Thanks for taking time to share your thoughts but I’d like to respectfully point out a few things. If you factor in the compounding factors of weight stigma, size discrimination, and social determinants of health, you can account for all of the discrepancies in risk between BMI categories. BMI is inherently flawed, but that’s another topic for another day.

We also know social determinants of health play a large, and often unmeasured, role in disease. COVID is a prime example of that, because when you look at the evidence, no, there is not a greater likelihood of death or complications for patients with higher BMIs…those numbers are generally reflective and representative of the population as a whole. The medical bias towards thinness and our culture’s insistence that weight loss = better health contribute to misrepresentation of the data and the skewing of public opinion.

I know it’s nice to think it’s as simple as, “eat a healthy diet and exercise” but that’s overly simplistic and fails to factor in the nuance and intersectionality of health and health behaviors. There are no prerequisites for body acceptance — one’s body size should not preclude them from access to health care or the ability to make autonomous, informed decisions about how or if they engage in the pursuit of health.