When announcing anti-obesity strategies, public health policy-makers conveniently forget:

a) BMI is not a great indicator of health
b) Fat is not synonymous with junk food
c) There have been multiple wars on obesity since the WHO report in 2000 with no apparent reduction in BMI

d) When you lose weight you are very likely to regain it
e) How policy that emphasises shaming also increases hate

This is the diet mentality on a macro scale: "this time will be different, blah blah..."

This is also classism. Celebrity spokepeople: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in his River Cottage and Thomasina Myers. Really down with the kids.

The medical industrial complex doesn't know how to look after fat people. Access to medical care is included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but services are withheld from us unless we agree to lose weight (see convenient amnesia above).

Many of us don't seek essential care because we are poorly treated in the medical system. Weight loss treatments can damage your health. This has an effect on our vulnerability to Coronavirus.

Narratives of how much fat people cost the nation have eugenicist roots and are deployed to justify neoliberal austerity policy, so don't buy into them please.

You really want to help fat people stay alive and live good lives? Here are some alternatives, which also happen to be cheap:

Look for community-based interventions with rock-solid evidence of long-term health improvements and adapt to local and specific populations. Clue: Health At Every Size.

Include fat in anti-oppression policy. Develop sensitivity-training. Critique healthism. Get better at disability politics. Learn how to care for people as they are.

Identify and support fat community mentors. Pay them properly.

Recognise the agency of fat people to define and develop projects on our terms. Invest in self-help projects. Stop ignoring, patronising, blaming and shaming us.

Consider access, who speaks, whose knowledge counts, ensure nothing about us without us.

Meanwhile: cry/yawn/gnash/groan/despair/laugh etc, we will no doubt witness this bullshit over and over again.

Feel free to read more of my work:

http://charlottecooper.net/shop/ 

https://www.hammeronpress.net/shop/social-movements/fat-activism-a-radical-social-movement/

People selling weight loss who are retweeting me, please stop. This is not for you to appropriate. You are the problem.