Guess what really still doesn't work? Stigma

I'm not sure why I have to keep pointing out that stigmatizing a fat person does not make them lose weight. You see, no matter which avenue the "Obesity researcher" is coming from, they always come to the same conclusion: fat people need to eat less. Some of them try to be kind, saying its not the fat person's fault they stuff their face, they are just too stupid to understand healthy eating.

Then there are doctors who think its perfectly okay to shame a fat person.

“It happens all the time,” wrote Dr Pemberton, who also has a
column in The Telegraph. “Patients who are not interested in changing
their diet in any way, demand to have their cake, eat it…and then pop a pill
so that the calories never touch their waistline.

As a veteran of countless diets, lifestyle changes, "healthy" eating and OTC diet pills, that resulted in weight loss, followed by massive weight gain, I can say Dr. Pemberton is full of shit. And considering that no weight loss drug has ever worked in the long run while some have been deadly, diet pills are not the easy way to lose weight. 

It goes back to the same argument that all fat people overeat and if they stop they will suddenly become thin. I don't deny that sometimes when you stop eating junk food, you might drop a little weight or none at all. But that weight loss rarely makes a fat person thin. (And until we drop BMI as a primary health indicator, all healthy habits become pointless unless the person gets to the magic "normal" number.)

The people who come to your practice Dr. Pemberton, you might find out something if you listen to their words instead of looking at their fat. Chances are that by the time they meet you, they've already tried all kinds of diets and lifestyle changes and now they are getting desperate.

Last week I reviewed the book Shadows on a Tightrope. In it was an essay about a woman who got weight loss surgery (back when the death rates were 6-8%) purely because she couldn't deal with the stigma.

A good doctor would look at the entire health of the patient, listen to their stories. You might be surprised to find how good they were on their diet until the feelings of starvation took over and how willing they might be to be healthy if their doctor didn't try to shame them.