Obesity has long been seen as a personal failure, but recent progress in obesity understanding has begun to change the way people view the chronic illness, as well as those who have it.
Although the harmful stigma still exists, the introduction of new medicines and interventions for people who have tried to “eat less, to move more” for their entire lives that this disease, like any others, must be treated and seen as such.
Lisa Schaffer, executive director at Obesity Canada, has experienced obesity from both sides of the coin – in her personal life and in her professional life. She spent a large part of her life dealing with ‘feeling as the greatest child in the room’, and it was not because of a lack of trying.
“I was always very active. I was in ballet, tap, dance, all the different things in the theater,” she said. “I wasn’t really shy, but I certainly understood that I was different all my life.”
Learning and unlearn what obesity is real
Lisa notes that people on both sides of her family have also had to deal with obesity in their lives, and the idea of having obesity from a young age became ‘everything that shows’.
“That will be a bit that you really form as a person, you know. If you are worried about the tensile strength of a chair since a small age, it stays with you. That determines how you navigate some aspects of life,” she said.
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