five ways healthcare can be better for fat people by Kristen, a, Hardy M, a, I feel like I I know of Kristen like we've probably message Kristen if you're listening. Hi. Love your work. So quote from this, fat suffering and death, much of the existing work on better accommodating fat people's knees within North American healthcare settings focuses on reducing stigma and addressing inadequate medical equipment, in some cases, inadequate equipment and surgery related issues can be a matter of life, of life or death. The Computed Tomography or magnetic resonance resonance imaging scanner that was not designed to accommodate the bodies of larger members of the population, the surgeon who never learned to operate on fat bodies because their medical school, medical school refused the donation of fat cadavers. By the way, most places don't take fat people for research or anything like that. If they're when I say fat people over 180 pounds, which is not fat, so all of the research is being done on thin people. Okay, refusal donation of fat cadavers or the loss of life due to impaired health and well being from bariatric surgery, these deaths are collectively uncountable. The results, however, is the loss of precious lives and the irreversible trauma to families, friends and communities. Other outcomes are not as often as deadly, but may result in significant damage to physical or psychological health when, for example, clinicians expressions of weight bias result in, quote, health care seekers of higher weight ceasing or contact with clinicians joint replacements in Healthy People being denied on the basis of BMI or eating disorders being induced or re triggered by the bigoted comments of those entrusted with healing to every survivor of medical weight bias is suffering in limitation of activities, economic impoverishment through imposed disability or other negative consequences, are lived experiences that come on top of the already serious health impacts of broader social and cultural fat phobia. Yes, yet these sequelae of encounters with medical fat phobia cannot be tackled, apart from their root causes, the dominance of thin centric ideology, but the pathologization of fatness a failure to foster the leadership of fat people and a biomedical health system that continues to elevate the powers of power of physicians over that of healthcare seekers fat and otherwise, ultimately, we cannot understand and effectively address the specifics of the induced suffering of fat people within or excluded from biomedical context without looking to the poor inequalities that ground and support them, to the power sorry, to the power inequalities that ground and support them. That's a good, that's a good, that's a good. It's not too long this piece, so you can probably read it in 10 minutes. So. Minutes. One minute. I don't know how long it'll take you to read, but anyway, that's from 2023 really great, really great. How am I gonna end this? Hey, Elizabeth, this is how I'm gonna end it. That's how I'm gonna end it. Listen. Some good news. Okay, some good news. So I train, I train organizations, right? I help individuals and organizations and learn anti fat but anti fat buyers. And I gotta tell you, I gotta tell you, things are changing 100% not have they're changing 100% but I 100% feel like they're changing really, really, really. So I've been doing this work for 10 years longer, I think probably I need to. I always need to go and check my LinkedIn to see how long I've been doing, doing this work. And I'm like, what Jesus would that be that long? I'm always like, Oh, it's seven years. And it's like, no, it's 11 years or whatever. I don't know. Let's just say 10, whatever. Anyway, 10 years ago, just absolutely not, absolutely not to get this was, this felt very like a very, very, very difficult topic to get people to get on board with whenever I'd be having conversations. By the way, this is my experience. Okay, so take that with a grain of salt, whatever it's called. But if I had conversations with people 10 years ago, and I was having conversation with people 10 years ago, hey, fat people are human. And, you know, wild things like that. What do you talk about? Vinny people are not human. Silly sausage. Anyway, I would, I would be getting a lot of pushback. I remember about seven years ago. So I used to be in recruitment, so I had a lot of contacts in HR, in Vancouver, many, many, many contacts. And I remember about seven years ago, and then again, about five years ago, reaching out to all of those HR people and saying, Hey, if your organization wants to include this in their dei planning. And no one was interested. No one was interested. Now, they're really fucking interested. Some people, though, there are still, there is obviously, obviously, there's still lot. No, I say some, there's still lots of people. And I'm talking about people who are leaders and maybe in the DEI world. But people are hungry for this now. People are like, yeah, fat people human. I'm a bored, and I think that we should be kind of fat people. You know, whereas five years ago, 10 years ago, it would be like, Are Fat People human? And there'd be a few people who were like, Yeah, but a lot of people were like, and some people like, but it only if they're healthy. So things, mine is my anecdotal, very kind of rough idea of feeling, of this, this work of we're getting to that point where everyone knows and you know, like, for example, I did a training with with healthcare providers a month ago, and I said to them, so how many diets you know? What do we know about diets? How many diets work? Basically, I said it in a in a more robust way, but how many diets work? And many of them said zero. And I was like, What the fuck? Huh? How do you how do you not know that diets don't work? This is amazing. Some of them were like, oh, you know, yeah, but what about this one? And so that basic thing of like, diets don't work. A lot of them know. But then there was still kind of, yeah, but my patients fat so and the fatness is causing the problem. So how do I get them to listen to me and not be fat anymore? You know, this is after the training, and I'm like, no, no. Anyway, they might not have been listening to the training and just randomly asked Anyway, whatever. I'm so thankful about that. It really, really, really, really, makes me excited about what the future holds for fat folks, knowing that things are maybe question mark, continuing to get better question mark. I'm even just saying that I feel scared, that I've just jinxed it, and, you know, I'm just delusional. I don't know again, if you wanted to come to that training, if you're if you're around family in the next couple of months, or if you're around anyone ever, just for the rest of your life, that talk shit about fat and fat, fat people and whatnot, and you want to know how to deal with them and some strategies and word tracks, all that jazz. Come along to my training. Link will be in the show notes, boundary boss live, or get the replay. If you enjoyed the show and you want to contribute to more cool, fat stuff, go to KO fi. You get. Some free stuff in return, and thanks for hanging out with me today. It was tonight. I like doing podcasts. I like, I feel like I'm hanging out with people, but, you know, I'm on my own. I just imagine, I know, we're in a big group together, listening, talking about fat stuff, and it's just me and my own. This is my fantasy. So yeah, thanks for hanging out with me today. Remember you are worthy. You always were. You always will be and stay fierce fatty. See you next time. A good boy. You