How Fat-Shaming is Really Hurt People Hurting People with Health Coach Joe Loye – Episode 159

Hola amigos! Welcome to One Small Bite!

Anti-fat bias, weight-stigma, and fat-shaming happens both so implicitly and explicitly, that many just take it as the norm. There is idea that fat is bad, and that being fat is the same as being unhealthy, which only leads to feeling more unworthy, isolated, and hurt. In today’s episode I talk with Health Coach Joe Loye on his journey through fat-shaming and transformation to Healthy At Every Size and weight-inclusivity, body positivity, and just feeling better in the body he’s in. Listen in today as we discuss the main areas that fat-shaming shows up in our society and ways we can move away from that toxic thinking.

Highlights of this episode:

• Joe’s journey to the weight-inclusive space
• How fat shaming and weight stigma shows up
• The differences of fat-phobia in men
• How fat shaming and fat-phobia shows up in gay men
• How straight people can help
• How a fat person can protect against weight-stigma and fat-phobia

Episode Show Notes: 

Joe’s journey to the weight-inclusive space
Joe’s background is in education – a supervisor for after school programs where coaching was a big part of his job! Joe talks about how he had dieted his whole life, such as weight watchers, and many other programs. A coworker introduced him to intuitive eating at a point in his life where he was just fed up with diets and obsessing over food. Joe was looking for something different, and the introduction to intuitive eating was life changing. He was able to find an organization where he was coached, and learned to be a health coach. Through this journey Joe was finally able to learn more about the body and why he wasn’t successful at losing weight. Spoiler Alert – it wasn’t his body! He started recognizing the way he treated his body and the way he spoke to himself, which was way more impactful than any food he actually ate. Joe realized that he wanted to help people, specifically in bodies that aren’t considered part of the “thin ideal,” to overcome these same thought patterns and beliefs he held about his body, food, and exercise. 

How fat shaming and weight stigma shows up
Joe has been a fat person his whole life, and society made him feel like this wasn’t ideal. Something was wrong with him, or that he wasn’t worthy. He talks about how fat-shaming and weight-stigma shows every day in weight loss commercials, on social media, clothing stores, in restaurants, Theatersand even in casual conversations of how someone looks good or not based on their size. These messages are internalized by large body people, consequently every time he lost weight he was told “you look good” but no positive comments if he’d gain the weight back. It was as if his entire worth was tied to losing weight, and it stuck with him, which is internalized as “looking good” is equivalent with being thin. 

The differences of fat-phobia in men
“I think acknowledging that men do not experience fat-shaming and weight-stigma the same way women do.” Joe believes that although it’s different, it doesn’t mean that men don’t experience it, but he sees how it can lead to men not seeking help or it creates a whole other stigma around eating disorders and body dysmorphia. Joe explains how the BMI (Body Mass Index) is majorly flawed mostly because, as he puts it “you can’t tell someone’s health by their body size.” The BMI was developed by Adolph Quetelet in the 1830’s, with the goal of finding the “perfect human.” Quetelet was not in the medical field and did not intend for the BMI to be used for medical purposes. His sample population only included white French and Scottish men, thus, the BMI is not representative of the entire human population. It rose in popularity in the early 20th century when it was discovered by life insurance companies, who used it to set insurance premiums for their clients. The company found a relationship between weight and mortality, though the sample included only insurance company clients whoself-reported their heights and weights. Nevertheless, it set off an interest in the use of the BMI as a tool to assess health. The BMI was determined to be the best tool to assess health not for its accuracy, but for its ease of use in medicine and research. The BMI does not consider health behaviors (e.g. stress, nutrition, physical activity) or body composition (e.g. bone, muscle, and fat mass). Therefore, it does not give an accurate picture of health.

How fat shaming and fat-phobia shows up in gay men
Carl Hovey, a psychologist and researcher at the Soho and Fidi locations of the Gay Therapy Center in New York, studied how gay men and the prevalence of body dysmorphia and body image challenges. Gay men are the second largest population to experience eating disorders and body dysmorphia. Joe explains that gay men exist in a culture that already tells them that their bodies are their value. Dr. Carl Havey explains “One of the more surprising elements that came out of the research is how often experiences of the body–more specifically, whether or not an individual felt his body was acceptable or unacceptable in the marketplace of gay culture–was related to a feeling of inclusion or exclusion within that culture.” There is an unspoken expectation within gay culture: you must be desirable at all times, or else you won’t fit into the cultural spaces reserved for gay men. This can lead to pressure to control the body at the expense of health. Therefore, if you enter a culture of desire, without feeling as though your body fits into that script of what constitutes what is desirable, there will be an instinctive, natural sense of isolation. Carl further explains “It makes sense that if there’s not a feeling that one’s body is a legitimate source of desire, one begins to feel very excluded.” “Not just from the larger gay community. People even talked about feeling alienated from themselves, as though if their body didn’t fit a certain script, they weren’t even sure who they were as gay men. They felt very alienated in that way.”

How straight people can help
Joe’s main message to straight and thin sized people is educate themselves and then help educate others. Unfortunately, those who are thinner, white, straight, heterosexual, or cisgendered are more likely to be listened to than anyone who doesn’t fit into those populations.

How a fat person can protect against weight-stigma and fat-phobia
Joe believe that one of the biggest things a large body person can do is to start healing their own perception and relationship with their body, food, and exercise. Become aware of and interrupt their own biases towards themselves and others. It is critical to advocate for what they need! Work with someone on phrases you can use when you are faced with these situations; ways that they can stand up for themselves. Furthermore, he believe that fat people can work to stay grounded in the body they have, to work to love and respect it, to work to not give any weight to the stigmas, phobias, and biases. Remember that fat people are so much more than just their body and weight. Joe believes that it is important to Make a Plan. Write down some key questions before the visit to the doctor, and if the conversation turns to weight, and weight is not what they’re there for, take a moment. Weight-based comments can boost anxiety and throw people off balance.

Resources:

EVOLVE Community
A community of people just like you interested in evolving their relationship with food and body, to learn and practice new habits, grow together, in order to feel good and live fully. Read about it here: EVOLVE Community

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Chop the diet mentality; Fuel Your Body; and Nourish Your Soul!