle-venom]

Discussion of weight, BMI, medical fatphobia, weight loss medications, ed triggers, internalized fatphobia, desire to relapse, and other related content. No numbers, ultimately recovery oriented but pretty honest about the relapsey feelings

Overall the hepatologist appointment a week ago was good. She said mostly the same thing as the surgeon; it's good to be off the birth control, I'm not in danger currently unless I go back on any estrogen based medication or become pregnant; I need another MRI in a few months to monitor the tumors. She didn't have time to look at the MRI images before the appointment as they take a while to upload, but promised to look at them with the radiologist and surgeon there and call me once she'd looked.

She did mention weight loss could be the one other factor that might help shrink the tumors. Going off the birth control is the biggest thing by far, but she said weight loss might help. I tried to make it fairly clear that I wasn't interested in that, that I had a history of anorexia and was not looking to pursue weight loss at this time. She backed off, and it was okay. But then when I was leaving they handed me a paper with information about the visit, and in big font on the first page it listed my height, weight, and BMI. I'd resigned myself to knowing my weight a few months ago bc of all of these doctor's appointments, but it's been at least 5 years since I've known my BMI, and that was a very conscious choice on my part. I know BMIs are bullshit, but I used to be dangerously obsessed with them and it's an even bigger trigger than weight or calorie numbers are for me. So that was really distressing, and has been bothering me and making food even more difficult than normal for the past week.

Today, thankfully during my therapy session, the doctor called back to discuss the MRI images and her consultation about them with the other doctors. And she again brought up my weight, said that the other doctors all suggested weight loss, and that there was a new type of weight loss drug she could put me on. I lost it, and my therapist stepped in and explained why that was a bad idea. It was one of the most triggering conversations I've had in a very, very long time.

I used to be quite thin, but gained an extreme amount of weight very quickly when I was put on psychiatric medication (esp seroquel) as a teenager. My psychiatrist tried to counteract this by giving me incredibly fucked up advice about what to eat and by putting me on diabetes medication (I'm not diabetic) for its off-label use as an appetite suppressant/weight loss drug. When that had bad side effects she tried to put me on weight loss shots, but I refused. But she spent years pushing various forms of weight loss medication, and it was honestly somewhat traumatic bc of the way it was done/tied up in my ED history.

I stopped seeing that psychiatrist a few years ago, and my current therapist knows I still have an eating disorder, even though it's no longer strict anorexia, and that pursuing intentional weight loss would be incredibly detrimental for me. She's worked to communicate this to my current PCP, and overall I've been fortunate enough not to have people constantly pushing weight loss like I used to expect. So today just really, really took me off guard and upset me. Someone telling me I needed a weight loss medication brought up sooo many triggered thoughts and feelings. I'm very skittish about medication in general, have a lot of medical and medication-based trauma, and have been trying to recover from decades of disordered eating and shame about my body. It was honestly one of the worst, most destabilizing things that could have happened to me.

I'm doing a bit better this evening, but I'm still really upset. I can feel all the different parts of my brain fighting. Part of me wants to cling to recovery and intuitive eating and anti-diet work and all of that stuff, and I know that's the right thing. But so many other parts of me are telling me that it's wrong and weak and bad and dirty and ugly and selfish and lazy and and and and. That I should listen to doctors, that I should diet, that I should relapse, that I should take the pills, that I should get weight loss surgery, that I should never allow myself to be okay with being fat. And I know that's wrong. I know. But the internal fighting and conflict between different world views is vicious right now. It makes me feel dizzy and sick and psychotic and desperate and scared and angry. It's awful. It's just really awful.

[lastoneout]

Like there really is NOTHING like hearing every doctor say "we don't see this in people your size :/ but idk try losing weight that should fix it" only to come back a year later like "okay I lost 20lbs and it didn't fix it, I think maybe y'all are completely full of shit actually" like I am PROOF you guys need to research this more because the science does NOT add up at all.

And I know I fucking KNOW it's bcs this is a "fat person problem" so they just don't care to look into it more, which makes me feel like shit bcs I was already skinny and I have it easier than actual fat people for sure but like??? Medical fatphobia is literally ruining lives. I refuse to believe there isn't more to this condition, but no one cares. All their advice boils down to "lose weight" even tho my very existence proves this is not a fucking weight problem.

God I hate having a rare condition. And I fucking hate every single doctor who ever dismissed people suffering from it because they were sub-human and "just need to lose weight". (And like, it's not the point at all, but I cannot lose more weight. I lost so much so fast I thought I had cancer. I'm nearly as skinny as I was when I was sixteen. That's not how being an adult human works and I firmly believe actually hitting that weight would destroy my health.)

Anyway if one more doctor tells my skin and bones ass to lose more weight I'm going to leap at them like a rabid animal for me and for every single fat person who came before me. None of them deserve to get away with this shit.

[blackmoldmp3]

gastrointestinal upset will have ur doctor recommended food tracking app giving u a good grade in not eating