Confused by the TikTok and Instagram talk by women of all sizes shaming overweight women who want to lose weight? It’s time to listen to your doctor.
There’s a big difference between promoting kindness and promoting denial.
The body positive movement started with good intentions — pushing back against body shaming and the stigma that too many people face because of their size.
Those goals still matter. Everyone deserves to feel accepted, no matter their weight.
But somewhere along the way, parts of the movement drifted into dangerous territory — discouraging people from listening to medical advice and treating obesity as something that should be ignored – or celebrated – rather than reversed (through safe, sustainable management).
Trust Your Doctor
If your doctor makes you feel uncomfortable, this doesn’t mean it’s okay to be fat.
Find another doctor with whom you feel a good connection.
When they bring up weight, it’s not about judging you — it’s about protecting your health and being a responsible health care provider.
Obesity is linked to serious conditions like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep apnea, infertility, mobility impairment, daily pain and even certain cancers.
Pretending those risks don’t exist doesn’t make them go away. It just puts your future health in danger.
Listening to your doctor doesn’t mean hating your body or obsessing over the number on the scale.
It means acknowledging that weight is a medical factor, not a moral one.
A good doctor doesn’t tell you to lose weight to “fit in” or “look better on Instagram.”
They bring it up because they’ve seen what can happen down the road when weight related issues go unchecked.
If you have high blood pressure or abnormal blood sugar, you’d expect your physician to point this out.
Likewise, they should not be demonized for mentioning your weight, even if you’re seeing them for a broken finger.
Doctors don’t make money off of discussing weight issues with their patients. They do it because their passion is health care. And it’s based on facts, not feelings.
Fat Acceptance and Body Positivity
Not all women who oppose intentional weight loss are obese. A surprising amount have never even been fat.
They have projected their insecurities onto women they’ve never even met – posting messages and videos urging them to accept their bodies as they are, even if morbidly obese, that they “don’t need to lose weight.”
Some voices in these online communities have gone from “don’t shame people” to “don’t ever mention weight.”
In fact, some don’t even want to mention “health.”
Refusing to talk about weight at all shuts down honest, necessary conversations about health.
It’s like telling someone with high blood pressure that they shouldn’t take medication because it might make them feel “stigmatized.”
Nobody wins when we silence medical facts.
Put on that Emotional Armor
Put aside the relentless messages from your favorite “anti-diet” influencers and speak to your doctor.
If he or she suggests weight loss or treatment options — whether that’s changes to diet, increased movement, medication or newer approaches like GLP-1 therapy — they’re using evidence-based science, not bias, emotions or feelings.
These professionals spend years studying how the human body works.
Of course, not every doctor is sensitive in how they communicate, but that’s a reason to find one whose bedside manner suits you, rather than reject medicine altogether.
Don’t Be Brainwashed
Some influencers are so insecure that their way of coping with this (and they may not even realize it) is to brand any overweight woman, who wants to slim down, as hating herself, having body dysmorphia, being fatphobic or being brainwashed by the diet industry.
Funny thing is, Big Food does a helluva lot more brainwashing than do companies that sell weight loss products.
Some of the marketing campaigns by fast food giants are ingenious and result in yearly monstrous profits that can easily swallow up those of the diet industry.
Don’t let influencers convince you that you can’t love yourself and still work towards being healthier.
Many like to say that “thinness doesn’t equal health.” But this isn’t about thinness.
It’s about obesity and overweight. The fact that there are many thin people with chronic illness has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that obesity endangers health.
And even if you’re not overweight, it is perfectly okay and very logical to want to adhere to lifestyle choices that will prevent unhealthy weight gain. This means you care enough about yourself to adopt these measures, not that you hate yourself.
Losing weight doesn’t erase your identity, and it doesn’t mean you’ve “sold out” to diet culture.
It means you’ve decided to step down from ultra-processed food culture.
