Hello and welcome to the nutrition diva podcast I'm your host Monica Reinagle and today I want to talk about the role that body weight plays on health because this is a subject of some debate.

The Health at Every Size Movement promotes acceptance and appreciation of one's body regardless of your body size.

It encourages people who have overweight or obesity to shift their focus from losing weight

to other healthy habits such as eating healthy foods and getting more exercise.

Some physicians and dieticians who embrace this philosophy will even refuse to counsel people on weight loss.

It's okay if their clients lose weight as a result of changing their health habits,

but that shouldn't be their goal.

Now part of this is a response to the harmful stigmatization and discrimination that people

living in larger bodies have long experienced.

People with overweight and obesity face bias and discrimination in many aspects of their lives,

including with their health care providers.

Numerous studies have shown that people with larger bodies receive substandard care

and less support from their health care providers.

And because obesity is more prevalent among low-income individuals and minorities, a bias against

patients who are overweight can disproportionately affect these disadvantaged groups

and contribute to a downward spiral of poor outcomes.

The Health at Every Size Movement is also a pushback against so-called diet culture.

And I get it, the relentless pressure to be thin and the means by which this ideal is promoted and

pursued has caused untold psychological and physical suffering.

However, this philosophy also came of age in an era when the available treatment options for obesity were pretty ineffective.

Short of bariatric surgery, most attempts to achieve and maintain significant weight loss failed.

But over the last few years, we have seen a dramatic sea change in the treatment of overweight and obesity

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