Healthy At Every Size: Must We Surrender the War Against Obesity?

We must love obese people enough to tell them the truth.

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About the Authors

Julian Adorney is a columnist at Reality's Last Stand and the founder of Heal the West, a substack movement dedicated to preserving liberalism. He’s also a writer for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). Find him on X: @Julian_Liberty.

Mark Johnson is a trusted advisor and executive coach at Pioneering Leadership and a facilitator and spiritual men's coach at The Undaunted Man. He has over 25 years of experience optimizing people and companies—he writes at The Undaunted Man’s Substack and Universal Principles.

Geoff is a Relationship Architect/Coach, multiple-International Best-Selling Author, Speaker, and Workshop Leader. He has spent the last twenty-six years coaching people world-wide, with a particular passion for supporting those in relationship, and helping men from all walks of life step up to their true potential. Along with Mark, he is a co-founder of The Undaunted Man.

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The war against obesity isn’t going well. So, here’s a novel idea: what if we just stopped fighting?

That’s the idea at the heart of the Health At Every Size (HAES) movement, which argues that obesity is not a problem and that weight loss shouldn’t be a goal. Dr. Lindo Bacon, a leading proponent of HAES in the United States, describes their book of the same name as “a book designed to help you break free of the weight-loss mentality.” Bacon quotes a patient from a study they ran involving obese participants who encapsulated the essence of the movement: “weight loss may not be possible” and “would not be a goal” of Dr. Bacon’s work with her. 

So, if the aim of HAES is not to help obese patients lose weight, then what is the goal? To destigmatize obesity and “embrace size diversity.” The ultimate objective is a kind of radical self-acceptance: eat what you want when you want, move your body when you want, and just ignore the scale. Or as Bacon advises, you should simply “Love and appreciate the body you have.”