This World Obesity Day, Calibrate is Upending the Way Americans Talk about People with Obesity
It’s time we start speaking to people with obesity with the respect and dignity they deserve
“‘Obese’ is a label. ‘Obesity’ is a disease.” I’ll never forget Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford sharing this with me during our first conversation. While it may seem like a small distinction in language, when we use the term “obese” to describe someone with obesity, we are failing them. Why? Because “obese” puts their disease before their identity.
In 2013, the American Medical Association (AMA) classified obesity as a chronic disease, and in 2017, they resolved to use the person-first language — acknowledging the person before their condition. Despite this, society continues to fault people with obesity for their condition by distinguishing it as a lifestyle choice, rather than a chronic disease.
Nearly 200 million Americans are living with overweight and obesity and as many as 40% of U.S. adults report past experiences of weight-based teasing, unfair treatment, and discrimination. This only adds to the compounding stigma surrounding weight, making us more stressed, anxious, and depressed. This stigmatization — whether implicit or explicit — can have serious consequences. If we are uncomfortable seeing our doctor or health providers because they view obesity as a lifestyle choice, we are less likely to seek treatment.
On this World Obesity Day, we are highlighting an important conversation — obesity is a chronic disease, not an identity, and how we talk about obesity and overweight is therefore an essential part of how we treat the disease, and the people who experience it. By choosing to say “with obesity”, we take an important step in eliminating weight bias from our culture.
Living Our Mission
I founded Calibrate with the mission to change the way the world treats weight. This means addressing both how we think about weight and how we define the standard of care for weight. Changing the way we think about weight requires recognition that the cultural narrative of obesity is still anchored in willpower, despite the fact that decades of science demonstrates that obesity is a disease resulting from a combination of hormonal, genetic, biological, and environmental inputs, rather than lifestyle choices.
Acknowledging this disparity helps us understand why achieving metabolic health and sustaining weight loss can seem near impossible, despite the countless weight loss products and services promising us otherwise. By the time our members reach Calibrate, they’ve both tried these programs, and endured frustrating and hopeless experiences with a healthcare system that supports implicit biases about weight.
Small Wins Create Big Wins
We know that incremental steps can add up to something much greater than its parts. And while shifting the way we refer to people living with obesity may at first seem inconsequential, it’s the most important catalyst for real change, because language matters, and our weight is not a reflection of our identity.
Changing language won’t solve the whole problem, but it will take us one step closer to eliminating weight bias from our culture and creating a more inclusive community to treat and solve the largest and most pervasive category of chronic disease society has ever experienced. From day one at Calibrate, we have used person-first language, and now we are demanding that others do the same. If more people commit to using person-first language, we will collectively drive more people to acknowledge that they may be living with overweight and obesity, launching a flywheel where people are empowered to seek information and treatment.
Help Us Take Action
In recognition of World Obesity Day, and in partnership with our Clinical Advisory Board and Health Experts, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Ro, the Obesity Action Coalition, The Obesity Society, and World Obesity Day, we have launched a campaign called Treat Obesity, Delete Obese to encourage everyone to take the first step and stop referring to each other as “obese.”
In 2021 alone there were over 40,000 instances of news stories using the adjective “obese” in reference to people with obesity*. To raise awareness of obesity as a disease, not a lifestyle choice, we’re starting with a call to action to the media as they play an integral role in shaping the language that we use in America.
In taking action and living our mission, we’ve sent letters to the editor in response to recent articles that mention the term “obese” to dozens of news publications (and counting), asking them to update their editorial guidelines to us person-first language with regard to obesity. By asking them to update their editorial policies, we can reshape our society’s implicit understanding of obesity, catalyzing the required culture shift to set the standard of care for obesity treatment. Moreover, we’ve placed ads with the New York Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times to provide further visibility into this important issue.
Join us, today, on World Obesity Day, by taking one small step and urging the media to update their editorial guidelines to adopt person-first language.
Learn more about how you can get involved today: https://www.joincalibrate.com/pages/world-obesity-day.
*According to Muckrack.com, in 2021 there were over 40,000 instances of news stories in the United States using the adjective “obese” in reference to people.
