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Fat Shaming Meets Obesity Drugs, But Is Medication the Answer?

Dr. Patricia Farrell
6 min readApr 28, 2023

Weight, obesity, and fat shaming are reasons for concern now that medications appear to offer the “magic” solution to all of them.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Fat shaming is a widespread issue that negatively impacts people’s psychological and physical health, leading to self-blame and delaying the receipt of necessary medical care. Stress brought on by weight discrimination makes overweight and obese people may consume more, which in turn causes them to gain more weight. In different contexts, such as medical offices and workplaces, weight stigma exists. And increasing the number of diets that have been tried and failed, only makes matters worse, not better.

Those who have been the object of fat shaming are always hoping the answer to their problem lies in the next diet or, now, the new medications. Is it the answer for which they are hoping? Time will tell, but Mother Nature isn’t easily fooled.

“Failure” is the operative word here, and TV commercials with well-known entertainment stars are eager to get customers on another diet plan. Did all those stars have weight problems that were “solved” with these “diet systems"? I truly doubt it, and I find this disingenuous hawking of expensive food plans disagreeable in the extreme. Yes, in the extreme.

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Dr. Patricia Farrell
Dr. Patricia Farrell

Written by Dr. Patricia Farrell

Dr. Farrell is a psychologist, consultant, author, and member of SAG/AFTRA, interested in flash fiction writing (http://bitly.ws/S94e) and health.

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