Approach to care

• What does it look like for you to provide care to patients in larger bodies? How is, or isn’t, your approach different from how you care for patients in smaller bodies? If you work with children, how is or isn’t your approach different when working with children?

  I validate that society is tough, there are a lot of thoughts and feelings about bodies size, shape, ability, health, gender, sex, race etc. I name that I too live in this world and hear how people talk about bodies. This all said, that weight is just a very small portion of what I may look at. If our body has lost weight we may need to check in to make sure its growing/healing. Larger bodies I gather resources to make their journey in life slightly easier such as RHA declining wts. explore communities that can support them in their body and challenges fat bodies have. Similar for children, but bring parents in and discuss how important language is around food and bodies as well as providing consistent intake no matter the body size.

• What is your perspective on how weight is or is not related to health?

  Like any bio marker weight can give us data on the body. I give examples of my time in LTC and cardiac clients who did not take their diuretics lead to 25# weight gain in 5 days. This is very important data on how fluid is building up and that the body is not doing great. Weight and set point comes mostly from genetics and if we truly want to work on health we need normalize our relationship with food (consistent, enough, and varied intake), incorporate enjoyable movement, and make connections with our bodies cues. This can be done without focusing on weight and in any body.

• Finish this sentence: “Fat people are…” 

  people. (should be treated like their counterparts in other sized bodies)

• How do you, your clinic, and the healthcare system you work in use BMI (i.e BMI cutoffs for accessing certain services, BMI on charts and printouts, etc)? Is this flexible?

  I do not believe BMI is a useful data point

• If a patient declines to be weighed, how do you and/or your staff proceed? Cool, unless we are working on restoration. Then we will need to get a weight eventually but can take a couple sessions to get comfortable with getting weighed.

• If a patient declines to discuss weight loss, nutrition, and/or exercise, how do you proceed? Amazing! I mean insurance will likely want me to ask about food at some point, but can do that without shaming food choices in turn normalizing intake.

• What does the physical accessibility of your office space look like? What kinds of accommodations are present for people in larger bodies? Are there things you wish were in place that are currently not? Chair of varied sizes including couches in both waiting areas and in offices

• What do you do to allow fat people to feel comfortable and welcome in your office? Comfortable sitting areas without arm rest, artwork on the walls of various bodies including fat bodies, discussion within the first appointment that weight in terms of "health" is never going to be a goal however it is a safe space to have conversations around how being in a larger body affects life

• If you’d like to use this space to talk about any identities (gender, race, size, sexuality, etc.) you hold and how this relates to your care, please do so.