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Weight bias: a call to action

Weight-related issues (including excess weight, disordered eating and body concerns) are often considered as comprising distinct domains of ‘obesity’ and ‘eating disorders’. In this commentary we argue that the concept of weight bias is an important variable when considering wellbeing across the spe...

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Autores principales: Alberga, Angela S., Russell-Mayhew, Shelly, von Ranson, Kristin M., McLaren, Lindsay
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5100338/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27826445
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40337-016-0112-4
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author Alberga, Angela S.
Russell-Mayhew, Shelly
von Ranson, Kristin M.
McLaren, Lindsay
author_facet Alberga, Angela S.
Russell-Mayhew, Shelly
von Ranson, Kristin M.
McLaren, Lindsay
author_sort Alberga, Angela S.
collection PubMed
description Weight-related issues (including excess weight, disordered eating and body concerns) are often considered as comprising distinct domains of ‘obesity’ and ‘eating disorders’. In this commentary we argue that the concept of weight bias is an important variable when considering wellbeing across the spectrum of weight-related issues. We make the following six points in support of this argument: i) weight bias is common and has adverse health consequences, ii) shaming individuals for their body weight does not motivate positive behaviour change, iii) internalized weight bias is particularly problematic, iv) public health interventions, if not carefully thought out, can perpetuate weight bias, v) weight bias is a manifestation of social inequity, and vi) action on weight bias requires an upstream, population-level approach. To achieve sustainable reductions in weight bias at a population level, substantive modifications and collaborative efforts in multiple settings must be initiated. We provide several examples of population-level interventions to reduce weight bias.
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spelling pubmed-51003382016-11-08 Weight bias: a call to action Alberga, Angela S. Russell-Mayhew, Shelly von Ranson, Kristin M. McLaren, Lindsay J Eat Disord Commentary Weight-related issues (including excess weight, disordered eating and body concerns) are often considered as comprising distinct domains of ‘obesity’ and ‘eating disorders’. In this commentary we argue that the concept of weight bias is an important variable when considering wellbeing across the spectrum of weight-related issues. We make the following six points in support of this argument: i) weight bias is common and has adverse health consequences, ii) shaming individuals for their body weight does not motivate positive behaviour change, iii) internalized weight bias is particularly problematic, iv) public health interventions, if not carefully thought out, can perpetuate weight bias, v) weight bias is a manifestation of social inequity, and vi) action on weight bias requires an upstream, population-level approach. To achieve sustainable reductions in weight bias at a population level, substantive modifications and collaborative efforts in multiple settings must be initiated. We provide several examples of population-level interventions to reduce weight bias. BioMed Central 2016-11-07 /pmc/articles/PMC5100338/ /pubmed/27826445 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40337-016-0112-4 Text en © The Author(s). 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Commentary
Alberga, Angela S.
Russell-Mayhew, Shelly
von Ranson, Kristin M.
McLaren, Lindsay
Weight bias: a call to action
title Weight bias: a call to action
title_full Weight bias: a call to action
title_fullStr Weight bias: a call to action
title_full_unstemmed Weight bias: a call to action
title_short Weight bias: a call to action
title_sort weight bias: a call to action
topic Commentary
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5100338/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27826445
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40337-016-0112-4
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