In this episode, we welcome Dr. Asher Larmie to talk about creating a truly weight-inclusive approach to our health. As both a primary care doctor and a fat patient, he shares a unique look at how weight stigma directly harms people in the medical system, offering a perspective that bridges clinical practice with lived experience in a way that few conversations about weight-inclusive therapy manage to do.We talk about the deep medical trauma and anxiety that keeps so many of us from going to the doctor in the first place, an experience that overlaps in painful ways with the anxiety so many people carry from eating disorder recovery and disordered eating histories. Dr. Asher helps us unpack the history of the BMI and shows us how standard health guidelines are often driven by big money instead of actual well-being, a history that rarely gets discussed openly in traditional nutrition counseling or general medical training.

Most importantly, we explore how to step off the battlefield at the doctor’s office by learning to use our own voice, set clear boundaries, and reclaim our personal consent. It’s a conversation that echoes what we hear so often in individual therapy and group therapy settings, where clients are learning these same skills of boundary-setting and self-advocacy, whether they’re working through emotional eating, chronic dieting, or the aftermath of binge eating treatment. It is a powerful reminder that we all deserve healthcare rooted in real compassion, safety, and true body peace — the same compassion that any good HAES-informed therapist or intuitive eating therapist tries to bring into the therapy room. For anyone currently in eating disorder treatment or eating disorder therapy, or navigating the newer landscape of body image and GLP-1 medications and GLP-1 and disordered eating risk, this episode offers language and validation that can be hard to find elsewhere.

Key Takeaways

• You have the right to refuse the scale and withhold consent for being weighed.
• Medical trauma from weight shaming causes many people to avoid getting necessary healthcare.
• Standard body mass index measurements were never built using diverse or inclusive patient data.
• Internalized blame for health issues belongs to a biased system, not to your body.
• Practicing self-compassion and finding a supportive community helps us heal from medical shame.

Resources

• No Weigh: Everything You’ve Been Told About Weight Loss is a Lie by Dr. Asher Larmie – https://a.co/d/09l6u8n5
• The Fat Doctor Podcast – https://podcasts.apple.com/ch/podcast/the-fat-doctor-podcast/id1573468700?l=en-GB
• The No Weigh Movement Website – https://www.noweigh.org/
• Fat Doctor Official Website – https://www.fatdoctor.co.uk/
• Dr. Asher Larmie’s Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/thefatdoctor/

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Jennie Kramer LCSW-R, CEDS

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Contact: jkramer@mbhany.com