The Fat Doctor Podcast

My Weight Says Nothing About Who I Am

• Dr Asher Larmie • Season 5 • Episode 27

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Society has conditioned us to believe that our weight reveals everything about our character, intelligence, willpower, and worth as human beings. From childhood, we're taught that fat bodies represent moral failure, laziness, and unworthiness of love or respect.

In this raw and powerful episode, I dismantle the extensive list of harmful stereotypes we've internalized about ourselves and call out healthcare professionals who perpetuate discrimination. I explore how these beliefs shape our relationships, our sense of self-worth, and our right to exist fully in the world—and why it's time to reject these lies completely.

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 27 of Season 5 of the Fat Doctor podcast. I'm your host, Dr Asher Larmie. It's been all of 2 minutes since I recorded episode 26, but it's been a whole week for you.

And I hope it's been a good one. I don't know what happened. I'm recording this in the past, if the world still exists, that's great, that's a positive thing. And yeah. Today, I'm gonna tell you why my weight doesn't say a damn thing about me.

Yeah. Not a damn thing. Not one thing. And I thought I would start this episode, instead of saying why it doesn't, by telling you all the things that people think that their weight says about them. More importantly, all the things people are conditioned to believe that their weight says about them. I read a list! It's a really long list.

And it's not an exhaustive list, like, that was just all the things that I could write down in a few minutes.

The things we're conditioned to believe, and we are conditioned to believe them from such a young age, there are studies that show that children before they hit kindergarten age. Before they go to what we call here in the UK nursery. They already have these beliefs. That's how far back we can trace it.

In our own lives. And these lies that we've been told have existed for many centuries now. We didn't always feel this way about fat bodies.

Like, things change, and if you want a good account of how they changed and why they changed, then I will continue to recommend Fearing the Black Body by Dr. Sabrina Strings. It's a really good sort of summary of what happened. What went wrong? And how it all, as often is the case, stems from racism.

That just got very dark very quickly. Sorry, but it's true. I mean, that's reality, isn't it?

So, here's my list, I've written it down, I've got it on paper in front of me, I'm looking at it, I'm like, okay, here we go, a list of all the things we're conditioned to believe about ourselves as fat people, just because of our fat bodies, nothing else. Nothing else involved here. It's just this because I'm fat, I believe that or we're taught to believe, that we lack willpower and self-control.

Because we're all [eating sounds]. Right? That's if you can't see me, that was an impression of me eating, stuffing food in my face. You might be like, what the hell? That was my impression of me eating, which is probably how I eat. It's quite messy. I make no apologies. I do eat with my hands quite often. There's, like...

I'm a big fan of Zora and Mumdani. Of course, I'm going on a tangent. I'm a big fan. Follow him on Instagram. And there was this whole hullabaloo, because he was eating with his hands. And people were calling him a savage. And I've been with my husband, my partner now for over 25 years, and we often eat dishes with our hands, because that's culturally what is acceptable, and what we're taught to do. In many African cultures, including his own, there'll be some kind of starch or foods, or whatever that you kind of like, roll up in a bowl, and then you dip it into a stew or a soup, and then you eat with your hands, that's completely normal. And as my husband Junior would say, nature's cutlery.

And point to his fingers, yes. So yes, I do eat with my hands, I make no apologies. But anyway, I'm not going to go off on any more tangents, because otherwise we'll be here for ages, really long list.

We lack willpower and self-control. We're lazy and unmotivated. Let's just bullshit, because we're often the opposite. We're trying to prove that we're not, so we kind of like, swing the other way. We're the opposite of lazy and unmotivated. We eat too much and move too little, of course. Eat less and exercise more, obviously. We're unhealthy by default, and I have covered this ad nauseam already in the last five seasons of this podcast. So we all know that we're not unhealthy by default, that your size doesn't say anything about your health. If that wasn't a podcast episode a few weeks ago? Sure it was, I've forgotten already. But yeah. Fat equals unhealthy. No, it doesn't, but that's what we're conditioned to believe.

We're conditioned to believe that we're a burden on the healthcare system. I did do an episode about this once, and I'm very proud of that one. I still, to this day, chuckle. And I hope that you all are like, using that analogy of how, like, if being fat is a burden to the healthcare system, so is being male.

But yeah, we're conditioned to believe that, for some reason, men are not conditioned to believe that. It's odd, isn't it?

At the same time, we're conditioned to believe that we're costing society money. We're setting a bad example for our children, so much so that that is a reason to remove children from their homes. We have proven this, that there are social workers out there who are willing, and judges who are willing to remove perfectly happy, yet fat children, from their homes because they're fat. Not because they're being abused, because they're fat.

That we don't care about our appearance. That's just not true. I mean, I don't care that much about my appearance, but it's not because I'm fat. We don't care about our health, of course. You know, because the fats are clear, we don't care about our health.

There is a stereotype about us being less intelligent and less capable, and I don't put that much stock in intelligence. Like, I, you know, this whole concept of intelligence doesn't really excite me. You know, when people say, well, my IQ's really high, I'm like, already, I don't like you. I don't think it's that important. But to say that people are not intelligent because they're fat, well, that has some real eugenic undertones, and that's not okay. You cannot determine a person's intelligence based on the size of their skull, their height, the length of their arm span, or indeed the size of their body, so fuck off with that nonsense.

There's a belief that we deserve fewer romantic partners, or options, you know? You should be so lucky if anyone takes an interest in you? And then there's, you know, I don't want to be too explicit, but even people who are sexually assaulted will be told, you're lucky that someone showed an interest, you know? That's people actually genuinely believe that. Like, I've heard people say that. That's interesting. We should be grateful for any attention or love that we receive. We should be so fucking grateful for it. We should be begging for the crumbs from the table. Because we're not worthy enough to sit at the table, because we're fat.

And we really shouldn't be sitting at the table, especially if there's food on the table, because we are greedy, and we will eat all the food. So instead, we must stand to the side of the table, ideally kneel beneath the table, and beg for the crumbs of affection that people are willing to sort of throw at us, like we're dogs.

Actually, that's not true. I give my dogs really lovely food. But yeah, that's what we're taught. And I, you know, I'm gonna go off on a tangent. I have been doing a lot of self-reflection, and a lot of like, unlearning and deconditioning and processing a lot of shit that stems all the way back from my childhood, and one of the things that I've learned of late is that I have a tendency to take on the role of the helper. All the fixer. Or the savior. Because I have been told that there is zero value in who I am as a human being. That my value is purely comes from what I am able to do for other people. That's what my value, that's where my value lies. As a human, no. But as somebody who does things for other people, yes. And so, that's something I learned from a very young age, and it's something that I've believed for a very long time, and as a result, I find myself constantly trying to fix other people's problems. Constantly trying to help people. Constantly offering, you know, as much as I possibly can, putting their needs above my own, making myself smaller, making my needs disappear. You know, being kind at all costs, all of these things, and I can trace it back to the fact that I learned from a very young age that I should be fucking grateful for any attention or love I receive. I'm not entitled to it.

And that's bullshit. Everybody is entitled to attention and love. Everybody, regardless of what they look like on the outside or on the inside. Everybody. Okay, that wasn't a necessary tangent. Going back to my list.

Especially, this list is kind of random, so it was quite deep and meaningful, and now it's just switched over to something very practical. We've been conditioned to believe that, or that we're less reliable employees, and again, that's like, if you look at how fatphobia and weight stigma impacts employment. All the stuff is there. Yeah, apparently we're not reliable. We're not as good, even though most of us spend all of our time trying to disprove this! By being the kind of indispensable one. We're more than reliable, but whatever. And also, fuck working for the man. So I don't think there's anything to be... I don't want to be a reliable employee. I want to be the person that phones it in.

We've been conditioned to believe that we're addicted to food. We're addicted to sugar, we're addicted to fat, we're addicted to salt, whatever we're addicted to at the moment. Carbs. We've been conditioned to believe that. We are there's something wrong with us emotionally. You know? Like, there is some kind of like deep psychological flaw. And that's why we're fat, as a result of this deep psychological flaw, whatever it is.

We're conditioned to believe that we're supposed to hide our bodies and take up less space, spend a lot of time telling people to take up more space. But hiding our bodies, oh my gosh. I used to, especially my belly, because that was the thing I was most ashamed of, because it's the biggest part of me, is I would always try and find clothes that flattered my shape. You know, what clothes flatter my shape?

Now, I intentionally choose clothes that show off my belly. I draw attention to it, because I'm like, yes, my belly enters the room before I do. It's your lucky fucking day. But that took a long time to learn.

We're taught that we're conditioned to believe that we're weak, that we can't handle stress. That we don't deserve fashionable clothes, or like, cool clothes. Like, all the plus-size clothes are just always ugly. Why? Because we have to hide our bodies. The two go hand in hand.

And then, of course, we're conditioned to believe that we should always be trying to lose weight. We're fundamentally flawed, there's something wrong with our body. The body our bodies are the problem, and we should be doing everything in our power to fix them. And in fact, if we're not actively dieting and trying to fix our bodies, then we are just failures. Failures on that kind of basic, like, human level. You are a failure as a human being.

We're conditioned to believe that we caused all of our own health problems. I spend a very long time studying evidence, presenting it in all sorts of different ways to say, no, that's not true! You're not diabetic because you're fat. You know, high blood pressure doesn't go on fat, you don't have heart problems because you're fat, you don't have you don't have PCOS because you're fat, you don't have arthritis because you're fat, you don't have fatty liver because you're fat, oh my god, I've done so many master classes, so many master classes!

But, you know, it's like screaming into the void, no one listens. I mean, you listen, obviously, but not everyone else. The rest of the world doesn't listen. We've been conditioned to believe that we should be ashamed of eating in public. To kind of exist in a public space, don't you dare put food in your mouth.

We've been conditioned to believe that when other people are uncomfortable with our bodies, that we are responsible for that discomfort, that we have to do whatever we can to manage that other person's discomfort. But it's somehow our responsibility. Because they're uncomfortable. No, it's their response, but if you're uncomfortable with me, fucking look away. But we've been conditioned to believe the opposite. That we don't go to the beach in swimwear, because other people would be uncomfortable having to look at all of our fat rolls and all of our cellulite whilst they're like, enjoying a day out on the beach. Look away, mate. Just look away.

We've been conditioned to believe that when we try to take up space? Or just exist in fat bodies, we are glorifying obesity. That's what we're doing. Glorifying obesity. Kind of like we glorified the name of Jesus, but we're glorifying the name of obesity instead. Fuck obesity, fuck glorifying, fuck all of it. We have being conditioned to believe that it's absolutely okay to discriminate against fat people. Because that will motivate them to change. If we deny fat people their basic rights, well, then they'll become thin people, so that's a perfectly good excuse. Stop mollycoddling your patients, Asher, and they'll never get thin unless you tell them the truth and horrible to them about them being fat.

We have been conditioned to believe oh my god, this list is so long, that we don't deserve the same opportunities as thin people. We have been conditioned to believe that we are morally inferior to thin people. We have been conditioned to believe that we should be constantly apologizing for our very existence. We have been conditioned to believe that we have no right to complain about mistreatment. Because with that. You brought this on yourself. Stand up for yourself, and once again, you're glorifying obesity. That was a long list. I don't know how many it was, but I don't know. Was that, 20, at least? I didn't count. Anyway, it's a long list.

Are things that we are conditioned to believe. And you memorize at the beginning of this podcast, I said that my weight, my size, doesn't say a damn thing about me, and yet I've been conditioned to believe all this shit about myself based on what I look like. That's not fair!

The people that did the conditioning, I want to have words with them, and it's not just my parents, I'd love to say it was just my parents. It wasn't just my parents. This is one thing I cannot just blame on my parents. They had a role to play, but actually it was society as a whole. It was everybody, it's everywhere. I cannot escape it. This is just what we've been led to believe.

But the reality is that our weight says nothing about who we are. It doesn't say about how much anything about how much exercise I do, how much I eat. How intelligent I am, how capable I am, what I'm like as an employee, what I'm like as a person, my mental health, my emotional well-being. It doesn't say anything about those things. It doesn't say that I deserve to be mistreated. Just because I look like this, that somehow I deserve it. It doesn't say that.

My my my size, my weight says nothing about who I am. It doesn't reflect my levels of willpower. It doesn't reflect my character, my integrity, my courage. You cannot tell any of those things by looking at me. None of them. It doesn't make me any less capable. And it doesn't make me any less deserving of respect. Deciding that a person deserves less respect. Deciding that a person is whatever you decide, just by looking at them is discrimination.

When you make assumptions about people based on their weight, you are causing harm. It is discrimination, there is no other word for it. And I get it. We live in a world where it pays to discriminate. Like, the more you discriminate, the more powerful you become. The more money you earn, the more sponsorships you get. It pays to discriminate against people. We're living in some very tough times, but you know what?

Fascism is boring as fuck. Fascism has no substance. Fascism is like a house of fucking cards. It might look impressive. It might look powerful and mighty from the outside, but actually, in order for fascism to exist, the powers that be have to hold on so freaking tightly because they know there's no substance.

Human beings need connection. Human beings want to live in a world where everyone is treated with respect. Human beings want to be valued. Want to be treated well. If we lived in a society that treated everyone equally. The powers that be would have less money and less power, and they don't like that. But they are a very small, small proportion of people! The rest of us, like the 99% of us, or the 98% of us, just want to be treated with respect. Basic respect, like, at the end of the day, just basic levels of respect will do.

We don't need to be shitty to everyone else in order to feel good about ourselves. And I know, we've been conditioned to do that, and I'm not saying that 98% of the world doesn't hate fat people. Like, most of the world do hate fat people, but they don't realize the underlying issues. They don't realize that this is actually just societal conditioning. They don't realize why they think these things. They just but taught to think it. We were all taught to think these things. We were taught to think these things about ourselves. Thin people would think these things about fat people, and it sucks! It really does. But I genuinely believe that none of us want this.

Like, the whole of society doesn't want this, deep down. I understand that the political and economic and even social structures require there to be an us and a them, require there to be these kind of structures in order to thrive and survive. But I also believe that human nature rebels against it. And I really believe that for as much as we're being squeezed right now, there's also this kind of wave of what is the word I'm looking for?

Compassion. There's just bursting to get out. Like, like, people are so shitty at the moment, it's like it's creating a real desire in a lot of us to see change, to see, you know to bring back the 1960s peace and love and, you know, Woodstock and all that shit, I don't know, I'm just making shit up now, but I wasn't there.

I've heard it was great. Anyway I want to speak now specifically to healthcare professionals, to the medical profession as a whole. Any one of you who perpetuates harmful stereotypes about fat people isn't just reinforcing discrimination. But you are denying fat people the right to live to our fullest potential. And that fundamentally goes against you're a professor. The vision, the mission, the purpose of the healthcare profession. You you we aren't you, we, we.

As healthcare professionals. Are essentially here to ensure but people, humans, get to live to their fullest potential. Literally. Live to their fullest potential. And and when you do the opposite, then you're doing the opposite. You're causing human beings at its most basic, to die. Or to live a half-life.

That's what you're doing. When you deny patients the right to treatment, when you discriminate against them, when you stigmatize them, when you mock them, when you when you treat them poorly. When you perpetuate these harmful stereotypes. You are causing harm to your patients. And fuck you for doing that.

Like, I don't have anything else to say to you, but fuck you. You might not like that, but if you're listening in right now, fuck you. You have no right, and I'm sick of it. I'm sick and tired of it. You are repressing an intentionally marginalizing fat people, you are blaming us, you are taxing us for the consequences of that oppression, which makes it even worse, not only do you inflict the wound, but then you go ahead and rub salt on it by saying, it's your own fault!

I'm punching you, and it's your fault that I'm punching you! I'm assaulting you, and it's your fault that I'm assaulting you. How dare ye? It is high time that we as a society, but especially the medical profession, stop using weight as a measure of worth and start recognizing the full humanity in every single person, irregardless of what they look like. Whoever sits down in front of you at your desk. Whoever they are, that you just recognize, this is a human being. Who deserves all of my compassion, and my empathy, and my respect.

Just basic dignity, just basic dignity, that's all I'm asking for. Nothing exciting, nothing exceptional, just basic decency.

As you can see, I am very angry. I'm also very hot, it's July, people. End of July, beginning of August, and I'm sweaty. But I'm also angry. And I'm glad I'm angry, because that anger has been there. It's been very present, it's been stuck. It's like been it's it's it's had nowhere to go for a really long time.

And one of the things I realized as I was talking I was alluding to earlier on is that I have spent a lot of time being the helper and the fixer. Being the fat doctor, being the one that, like it's like, oh, you're going through hard times, let me make that better for you. That I have forgotten that I am also a fat patient.

I'm a fat person. I am experiencing the same levels of discrimination and hatred, etc, as you are. Now, hang on, I know, to be fair, the weight stigma is very much it's not a binary, it's not yes or no. It is on the spectrum. The heavier you are, the more stigma you experience, and I know that. I know that as a small fat, I experienced far less weight stigma than other people. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that. I also hold more than one identity that is experiencing is under attack, let's put it that way. As a trans person, as a queer person, as an autistic person.

Life isn't fun, life isn't fun for any of us. But I forgot that actually it's not my job to fix other people's problems. Sometimes it's my job to just be like, yeah, not my job. Sometimes I have the right. I deserve to just sit here and go. Yeah, this fucking sucks. I'm a person, as well as a doctor.

One of the things I realized was that I am not very good at differentiating where the person sort of ends and the doctor begins, or the other way around, and the doctor ends and the person begins. I see this a lot in my relationships and my friendships, you know? Where I'm great at giving help, but not so great at asking for help. My own fault, I take full responsibility and nothing to do with my friends. My friends are great. It's just that I don't ask for help.

The whenever they have a problem, instead of just listening, I'm always trying to fix it. And even with my community, you know, I spent a really long time creating this beautiful community on Discord. It's small. But I like that. Small and manageable. It's a community you have to pay for, and this is really fundamentally important to the to the success, I believe, of this community. I had a free Facebook group once, I had been in plenty of free communities that had been absolutely horrendous. I still have the scars. I still have the kind of I'm so shell-shocked.

By those communities. So I, when I was starting, I had a free Facebook community, which I put it into. And I was like, no, I still want a community, and when I was starting up, the first thing I said was, it needs to be paid for, because we value the things that we pay for. If you give somebody something for free, they probably just toss it to one side and never look at it again. If they have to pay £10, even £10 for it. They'll they'll take better care of it. And so, it is a monthly paid-for community, so only the people who really want to be there are there, and they're great people. They're really, really great people. But one of the mistakes I made was thinking that community wasn't enough, that I it wasn't enough for me to show up as me.

This is Asher, that I had to somehow offer my medical services as well. I'm not, like, really shifted, I think, the energy in the group, because it became a group where people came to talk about their medical problems, and that's not what it was meant to be. It was meant to just be fat community. And so, I think well, I know, don't think I made a mistake there. And I realized I made a mistake. And I realized that it's really important that I get clearer about when I'm Asher the doctor. And when I'm just Asher, the fat person.

When I'm recording this podcast, I am Asher the Fat Person. I am a doctor, you can't take the doctor away, like, it's 25 years of my life, dude, like, you can't, like, pretend it's not happened. Rather, like, I can't pretend I'm not trans, or I'm like, I am. But when I sit here in front of my mic and start talking to you, I'm talking to you as just out of the fat person, right, who's angry. And have something to say, and literally presses record and speaks into a mic.

But that's the same in my community now, and I'm really excited about the future of this community. So if you're enjoying angry Asher, and want a little bit more of that. Then come join the waiting room. As I said, it's a paid-for community, it's £15 a month, that gets you access to this wonderful Discord community. And regular coffee and ketchups. My coffee and catch-up sessions, which are really fantastic, just an opportunity for us just to come together and have a coffee.

Or, in my case, it wasn't it's usually a nice drink, or an ice lolly. We call them ice lollies, you call them popsicles in the States. So, yeah, sometimes it'll be that. But anyway, we come together with a coffee, and we just chat, and it's lovely. I've been I've been offering that out, that's now just for waiting room members, it's on once a month.

And then we have this lovely Discord community, and I'd love for you to be a part of that. I really would. And I know that, you know, for some of you, it might be like, that's too much, I can't afford that. Understandable.

But in order for me to be present in the community, it is a paid community. But that means that I moderate it, and that I'm involved in it, and that it will never get too big. Because I will manage the numbers. That conjoined. So yeah!

Join me at the waiting room! It's a waiting room! Because, again, wordplay, W-E-I-G-H-T. Waiting room. But it's like a waiting room. I just I envisioned, when I first started it, I envisioned us sitting there. Waiting to see a doctor, and just having a little gossip. And a moan, and complaining. So there is, of course, it's not it's gonna have it is a place where we can talk about medical weight stigma. Of course, there's going to be a kind of underlying flavor of medical weight stigma, because that's kind of what I do.

But it's much more than that, so yeah, I'd love to have you join us. That is the end of this episode. I'm going to be talking about Jordan's story next week. Jordan is the name of my main character that I've created, I'm very excited.

I'm running out of names. Not that there aren't I mean, I have to come up with some more names. But yes, Jordan's story next week. Thanks very much for listening, hope you all have a lovely week, and I'll see you next Wednesday!