The Fat Doctor Podcast

No Weigh! The Live Book Launch

• Dr Asher Larmie • Season 6 • Episode 19

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 For 20 years, I prescribed weight loss without question at the same time as I was experiencing weight stigma myself as a fat doctor in a fatphobic system. In this special live episode, I'm launching my book No Weigh! Everything You've Been Told About Weight Loss Is A Lie, and sharing exactly what's in it: the lies, the money, the harm, and the tools fat people need to fight back. This isn't a book about fixing yourself. It's a book about reclaiming your power. 

Don't forget to order your copy today and make No Weigh! a bestselling diet book.

Got a question for the next podcast? Let me know!

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Hello everyone. For those of you who are with me in the room right now, you get to see me recording a podcast. For those of you who are joining me either on YouTube or wherever it is you're listening to your podcast, hello and welcome to a very special episode of the Fat Doctor podcast. This is my book launch, live. I have absolutely no idea how it's going to turn out, but I'm really looking forward to it. I've got some amazing people here with me to ask the questions they've always wanted to ask about the book and about all the work that I'm doing. It's a free-for-all.

I have been preparing for this moment for a really long time. Like, months, right? It took me months to write this book, and I mean, psyching myself up, and then I published it, and then I had to wait for the pre-order, and it's finally coming out tomorrow. And you'd think that I would have a lot to say and I'd be really ready to talk about it, but actually my mind has gone completely blank, and it has been blank for the last two days. Every time I sat down to write notes, I was like, I don't know what to say. I think I'm very emotional, and so I'm just going to start with that. I'm feeling very emotional, I'm feeling very grateful for this community who have kept me going. Every time I wanted to quit, one of you has reminded me not to do that, and has told me why I shouldn't do that, and it has kept me going. And I am so grateful for you. I cannot — I'm not trying to be cutesy about it, I really mean it. And most of you who know me well enough know that I don't just say things for no reason. I say it if I mean it, and I really, really do mean it. So, thank you, first and foremost.

I really hoped — I had planned to have a copy of my book to hold up in front of you right now. See this imaginary copy of my book? I ordered it on the 1st of May, and on the 7th of May I got an email from Royal Mail saying we will be delivering your book tomorrow. That was the 8th of May, which just happened to be my birthday, and what is the 19th of May? And that tells you everything you need to know about Royal Mail. Amazon tried to fix it, they didn't, and so unfortunately I'm not going to have a copy of my book probably for another few days. You might get one before I do, which is exciting for you. So I just want you to pretend that I'm holding my book right now going, look, it's here, it's here!

But it's out in print version and on Kindle tomorrow, so if you pre-ordered it on Kindle it should be delivered directly into your inbox, and if you haven't pre-ordered it but you're going to be ordering a hard copy, then you can do it from midnight tonight, technically, or actually by the time this podcast comes out, wherever you are.

And so now I'm going to be really honest with you about two things. Number one, I very, very, very rarely read non-fiction books. I've probably read ten in the last two decades. The other thing is, I never listen to podcasts, which is kind of ironic because we're on season 6 of my podcast, and I've written a book myself, but I don't actually — like, it's not my thing. And I think reading non-fiction is actually a really big ask of people. I know that life is busy, I know that our capacity is limited, and there are lots of amazing books out there, and I have a long list of ones that I'm planning to read and probably will never get to. I've read that actually just buying a non-fiction book can have quite a positive impact on you. So that's my excuse for all the books I've bought and never actually read.

That being said, the book exists now, and I'm really proud of it. I'm going to tell you all about it. All of Season 6 is about this book and will continue to be about this book. There's also a website, NoWeigh.org. There's a page on the website — it's noweigh.org/start-here — and it basically condenses the entire book into essentially a 10-minute read. So if you don't have the capacity to read the whole book right now but you want to know what's in it, you can start there. Basically, however you want to engage with it, there is a way in.

I love that some people mainly read non-fiction, because it's way more interesting. I read a lot of fiction — it's mainly romance or crime fiction, and the more basic the better for me. I do not read highbrow fiction at all, because my brain literally won't let me. But I applaud those of you who do, because educating yourself is always a very good thing.

Alright. I'm going to tell you a little bit about why this book exists and what's in the book.

The book exists essentially because for 20 years I practiced medicine without knowing any of this stuff. I prescribed weight loss without question. I told my patients to lose weight in order to treat their symptoms. I told my patients that they had to lose weight in order to access certain treatments. I never fully agreed with that last part — I always felt like that was actually inappropriate — but it was the guidelines, it was the rules, and I followed the rules without question. I never once thought about weight stigma. Honestly, I didn't even know what it was until a few years ago. And all the while, the entire time I was practicing medicine this way, I was also experiencing weight stigma as a fat person trying to access healthcare.

I had my first child three years after I qualified. So the first time I had a child, I went through pregnancy and labour in an extremely fatphobic environment. I knew what weight stigma was and I knew all the bullshit that came along with weight and medicine, and yet I never thought to question it. I probably need to talk about that in therapy one day, because I don't quite know why. Although, I guess to a degree I internalized a lot of the messaging, which was that fat people essentially deserve what happens to them, right? So I felt like I deserved it. So every time a doctor was shitty towards me, I was like, ugh, that's crap — but I deserved it, because if I wasn't fat then they wouldn't have had to do that. So I guess that's how I justified it, but I probably need to explore that more in therapy, not here.

In 2020, after the pandemic hit and I went on my final diet ever, I found the anti-diet world accidentally, and it has been an incredible journey ever since. I learned a lot. I learned about all of the lies that we've been told about weight loss — a lot of them, anyway. And the more I learned, the more I was like, this is not possible, this can't be true. I kept going, and more and more lies got uncovered. Then I started to realize that doctors were playing a huge role — a very important, very integral role — in spreading these lies and perpetuating the harm. Like, doctors were conspiring with the weight loss industry, essentially, or the weight loss industry was conspiring with doctors, to really actively harm fat people, to deny them basic healthcare, and to perpetuate these lies we're being told. And I was like, oh no. It's not good being on the wrong side of history. I probably need to do something about that.

And so I started speaking up. As those of you who've been following me know, I started out as The Fat Doctor, and then I started using the hashtag NoWeigh quite a long time ago. The book has been bubbling away ever since — I think this is the fifth version. I've written it many times and gone, no, that's not it, and then had to start again. But yeah, at the end of it all, at this stage in my life, the real reason I wrote this book, the real reason I feel like this book has to be out there, is because I'm really sick and tired of doctors. We could end the sentence there, but specifically, doctors treating their fat patients like shit. I am really sick and tired of it. There is absolutely no rhyme nor reason, nor justification for it. It's just wrong. It's so wrong. It's harmful, it's unethical, it's a breach of our duty of care. And it has to stop.

But I didn't want to write a book to doctors. A, because — well — and B, because I didn't think they were going to listen to me. But actually, that's not the main reason. The main reason was because I wanted to write a book for fat people. And so that's what I've done. I have written a book for fat people, about fat people, centering the lives of fat people, and very much with the attitude of: if doctors read this, they can read it and they can take note, but actually it's not about them. It's about fat people.

I'm not here to get doctors on board. I really don't think I need to. The rules are the rules, the laws are the laws, and they're supposed to be doing something that they're not doing, and they should be held accountable for that. So I wrote this book for fat people, as a way of giving fat people the language and the evidence to stand up to their doctors, to take their power back from their doctors. Yeah, I think the anger sort of became the book, really, if I'm honest.

So, a little bit about what's in the book.

Chapter 1 is "Is There Such a Thing as a Healthy Weight?" and I spend the entire chapter telling you that this idea — that there is a correct weight to be, and if you go above that weight you're fat and unhealthy, and if you go below that weight you're also unhealthy, but there's a bit in the middle which is the healthy bit, technically BMI of 18 to 25 — is just bullshit. The whole thing is bullshit. I talk about the history of how it came to be. It is essentially a scam created by insurance companies to begin with. Then the weight loss industry was born out of this and went, oh, this is a great way to make money. And that's what they're doing — they're making hundreds of billions of dollars every year because they created this myth, this lie, that there was such a thing as a healthy weight, and anybody above it is fat and unhealthy. It's not true.

There's this term, obesity — I refer to it a lot in the book, and I make it very clear that I don't agree that it's a real thing. It just simply means being fat, so it's a clinical way of calling someone fat. But the idea that it's a disease — there's something a lot more sinister about that. The weight loss industry turned fatness into a disease in order to sell weight loss. That was the whole point. That's kind of the once upon a time of my story: once upon a time, the weight loss industry created a disease out of nowhere to sell weight loss. That's how it starts.

In Chapter 2, I tell you something that probably many of you already know, which is that diets don't work. And diets don't work because your body won't let them. Literally, your body is programmed to resist the very thing you're trying to achieve. They work in the short term, because your body is fairly relaxed about it at first — it lets you get away with it to a point. But over time, something called adaptive thermogenesis kicks in. It kicks in right from the beginning, actually — your metabolism slows down, your appetite goes up, and weight loss is unsustainable for pretty much everybody. It's a biological reality. It is evolution. It's not something to do with willpower, or not being good enough, or not trying hard enough, or needing to try a particular diet. They never do work. None of them do. And I talk about that in great detail in the book. How your body is designed to hold onto its fat for your survival, for the survival of the species, and it doesn't understand the difference between intentional and unintentional weight loss. It's all the same. Starvation is starvation, as far as your body is concerned. I also talk about how the best way to gain weight is to attempt to lose it, because weight loss is the biggest risk factor for long-term weight gain. Essentially, dieting makes you fatter. There's even a study called "Dieting Makes You Fatter," which is great.

Chapter 3 talks about how being fat is not what is making you sick. I know — it goes against everything you've been told. I think this is the chapter people are going to struggle with the most, because it's very contrary to all the messaging you've probably received most of your life.

I started talking about the obesity paradox in this chapter — many of you will have heard of it. A paradox is basically something that happens contrary to what you'd expect, right? Everyone assumes that being fat is a risk factor for disease, and so they can't explain why fat people seem to do much better in all sorts of circumstances. After a heart attack, after a stroke, if you've got kidney failure and you're on dialysis, during surgery, after surgery, in ICU, with heart disease, with heart failure, with high blood pressure — there are all these studies that show that fat people fare better. They live longer. And they call it a paradox. They've come up with all sorts of reasons why — oh, no, it's the data, it's confused — but it's not. It just is what it is. Because actually, what no one is willing to accept is that in some situations, having fat is actually protective. It protects you when you fall down. It stops you from getting frail. Fat is a very important organ that serves many important functions. The idea that fat is bad for you because it doesn't look good — it's like saying skin is bad for you because it doesn't look good. That's just bullshit. Interestingly, muscles look good, so nobody has a problem with people having too many muscles.

Weight cycling is absolutely a huge risk factor for all sorts of diseases, and that's what I refer to in the book. They all say it's your weight, but actually it could just be weight cycling. It could be weight stigma that's causing these things. In fact, weight stigma and weight cycling have been shown to cause high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar, chronic inflammation, and all of these things. So it might be your weight, but indirectly — it might be because you're being stigmatized because of your weight, as opposed to your weight itself causing the disease. That's when it gets a bit complicated.

So that's kind of Part 1 of the book, which is basically: fat is not a diagnosis, so let's stop treating fat, because there's nothing wrong with fat.

The second part of the book is all about how doctors are making you sick. Being fat is not what's making you sick — but the next chapter shows that doctors are making you sick. I don't pull my punches in this chapter. I am brutally honest about how doctors really are very much the problem instead of the solution. That weight stigma kills people. There's one particular study that showed that during swine flu, fat people had an 81% higher odds of dying. Which is terrible. But it turns out it's not because of their weight — it's because fat people received antiviral treatment a lot later than thin people. Once they took that into account and adjusted the figures for that, the association between weight and death from swine flu disappeared. So that's just one study that shows that weight stigma is literally killing people.

But it's not just doctors that are making you sick — it's the treatment itself. They created this disease in order to sell a cure, but the cure itself is causing the problems. Sometimes that's quite literal: there are weight loss drugs out there that cause the very problems they claim to be solving. Many drugs have been taken off the market because they caused heart disease. Weight loss drugs that caused heart disease — you can't make that up. I talk about the Minnesota Starvation Experiment in great detail. I talk about eating disorders and how doctors are essentially prescribing eating disorders to their fat patients. How we don't take this seriously — how dieting is a risk factor, and how you're up to 18 times more likely to develop an eating disorder if you use severe dieting techniques, which are prescribed by doctors. We don't talk about that enough. And I also make the point that what we call disordered eating in thin people, we call lifestyle changes in fat people. And that's a real problem.

The next chapter is about how weight loss won't improve your health. I don't know what else to say about that. Weight loss doesn't improve your health. The end. There's a whole chapter about it, but to sum up, it doesn't.

And then in the last three chapters, I get into why it's all become so problematic. Because the beginning of the book covers the reality — that doctors are really problematic, that weight stigma and eating disorders and weight cycling are causing harm — and hopefully doctors reading that part go, "Oh god, this is crap, why are we doing this?" And then Chapters 7, 8, and 9 make it very clear why we're still doing it.

Chapter 7 is about how the guidelines exist but can't be trusted. I show very clearly how the guidelines committees — the ones that write all the guidelines saying you should lose weight to treat your sleep apnea, you should lose weight to treat your arthritis, you should lose weight because you're fat, full stop — are bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical industry and the weight loss industry. We are enshrining discrimination into medical practice because of money, for profit only. For no other reason.

The next chapter gets harder, because I talk about the money — how much money, and what money will buy you in today's world. I talk about how semaglutide, sold as Ozempic and Wegovy, and Novo Nordisk made upwards of 30-plus billion last year. And Mounjaro beat them by a few billion — just a few billion between friends. I talk about what drug companies are able to do with the money they spend: how they buy doctors, how they buy guidelines, how they buy research, how they buy the media, how they buy politicians. You can call it lobbying if you want, but they are making sure that they continue to earn money by continuing the lie.

The last chapter is probably the most painful. It talks about just how far these lies have taken us in our society — how far we've allowed this to go. I talk about children who were removed from their family by social services simply because they didn't lose enough weight. I talk about how people are being denied surgery, how people can't have organ transplants, how they can't have fertility treatment. And I allude to the fact that this is eugenics. It's very intentional. This is the weight loss agenda. It's really hard, because I sort of ended the book there — not completely abruptly — but it doesn't have a happy ending yet. There is no happy ending. I tried in the epilogue to sort of cheer people up. I don't know if I succeeded.

But the thread that runs through all of it is what good healthcare should look like. Because the thing is, as I point out in the book repeatedly, this isn't new information. I am not telling doctors this is a new way to practice medicine. I'm just saying this is how doctors are supposed to practice medicine. It's already in the handbook. It's not radical, it's not some new standard — we've been talking about this stuff for about 100 years. Autonomy, first do no harm — it's already written in black and white. Sometimes it's quite explicit. Like, you're not allowed to discriminate against your patients based on the fact that you think they brought on their medical condition. That's actually explicitly written into our UK guidelines for doctors.

I remind people that no is a complete sentence, and you get to opt out, and you get to say no, and doctors cannot demand anything else. It's hard, because they will try every technique they know, and sometimes it doesn't feel like you can say no. But I try to remind people that there is a way.

Now for some questions.

Is this book for people just starting on an anti-diet journey? Absolutely. I really want people who are just starting on an anti-diet journey to read this book. The sooner the better. It's written for anyone to understand — I've tried to write it in very plain English without the jargon. It's a story, and it's best to read it through, from chapter to chapter, because it follows a theme. But yes, you don't have to know anything about anti-diet. The idea is: you've never heard of anti-diet before, you pick up this book, you read it, and by the end of it you could be an expert.

How can this book support someone who has been advocating for themselves for a long time? For some people, they've been in the anti-diet world for decades and they're still struggling to access the healthcare they deserve, and they know they deserve better. There is a lot of advice, there's language that people can use. I'll say things like: if your doctor says this, you can say this. If your doctor's trying this, you can try this. I'd love to be able to present the perfect solution and just say, here's a two-page PDF of how to get the care you deserve. I wish it were that simple. That being said, there is a two-page PDF you can get — there's a QR code at the end of the book. If you scan it, you can get a two-page PDF script for how to advocate for yourself in the doctor's surgery. I appreciate that's not going to fix everything, but it's a start.

Will this book help me talk to my fatphobic family? Well, I think this is a great way to deal with your fatphobic family — you can just give them the book and be like, shut up and read this. Part of writing this book was about wanting to take the burden off you, because no one takes you seriously when it comes from you. And I get that one of the many privileges of being a doctor is that people do listen to me, because I have a medical degree. So you can just give them a book written by a doctor with over 200 clinical references in it and just say, I'm not saying this — here's the book, you read it. That's one way to deal with it.

The book has come out in this environment where GLP-1s are the default. Yeah, you're going to learn throughout this book why GLP-1s are the default. Once you know how they did it — and I tell the actual story of how they did it, how they got to be that successful, what it took, which was about 15 years and was very clever — I just kind of reveal the playbook.

Is there a section in the book you think might be particularly persuasive when talking to a fatphobic doctor? If I had to pick, it's the section on weight stigma, because there's a big part in there about medical ethics — this is what your doctor should do, is obligated to do. And so if they're not doing it, you can say, hey, you're supposed to do this and you're not. There's such a power imbalance in the consultation room, such a disproportionate amount of power held by the doctor. In a way, I want to pull back the curtain and say, actually, this is what doctors are supposed to be doing. This is what you should expect from your doctor every single time. This is standard medical care. And if you know that, and you know your doctor's not doing it, I want you to have the courage to say, hey, you're supposed to be doing this and you're not.

What's the one piece of advice or information from the book that you'd give to someone who is skeptical? There is a section on the NoWeigh website — if you go to noweigh.org and go to the evidence section — I wrote that specifically for skeptics. There are about 10 clinical references, and I wrote this for skeptics. So if you've got someone who's just like, this is all bullshit, you can send them to that webpage and say, okay, sure, go read this and then come back to me — because I'd like to think it's fairly persuasive.

And I often say to people, it's really a lot to ask of you to have to educate friends, family, medical professionals. You shouldn't have to do that. You are already experiencing a lot of stigma, a lot of trauma, a lot of harm at the hands of all of these people who are supposed to care about you. The last thing you should have to do is become an expert and start citing journals. I hope that the book and the website will give people the opportunity to just say, I'm tired — there's a book out there, just go read it. Educate yourself, rather than you having to educate other people.

Do you intend to have it translated? Yes! There are two people from France sitting in the audience of this book launch, and French might be the first language I translate it into — not because I prefer French to any other language, simply because French people have offered to help me. I would love to be able to translate this into multiple languages. I am a self-published author, so I have to do all of this on my own. I don't have a publisher doing it for me. So it might take a little while, but it is the plan.

I love this comment: "The positive is the empowerment to push back and self-advocate in a more informed way. We shouldn't have to, and it's also a valid choice not to, but this is a very important tool to help us decide and know how to." I love that. I might put that on my website. Instead of a mic drop, it's a book drop, and then you leave the room. Like, don't talk to me before you've read it. Do you remember when people used to say, talk to the hand? Well, talk to the book. Shove this very bright blue and orange book in their face and just — yes. Over 200 clinical references. I think it might actually be upwards of 250.

Advice on finding care when it's likely to be denied on the grounds of BMI. I spend a lot of time working with clients on a one-to-one basis, and it's definitely mentioned in great detail in the book. I don't want to give too much away, but I am literally working on the next project — because I can't finish a project without working on the next one. The next project is basically about this. How do I find a doctor who's willing to do the surgery? Watch this space. I promise I can help with that. I have had many clients who couldn't get the surgery, and I've sometimes actually sat in the consultation room with them and advocated for them until they got their surgery.

I live in the Netherlands — I think the way the NHS may be different from Dutch healthcare, yes. And many of you are saying: I live in America, I live in the Netherlands, I live in France — you're all in different parts of the world, and our healthcare systems are going to be different. I have worked with clients in most parts of the world — Europe, Canada, America, Australia. Yes, healthcare systems are different. However, there are some fundamentals that apply wherever you are. There are certain ethics, certain laws that all doctors must abide by, wherever they are in the world. A lot of the research I did was based primarily in the UK, although I do mention the American Academy of Paediatrics, the WHO, the National Institutes of Health in the US, and I think even a Canadian body as well. But most of the stuff in this book applies to anyone, anywhere.

And yes, as someone is commenting — even in the UK it varies enormously depending on where you live. BMI limits differ trust by trust. There's no UK-wide regulation on this, and the reason for that is because it's completely and utterly illegal. It is discrimination. I would very much like a lawyer to come along and try the case. It's illegal, what they're doing. Illegal. There's no question about it. There's no argument to be made apart from discrimination here, especially when it comes to BMI limits on surgery. There are very strong arguments to be made against them.

Just a little bit about who this book is for. It is written primarily for any fat person who has ever walked out of a doctor's appointment feeling worse. Full stop. You go into the doctor feeling crap, because otherwise why would you go? And you come out feeling worse. You know that feeling. I wrote this book for you. I wrote this book for every single person out there who was told to lose weight instead of getting a diagnosis. Nobody cares about what could be causing that — they've already decided the moment you sat down that it's because you're fat, and the only way to treat this is weight loss. I wrote this for you. I wrote this for the person in the audience who is being denied surgery. I wrote this for every single person who is being denied treatment until they're deemed thin enough — whatever thin enough looks like, and as one person pointed out, it just depends on where you live. Postcode lottery, or zip code lottery, as they say.

I wrote this book for every single person who has blamed themselves and internalized the message that this is all my fault — if I were thinner I wouldn't have any of these problems, so when my doctor treats me like shit, I deserve it, I brought it on myself. I wrote this for you. The book is yours. To any fat person out there, it gives you the evidence, it gives you the language, it gives you the permission to push back. I'm not saying it's easy to push back, but it gives you the permission to do so.

Here's a comment I love: "In my opinion, the book is sharing some infuriating stuff — sure — but it is super empowering to first know that what we feel as not okay IS not okay. And even if nothing changes immediately with doctors or family, I feel like I can have a much better informed consent, or non-consent. I feel like I can say, nope, no thanks, let's not talk about my weight. No Weigh." I love that. You catch on.

There's a lot in the book about consent and opting out, and how to opt out. Like, you just don't have to listen to any of it. And there are some parts I think people will find really surprising. Like for diabetics, for example — there's a whole section in there about how you just get to say no to all of that. Not just the weight loss, but also all the restrictive dietary advice they give you. It's all based on very questionable evidence. So there's lots of information that gives you the opportunity to make your own informed choice. Because at the end of the day, this is not meant to be a substitute for medical care. I'm not trying to be your doctor — that's not appropriate, that's not my job. But if your doctors are not giving you the evidence, if they're withholding the evidence, if they are giving you the wrong information, if they are not giving you the opportunity to make your own informed choice because they're coercing you — which is illegal — you need information, you need knowledge. How can you claim back any of your power if you don't know what you don't know? So I think a lot of this is just giving you the opportunity to say no. Or no weigh, because I'm punny like that.

Now, the book is out tomorrow. There is a link in the show notes. Here are a few things you need to know. When I self-published this book, Amazon asked me to give it categories. I've put it down as a diet and weight loss book. I've also put it down as personal health. Those are the two categories. If I sell a lot of copies in the first couple of days, it is possible — and this is just wishful thinking, this is pie-in-the-sky thinking — it is possible that I could be a best-selling diet book author. And I will be able to tell everybody that I wrote a best-selling diet book, and I really like that. So I'm asking you to buy the book in the first couple of days so I can be the author of a best-selling diet book. Imagine if everyone who goes to look at diet books clicks on a book, and the first thing Amazon recommends is the number one ranked best-selling diet book of the week — my book. That would be cool.

An Amazon review — if you've read the book already, the more reviews you put on Amazon, even if it's just a one-liner, the higher it goes in the ranking. The higher it goes in the ranking, the more likely people are to read it. I want to make it very clear right now: I did not write a book to sell copies. I did not write a book to be famous — in fact, if I could write a book anonymously, I would. And I definitely didn't do it to make money. For those who don't know, selling books is not a great way to make money. I am not trying to persuade you to buy this book so that I can become rich and famous. I am trying to persuade you to buy this book to support me, yes, of course — thank you to those of you who are. But because the more copies that are sold, the more people are talking about this book, the more strangers on the internet who have never heard of it all of a sudden come across it and go, oh, what's this? And get curious about it and start reading it. The more the message will spread. And that's what I want to happen. It's not about selling copies, it's about getting the message out there, and forcing healthcare professionals to pay attention.

I want you to imagine you're a doctor. You're sitting in your office, and somebody brings in a book, or says, have you heard of this book, or mentions it or references it. The first time you hear it, you dismiss it. The second time you hear it, you dismiss it. The third time, you start to get a little bit pissed off. What is this book? Who is this author? Why are they making my life difficult? But if you've heard it five times, ten times, if people keep talking about this book, you're going to find it very hard to ignore it. Especially if people use this book to start writing complaints about your mistreatment of them. Life's going to get really tricky for you really quickly, and then you're going to have to pay attention, and you're going to have to address some of the issues this book raises.

So part of it is: I want people to get the message, most importantly. I want fat people to read about this. I want fat people to feel empowered to advocate for themselves. But there's also part of me that wants to force the conversation — specifically, the conversation about why we shouldn't be prescribing weight loss, why we shouldn't be weighing patients, why we shouldn't be talking about weight in the consultation. And we absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, shouldn't be stigmatizing our patients because of their weight, because this is just completely and utterly unacceptable.

So, yes, please — I need your help to spread the message. I am self-published, I don't have a team. I edited the book myself. I don't have a PR team, there's nobody working in marketing, there's nobody helping me here, it's just me. So the more you help me to spread this message, the more the message will spread. Tell people about this book, share it, post about it. Send it to your doctor. If you want to really make a point, buy a copy for your doctor.

Thank you all very much. I'm coming to the end of my podcast. I'm going to end the recording now. Thanks, folks, see you next week. Let's see what happens next!