My Health Does Not Define My Worth

Our worth as human beings is not determined by our health status. In this powerful episode, I challenge the pervasive narrative that ties personal value to health metrics and physical ability. I explore how healthism is deeply rooted in capitalism, racism, ableism, and colonialism, creating harmful hierarchies even within marginalized communities.

Drawing from my own personal experience with chronic illness and analyzing problematic media representations of 'fat but fit' bodies, I make the case that every person is equally valuable, regardless of their health or ability to contribute through productivity.

This episode asks: What if we collectively rejected the notion that health determines our worth?

The Guardian Article is “‘Plot twist - I’m still a fat person!’: meet the people proving you can be fit at any size” by Sarah Phillips, Sun 29th March https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/mar/29/im-still-a-fat-person-meet-the-people-proving-you-can-be-fit-at-any-size

The journal article is: Metabolically Healthy Obese and Incident Cardiovascular Disease Events Among 3.5 Million Men and Women

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Chapters

• 0:52 The Roots of Health Moralism
• 6:35 How Health Status Impacts Self-Worth
• 12:19 Everyone Is Equally Valuable
• 14:05 "Fat but Fit” According to The Guardian
• 27:31 Everything You've Been Told About Weight Loss Is a Lie
• 33:59 Ask Me Anything

Transcript

Hi everyone. This is episode 15 of the Fat Doctor Podcast, Season 5. I am your host, Dr. Asher Larmie. It is Wednesday, the 12th I believe, of April. I'm recording this podcast a couple of weeks in the past. Today, I am going to be tackling a subject that is very dear to my heart at the moment, especially about whether or not health defines our worth. We're going to be talking about healthism. We're going to be talking about moralism, where it all began, where we're at and where we should be heading to. I have been talking about health. If you go back to the beginning of this season of the podcast I have been talking about health, how do we define health. I think that was Episode 2. And since then I've been talking on and off. In season 2 of the Fat Doctor Podcast I spent an entire season talking about health and what is health, and how do we define it, etc. And healthism. I guess I'm kind of carrying that on, and I will continue to carry it on, because I think that our health beliefs, our ideas surrounding our physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, etc. health were sort of created in this crucible of health and wellness culture. So I think a lot of us are very confused about what is health, what isn't health, and I will continue to challenge that so long as I'm doing this podcast. I just don't think that I can ever stop, really. Historically, our health has been linked to our morality for quite some time, and when we begin to pick this apart, all of the usual suspects begin to appear. There are layers upon layers of them. To start with this capitalism, because health is commodified, health is packaged and sold to you in all sorts of different formats. This is what healthy looks like. This is what healthy does, and it will cost you 39.99 plus tax. That's basically how we have begun to view health, and it's been going on for quite some time. But we can go back further. We find, in fact, if we go back far enough, we find unsurprisingly good old fashioned racism, especially anti-black racism, colonialism, white supremacy. Lots of people have written on this. Lots of people have spoken about this. I'm not here to speak over them. I thoroughly recommend Dr. Sabrina Strings' "Fearing the Black Body" and DaShawn Harrison's "Belly of the Beast." These are two books that really helped me understand how anti-black racism really is at the very roots, at the very core, the very foundations of healthism, wellness culture, moralism, etc. And there's more to it, of course. There's patriarchal influence. Man is superior to woman, and alongside that we have a lot of classism because we are taught that the so-called health behaviors that are very important to our health, that's something that we see more in the kind of higher classes and the lower classes, the working class, have riskier health behaviors. And you know it's very much class. It's also, you know, "you should do this for your health." Nice! Except for if you have to work shifts, or you are living below the poverty line. Then we go the other way around. Ultra processed food, junk food, not exercising, not going outside, sedentary lifestyle. There's a lot of class influence in there as well. There's also a lot of ableism because, of course, when we talk about health, we're talking about sort of cardiovascular health. We're talking about fitness. We're talking about mobility. We're talking about functioning and productivity and having a role in society. And all this stuff is ableist once again, and so loads and loads of layers. And I've talked about them already, and I will continue to talk about them. You hear this stuff all the time. "At least you have your health." "Oh, well, at least you have your health." Because if you don't have your health. Well, I don't know what. You're less than. "That person really let themselves go" - often talking about their weight, but that actually could just be talking about somebody in general. "Look at them, they really let themselves go," which is a moral failing, isn't it? Letting themselves go. "But, look at that person! They look so healthy." There's a coded compliment for weight loss often. But even if it wasn't, even if it was just, "Look at you, you look so healthy." Oh, nice, right? Because that's important. Being healthy is important. "You have your health, you look so healthy." And so what does that say about me? Honestly, I'm asking, what does it say about me? Because for the longest time I was able to walk through this earth thinking I'm fat, and I'm trans, and I'm queer, and I'm this, and I'm that. But I'm healthy. And then I stopped being healthy all of a sudden. I have a chronic illness that I'll never be able to get rid of, not a chronic illness, but the fat illness that is diabetes. And then I developed a problem with my shoulder. And now I'm in a lot of pain, and there's one thing I can tell you about pain, and it's not just with pain, but pain is a really good example of this. When one part of you hurts, all of you hurts. When one part of your body stops working properly, the rest of your body tries to compensate, and over time becomes painful, too. Just because of the way that I'm sleeping, the way that I'm unable to perform activities of daily living because of my shoulder. All of a sudden my back, my hips, my other shoulder, my wrists, all of them - I mean, everything was fine until one started hurting. Now everything hurts. And let me tell you, this has not been great for my mental health, nor has it been great for my sense of self-worth. And also I'm not able to go out and do as much as I used to be able to do, and as a result I don't get to enjoy life as much as I used to, so that's tanking my mood. It's also making me a lot more isolated than before. Social isolation is a bit of a challenge, really. And then that's impacting my energy levels. I'm exhausted all the time unsurprisingly, not just because I'm waking up in the night with pain, but just because this is dragging on and on. I can't look back and remember a time now when I was able to sleep through the night, when I was able to move without pain. Now, actually, it's only been a few months, but it feels like it's happened for so long that I can't remember when it wasn't like that. I also have no idea how long it's going to last. It might last forever. It probably won't because of the condition that it is. But I feel right now, I feel really low. I'm in a valley. It's really not great, and I'm fortunate that I have a condition that by its very nature is transient. It doesn't last forever. What if you've got a condition that lasts forever? That isn't fixable? What if you were born with that condition? Then what? It's not fun. It's really not. And then to be told, in addition to all this, "Well, actually, you're just simply not good enough now. You have less value to society because of your health status, because you can't contribute. You aren't as productive. You're more of a burden, you require welfare or support. You're dragging us down. You aren't paying as much taxes." All this that is rooted in ableism and white supremacy and racism and capitalism, and all that we know is harmful. But it's such a - talk about salt on a wound. Talk about the cherry on a terrible sundae. I mean, really, the last thing you want to be told is because of a condition that you have no control over, not only are you struggling physically and emotionally and mentally and socially and energetically, but in addition to that, you no longer have any value in society. And also says who? Because I really want to question that for a moment - says who I don't have any value in society. Who says? Who says I can't contribute? There is this idea that if you are not productive, if you are not contributing financially in today's capitalist world financially, if you're not contributing, you are less than. Says who? Do you need me to tell you how many artists and scientists and community leaders are living with illness and disability? How many historical figures have a history of illness and disability! There are so many different ways to contribute to society beyond these stupid productivity metrics that we use. And yet you have this kind of belief that if you're not healthy, you're less. You're of less value to society. And what does that do? That causes us to feel deeply ashamed. So we get all of this internalized shame, and also a lot of anxiety. Because you can't control your health. And all of a sudden you have this chronic illness. And so there's all this anxiety. There's the shame, and then there's anxiety, and then your self-worth is tied very much to your health metrics. From my point of view, as a diabetic, when my A1C is good, my self-worth is high. When my A1C is bad, my self-worth is low. But guess what? I have very little control over my A1C, so I don't get to control my self-worth anymore. It is determined by a blood test, by a number on a screen, and a doctor who gives me a thumbs up or a thumbs down, who gives me a lecture or a pat on the back. And there's no rhyme nor reason to it. I can't even say, "Oh, yeah, if I do this, then this will happen." I don't know. I have no idea. Hence the anxiety. There's all this stigma and isolation, and even healthcare access. The sicker you are, the less you are able to access healthcare which is ridiculous. It's awful - the sickest deserve the best healthcare, and they get the worst health care. The chronically sick are the ones who are most impacted by this. So I mean, we really got to ask ourselves what is going on. This isn't right, because if you think about it, we all rely on each other, regardless of our health status. Think of all the people in your life that you don't notice, but without them you couldn't survive. There was that whole experiment, and it was something to do with refuse collectors, and how, when they go on strike, the world comes to a halt, screeches to a halt. We cannot survive without refuse collectors, and yet how often do we turn around and go, "Thank God for the refuse. What would we do without the refuse collectors?" We all depend on each other. When the lockdown happened and there was everyone stayed at home except for what we called essential workers. And I always felt really sad about that, because I was like, actually, everybody is an essential worker. It's not some more essential than others. But there was this kind of special status given for a short period of time to healthcare workers and first responders and stuff. And don't get me wrong - healthcare workers, first responders, teachers, the people putting groceries on tables - these are all very important people, but everybody is equally of value. You don't have to have one of those jobs to be important. The world will come to an end if an entire group of people cease to exist. I truly believe it. We need each other. So this idea that our health status somehow determines whether or not we are worthy of whatever is just not okay. And, interestingly enough, at the time of recording this podcast, there was an article that I found in the Guardian, and I had posted an Instagram post that basically said, "I don't owe you my health" because I was getting ready for this podcast, and then a couple of days later this article came out, and I was like, "Oh, good, this is what I was talking about!" The article was written by a woman named Sarah Phillips. It was in the UK Guardian. It says, "Plot twist. I'm still a fat person. Meet the people proving you can be fit at any size." Now I saw a whole bunch of faces that I recognized. They were fat people from the Guardian talking about how you can be fit at any size! This very rarely happens, and it was very exciting - representation matters, people, and we all got excited when we saw this. The byline says: "In the age of Ozempic and extreme dieting, slimness is still prized over any other body shape. But you don't have to shrink your frame in order to be powerful, supple, and healthy." True story. In order to be powerful, supple, and healthy, you do not need to shrink your frame, but also you don't have to be powerful, supple or healthy, or fit to be a worthy human being. This article had some real gems in it. People like Becky Scott. It started with Becky, who is a fat fitness instructor and has a master's in something related to sports. She was both well-learned and has lived experience of fatness, and is a fitness instructor. She was sharing all this stuff, and it was really good to see. As I said, representation is really important. She talks about things like - I'll quote here: "Health outcomes can be improved through exercise, regardless of the size of our body. So it is about focusing on other health and wellbeing goals like getting outside, overcoming isolation and improving mental health rather than waist size and weight." These are all true. This is very much true, but what the article failed to include, and this is nothing to do with Becky - obviously she was quoted in the article - the person who wrote the article only wanted to give a very brief outline sort of like, "Oh, look! Fat people can be fit, too." But that was it. There was nothing really spoken about how, for a lot of people, getting outside, overcoming isolation, improving mental health is really challenging, not because of the individuals, but because of the society we live in. Becky talks about being denied surgery, just because of BMI. And there was this bit about how BMI is is bullshit, and it's great. But then, of course, for every Becky and Scottee and all the other people who were in this article, there has to be an expert to provide the other side of the argument. There was Dr. Jeffrey Horowitz, Professor of Movement Science at Michigan School of Kinesiology, who says that exercise alone is not the solution to better health. I agree - exercise is not a solution to health at all. In fact, I would say it was very low down when it comes to health in general, entire health and wellbeing. I would put exercise sort of if we had a list, and we put it in order, at least 15th on the list, right? There are loads more important things. So I'm with you, Dr. Jeffrey Horowitz. We're with each other so far. And then he went: "I want to be cautious of the stigma associated with obesity." I said, "Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate you. I appreciate that you're concerned about stigma." He says, "Weight loss is one of the most difficult things for people to do." I mean, I've had three babies, so I beg to differ, but sure it is hard. I'll give you that, and I've definitely tried to lose weight more than three times, and it's unsustainable, of course. So if you mean sustaining weight loss is one of the most difficult things to do, I would agree with you. Anyway, but he goes on, he's with us, and he goes: "But for a person with obesity..." Oh, Jeffrey, did you have to? "...who has some health risks associated with it, losing weight almost always leads to the greatest health benefits. Exercise is probably second most important, followed by the type of foods they are eating." So in his mind, it's weight loss, exercise, food, 1, 2, 3. Of course it's a load of nonsense. As I said, they're low down. Weight loss isn't even on there, and food and exercise much, much lower down. Much more important things that we'll talk about later. But anyway, Jeffrey, I think you might be a bit confused. But I'm not surprised because this is what you study, and you really don't know anything about anything else apart from exercise and movement. But you see how he said, "But for a person who has some health risks," we're separating fat bodies now. "I don't want to upset fat people, but for those who have health risks I don't care. I will upset them." And there's Philippa Diedrichs, a professor of psychology at the Centre for Appearance Research at the University of the West of England in Bristol. She has mixed feelings about the term "fat but fit." Tell us about it, Philippa. She says, "I guess it's the 'but' because that highlights the negative connotations associated with being fat, whereas fat is just a description and an adjective to describe a body shape." I agree - fat is just a description. Couldn't have said it better myself. She goes on, "But of course, in society it has become laden with other negative connotations and stereotypes which are often untruthful." You're right, Philippa. Thank you. "There is a widespread misconception that those two things can't go together. In actual fact, there is a lot of evidence showing that you can be fat and fit when it comes to strength, mobility, and cardiovascular health, and a range of other health indicators. But unfortunately, weight and health often get conflated." Oh, you were so close, Philippa, we really did. You could have made your point without talking about strength, mobility, and cardiovascular health, because, again, just like with the previous guy, Dr. Horowitz, you know, wants to be very clear that you know we shouldn't stigmatize fat people, but if you're fat and unhealthy, well, too bad. And Philippa has also, you know, "Look, you can be fat and fit. But let me tell you about strength and mobility and cardiovascular health," because the assumption is, of course, these people who aren't strong and mobile and don't have good cardiovascular health - what is the assumption we're making about them? She didn't say anything. Obviously she wasn't saying anything negative. But it's the implication here, isn't it? Because we're separating them out. And that's the key. This is the thing I want you to hear is that we're creating a hierarchy within the fat community - fat and fit, fat and exercising, fat and good nutrition, fat and unhealthy, fat and diabetic, fat, diabetic and not moving. It gets worse and worse and worse, and that's the thing about hierarchies. And then there's Dr. Ellen Fallows, a GP and Vice President of the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine. This is not medicine, folks. Lifestyle Medicine is not medicine. It's wellness culture. I just want to point that out. You can get a degree in lifestyle medicine, but that's not an actual doctor. She's a doctor who went to medical school, became a doctor and then decided to be a lifestyle medicine doctor. Dr. Ellen Fallows says it's a no-brainer that we should encourage people to exercise. Is it, Dr. Ellen Fallows? Everybody should be encouraged? It's a no-brainer? I think perhaps you might need to do some critical analysis here. There's plenty of people that we shouldn't be encouraging to exercise. For example, people with an eating disorder who exercise as part of their eating disorder behavior. Or people with hypermobile EDS who have the risk of overextending their joints and causing major problems and needing joint replacements. We can't say it's a no-brainer. Anyway, Fallows advises patients to keep active, but Fallows has a conscience. She says, "I feel awful when I meet people who are spending hours at the gym and not losing any weight, and they've not had any support to change what they are eating or addressing other factors such as sleep and stress." It's not just exercise. There's eating which Dr. Horowitz talked about, and there's exercising. Dr. Fallows wants you to remember about sleep and stress. Turn off your stress, press the button, reduce your stress. Dr. Fallows mentions research which shows that metabolically healthy obese people had a 50% higher risk of coronary heart disease than those who are of normal weight. She goes on to say this, one of my favorite lies of all time, "If fat's around our hips and breasts is okay, but it is organ fat, central obesity that gives us tummy fat." Organ fat gives us tummy fat. I'm curious to know how that is the case. Did you just make that up, and then just say it and hope that you sounded clever? There's somebody else in there called Rianne Cutter, and Rianne is one of the kind of "fat but fit" people, and she said, "I have lost around 58 kg. In the gym we lift 40kg sandbags. I don't know how I was walking around carrying that extra weight. No wonder my joints were hurting, and I couldn't get up the stairs." We get into it, don't we? Now we get into it. Here's where the body hierarchies come, really, just come to the surface. We're now, just, you know, before we were being a bit subtle about it. Now we're not bothering. Now, we're just saying how it is. Because, you see, Rianne is still a size 18 (that's size 22 in the US). And so she wants to be smaller, but she's fat and fit, so she's all right - but before, when she weighed an extra 58 kg, she was not all right. She's a good fatty, isn't she? She's healthy, strong, powerful, supple, fit. She gets to go to the top of the fatty hierarchy. She's also a small fat, size 22/size 18. It's not really very fat, is she? The only shining part, there's only one part of this article that really shines through. And I'm like, "Oh, thank God, someone says it," and Scottee says it. Scottee is a yoga instructor, among other things, and he says, "I often say at the end of my videos or classes, 'It's only running. It's only yoga. If it isn't your vibe, it isn't your vibe.' I'm not here to determine that people need to exercise, that to be a good fat person is to be somebody that moves. Because I enjoy exercise that doesn't make me a better fat person than somebody who doesn't." Thank you for saying that - it really doesn't. I like that that quote is in there. I want to frame that quote, repeat it back to people, because it doesn't make you a better fat person if you're exercising. But what I wanted to tell you about this article is, I think it really highlights how subtle it is. It's the language, it's the coded language that we use. There's something in there about worthiness that we look to these people who have been selected, who are fat and it's their job, or at least their part-time job to be fitness instructors. So, of course, they exercise. It's their job, and I'm sure they'll be the first to tell you that. And Scottee even says that doesn't make me a better person. It's just that I exercise, and I like doing it, and I'm making money out of it. That's great, that's something to be proud of. And it's wonderful that we've got people of different shapes and sizes doing what was traditionally only for thin people, and also this article kind of lays the groundwork for this hierarchy of bodies. There are the ones who are fit and active, and then there are the ones that are metabolically unhealthy, poor mobility, poor cardiovascular health, all of the other things they said - not supple, and they are lower down. They are less than, they are not as good as. And for me, that's a real problem. I'm going to move on now to the part of my podcast where I tell you how everything you've been told about weight loss is a lie. And I'm going to use the study that was quoted in this Guardian article. The study is "Metabolically Healthy Obese and Incident Cardiovascular Disease Events Amongst 3.5 Million Men and Women." People need to work on their titles. I'm pretty sure ChatGPT could do a better job. Anyway, there's a large cohort study from, I don't know when it was from, but it was a large cohort study. I think it was published in 2017 that basically used electronic health records from the - and I'm not making this up - this is an acronym, but it's the THIN database. THIN! They took 3.5 million people, and they basically categorized them. The only inclusion criteria is they couldn't have pre-existing heart disease. They didn't have any history of heart disease, and they categorized them according to their BMI - underweight, normal weight, overweight, obese. We all know how problematic that is, right, that those terms in and of themselves are terrible. BMI is a completely useless metric of health, eugenics, racism, etc. We already know there's a problem. This study is already flawed, but we haven't got to the important parts yet. They defined "metabolically healthy" by the absence of diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. So if you didn't have those three things, you were metabolically healthy, and if you did, you were metabolically unhealthy. And then they followed them up for about 5 and a half years roughly, and they were looking for cardiovascular events, like a heart attack or stroke, or heart failure, or anything like that. So what did they find? They found that metabolically healthy fat people still had an increased risk of heart disease compared to metabolically healthy thin people. They say it like it's a surprise. I mean, you're telling me that fat people have a higher risk of disease than thin people. I knew that. It's obvious, isn't it? But not for the reasons you think, because the other thing they found was that the risks increased regardless of BMI. It was the diabetes, the high blood pressure, and the high cholesterol that increased your risk, not the weight. So even if you're a thin person who had one of these metabolic abnormalities, you had a higher risk. They're saying, "There we go - proof." It's not proof. It's not a gotcha moment. First of all, this is a really terrible study. I cannot believe it got into the Journal of Cardiology, but beyond that it's an observational study, which means we cannot establish causation. Whenever you're looking at studies, whenever you hear about a study, you want to ask yourself what kind of study was it? And is it a good quality study? A randomized control study is, I guess, in terms of collecting data and drawing conclusions, perhaps the most accurate and the least biased of them all, and a meta-analysis. But the meta-analysis is only as good as the studies that it includes. So a meta-analysis of randomized control studies - top, top. Randomized control study. And then you have good quality observational studies. So case control studies, prospective studies rather than retrospective studies. And we can determine whether or not they're good or not. This wasn't any of those things. It was literally the kind of study that a teenager could do with access to the right data. It's just not difficult. Four categories of people, follow them up, and how many people had a heart attack. It wasn't difficult. And you cannot establish causation from an observational study. Why? Because there are all sorts of reasons why fat people who are "metabolically healthy" are more likely to have a heart attack: epigenetics, genetics, early life experiences, stress, environmental exposures, difference in healthcare access, difference in quality of care, difference in socioeconomic status, psychological stress, weight stigma, weight cycling, discrimination. All of these things could be the reason why fat people are more likely to have a heart attack, and we don't know, because we didn't look at it. So it's not a gotcha moment. It leaves more questions than it answers. But beyond that, how are you determining metabolically healthy by just 3 criteria - diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia? Why those three? Why'd you pick those ones? Why not do other ones? What if there's another condition that links all of these together? It's just ludicrous that those are the only thing they can come up with. Also, they're using electronic health records, which is really problematic because they are often inaccurate. They also only assessed the person's metabolic health at baseline - didn't even follow them up every 6 months or something. Nothing - just looked at the data. This is such a basic study. But that's the study that was quoted by Dr. Ellen Fallows, and it's the study that was quoted in the Guardian. Science? It's a crap study. Shame on you for thinking that that's an actual study to be proud of. It says nothing. All it says is that amongst this group of 3.5 million men and women, fat people were more likely to have a heart attack than thin people. Fat people without diabetes, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol are more likely to have a heart attack than thin people without high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. So what? I've already told you, I've listed a whole bunch of reasons why that might be, and unsurprisingly most of them, if not all of them, have their roots in capitalism and racism and ableism and classism, white supremacy. Shocker. Could it be? My final part of this podcast is the part of the podcast where you get to ask me anything. And today's question comes from somebody on Instagram who asked the question, "How can a person improve his health without going into weight loss?" and then made some suggestions - good nutrition, gentle movement, social relationships, good sleep, etc. They said, "I don't want to be passive with my health, even though I know that I cannot control it in the end." And this for me, is the crux of it. This for me sums up the podcast perfectly, sums up the statement: your health does not determine your worth. Because here's the thing. If health does determine your worth, then it makes sense that you'd want to improve your health, and I think of it from a carrot and a stick point of view. From a carrot point of view: why wouldn't you want to improve your health? If health is related to worth, then people with, you know, quote unquote, "better" health will be considered more worthy, therefore more employable, more likely to make friends, more likely to get into relationships, more likely to have support and access to resources, and, you know, do better on a social media algorithm. So many reasons why, if health and worthiness are linked together, why you'd want to act on your health. Why you'd want to, as this person says, not be passive - they want to be active when it comes to their health. But there's also the stick - the other side of the coin - because if my health and my worth, not just my self-worth, but my worth, my value within society are linked together, I have to be active, otherwise I'm at risk. Now we're talking about threats - threat to my safety and security, to my financial stability, to social isolation. We're talking about healthcare access. We're talking about really important things. If I want to be safe, I need to take action when it comes to my health. And the problem is, there are very few things we can do to control our health. I've talked about this already. We can't control our health. We have so little control over it. So do you get it now, do you get why this is so important? Because if the only way for me to increase my value in society, or another way of looking at it, for me to be considered worth more, as opposed to worth less, then I need to be an active participant in my health, and yet there's very little I can do. So it's no wonder we spend all our money on health and wellness culture. It's no wonder we're always looking for the next hack, the next thing, the next food, or whatever, or supplement, or this or that. There's no wonder people ask me all the time, "What can I do? How can I improve my health without going into weight loss?" They ask me this all the time. Of course you're asking that question. Why wouldn't you? You want to be worth more, not worth less. But here's the other thing. Here's the other option. What if we were to turn around collectively and individually, and say, "My health has nothing to do with my value, with my worth, with what I am, who I am and who I am to other people." What if we were to turn around and say, "This healthism is nonsense, and I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not prepared to live in a world where you're going to judge me by my health." And, you know, it's wishful thinking sometimes. It's not going to impact whether or not you get treated better in the doctor's office. If you're fat and you're unhealthy, you're never going to be treated well by a doctor. When was the last time a fat, unhealthy person had a good consultation? And by good, to get to like a B-plus, not only does your doctor have to work in your best interest, but they have to achieve something. "Yes, and not only do I care about your health, I'm going to do something positive for your health." To get to the A-level you have to go above and beyond. It's asking a lot. But just a pass would be to do something, just something that was actually in my best interest. When was the last time that happened? The last time it happened to me? I can't remember. No, somebody gave me an injection, a steroid injection into my shoulder. That was a C-minus. Didn't talk about my weight, either. So maybe even a B-minus. Folks, I'm going to leave it at that. I hope you got something out of it. I welcome your thoughts. And if you have something that you want to ask me for next episode, then please do ask me anything. You can check the show notes. You can send me an email, or you can send me a message on social media or find a way of getting in touch with me and asking me a question, and then I will try and answer it. I should probably have a list of things that are happening right now. I have no idea what they are. So if you're not signed up for my emails, remember, you're only getting one email a week. Well, two, if you count the No Weigh Newsletter. So the No Weigh Newsletter, and there's one email a week from me now. So if you are signed up, you'll be getting less, but you'll still be in touch with what's going on, because I'm not organized enough to remember to say it at the end of the podcast episode. Thank you so much to everyone who's listening. I will see you next time.