This groundbreaking radio show is the only one out there totally dedicated to Health at Every Size and spreading the messages thereof. Pat and Peggy are a dynamic duo with charming personalities, tons of information at their disposal and a delightful way of sharing it. Their banter is fun, good-natured and humorous, and you can tell that they’re always having a good time.
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This article by Eric M. Matheson, MS, MD, Dana E. King, MS, MD, and Charles J. Everett, PhD demonstrates that “Healthy lifestyle habits are associated with a significant decrease in mortality regardless of baseline body mass index.”
Promotion of the weight-centered health paradigm through weight reduction policies and programs may lead to negative health outcomes such as eating disorders, mental health issues and harms from weight cycling and social stigmatization. This study asked why the weight-centered paradigm is uncritically relied upon in public policy and identified effective alternatives to it. Methods used to explore this were discourse analysis of policy documents, case studies of research on Health at Every Size and stakeholder interviews to evaluate policy alternatives. Three policy options are recommended for government adoption: i) weight bias training for health care professionals; ii) framing health promotion in “healthy weight” not “obesity reduction” language; and iii) ensuring health surveillance is not limited to measuring weight alone and involves tracking for unintended outcomes (e.g. eating disorders). A further recommendation suggests that eating disorder prevention professionals take a lead role in advocating for health- rather than weight-centered approaches.
Have you ever worked with a therapist/health professional and wished that s/he understood the non-diet/HAES approach? Or, do you have colleagues that you would like to educate more as to what Health at Every Size is all about? This article was featured in the Psychotherapy Networker magazine, the largest national magazine for mental health professionals. This article by Judith Matz is the perfect introduction to the field of psychology for Health at Every Size ideas.
Current guidelines recommend that “overweight” and “obese” individuals lose weight through engaging in lifestyle modification involving diet, exercise and other behavior change. This approach reliably induces short term weight loss, but the majority of individuals are unable to maintain weight loss over the long term and do not achieve the putative benefits of improved morbidity and mortality. Concern has arisen that this weight focus is not only ineffective at producing thinner, healthier bodies, but may also have unintended consequences, contributing to food and body preoccupation, repeated cycles of weight loss and regain, distraction from other personal health goals and wider health determinants, reduced self-esteem, eating disorders, other health decrement, and weight stigmatization and discrimination. This concern has drawn increased attention to the ethical implications of recommending treatment that may be ineffective or damaging.
This article is by Judith Matz, LCSW and Ellen Frankel, LCSW, Co-authors of The Diet Survivor’s Handbook: 60 Lessons in Eating, Acceptance and Self-Care
Find more of their amazing work at http://www.dietsurvivors.com.
This article, by Linda Bacon, PhD and Judith Matz, LCSW, was published in the November/December issue of Diabetes Self-Management and is intended to serve as a valuable resource for people who have diabetes and who are looking for ways to care for themselves without a weight loss focus. There is a strong HAES perspective with great information about ASDAH and other ways to care for oneself while living with diabetes.
Author of Health at Every Size, Linda Bacon, has released more letters for all of us to use in our fight against size discrimination and in our journeys to spread the message about Health at Every Size as a superior model for increased health. Enjoy this one, which addresses those people who think that accepting people of all sizes is a dangerous practice.
GO GIRLS! (Giving Our Girls Inspiration and Resources for Lasting Self-Esteem) is a program developed by Eating Disorders Awareness and Prevention, Inc. (EDAP; http://www.edap.org). Its goal is to prevent the development of eating disorders among high school students through media literacy education, media activism, and media advocacy (1). Media literacy education involves enhancing participants’ ability to analyze critically messages in various media forms and to create media messages that reflect an alternative viewpoint (2). The media activism component relates to changing the media through protesting or praising particular media products. Media advocacy involves using the media to communicate messages in the participants’ own words with the goal of changing important aspects of their environment.
Few doubt that the mass media portrayal of body image has a dramatic developmental effect on girls in our society. This article reviews some of the primary theories about this phenomenon and the available research on the subject.
As dangerous as the side effects of regular weight loss can be when weight cycling is taken into account, rapid weight loss poses its own set of serious dangers. This article details the kind of research that has already been done in this field and explains the consequences of rapidly losing weight.
Dr. Jon Robison wrote this amazing Special Report that was published by the Wellness Council of America (WELCOA). It discusses the detrimental affects of obsessing about weight loss and dieting and following a weight-centered approach to health rather than a behavior centered one. These ten steps are excellent suggestions for how to begin living your life now the way it should be lived.
A triad of problems has been known to occur in athletic women and also women who are very thin. Efforts to combat these three illnesses and their collective appearance has been made, and this article discusses ways that such women can be approached and treated to restore optimum health.
This article is written for the health care professional who wants to begin learning how to implement a Health at Every Size approach to lifestyle and behavior with patients. This is, admittedly, a challenging task at first that takes some getting used to, especially considering the pressure from most health care providers to simply recommend weight loss. However, with practice and the derivative results in patients’ health, it will be seen how beneficial a move to the new Health at Every Size paradigm is.
The approach towards weight loss may not be doing what we think it does. Indeed, rather than create the health benefits that we presume, a focus on weight loss may be preventing us from concentrating on what’s important, like activity, diet, social ties, spiritual and emotional well-being. This essay is a consideration of weight control paradigms and resulting programs.
This amazing resource should be passed along to every person in the medical profession to help them learn how to adjust their practices to professionally and appropriately accommodate larger patients. This open letter was graciously provided by Alice Ansfield of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research as suggestions for Health Care Professionals.
This is the second part in a two-part series that details the ways in which the emphasis on weight loss is not as good for the general public as an emphasis on healthy behaviors.
After a brief summary and some key references detailing the medically understood fact that sustainable weight loss is untenable and that salutary health effects can result from healthful behaviors independent of weight loss, the author proceeds to outline the tenets of a size acceptance approach to health.
In this review, we address the prevailing view of obesity as a major threat to public health and find that this paradigm is based on incomplete consideration of the evidence. After reviewing diabetes, hypertension and hypercholesterolemia (Part 1), and mortality (Part 2), we advocate a wellness approach focused on healthy lifestyle and treating disease in the obese, rather than treating obesity as a disease.
This is a downloadable PDF article from the April 2007 edition of American Psychologist. It is summarized as such: The prevalence of obesity and its associated health problems have increased sharply in the past 2 decades. New revisions to Medicare policy will allow funding for obesity treatments of proven efficacy. The authors review studies of the long-term outcomes of calorie-restricting diets to assess whether dieting is an effective treatment for obesity. These studies show that one third to two thirds of dieters regain more weight than they lost on their diets, and these studies likely underestimate the extent to which dieting is counterproductive because of several methodological problems, all of which bias the studies toward showing successful weight loss maintenance. In addition, the studies do not provide consistent evidence that dieting results in significant health improvements, regardless of weight change. In sum, there is little support for the notion that diets lead to lasting weight loss or health benefits.
That’s right, our wonderful Mental Wellness expert, who helps you feel better in your own body with her fun tips and fascinating articles every week, was on Plus Model Radio with Chenese Lewis. Listen to all of the wonderful advice she has to offer and even hear her mention More of Me to Love!
Looking for a way to get a pick-me-up? Read these 14 affirmations and recite them often. Believe them. They’re not meant to brainwash you into some false reality but to wake you from the false reality that has led many to believe that only thin people are beautiful or worthy. These will help you realize that you are beautiful and worthy just the way you are.
The Largesse Network has provided these 14 wonderful ways to better health - and none of them involves dieting! Learn some great ways to start being healthier right now.
This wonderful list adeptly summarizes the many reasons that dieting is more harmful than helpful. Thanks to the Council on Size & Weight Discrimination for this list!
Dr. Peggy Elam, renowned psychologist, Health at Every Size advocate, radio-show host, and publisher, brings us her 12 steps to living life with a Health at Every Size approach.
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