Help us Beat Weight Stigma in Eating Disorders

Jeanette and Emma started calling to BEAT U.K. (eating disorder charity) into a conversation during Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2022 on weight stigma in their services. People in large bodies are commonly left out of the services, not represented and stigmatised in ED diagnosis and treatment. These mean that fat folx struggle to access treatment, the correct treatment, in treatment experience weight stigma and anti fat bias and find it more difficult to recover from EDs.

In our open letter to BEAT, we asked for some clear actions : -

Retract your position that ‘ob*sity’ is a problem and cease using stigmatising language about fat people

De-align yourself from weight management programmes, policies and campaigns

Promote a weight-inclusive approach in eating disorder services and wider health promotion activities which is informed by the lived experiences of fat people.

BEAT agreed to meet with us during EDAW 2022 but then cancelled on the day of the meeting without rescheduling.

We have a huge amount of lived experience of weight stigma experience from ED diagnosis and treatment from in BEAT services and from within the NHS. Please feel free to share your experience here.

Since then, BEAT has emailed us asking questions about our concerns and asking about lived experience. We replied with our concerns and that we were going to be left out of the conversation.

We haven’t heard back as of 13th April.

We need to take power over this narrative.

No one deserves to experience weight stigma and the trauma that comes with this experience. We want to see this stop completely but for the time being we need to create a safe space for people who are or are at risk of experiencing weight stigma in ED diagnosis and treatment.

We will continue to campaign to stop weight stigma in EDs.

We are raising money to: -

If you can give, we would really love your support.