My Experience: Anti-Fatness in the Doctor’s Office
Content Warning: Contains mentions of dieting and medicalized anti-fatness. Please read with care.
I have so much to say, but as soon as my fingers hit the keyboard, I lose all of my thoughts. I suppose that's an act of self protection: not really wanting to remember everything in full, not having to look at it all on one page, not wanting to be seen as “dramatic,” unsure if my story really matters all that much. Do I really have anything worthwhile to share? I feel anxious that my account will be incomplete. It won’t be full of profound statistics or facts and figures—just some of my experiences.
As I’m working at a local coffee shop an acquaintance pops over and says hello. I tell her what I’m up to. “Working on my first ever blog”. She asks what it’s about. I tell her that it’s about anti-fatness at the doctors. She says that she has so many thoughts on the issue and that she’s so glad that I’m talking about this. She asks when it will be posted. She is excited to read it. She starts sharing some of her personal experience about the healthcare system. She is the perfect reminder from the universe that we need to talk about our stories and experiences.
This post doesn’t go into the elaborate systemic issues that permeate the healthcare system. Other folks have done incredible jobs researching and reporting on this topic. Instead, this post will show you an imperfect and incomplete recollection of some of my experiences.
For a long time, I would go along with all the weight loss ideas that my doctors would prescribe to me. I believed that the only way for me to achieve health and happiness was through shrinking my body by any means necessary.
I remember sitting in my doctor’s office at around the age of thirteen. She has just told me to try weight watchers, “The only tried and true method of weight loss.” I remember looking at the childish wallpaper in the exam room and hearing her say that I can make easy changes like instead of eating whipping cream I should eat cool whip—as if whipped cream was a staple in my current food routine—I remember thinking, okay, I’ll give this weight watchers thing a try. Maybe it will give me the tools to feel “normal.” Looking back, I wish my thirteen-year-old self could have seen how “normal” I really was. Today I’m stunned that my doctor recommended that I go sit in a room with women predominantly over the age of fifty-five in an attempt to “manage” my weight. (I’ll add more about weight watchers in a future post.)
From that appointment onward until I was 26 years old, doctors appointments were filled with solicited and unsolicited diet and weight loss information/programs, as if my weight was the absolute focal point that determined my health and wellbeing. Regardless of what I went to the doctor for, we would always end the appointment discussing my weight and how we were going to “fix it. ”
The summer after my freshman year of high school a doctor recommended I work with a local woman in her 60s who had a weight loss clinic out of her home. I remember archaic worksheets that seemed to be from the 70s that guided me on what foods I was allowed to eat. I would go to her “clinic” 2-3 times a week to get weighed and talk about my “progress.” (If you haven’t noticed already, I love the use of quotes around items that I now find to be bullshit.) One thing I remember was that the only carb I was allowed to eat was one piece of whole-wheat toast and melba toast.
The summer after my freshman year of college. My doctor recommended I try an expensive weight loss program that the clinic was partnering with. It consisted of meal-replacing food bars that tasted like tar—and cost $30 dollars for a pack of twelve. I can’t even begin to go into the insanity that is the weight loss industry and how it attaches itself to medical providers. I remember feeling so desperate to lose weight and change my body. I had tried countless methods, doctor prescribed and not, over the majority of my lifetime. I couldn’t understand why my weight wouldn’t go down and stay down. I had plenty of willpower. I was the editor of my high school newspaper, I got good enough grades, I had a good group of friends, I got a great job at a boutique right out of high school. I worked hard and got what I wanted. Not with my weight though.
When I was twenty-two I decided that weight loss surgery was the answer for me. I did all the research, contacted my insurance company, and went to the information session. I remember sitting in the info session with some other folks. I remember overhearing a gal similar to me lean over to her mom and announce that she was skeptical of the surgery. She said she was concerned because she thought the surgery was too permanent of a “solution.” My weight loss obsessed brain looked at her and thought, “What a quitter.” The permanence was exactly the point. I wanted to be permanently different.
Thankfully around this time, I had the privilege of working a job where I had good health insurance. Because of this, I was able to see a counselor who started to lovingly poke at my internalized anti-fatness and self-hatred. After about two years of working with her, I was able to enter medical situations in a new way.
I used to think I was a fucked up failure who couldn’t get it together. Now I know that the medical system is fucked.
When I started seeing my last general care provider I came in with a bold conviction. I told her on my first appointment “I will never do anything again in my life to intentionally lose weight.” My voice was shaking but it was my first act of trying to protect myself from explicit medicalized anti-fattness. Who knows if my doctor still held unvoiced anti-fattness. She probably did. After that statement, my doctor never brought up weight loss as a treatment, or frankly at all.
As I sit here writing, 10 plus other memories and experiences pop into my head. I feel the pressure to stuff them into this post. After a breath, I realize that I can come back to you all and these memories next time.
All my love,
Hailey